Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Murkowski, in cosponsoring a resolution commemorating Red Ribbon Week. Red Ribbon Week, celebrated October 23-31 of this year, encourages individuals, families and communities to take a stand against alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug abuse. The tradition of Red Ribbon Week, now in its 22nd year of wearing and displaying red ribbons, started following the assassination of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Enrique ``Kiki'' Camarena. In an effort to honor his memory and unite in the battle against drug crime and abuse, friends, neighbors and students from his hometown of Calexico, CA, began wearing red ribbons. Shortly thereafter, the National Family Partnership took the celebration nationwide. Since then, the Red Ribbon campaign has reached millions of children, families, and communities across the country, spreading the message about the destructive effects of drugs. In my State of Iowa, the theme for Red Ribbon Week is ``Take a Stand--Be Drug Free.'' Schools and community groups across the State are organizing a variety of activities including pledges, contests, workshops, rallies, theatrical and musical performances and other family and educational events. These events are all designed to educate our children on the negative effects of drugs and to promote a drug- free environment. Research tells us that the longer a child stays drug-free, the less likely they will become addicted or even try illegal drugs. This is why it is so important to maintain a coherent antidrug message that begins early in adolescence and continues throughout the growing years. Such an effort must involve parents, communities and young people. Red Ribbon Week provides each of us the opportunity to take a stand by helping our children make the right decisions when it comes to drugs. In light of the growing epidemic of prescription drug and cold medicine abuse throughout the Nation, this year's Red Ribbon Week holds greater importance. I thank my colleagues for passing this resolution to demonstrate our commitment to raising awareness about drugs and encourage everyone to make healthy choices.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is harvest time in Iowa and throughout heartland. It is the time of year when farmers work around the clock to bring in the year's harvest of corn, soybeans, and other grains. Just this past weekend while on my farm in New Hartford, I was able to help my son with the harvest. Across Iowa and the Midwest, farmers are harvesting a bumper crop. It is during this time that we pray that these bounties from the land make their way into of the mouths of the hungry. It is appropriate, then, that during this season of harvest, a gathering will be taking place in northeast Iowa focusing on global hunger. Not far from my farm, a dinner is taking place tonight in the small town of Protivin, to honor one of America's greatest fighters of hunger. Dr. Norman Borlaug, who grew up just a few miles from Protivin in Howard County, shared his talents to help populations around the world. His efforts to increase food production, and alleviate global hunger and famine earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and the title of ``Father of the Green Revolution.'' His work in food production was also acknowledged this summer when Dr. Borlaug was presented the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bush and the bipartisan leadership of Congress. As a testament to his work around the globe, officials from Mexico, India, Japan, and numerous countries in Africa were present to honor Dr. Borlaug. I was proud to join this distinguished group in honoring him, and I thank my colleagues for acknowledging Dr. Borlaug's accomplishments. It is clear that Dr. Borlaug has never forgotten his roots. He remains a rural Iowa farmer at heart. That is why I am sure tonight's dinner near his hometown will mean as much as, if not more than, the formal banquet that followed his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It is also appropriate that Dr. Borlaug is making this trip back to the heartland today, October 16. Today has been designated ``World Food Day'' around the globe, and ``Dr. Norman E. Borlaug/World Food Prize Day'' in Iowa. Dr. Borlaug continues to lead the effort to end global hunger and will do so today by participating in the first Iowa Hunger Summit in Des Moines. This summit will bring together people from across Iowa and the country to focus on feeding the hungry at home and abroad. Iowa Governor Chet Culver and former Governors Vilsack, Branstad, and Ray will also be in attendance for the summit. I would like to thank the World Food Prize Foundation which provided the leadership in making this daylong focus on hunger possible. The foundation has worked closely with the Alliance to End Hunger, the One Campaign, and Iowa State University to make this event a central focus of World Food Day. This is an appropriate time of year for us to focus on hunger and feeding the malnourished worldwide. I hope my colleagues will join in commending those who are working daily to raise the awareness of world hunger and working to provide adequate food for all.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is with great sadness that I must inform the Senate of the death of Sergeant Joseph B. Milledge a Glenwood, IA, native who was killed in Iraq on October 5, 2007, during combat patrol in Baghdad. Sergeant Milledge was part of the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, 1st Armored Division stationed in Vilseck, Germany. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends, especially his wife Amanda and their 1-year-old son Joseph, Jr., as well as his parents, Carla and Jack. Joseph Milledge was born in Council Bluffs, IA, and later moved to Glenwood with his family where he attended high school. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 2003, a year after he graduated. By all accounts, Joseph was a highly literate man who enjoyed reading books on religion and philosophy and writing poetry. In fact, I understand he gave his wife a book of his unpublished poetry this summer. Joseph loved his family unconditionally and cherished spending time with his son, nieces, and nephews. Sergeant Milledge was very dedicated to his country and the cause for which he was fighting. His mother explained that he didn't want to go back for a second tour because of his family but did so because he knew it was his duty to his country. Carla Milledge said, ``You couldn't have asked for a better father or husband. He loved his wife and son. He loved them with his whole being.'' I know his loss will be felt very strongly, not least by his infant son. But, as his wife Carla said, ``He'll know his daddy was a hero and died for what he believed in.'' Sergeant Joseph B. Milledge is indeed a great American hero who will be remembered for his courage, his strength, and his love. He gave the ultimate sacrifice for his family, friends, and country, and we are forever grateful.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for 10 years, I have advocated for stronger measures to ensure that America's nursing home residents receive the quality of care they deserve. Currently, over 1.7 million Americans live in nursing homes. This number will grow by leaps and bounds as the baby boomer generation ages. Therefore, there has never been a more critical time to make sure that the Federal Government does all it can to protect the most vulnerable among us from substandard care. In late September, an article on the front page of the New York Times underscored this issue and brought to light some troubling data. The article, entitled ``At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing,'' studied the quality of care at investor-owned nursing homes. The findings were alarming, to say the least. Using numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the article compared several investor-owned nursing home chains to industry-wide averages for several indicators. Here is what was found. The investor-owned homes, on average, had fewer clinical registered nurses per resident and higher numbers of serious health deficiencies. The article also reported that, in some cases, long-stay residents in these investor-owned homes suffered from higher rates of deterioration in their condition. I would like to highlight one case in particular. Following its purchase by a large investment firm, one nursing home cut its number of clinical registered nurses in half. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities, and other services were also cut. Investor profits soared and resident care plummeted. Indeed, visits by regulators found fire exits that didn't work, dirty kitchens, and other health and safety violations. Fifteen residents died in 3 years due to negligent care, according to their families. Our elderly and disabled nursing home residents our own grandparents, mothers, fathers, and other loved ones deserve better. Is this a case of profits before care? Well, I am not sure. But I certainly intend to look into it. I intend to investigate allegations that some large investment firms are buying up nursing homes across the country and are hurting quality of care. And as a result, achieving, as the New York Times said, ``More profit and less nursing.'' And let's not forget that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shoulder some responsibility for these problems too CMS needs to do a better job of protecting seniors in our Nation's nursing homes and I am going follow up with them to see what they have to say. So I say to my fellow Senators, we must do what is necessary to protect America's nursing home residents. We need to closely examine this matter. I plan to take a very active role in looking at this issue and will be speaking with nursing homes, equity firms, and to CMS. We owe it to America's nursing home residents and we owe it to their families. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article to which I referrd earlier.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about health insurance. Congress is well aware of the ever increasing number of the uninsured. Not to mention the fact that health costs continue to rise at an alarming rate. Make no mistake, the numbers are sobering. But I am not here to dwell on the past and present. I stand here today to talk about the future. I stand here to discuss ways to expand access to health insurance and to change the inequities in the tax treatment of health insurance. During the debate on SCHIP, I engaged in a colloquy with Senators Burr, Coburn, Martinez, Corker, and Bennett. During that exchange, I explained that, currently, a taxpayer who receives health insurance through his or her employer is not taxed on the cost of the health coverage. I also explained that individuals who do not receive health coverage through their employer generally do not receive a tax benefit. Similarly, a tax benefit is not afforded to people who are not employed and purchase health insurance on the individual market. I noted that Republicans and Democrats alike agree that Congress should ``level the playing field'' and expand access to health insurance. The question is how. Senators Burr, Coburn, Martinez, Corker, and Dole have introduced a proposal that would eliminate the exclusion for employer-provided health coverage. It would provide a flat tax credit to all Americans who purchase ``qualifying health insurance.'' I commend the Senators for their leadership, and I intend to work with them on ways to expand access to health insurance. Senators Wyden and Bennett have also introduced a proposal that would expand access to health insurance. Senators Gregg, Bill Nelson, and Alexander have cosponsored the proposal. Most recently, Senators Stabenow, Landrieu, and Coleman cosponsored the legislation. This bipartisan legislation is a ``patient-driven'' approach to reforming our health care system. I want to stress, a ``patient-driven'' approach to reforming health care. A ``patient-driven'' approach means the patient can shop for their own health care in a competitive marketplace, which will allow them to choose the type of health insurance that meets their needs. Many in the Democratic Party, including several of the Democratic Presidential candidates, want a government-run single-payer health care system that is not ``patient-centered.'' This is a nonstarter and is bad policy. Recent polling shows that the American public thinks so. That is, the majority of Americans do not want a government-run system. I want to reform the health care system through the Tax Code. I want to cap or eliminate the exclusion for employer-provided health coverage and offer Americans a choice between a tax credit and a deduction for health insurance. I want to condition these tax subsidies on States undertaking certain insurance reforms. I want to give the States the flexibility to decide what types of reforms are best for their constituencies. This ``patient-driven'' approach--with insurance reforms and changes in the tax treatment of health insurance--should make health insurance more affordable. And it should significantly reduce the number of the uninsured. During my tenure in the Senate, I have sought to build bridges between Republicans and Democrats. I believe that there are times where Republicans and Democrats need to come together to produce results. An example of my efforts to work in a bipartisan manner is the bipartisan SCHIP legislation that was overwhelmingly passed by this body. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I join Senator Wyden in cosponsoring the Healthy Americans Act. The Healthy Americans Act is a ``patient-driven'' approach to reforming our health care system. While I support this ``patient-driven'' approach, I have serious concerns about a number of the provisions of the Healthy Americans Act. For example, like many of the Democratic Presidential candidates, the act would require all individuals to buy health insurance. I support accessibility to private insurance and differ with my colleagues on this point. Also, Senator Wyden's approach is more regulatory than I would prefer. In addition, I am not endorsing the repeal of the noninterference clause in Medicare Part D. That is not going to be on the table. So my cosponsorship is not an endorsement of these elements. Instead, I am cosponsoring the Healthy Americans Act to add my voice to the call for significant changes in our health care system. What we have here is Republicans and Democrats coming together to solve a problem. This is what bipartisanship is all about. We are all on the same page when it comes to the big picture; that is, reforming our health care system and expanding access to health insurance. We have serious problems, and we need serious people to solve them. So let's put politics aside, roll up our sleeves and work in a bipartisan way to reform our health care system. Make no mistake, my cosponsorship of the Healthy Americans Act is only one step in the process. I intend to work with Senators Burr, Coburn, Martinez, Corker, and Dole on their health care reform proposal. I intend to work with Chairman Baucus and members of the Senate Finance Committee on small business health reforms, along with more comprehensive health care reform proposals like the Healthy Americans Act. Let's get serious.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program. On Saturday, on television I saw that the President called our agreement--our bipartisan agreement, I want to emphasize--he called it irresponsible. Specifically, in his radio address, the President said we ``put forward an irresponsible plan that would dramatically expand this program beyond its original intent.'' Well, I am here to respond to that accusation by President Bush. To call what we agreed to as irresponsible is an insult to an agreement we reached and is an insult to 67 Members of the Senate and 265 Members of the House who voted in favor of it. Calling our bipartisan proposal irresponsible ignores reality. The reality is that the current program--the program of the last 10 years, sunsetting yesterday--is out of control. The present program is failing. That is--to emphasize--the reason for passing the bipartisan bill that we passed. Because the present program is not working the way it was intended, and with this legislation we corrected a lot of problems to turn that around. So the President is about to veto a bill that fixes the problems and improves the program for the future without having put a credible alternative on the table. We have not heard from the President as to what he would do about the SCHIP program except he wanted to save it and expand it. The current program does not have adequate funding just to keep running with no changes. Under current law, the current program is authorized to spend $25 billion over the next 5 years. That is the baseline amount. But the Congressional Budget Office says the $25 billion baseline amount will not fully fund the program. So the President says he wants to keep the program going. You cannot do it the way it is funded right now. Now, what does the Congressional Budget Office say? It says that without more funding, 840,000 kids would lose coverage. Without changes, as many as 22 States will not have any funding to run the program next year, and Iowa is one of those States--my home State. Senator Harkin is on the floor; he would agree with that, I am sure. Anyway, the President never said he wanted this program to lose kids, but the Congressional Budget Office says, doing what we are doing now, 840,000 kids would lose coverage. So keeping the current level of funding is not responsible, but if the President vetoes that bill, that is what we are doing. Of course, to the President, ignoring that fact is ignoring reality. Let's look at what the President proposed. The President proposed a $5 billion increase in funding in his budget, but that is also insufficient funding. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the President's proposal would cause 840,000 children to lose coverage. That is right. The President's proposed $5 billion of new funding, without doing anything to get more kids covered, I think is hardly the responsible thing to do. The proposal put forward by Senator Lott and Senator Kyl that we voted on 2 months ago--now maybe 3 months ago; I guess it was in July we voted on it--was an alternative to the bipartisan product we eventually passed. The proposal by Senators Lott and Kyl devoted twice as much funding as what the President did. To me, that is recognition enough that the President's thinking on the Children's Health Insurance Program is off track. The Lott-Kyl proposal was the alternative children's health insurance proposal offered during floor debate in July. My good friends put some serious thought into what they developed. They proposed about $10 billion in new Children's Health Insurance Program funding. That proposal covered 900,000 additional uninsured children, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but the Lott-Kyl proposal only received 35 votes--barely a third of the Senate. There are good ideas in the Lott-Kyl proposal. They took a serious look at what populations should be covered by the SCHIP program, and it doesn't result in kids losing coverage as the President's proposals do, as the President's budget does, and that for sure is going to happen with a veto. But with all due respect to my friends, 35 votes is hardly a ringing success. So how much funding is really needed to keep the program afloat? Well, the Congressional Budget Office says $24 billion of additional funding is needed to provide States with funding so that States can operate their programs as intended. That means $24 billion is needed to make sure there are no funding shortfalls, and $24 billion is needed just to fill the hole in the baseline and cover the kids whom States would like to cover if they had sufficient funding. The compromise agreement provides that level of funding and then goes an additional step by offering States incentives to cover more low-income kids, meaning kids and families under 200 percent of poverty. Now, that is the goal of reauthorization--to cover more low-income kids. The bill we passed last week makes other important improvements to the program. Those improvements include better dental benefits, improves mental health coverage, with an outreach program to get the word out to kids for the kids to enroll. A bipartisan compromise is a responsible approach to funding the program and returning it to its original intent--covering lower income kids--and not covering more adults in 3 of our 50 States than our kids are being covered in those States. Now let me shift gears and talk about the alternative to authorizing the program. The alternative to a reauthorization of SCHIP is a simple extension of current law, and calling for a simple extension of the current program without addressing the many problems it has--and I just suggested one: 3 States out of 50 cover more adults in the children's program than they cover children. Now, if you want to talk about the word ``responsible'' and whether Congress is responsible in this bill, I would say anybody who wants to leave the program the way it is--and that is what is going to happen with a veto--that is an irresponsible position to take, to keep a program going that is covering adults in a children's program. We want to cover kids, low-income kids. So the SCHIP program today, which is the way it has been for the last 10 years, is far off track. The President has it backward when he says our bipartisan proposal ``expands the program beyond its original intent.'' With no changes, it is the current SCHIP program that has strayed far from the original intent. I wish to remind my colleagues of 1997, passing the State Children's Health Insurance Program. There is no ``A'' in SCHIP. It was never meant to cover adults, but adults are being covered. We want to get back to the original intent of this program being for kids. First of all, the current program covers kids at incomes far above what was considered low income in 1997. It covers parents, and in some States it even covers adults who have no kids. Under the bipartisan agreement passed last week, this program will return to its roots: covering kids, covering low-income kids. Even though the administration approved of States covering childless adults--now, I want to emphasize that: This administration approved the States covering childless adults. Under our bill, childless adults will be phased completely out of the program. This is a responsible thing for Congress to do. This is one of the reasons the President should sign the bill, because the present policies are irresponsible. Even though the administration approved of States covering parents, under our bill States will no longer be able to get enhanced Federal funding for covering parents. Even though the administration approved of States covering childless adults, under our bill States will only be able to cover higher income kids if they demonstrate they have covered their lowest income kids first. The agreement passed last week creates new financial incentives to discourage States from spending a penny to cover anyone other than low- income children. All the financial incentives in the agreement are entirely focused on low-income children and, let me emphasize, families of under 200 percent of poverty. The administration has done nothing to turn around this irresponsible program which is now on the books. In fact, they have made it worse. Yet they have the audacity to call our bill irresponsible. Those who say our bill is irresponsible clearly haven't read the bill. This bipartisan compromise provides coverage for more than 3 million low- income children who don't have coverage today. If this bill is vetoed and if at the end of the day all we do is simply extend the program that has now been on the books for 10 years, what will we have accomplished? Will adults be gone from the program? No. Will States have a disincentive to cover parents? No. Will States be encouraged to cover low-income kids before higher income kids? No. Will the funding formula be fixed so that States are not constantly challenged by funding shortfalls? No. Finally, will we have done anything to cover kids out there who are not covered today? The answer is no. No, no, no, no. Is that responsible? No. It is continuing current law. Let me emphasize, it is a continuation of the current law that is the irresponsible thing to do. The program is broken as evidenced in just one way: the 3 out of 50 States covering more adults than kids, in some instances covering adults who don't have any kids. The program has strayed. It needs fixing. In fact, the bipartisan agreement follows the path laid down by the President himself. I have said this repeatedly. The President made a promise at the Republican Convention in New York: We will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. President Bush said that. An extension of current law will not do that. He may not want to hear this quote again and again, but until he honors the commitment he made in that speech by making a proposal to cover more low-income kids, I intend to keep repeating it. The President can keep his commitment by signing the bill we passed last week. But if he is going to veto it, he owes those of us who tried to keep his commitment with our bill a sense of what serious policies Congress can adopt to cover more kids. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Thank you, Mr. President. And I thank Senator Harkin.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as cochairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, I have had a distinct interest in the National Youth Antidrug Media Campaign and how we can improve its quality and improve its effectiveness. In 1998, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, with overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, launched a historic initiative to encourage kids to stay drug free. That effort in 1998 built upon the success of former First Lady Nancy Reagan's ``just say no'' campaign. The National Youth Antidrug Media Campaign targets youths age 9 to 18. The campaign also targets parents and other adults who might have influence over the choices young people make about drugs. Research has clearly shown that if we can keep children free from drugs until the age of 20, chances are very slim that they will ever try or become addicted to drugs. Maintaining a coherent antidrug message begins early in adolescence and continues throughout the growing years. This is essential for educating and enabling our young people to reject illegal drugs. Through realistic portrayals, the media campaign is designed to show kids the harmful effects of drugs and the benefits of a drug-free lifestyle. I wish to call my colleagues' attention to the poster behind me. This is one of those famous antidrug advertisements that maybe they remember from a long time ago. They might recall this famous advertisement known for its unforgettable slogan: ``This is your brain; this is your brain on drugs.'' Created by the Partnership for a Drug Free America in 1987, it is widely recognized as one of the known influential ads of all time. While most of us have probably never seen an actual brain on drugs, this commercial helped to shape the view of an entire generation regarding the dangers of drugs. The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign is without a doubt the single most visible symbol of the Federal Government's commitment to youth drug prevention. These advertisements are an important source of information for kids and parents about the risks and dangers associated with illegal drugs. Sadly, though, we have come a long way from the cost and success of those early ads, such as the one you see on the easel. In the 10 years prior to the creation of the media campaign in 1998, the Partnership for a Drug-free America was able to secure grants from various businesses, foundations, and agencies to create over 1,000 ads. Included in that number is the famous ``this is your brain on drugs'' ad which ran in 90 percent of America's households every day. Between 1987 and 1998, national and local media outlets donated over $2.3 billion worth of free advertising space. If you adjust that number for today's pricetag, that would be nearly $3 billion worth of donated media time. Unfortunately, as drug use began to decline, then, as you might expect, so did the generous donations of free air time. By 1998, Congress decided--since it was not going to be free--to fund a paid media campaign employing the partnership's antidrug messages. Since that time, the Federal Government has spent well over $1.5 billion to create, to research, to produce, and to distribute ads to prevent teen drug use. Yet I fear we are continuing to spend precious antidrug dollars to fund increasingly mediocre ads that fail to effectively reach our Nation's youth. In other words, they are nothing like the brain being fried ad I told you about. A case in point are the spots running on TV today. The image you can see in this new ad I have before us in the Chamber is entitled ``Walk Yourself'' from the ``Above the Influence'' campaign. For those who might not be familiar with this ad, I will give a quick synopsis of what this ad says. The commercial--which looks as though it could have been drawn by a 5-year-old--begins with a man smoking a marijuana cigarette while his dog looks on. When the man notices that his dog wants to go for a walk, he tells his dog to walk himself, presumably because he is too busy getting high. The dog responds, telling him he is disappointed in his master. The ad ends with the dog leaving and raising an ``Above the Influence'' flag. Now, maybe I am missing the point, but I fail to see how an ad such as this realistically portrays the dangers or harmful effects of doing drugs. We have a moral obligation in this country to ensure our young people have a chance to grow up without being accosted with drug pushers at every turn. We need, as a country, to create a strong moral context to help our young people know how to make the right choices. They need to know how to say no. They need to know that saying no is OK. And they need to know that saying no to drugs is the right thing to do. It is not just the safe thing, it is not just the healthier thing, it happens to be the right thing. While funding for the media campaign has been relatively modest in terms of our overall Federal drug control budget, it, for many, is the most visible aspect of our Nation's war on drugs. With only so much money to go around, we must ensure we are getting the most bang for our buck. Although I support and encourage any agency that works to reduce or prevent drug abuse, as Members of Congress it is important we be good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars. So I refer you to the Weiden-Kennedy chart--and I am not referring to Senator Wyden or Senator Kennedy. This is a different Weiden and a different Kennedy. We have had numerous studies over the years as to how the effectiveness of the present media campaign is very minimal, if not nonexistent. In last year's Weiden-Kennedy test results of teenagers, the flags ads I referred to in the previous chart, as these ads are called--they are called ``flags ads''--were rated on their believability, persuasiveness, and honesty. When you add up the averages of the flags ads with the rest of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America ads, the flags ads perform well under the ratings of the previous ads. I think the most important categories an antidrug ad must deliver on would be the ones you see listed on this chart. That is why I am concerned the media campaign is failing to reach and deliver an important message to our teens. Now, I would like to refer back to the funding because these are taxpayers' dollars, and we ought to see how they are being spent. So I am not alone in this assessment about the believability or the effectiveness of these ads. There is a wide variety of studies beyond just the one I referred to showing a lack of effectiveness. Even the Government Accountability Office recommended that Congress reduce funding for the campaign until it can be proven to be an effective prevention tool. Congress has slashed funding considerably. As you can see from this chart, the funding for the media campaign is only half of what it was 10 years ago. For fiscal year 2008, the House has slashed another $6 million off the campaign's budget to bring it to $93 million, though our Senate version keeps the funding level. If this is not a wake-up call to the Office of Drug Control Policy, I do not know what is. If Congress is to support the White House's request for a 30-percent budget increase, then the drug czar must take several steps to improve the quality and the effectiveness of the campaign. The first thing that must be done is to improve the quality of the ads. This does not require a budget increase to do so. The ads need to be simple, they need to be direct, and, obviously, they need to show the consequences of drug use. Exaggerations like a girl flattened on a couch or ``smushed'' from pot use, along with poorly drawn cartoons where dogs speak and space aliens freely roam show unrealistic scenarios and damage the credibility of the campaign, as you saw in the previous chart. The early antidrug public service announcements--I am talking about going back to that period of time 1987 through 1998--were simple, they were short, they were memorable. I believe the success of those early ads can be replicated by using a similar formula. Secondly, the campaign could be more effective if its message was more diversified. Although the media campaign has begun an awareness campaign on meth, it took an act of Congress to force the campaign to spend 10 percent of its budget to do so. Most of the ads produced by the campaign so far have all been about marijuana. Although I believe it is important that we discourage marijuana use, there are new and alarming drug abuse patterns that are starting to emerge among teens. Recent studies and articles are showing an alarming rate of teenagers who are abusing prescription drugs to get high. These drugs are easily accessible because kids can easily find and purchase them online or grab them from their parents' medicine cabinet. Many parents are not even aware of the trend or how they should go about discarding leftover medication. The media campaign could be a very useful tool to educate young people as well as parents on these new and emerging threats. Finally, the campaign, along with Congress, should work to encourage media outlets to donate more air time for antidrug messages. Currently, the campaign spends most of its budget in purchasing air time. Although media outlets match the amount the campaign spends, it in no way compares to what was donated 20 years ago. I believe it is imperative we show these outlets the need for more donated time in light of the trends I have previously illustrated. With more donated time, it will enable the campaign to focus on producing more ads on emerging drugs without Congress having to balloon its budget in the process. Some maybe think I have been against antidrug media campaigns because I have been overseeing some of that for a long period of time. But I am not against media campaigns. I am against wasting taxpayers' dollars on ineffective programs that show no effort at improvement. I believe the campaign can be remade into an effective tool to aid in our prevention efforts against teen drug abuse. But much has to change in order for that to happen. So I intend to send a letter to Director Walters, our drug czar, to find out why the campaign is not having a positive impact on preventing teen drug use. What do they intend to do to change this trend? I am going to ask him. I look forward to hearing their response promptly and to begin the process of reforming and reenergizing the National Youth Antidrug Media Campaign. Mr. President, let me ask my colleague from Iowa, who has been waiting to speak, I do not know whether we have the first half hour or whether we are going back and forth, but if the Senator does not need the floor right now, I have other remarks I want to make.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Go ahead.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank my colleagues for introducing this amendment. This program provides vital funding for many hospitals including those in Iowa, and I was very disappointed that the House blocked our attempt to extend this program. It is unfortunate. Extending this program, however, does not address fundamental problems related to the wage index system. As mandated under the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, MedPAC, released their report examining an alternative Medicare wage index methodology. The legislation also requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to propose revisions to the wage index in the fiscal year 2009 Medicare hospital inpatient prospective payment system proposed rule. I look forward to considering this proposal as we continue our work to make Medicare hospital payments more equitable.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I look forward to working with Chairman Baucus and other Finance Committee members to address this issue.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. We yield back the remainder of our time. Cloture Motion

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from North Carolina who just completed, I am willing to work with him on all the goals he wants to do. Earlier in the writing of this legislation, back during the months of March, April, and May, we tried to get the White House to get some other Democrats involved and helping Senator Wyden, who wanted to go in that direction, and the White House couldn't deliver. When it comes down to doing something all at once, or doing it in two separate pieces, sometimes you have to do it in two separate pieces. This is one of those issues. We have to do the Children's Health Insurance Program first and then I am going to join people like Senator Burr. Only I am going to be working in a bipartisan way with Senator Wyden, to see what we can do to take care of all of the uninsured in America. We can do that. The President wants to do it. There are Democratic leaders who want to do it. Senator Clinton has come out with a program doing it through private health insurance. But we cannot do it on this bill. The people who have been talking for 6 months about doing it on this bill had an opportunity, when it was up in the Senate, to offer an alternative. For all their talk, for months, nothing was offered along the lines of what they wanted to do. Don't come back complaining after we get a compromise between the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still complain, when you had a debate on this 2 months ago and you didn't have a plan to offer. You can't get anything passed in this Senate if you don't have it down on paper and offer it to us for consideration. But now, after this job is done, let's all get together and do it right. And we will do it right. I want to spend my time talking about some of the misinformation that was spread about this bill when it was first considered in the Senate 2 months ago and is still being considered today, just as if the debate and all the explanations we gave two Mondays ago didn't make a bit of difference. So let's go through it again. Let's get very basic and let's say where the misinformation is wrong. I am not here to embarrass any of my colleagues so I am not going to use any names. But yesterday a Member of my party took to the floor talking about this bill pending before the Senate. I wish to address some of those issues that were raised by my friend and colleague. This colleague repeatedly referred to the Children's Health Insurance Program as leading to a national system of health care. The goal here is to radically expand the size of a public insurance program to families that are really doing quite well, families making up to $80,000 that may not have children, or the children may already be insured by the private sector because you want to move more people onto the public insurance system because you want to have a nationalized system. I have one simple question to ask all the critics of this bill who, when confronted with the actual policies in this compromise, respond by shrieking: 80,000 income, $80,000 income; and that question is: If this bill became law tomorrow, how many families earning $80,000 a year would be eligible for this Children's Health Insurance Program? And the answer is: None. None. As they say in baseball: You can look it up. I have one simple question to critics who, when asked to respond to what is actually in the black and white of this bill, react by screaming, as we heard in that quote I just gave: National health care, socialized medicine. And that question I ask those folks is this: Under what contorted reasoning is a capped block grant inclusive of policies that prohibit new waivers for parents, phase childless adults completely off of this children's program, and limit matching funding for higher income kids, nationalized health care? That is what this bill does. It takes care of problems that have developed over the last 10 years. There have been legitimate criticisms of it. It fixes those problems and doesn't do any of the things that people say are going to happen, such as families of $80,000 being able to put their kids on this program. You can call all of this rhetoric something. You can call it anything you want. But in Iowa you can't call a cow a chicken and have it be true. I have some charts here I want people to see. This colleague of mine also referred yesterday to what is ``budget gimmickry'' about this legislation. I have this response to that colleague of mine. He said this yesterday, ``There is the problem.'' He was pointing to this chart that he had up at that time. Let me start the quote over again. For example, there is the problem that there is a scam going on, a scam in this bill as to how it is paid for. You can see this chart I have in the Chamber. This reflects the increased costs of the bill as it goes forward. But, in order to make their own budget rules, which they claim so aggressively to be following, such as pay-go-- meaning pay as you go-- they have to take the program, in the year 2013, from a $16 billion annual spending level down to essentially zero. In other words, they are zeroing out this program in the year 2013 . . . that is called a scam. I end the quote of my colleague. I am a proud member of the Budget Committee. I think I know how the budget process works. I believe in fiscal discipline and spending restraints. I agree that even under a Republican-controlled Congress, spending got out of control. Part of the reason why Republicans lost control of the Congress last election is because we didn't show concern enough to control spending. I believe part of the reason the President is threatening a veto of this bill is he is trying to play catchup for failing to veto 6 years of spending bills when Republicans controlled the Congress. I agree that fiscal discipline ought to be applied to spending bills and we should pay some attention to the level of spending and how spending is financed. From that standpoint, let me focus on the criticism that has been made about how this Children's Health Insurance bill is financed. We need to step back, and in stepping back we need to look at the whole picture. The Children's Health Insurance Program is a pretty small part of that picture. The thing about the Children's Health Insurance Program is that it is not like Medicaid or Medicare. It is not a permanent program. This program expired after 10 years. We are working on it now to reauthorize it. It will expire after 5 years. You never hear of Medicare or Medicaid expiring, sunsetting, so it has to be reenacted. It has been going on for 43 years. SCHIP, then, is not an entitlement and I have heard my colleagues recently refer to it as an entitlement. Now, there were some who wanted to turn this Children's Health Insurance Program into an entitlement program. So it has been discussed, I admit. I am not one of those. And nobody in the Senate that I know of spoke that way. But the House bill would have lifted the cap on the national allotment for the Children's Health Insurance Program and extended the program forever. The word ``entitlement'' may be applicable. I fought hard to maintain the block grant concept, the sunset concept--as has been the case since the program was started 10 years ago--- and to ensure that the program did expire so that in the future, Congress would be forced to reevaluate it and maybe improve or cut back, whatever the situation is 5 years from now, just as we have been doing this year with the sunset program. So despite the best efforts of House Democrats, because in the House it is more partisan than the way we do business in the Senate, this is a bipartisan bill. Regardless of the best efforts of House Democrats under the compromise bill when the program expires, it truly ends. The day after the authorization ends, poof, no more Children's Health Insurance Program unless Congress reenacts it. The Children's Health Insurance Program before us is an expiring program. So let me say that again. It is an expiring program. It is not an entitlement. Why do colleagues keep trying to fuzzy the debate by using words that are not applicable? Well, I know most of us in this Chamber would no sooner let the Department of Defense expire then we would let the Children's Health Insurance Program expire. That is a simple fact. But that does not make it an entitlement any more than the Department of Defense programs are entitlements. Because it is an expiring program, it is subject then to a very particular budget rule that makes this chart not exactly intellectually honest. The budget rule says the Congressional Budget Office must score future spending for programs based upon last year's program current authorization. So the baseline for the Children's Health Insurance Program right now, and for next year and next year, is $5 billion. For the next 5 years, the baseline each of those years is $5 billion, and also for the next 10 years. If you want to go beyond 5 years, and we do not do it in this bill, but sometimes the Congressional Budget Office does it, the baseline is still $5 billion. It is actually $5 billion a year forever as far as the Congressional Budget Office is concerned. Does anyone in this Chamber think the budget rule governing the Children's Health Insurance Program is realistic? Well, it is obviously not. But that is the way the Congressional Budget Office does business around here. So let's not kid ourselves. According to the Congressional Budget Office, over 1 million children would lose coverage if we simply reauthorized the Children's Health Insurance Program at the assumed baseline of $5 billion a year. Now, I have never heard anybody around here saying they want to throw a million kids off of this program. So what do you do? You provide for where you are. Well, you can throw them off if you want to, but I have not heard any of my colleagues, even the ones complaining about this bill, I have never heard them complain that we ought to throw 1 million kids off the program. Who would go home and tell their constituents that they voted to do that? But over 1 million kids would lose coverage. That is not politically viable. During the consideration of this Senate Finance Committee bill, there was a children's health insurance alternative that included an increase in the Children's Health Insurance Program by spending $9\1/2\ billion over 5 years. Now, understand, the White House ought to hear that. Even Republicans in the Senate are telling the President: Your $5 billion will not do what you want it to do. Those are even the Members who oppose the Finance bill, acknowledging that $5 billion was not enough. Everyone knows the current baseline is not realistic, that it created a hole in the budget that had to be filled. So what do we do? If you do not want to throw kids off, you fill that hole. It is that simple. We had to comply, though, with the budget rule. That is the way you have to do business around here. You get a point of order against your bill, and you have to have 60 votes to override it. So we did. Do those budget rules make sense? Well, that is a question for the Budget Committee, not for our Finance Committee. The Budget Committee sets those rules, and they are not for the Finance Committee to change. There is another budget rule the Finance Committee was required to follow. That rule is called pay-go, pay-as-you-go, which means that you raise revenue or cut spending someplace else to pay for the new things you are doing. It means the bill needs to cover its 6-year cost, and that makes sense. After all, this bill proposes new spending, and we should pay for it. And this bill does it. This bill complies with those budget rules. It complies with the pay-as-you-go requirement. Now, the children's health reauthorization that we are debating is only a 5-year authorization. And, as I think everyone knows, the bill is paid for by an increase in the tobacco tax, just like the original CHIP bill was paid for when it was created by a Republican-controlled Congress 10 years ago. Now, just like in 1997 when the Republicans did it, we had a problem with how the tobacco tax worked. The revenue from the cigarette tax is not growing as fast as health care costs grow. So that means the revenue raiser is not growing as fast as the costs of the program. So the Finance Committee did what it was required to do to comply with pay-go budget rules. The Finance Committee bill reduces children's health insurance funding to just below the funding that is in the current baseline. That means the Finance Committee, in 5 years, will have the same problem we faced in putting this bill together today. They will have to come up with the funds to keep the program running, if that is what they decide to do 5 years from now. We are covering even more low-income kids in this bill. That is a good thing. Assuming that Congress does not tackle the increasing problematic issue of health care costs across the board, as Senator Burr was begging us to do, the Finance Committee, in 5 years, will have a bigger hole to fill. They will have more kids to keep covering, and health care costs will be even higher than they are today. That is for the Finance Committee to face down the road 5 years. That is just like the job the Finance Committee had today if we were going to continue the Children's Health Insurance Program beyond the 10-year sunset. So what I am saying is, this is really nothing new. Now, my friend and colleague whom I have been quoting all the time, a person for whom I have great admiration, has once again distorted the so-called cliff that he referred to on this chart. That is where the line goes down after the year 2012. He has, once again, produced a chart that shows a dramatic decline in funding of the program. Here is the chart used to raise the issue about financing the compromised bill, which is largely the Senate Finance Committee bill. It shows only the funding in our bill. The approach that this chart takes reminds me of the story of the seven blind men trying to describe an elephant. Each described different parts of the elephant: one the tusk, another one the tail, another one the ear, another one the leg, and none could describe the whole elephant. They could not see the whole picture. So we have to look at the whole picture. As we all know, this program was created to supplement Medicaid. So I am going to show you the whole picture. You have to involve Medicaid. The goal of the program was to encourage States to provide coverage to uninsured children with incomes just above the Medicaid eligibility: Medicaid for the lowest income people, SCHIP to help lower income people who maybe could not afford private health insurance or their workplace did not have it. So to put my colleague's concerns into perspective, we need to look at the whole picture. We need, and we should, look at SCHIP spending as it relates to Medicaid spending. I would like to draw your attention to this chart so everyone can fully appreciate the consequences of our SCHIP program that is a fiscal disaster to some of my friends, as you listen to the debate, the consequences of the SCHIP program in the context of the Medicaid Program which it supplements. So I want you to take a closer look. Let's start with this tiny green line down to the bottom. That is the Children's Health Insurance Program under current law, the straight line across the bottom. I know we have to squint to see it. But that green line represents the Children's Health Insurance Program baseline under current law. As I have already discussed, it is $5 billion each year for the next 10 years, and maybe forever, depending on what Congress does in the future. Now, let's look more closely and honestly at the actual problem we are facing. This massive orange area above that green line I just referred to is Medicaid for several years into the future, 10 years into the future. It is a lot bigger, isn't it, than the Children's Health Insurance Program? Then, on top of that, we are looking to add what is in this bill, new spending for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The new spending is represented by that narrow blue line across the top there labeled ``funding in the compromise agreement.'' Again, you almost have to squint to see that blue line. And as you can clearly see then, costs are growing at a rapid pace overall. The overwhelming driver of the cost is not the relatively small increase of the blue line. And then the decline, you see a decline in that blue line on top in CHIP spending. That is just kind of a blip on the radar compared to the massive increase we see in Medicaid spending. We have a big problem. It is not going to go away. But it is not the Children's Health Insurance Program. It is the entitlement program that SCHIP is not a part of because I made a point--10 times in the last 2 days--that this is not an entitlement, even though my colleagues still talk about entitlement. Where are they coming from? What planet? I don't know. But entitlement spending is, in fact, ballooning out of control in future years if we do not act. We are going to struggle to keep these programs afloat. When you look at the whole picture, this whole picture, it puts things about the SCHIP program and the criticism of the SCHIP program in perspective. But the criticism is not justified. Now, remember all of the fire and brimstone about the awful cliff on the chart that we had before, the awful cliff of this compromise bill? The way that it continues to be described, you would think the world is about to end. And now looking at the big picture, where exactly is that cliff, you might ask? Again, you will have to squint to see that cliff. That cliff starts downward after the year 2012. So you saw on the previous chart, you see that big dropoff. That is what I raise about the intellectual accuracy of that chart. OK? If we go back to the other chart and look at the real program, that is how it goes down a little bit after 2012. It is not that dramatic compared to what we are doing on Medicaid. You can see how this debate has tried to distort what we are accomplishing. So this little blue line is what this debate is all about. This little blue line is the funding in the compromise agreement. This little blue line is what all the fuss is about. It seems like a whole lot of hollering is going on over a dip that is hard to even see. Let me tell you what the compromise agreement and this little blue line is not. This is not, as some people want us to believe, a government takeover of health care. This little blue line is not socialized medicine or nationalized medicine or anything like that. This little blue line is not bringing the Canadian health care system to America. That little blue line is not the end of the world that we know. To suggest that this little blue line and this tiny dip we see after the year 2012 is the dismantling of the U.S. health care system borders on hysteria. While I concede that allotments under our bill in the years beyond the 5-year reauthorization in this legislation do behave as described in my friend's chart, the one with the big dropoff, I don't think it warrants the heated rhetoric we are hearing today and yesterday. SCHIP is not a real fiscal problem. The problem is that issue nobody wants to talk about. What are we going to do about entitlements? Nobody has political guts enough to agree with it, but they want to put this Children's Health Insurance Program on the same par as those Medicaid issues. My friend I have been quoting all day and I worked together a year ago, now maybe 2 years ago, on the Deficit Reduction Act, to try to rein in this egregious Medicaid spending. I am proud of the work we did. He praised me so much 2 years ago for the heavy lifting I did for the entire Senate on saving some money--I should say Senate Republicans for saving some money--but how times have changed. We also found out how hard it is, at the time of the Deficit Reduction Act, to dial back entitlement spending. Even in a Republican-controlled Congress and even with the special procedural protections of reconciliation, we only succeeded in shaving $26 billion off that orange part of the chart. The problem of entitlement spending is still out there, and SCHIP is like a pimple on an elephant compared to the elephant that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are. I am very hopeful that once we are done with the CHIP debate, we can roll up our sleeves and get down to the business of tackling health care reform on a much larger scale, as Senator Byrd referred to, and I have referred to Senator Wyden from Oregon working on it over a long period of time. I know Senator Wyden wants to take this on, and I am going to join him in that bipartisan effort. As I have said many times, I had hoped we could have used this debate on SCHIP to focus on these larger issues of health care reform and helping the uninsured. I tried to engage my colleagues on the other side. I was repeatedly thwarted in that effort and told that SCHIP had to get done first. Well, hopefully we can get SCHIP done and then turn to the bigger issues so the next time the Congress has to tackle the Children's Health Insurance Program, this big orange block would not be so huge. Before closing, another criticism we had of this bill in the last debate 2 or 3 months ago was this. I will quote Senator Lott. I don't think he will mind my using his name. He was quoted on July 31: The House is going to pass a bill at what, maybe $80, $90, $100 billion, paid for by taking money away from Medicare beneficiaries. We go on conference, what will happen? What always happens. You split the difference. We are at 60. They are at 90. How about $75 billion. How is that going to be paid for? Is it going to be paid for by cutting benefits for the elderly or raising taxes of all kinds? Well, it is paid for the same way we paid for it on July 31, 2007, with the tobacco tax, not by Medicare money. He went on to say: I fear what is going to happen in conference. I don't know. Maybe the Senator from Montana and Senator Grassley can sit there and say: Oh, no, no, no, we are not going above what we passed in the Senate. But I think the reverse is going to be true. This is the base. The $60 billion is the beginning. Where did we come out? Exactly where Senator Baucus and I told the Senate we were going to come out. We came out with the $35 billion that passed this body. So all those people who are worried about the position of the Senate being lost in conference by Senator Baucus and I representing the Senate--and let's say Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hatch as well--would you please tell me you were wrong? I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, since the Senate passed the bill the first time, the subject of ``crowd-out'' has become a lot more important in this debate. Crowd-out is the substitution of public coverage for private coverage. Crowd-out occurs in CHIP because the CHIP benefit is very attractive and there is no penalty for refusing private coverage if you are eligible for public coverage. On August 17, CMS put out a letter giving States new instructions on how to address crowd-out. I appreciate the administration's willingness to engage on the issue. I think they have some very good ideas. But I also think there are some flaws in their policy. States are supposed to cover 95 percent of the low-income kids. But it has been a month since they issued the letter and CMS still cannot explain what data States should be using. Personally, I think CMS should have answers before they issue policies. And if they still can't a month later, I believe, as the saying goes, they obviously aren't ready for prime time. So the compromise bill replaces the CMS letter with a more thoughtful, reasonable approach. The Government Accountability Office and the Institute of Medicine would produce analyses on the most accurate and reliable way to measure the rate of public and private insurance coverage and on best practices by States in addressing crowd-out. Following these two reports, the Secretary, in consultation with States, will develop crowd-out best practices recommendations for the States to consider and develop a uniform set of data points for States to track and report on coverage of children below 200 percent FPL and on crowd-out. Next, States that extend CHIP coverage to children above 300 percent FPL must submit to the Secretary a State plan amendment describing how they will address crowd-out for this population, incorporating the best practices recommended by the Secretary. After October 1, 2010, Federal matching payments are not permitted to States that cover children whose family incomes exceed 300 percent of poverty if the State does not meet a target for the percentage of children at or below 200 percent of poverty enrolled in CHIP. Simply put, cover your low-income kids or you get no money to cover higher income kids. Now I know some people are obsessed with the State of New York and their and their efforts to cover kids up to 400 percent of poverty. It seems to come up in the talking points of every person who speaks out against our bill. This bill does not allow any State to go to 400 percent of poverty. In fact, the bill makes it very difficult for any State to go above 300 percent of poverty; it will make it very difficult for New Jersey, the only State currently covering kids above 300 percent, to continue to do so if they don't do a better job of covering low-income kids. If you are concerned about the State of New York, don't waste your time looking at this bill. You will not find answers to New York's fate here. The answer is where it has always been--in the office of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. Only he has the authority to allow any State to cover children up to 400 percent of poverty. This bill does nothing to change that authority. It is up to the Secretary. I heartily encourage those of you who haven't to read the bill. It is all there in black and white.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I think we are ready for closing comments by me as ranking member and Senator Baucus as chairman of the committee. Then we will be done with the debate on SCHIP. Mr. President, first, I thank my colleagues for supporting the vote to move to the consideration of the children's health insurance reauthorization bill so we could avoid a lot of turmoil over getting here where we are to get the business done because I think everybody knows how this is going to turn out. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Reid because he was an honest broker in helping the House to understand what needed to be done in the Senate, and he held a lot of meetings on this subject. I thank my good friend, the chairman of the committee, the Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, for his leadership in forging this compromise in a bipartisan way. I also have to recognize people who sat in on a lot of these meetings and worked hard and are part of this compromise: Senator Hatch and Senator Rockefeller. In particular, Senator Hatch has been a stalwart through this process because he was the leader in creating the Children's Health Insurance Program when it was first inaugurated 10 years ago. The continued leadership he showed was very good and necessary. I realize some in the majority want to do more than we do in this compromise. I know it wasn't easy for those on the other side of the aisle to convince some of their colleagues that this was the right course. But we have a bipartisan bill in the Senate, and now we have a bill with strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives. We picked up a massive number of Republicans who did not vote for it the first time in the House of Representatives. Currently, the SCHIP program covers kids at incomes far beyond what was considered low income in the original statute. It covers parents and, in some States, it even covers childless adults. With this reauthorization, this program will return to its original concept: helping the lowest income kids and not helping adults as the program evolved beyond the perceptions that were there 10 years ago when this bill was written. Childless adults who are presently on the program will be phased out completely because this is a children's program, it is not an adults program. States will not be able to get enhanced Federal funds if they decide to cover parents. States will only be able to cover higher income kids if they demonstrate that they took care of the purpose of this legislation, which is to take care of the lowest income kids first. Every financial incentive in this bill discourages States from spending a penny to cover anyone other than low-income children. And all the financial incentives are entirely focused on the lowest income children. All the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, this bill does not expand the program to middle-income families. It refocuses the program on the lowest income children. Some of the speeches I have heard on the Senate floor, I wonder what good does it do to make these points over and over because it is just that some of my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle don't read this bill, don't care what we say. This bill does what they think it does, even if it doesn't do it, and they say that on the Senate floor. Those who say otherwise than what I just said have not read the bill. This bipartisan compromise provides coverage for more than 3 million children who are without coverage today. In closing, I encourage my Republican colleagues to think long and hard about what I said as this debate began and throughout this debate. If this bill is vetoed--and this is what I would like to have the opponents concentrate on--if this bill is vetoed, if at the end of the day all we do is simply extend the program that has been in effect for 10 years, what will we have accomplished? Will adults be gone from this program who were not supposed to be included in it in the first place? No. Will States have a disincentive to cover parents? No. Will States be encouraged to cover low-income kids before higher income kids? No. Will the funding formula be fixed so States are not constantly challenged by funding shortfalls? No. And finally, will we have done anything to cover kids who don't have any coverage today? The answer is, again, no. I quoted the President making a promise at the Republican Convention in New York. I did that yesterday. I want to state again what the President said. You can't say it too many times. I hope at some time the President remembers what he said: We will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. An extension of law, which is what is going to happen if the President vetoes this bill, will not carry out what the President said at the Republican Convention in New York in 2004. Faced with that, your answer today on this bill, Mr. President of the United States, should be yes. This bill gets the job done that you said in New York City you wanted to do. I hope the President's answer will be yes because if he doesn't veto this bill, then we will do those things he said he wanted to do. It will help more than 3 million low-income, uninsured children. About half of the new money is just to keep the program running. The rest of the new money goes to cover more low-income children. It provides better options for families to afford employer coverage. It takes even more steps to address crowdouts, so we don't move people from private insurance to government-funded insurance. It phases adults out of the program because this is a children's program, it is not an adults program. It discourages States from covering higher income kids. It rewards States that cover more of the lowest income kids. It puts the lowest income children first in line for coverage. Here is what the bill does not do: It is not a government takeover of the health care system. It does not undermine our immigration policy. It is not expanding the program to cover high-income kids. It is not everything that people on my side of the aisle said it is in debate on the floor of the Senate. It is, in fact, a good bill. It is a compromise. I urge my colleagues to support this bill for kids. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield back that time, Mr. President.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the current law is that we have a statutory limit on the amount of money the Federal Government can borrow, and that has to be reconsidered from time to time. The legal limit applies to the money borrowed from individuals, private investors--such as banks and pension funds--as well as money borrowed from other governmental programs that are in surplus--such as Social Security and Medicare, or what we call intergovernmental borrowing. Increasing the debt limit is necessary to preserve the full faith and credit of the United States of America. Without an increase in this limit, our Government will face a choice between breaking the law by exceeding the legal limit or breaking faith with the investors by defaulting on debt. Neither of those choices is acceptable, and we have never done them. Critics sometimes object to raising the debt limit on grounds that it will allow the Government to borrow more money, but refusing to raise the debt limit is akin to refusing to pay your individual credit card bill after you have already gone shopping and bought something. We cannot pass tax bills and spending bills and then refuse to pay our bills. The time to control the debt is when we are voting on bills that actually create that debt. Raising the debt limit is about meeting the obligations we have already incurred, it is that simple. We must meet our obligations. So I urge my colleagues to support this increase. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased that this bill has passed with such a substantial vote. This bill now goes to the President. I hope the President will be persuaded by the strong bipartisan support this bill has and will sign the bill. As it customary, I want to thank the staff who have worked so hard to produce this bill. From the House: Bridgett Taylor, Amy Hall and Andy Schneider. From Senator Baucus's staff: Russ Sullivan, Bill Dauster, Michelle Easton, and Alice Weiss, and avid Schwartz. I would like to thank my staff: Kolan Davis, Mark Prater, Mark Hayes, Becky Shipp, Rodney Whitlock, Steve Robinson, Shaun Freiman, and Sean McGuire. Thanks as well to Senator Hatch's staff, Pattie DeLoatche, and thanks to Senator Rockefeller's staff: Jocelyn Moore and Ellen Doneski. Finally, I want to extend deep appreciation to the congressional support agencies on which Members and our staff rely. From the Office of Legislative Counsel, thanks to Ed Grossman, Jessica Shapiro, and Ruth Ernst. From the Congressional Research Service, thanks to Richard Rimkunas, Chris Peterson, Elicia Herz, April Grady, and Evelyne Baumrucker. From the Congressional Budget Office, thanks to Director Peter Orszag, Tom Bradley, Eric Rollins, and Jeanne De Sa. Again, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent to speak for what time I might consume.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, soon the Senate will be debating the Children's Health Insurance Program. I might refer to that from time to time as CHIP, C-H-I-P, Children's Health Insurance Program. This program is sunsetting in a week. The program was started 10 years ago, a product of a Republican-led Congress. It is a targeted program. It is a program designed to provide affordable health coverage for low-income children of working families. Those are families, working families, who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but struggle to afford private insurance and may not even have it. Last July, because this program has to be reauthorized right now, the Senate Finance Committee reported bipartisan legislation to enhance and improve CHIP by a strong vote of 17 to 4. In August, the Senate passed the Finance bill with the same bipartisan support by a vote of 68 to 31. On Tuesday, 265 Members of the House of Representatives voted for the bill that now will be before the Senate. That bill is a product of informal conferencing between the House and Senate. Clearly, we have a bill with strong bipartisan support. I want to emphasize that because this is the way the Senate Finance Committee has operated over a long period of time, both with Republicans in control and Democrats in control. Senator Baucus worked very closely with me when we were in the majority. Senator Baucus has continued that working relationship now that Democrats control the Congress and he is chairman of the committee. I welcome and appreciate that bipartisan leadership. It is obviously represented in this product that will soon be before the Senate. This legislation maintains the fundamental provisions of the Senate. I want to emphasize that it maintains the fundamental provisions of the Senate bill not to denigrate the work of the House of Representatives but as a reflection of the fact that we had to work out something that would not be filibustered in the Senate. In the House of Representatives they don't have such provisions for filibuster. The House had some deference to the Senate. I appreciate that. But I also appreciate the fact that a lot of my colleagues--and these are Republican colleagues to whom I refer, not Democratic colleagues--said so often during the months of consideration of this bill before we finally passed it the first time that this $35 billion didn't mean much that we passed in the Senate because the House of Representatives passed a $50 billion CHIP bill and it would come back much bigger. I tried to say to my colleagues at that particular time that there would have to be a realization that if we were going to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, we would have to have something closer to the Senate provisions than the House. So I emphasize that this is pretty much the legislation the Senate originally passed, albeit right now it is a compromise between the House and Senate. There was a cap on new spending of $35 billion. There are no Medicare provisions in this bill as there were in the Senate bill. Spending is paid for by an increase in the cigarette tax. I commend the majority in the House and Senate for cooperating with Senate Republicans and for working with us on our priorities during the negotiations that led to this agreement. This compromise agreement is consistent with the principles we put forth in the Senate bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Of course I will.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before the distinguished Senate majority leader leaves, I thank him for those very kind remarks. I also want to recognize him. Without his being an honest broker as an intermediary between the House and the Senate, particularly among Democrats, I don't think we would be here either. I appreciate that very much. As a person who has worked hard on this for 4 months, it wouldn't have happened without the Senate majority leader as well. I thank him very much. Getting back to the bill, I want to explain that this is fundamentally the Senate bill. We had a cap on new spending at $35 billion. That is where the Senate was. The Senate didn't have any Medicare provisions in their bill. The House did. We didn't have any in our bill, the House had Medicare provisions in theirs. Those are dropped out. There is a lot of Medicare provisions that we must act on, but Senator Baucus and I want to do that as separate pieces of legislation. We will do that, and we have committed to the House to do that. Spending is paid for by an increase in the cigarette tax. That is similar in both the House and Senate. I do want to commend the majority in the House and Senate for cooperating with Senate Republicans and for working with our priorities during the negotiations that led to this agreement. This compromise agreement is consistent with principles that we put forth in the Senate bill. I made clear during the debate on the bipartisan Senate bill before we originally passed it that the Senate went as far as I was willing to go in terms of spending and politics. It makes sense that we stayed true to the Senate bill. The Senate, after all, had a veto-proof majority. So it made sense to stay as close as possible to that successful formula, if the President would go through with his statement of veto and actually veto it. The legislation before this body maintains all of the key policy provisions of the Senate-passed bill. This bipartisan bill refocuses the program on low-income children. It phases adults off the program. It prohibits a new waiver for parent coverage. It reduces the Federal match rate for States that cover parents. It includes new improvements to reduce the substitution of public coverage for private coverage. This compromise bill maintains the focus on low-income uninsured children and adds coverage for more than 3 million low-income children. The compromise bill discourages States from covering higher income kids by reducing the Federal matching rate for States that wish to expand eligibility over 300 percent of Federal poverty limits. It rewards States that cover more low-income kids by providing targeted incentives to States that increase enrollment for coverage of low- income kids. So there is a very clear message to the States, all 50 States: Cover your poorest kids, meaning your kids from low-income families, first. Don't spend money on childless adults, as we heard so often during the debate. The word CHIP has no A in it. It is for children, not adults. Don't spend money on parents unless you can prove you are covering low-income kids. Don't spend money on higher income kids unless you can prove that your State is covering your lower income kids first. It is all there in black and white. Everybody can read it. I get a sense, talking to some of my colleagues, that they haven't read what we are going to be voting on. Anyone who suggests this bill is an expansion to higher income kids or other populations, as has been done under some waivers given by the Bush administration, is simply not reading the bill. Since the Senate passed a bill the first time, the subject of crowdout has become a lot more important in the debate. I want to define the word ``crowdout.'' That is the substitution of public coverage for people who were previously in private insurance, individual or corporate, health care policies. Crowdout occurs in CHIP because the CHIP benefit is attractive and there is no penalty for refusing private coverage if you are eligible for public coverage. On August 17, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services put out a letter giving States new instructions on how to address the crowdout, trying to stop going from private coverage to the CHIP program. I appreciate the administration's willingness to engage this issue. They have some very good ideas. But I also think there are some flaws in that policy stated on August 17 by the Secretary of HHS. States are supposed to cover 95 percent of the lowest income kids under that policy statement. But it has been a month since they have issued the policy statement, and CMS still cannot explain what data States should be using to make that determination about 95 percent. Personally, I believe CMS should have answers before they issue policies. If they still can't explain how it works a month later, I believe, as the saying goes, they obviously aren't ready for prime time. So the compromise bill that is before the Senate and passed the House last night replaces the CMS letter with a more thoughtful, reasonable approach. The Government Accountability Office and the Institute of Medicine would produce analyses on the most accurate and reliable way to measure the rate of public and private insurance coverage and on best practices by States that they would take to address crowdout problems because we don't want to create a public program that moves people from one private coverage to the other. That has happened to some extent over the last few years. We don't want to go further. This deals with that problem. We want to talk about people who don't have any health coverage rather than moving people from private to public. Following the two reports that are referred to by the Institute of Medicine, as well as the Government Accountability Office, the Secretary, in consultation with the States, under this bill will develop crowdout best practices recommendations for the States to consider and develop a uniform set of data points for States to track and report on coverage of children below 200 percent of Federal poverty guidelines and on crowdout. Next, States that extend CHIP coverage to children above 300 percent FPL must submit to the Secretary a State plan amendment describing how they will address crowdout for this population, encouraging the best practices recommended by the Secretary to limit moving people from private coverage to public. After October 1, 2010, Federal matching payments will not be permitted to States that cover children whose families' income exceeds 300 percent of poverty, if the State does not meet a target for the percentage of children at or below 200 percent of poverty enrolled in CHIP because we want the emphasis upon low-income children being covered. And at the lower income level, less have to have insurance in the private sector as opposed to higher income people maybe having to have that. So, simply put, cover lower income kids first or the State does not get money to cover higher income kids. Now, I know some people are obsessed with the State of New York in their efforts to cover kids up to 400 percent of poverty. It seems to come up in the talking points of every person who is against the legislation now before the Senate. This bill does not change the CHIP eligibility rules in any way--not one bit. This bill does not expand the CHIP program to cover middle-income families or higher income kids. It does not do it. The bill actually goes in the other direction. The real fact is the bill makes it very difficult for any State to go above 300 percent of poverty. It will make it very difficult for New Jersey, the only State currently covering kids above 300 percent of poverty, to continue to do so if they do not do a better job of covering low-income kids. If you are concerned about the State of New York, well, do not waste your time looking at this bill. You will not find answers to New York's fate here in this legislation. The answer is where it has always been-- in the office of the Secretary of HHS, Mike Leavitt. Only he has the authority to allow any State to cover children up to 400 percent of poverty. The authority to approve what States do with the CHIP program rests with him and no one else. This bill does nothing to change that authority. That is a fact. I heartily encourage those of you who have not read the bill and are talking along this line to read the bill. You will find out that what I have just said is a fact. It is all there in black and white. I also want to say a few words about the President's position on this bill and speak directly to the President, as I spoke to him on the phone at 10 minutes to 9 last Thursday about why he should not veto this bill. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that you are not--or at least there are words out that you are not--going to support this bill, that you might veto it. I would hope, Mr. President, that you would reconsider. I would hope that you would sign this bill. President Bush, you yourself made a commitment to covering more children. I could quote several times you have said this. But I will go back to something I heard you say personally. It was during the Republican National Convention in New York City. Mr. President, you were very firm on this point. Here is what you said. I want to quote what you said: America's children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention or information to stand between these children and the health care they need. So, Mr. President, that is what you said back at the Republican Convention. You were reelected. You have a lot of mandates you are trying to carry out. This Republican Senator is trying to help you carry out that mandate you were elected on based on that speech you made. I think that you, Mr. President, were pretty clear in your convictions then. I would like to repeat your words because I think they are very important. President Bush, you said that you would ``lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children . . . [in] the government's health insurance programs.'' That is the end of your quote. I am happy to make sure we fulfill that commitment you made, President Bush, but I believe your current budget, where you suggested $5 billion more, does not do the job. I happen to agree with your policy. I think this bill carries out your policy. But I do not think, President Bush, this bill can do that. You obviously cannot do that for the $5 billion more you have in your bill. The Congressional Budget Office reports that your budget proposal, President Bush, for SCHIP for fiscal year 2008 would result in a loss of coverage--not an increase of coverage that you say you want--a loss of coverage of 1.4 million children and pregnant women. Increasing the numbers of uninsured children is clearly not the goal you expressed or what we want to accomplish in our legislation. So we carry out the policies of covering the kids you want to cover with the amount of money that will do it. That is what we have done in this legislation before us. Now, this bill does not warrant the overheated rhetoric we heard in the House last night. I want to say to the President--before I get on to the point about what was said in the House last night--also, the President has another policy he wanted to work into this SCHIP reauthorization. He wanted to use the private sector and use the tax deductibility of individual policies to cover some--and even a great amount--of uninsured people. He thought the SCHIP bill would be a vehicle to do that. I agree with the President's policy on doing that. There was a period of time--during February, March, and April--that we were negotiating with the White House when I said I thought very much what Senator Wyden of Oregon was trying to do--and the Senator is on the floor--was worthy of doing. I asked the White House would they try to find some help for me and Senator Wyden, that maybe we could do this. They did not find any support for that. They still say they want to do that, but sometime along April or May, we had to make a decision here. Were we going to do what the President wanted to do on SCHIP? So we could not do what the White House wanted to do through the private sector as part of SCHIP, so in order to negotiate a bipartisan agreement, we had to forget that aspect. But I promised the White House all the time that I was going to be working for those goals of covering the uninsured through tax deductibility of individual policies, as Senator Wyden has suggested, and get universal coverage, even, if we can. I am still committed to that. I spoke to the President of the United States about that last Thursday when I was on the phone with him. I said: Let's get this SCHIP behind us. And I am going to join Senator Wyden in his effort to do it so we can get bipartisanship started on that issue, as well as what we have on SCHIP. So I am asking President Bush: Won't you please consider signing this bill, and then let Senator Wyden and me work with you on trying to take care of the 47 million people who do not have health insurance--do it through the private sector, do it through the tax deductibility of policies like that. We even had Senator Clinton, in her statement in Iowa, in her campaign for the Presidency, speak along the same efforts of using tax deductibility of private insurance to take care of medical problems generally but mostly the problems of the uninsured. So I think we can move in ways of accomplishing what the President wants to accomplish, but it just could not be done on the SCHIP. So you have to do what you have to do around here. If it takes two steps to get the job done, you do it. So I want everybody to know I am not abandoning any efforts to take care of the uninsured. I am going to work with Senator Wyden on that. Now, if I could go to the debate, the overheated rhetoric we had last night in the House. This is a bill which improves coverage for kids who are poor. This bill does not make it easier for illegal immigrants to get benefits. I do not know how that comes up, but that red herring has been going on over the last 24 hours, and somehow people believe anything they are told. Here is a case of reading the bill again. The bill clearly states that funds cannot go to illegal immigrants. The desperate efforts I heard on the House side to suggest this bill makes it easier for illegal immigrants to get benefits simply strains credibility. The bill does not extend eligibility for illegal immigrant children or pregnant women. I heard that. The bill does not make CHIP an entitlement. Now, we all know what the definition of ``entitlement'' is. That was thrown out in the debate in the Senate 2 months ago when we had this bill up. An entitlement is something that, if you qualify for it, you get it, and the money comes from the Federal Treasury, and there is no limit on the amount of money. That is an entitlement. This is a specific amount of money which is going to be spent on this program. Not one dollar more can be spent. This is not an entitlement. Even as recently as a meeting I was in within the last 4 hours, among a mass of my colleagues, that argument was used. I do not know how intellectually dishonest you can be. You are a Member of the U.S. Senate. You know what the language of Government is. Maybe the people at the grassroots do not think of entitlements the way we do. They do not think of programs, appropriated accounts the way we do. But everybody who has been around this Senate a few months knows what those things are. And to call this program an entitlement is intellectually dishonest. This bill is not a Government takeover of health care, either. And you heard that. This bill is not socialized medicine. Screaming ``socialized medicine'' during a health care debate is like shouting ``fire'' in a crowded theater. It is intended to cause hysteria that diverts people from reading the bill, looking at the facts. To those of you, my colleagues, who make such outlandish accusations, I say: Go shout ``fire'' somewhere else. Serious people are trying to get real work done. Now is the time to get this work done. I appreciate very much the leadership Chairman Baucus has provided. I thank him and Senator Rockefeller for what they did to reach a bipartisan agreement because they gave as much as Senator Hatch and I gave as we were negotiating--the four of us--for this bipartisan agreement. I also extend a sincere thanks to Senator Hatch, who is on the floor with me, for being a part of this effort. Senator Hatch was the main Republican sponsor of this bill 10 years ago, creating the State Children's Health Insurance Program. His commitment to the ideals and fundamentals of the program is steadfast, and the program is better for it. When we began the debate on CHIP, I wrote down some principles I want to refer to--principles I gave my staff that I believed in that I thought were accomplishable goals in this reauthorization. I probably wrote these down--well, anyway, I will refer to them. But I wrote these principles down in my own handwriting and handed them to my staff and said this is how I think we ought to proceed with the negotiations on the CHIP bill. I am not going to go through and read it line by line, but this is what I wrote down sometime back in February, and I am going to refer to some of these without holding this paper up again. Here are some highlights of these principles I wrote down entitled ``Principles on SCHIP and How They Compare to The Bill.'' It cannot be a middle-class entitlement, I said. This bill is not an entitlement. It must be paid for. This bill is paid for. Another principle I wrote down is that it must be focused on families below 200 percent of Federal poverty level. This bill is focused on those low-income families. Another principle: Kids should be covered before adults. This bill clearly makes that a requirement. Another thing I said is the program should be capped--not an open- ended entitlement to States. The program continues to be capped in this bill. I am here to say that my principles remain intact in this compromise document; therefore, I support the compromise bill and I urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is with great admiration that today I recognize some of the most intelligent, driven young minds in this country. I would like to acknowledge the 17 recipients of the 2007 Davidson Fellows Award, a scholarship awarded to exceptional students to assist them in furthering their education. These scholarships are given by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development to inspiring individuals under the age of 18 who have completed academically rigorous projects that demonstrate a potential to make a significant, positive contribution to society. This year's recipients achieved academic excellence in the areas of science, literature, mathematics, technology, and music. As I read through the accomplishments these young minds have achieved, I can assure you that this year's recipients are more than deserving of such an honor. I would like to take a few moments to describe what each recipient has accomplished. Richard Alt II, a 17-year-old from Fredericksburg, VA, has compared three weather forecasting methods to formulate a brandnew forecasting method. He has done this through detailed interpretation and analysis of varying aspects of climatology. Through his findings, Richard has created a universal process that allows meteorologists to compile more accurate forecast data and help public officials prepare seasonal response plans for various weather patterns. Another 17-year-old from Vienna, VA, Christina Beasley has explored human perception and beauty in her portfolio, ``An Experiment in Free Speech.'' This young lady has compared emotion in famous literary works to her own pieces of writing to reveal the tucked away beauty of common occurrences. She has realized through careful research and interpretation that a person must make the connection between emotion and rationality to fully understand the intricacies of the human mind. Sixteen-year-old Nate Bottman of Seattle, WA has found an array of solutions to the Nonlinear Schrodinger Equation, NLS, that shows the pattern of waves in fluids and plasmas that have sharp boundaries and dissipation. Nate has developed a method of finding solutions to integrable equations and has discovered that stationary solutions of the NLS are spectrally stable. His work will help in many areas of math and science, including but not limited to the study of Bose-Einstein condensates and plasma physics. A young woman from Davis, CA, Alexandra Courtis, has developed an innovative method used in areas such as cancer research to track different biological functions via luminescent silicon nanorods and quantum dots. At just 17, she has developed a less expensive method of using sodium silicide and ammonium bromide that has made it possible to produce silicon nanoparticles on a larger scale. Alexandra's accomplishment is a significant advancement in targeting cancerous tumors and individual cells. Billy Dorminy, a 15-year-old from McDonough, GA, has invented a secure method of message encryption using reduced redundancy representations of improper fractional bases. This new method of encryption takes up far less computer memory while also utilizing confusion and diffusion to keep a message hidden. Billy's method allows for the placement of a second undetectable encrypted message in the body of the first, opening the door for further advancement in the area of message encryption. Another 15-year-old, Yale Fan, from Beaverton, OR, has furthered the binary quantum computational Deutsch-Jozsa and Grover algorithms to create multivalued logic problems. These two algorithms were among the first in the creation of a quantum computer. His work is relevant in many areas including the vision systems in computers, various economic issues, and aspects related to space, including transportation, scheduling, and manufacturing. Madhavi Gavini, a 17-year-old from Starkville, MS, has developed an innovative method to restrict the augmentation of biofilm-forming pathogens. For example, Pseudomonas, a pathogen that is resistant to many drugs, produces a biofilm that protects it from antibiotics. This young woman's progress was done through the combination of traditional Indian medicine and molecular biology that will be used to treat millions dealing with Pseudomonas infections. A 17-year-old from Bridgewater, NJ, Michael Harwick wrote a piece entitled ``Highways: The Road as Existence'' that utilized prose, poetry, and dialogue to depict relationships that oscillate between isolation and connection. Michael consistently astounds the reader with a unique voice filled with streams of symbolic and linguistic meaning. Through his choice of short dialog and extravagant descriptions of a visual world, he has shown the lack of dialog in a world filled with noise. Todd Kramer, a 17-year-old from Port Jefferson, NY, produced a portfolio that followed his growth as a composer since he was 12 entitled ``Finding My Voice Through Music.'' He believes that each generation needs its musicians, composers, and performers that create artistic conventions that grow and mature with the times. This young man just graduated from the Juilliard Pre-College Division and is a student at the Perlman Music Program. He has performed in such prestigious places as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center right here in Washington, DC. Fifteen-year-old Shannon Lee of Plano, TX, is another very talented musician who believes that music is a cornerstone of communication, which she has shown through her violin portfolio, ``Creating a Musical Bond.'' Shannon specifically enjoys keeping tradition alive by playing a variety of distinguished composers to captivate her audiences. She earned the silver medal at the Stulberg International String Competition, and she received a scholarship from the Texas Commission on the Arts, where she also performed as a soloist in the Dallas Symphony. Danielle Lent, a 17-year-old from Cedarhurst, NY, has developed an innovative, cost-effective, and earth-friendly method of recycling plastics. Her process involves the exposure of plastic polymers to supercritical carbon dioxide, creating a plastic that has equal or superior properties in comparison to the original. Miss Lent's discovery has allowed for this entire process to occur without releasing harmful toxins while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions. A seventeen-year-old young woman from Wesley Chapel, FL, Celeste Lipkes, has transfixed her readers by exploring themes of disease, discovery, and faith in, ``Room to Pace.'' Her portfolio includes the juxtaposition of poetry that is amusing, intense, uplifting, and downright enjoyable with personal essays on physical loss and the oddities of the human family, and finally critical essays analyzing other poetry. Through her work, Celeste wants to inspire her audience to take notice of the details of life. Yuqing Meng, a 16-year-old from Madison, NJ, feels privileged to contribute to the art of classical music, which he has shown through his piano portfolio, ``Reviving Classical Music Through Individualism.'' When he was just 7 years old, Yuqing was one of the youngest candidates ever to be accepted to the Juilliard School Pre- College Division, where he later went on to win the Junior and Senior Concerto Competitions. In 2007, he also received the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist award. Katherine Orazem, a 17-year-old from Ames, in my home State of Iowa, has written a collection of sonnets, short stories, and essays entitled ``After Elegies'' that delves into the human issue of death and examines those who have gone through loss. She looks at these issues from many perspectives, including the loss a widow must face, the denial of his wife's death by a husband, and the pain an apostate feels who has lost her faith. Through her work, we have come to understand the human condition and its variety of responses to death and loss. A 15-year-old from Norristown, PA, Janet Song has created a urine test to detect the early signs of cancer. She has been able to isolate short circulatory DNA found in urine to identify tumor sites. Janet's new method has made cancer screening less unpleasant, less invasive, and cheaper than current methods. Columbia, SC, native Graham Van Schaik has researched pyrethroids that are found in common household and garden pesticides. He even discovered that pyrethroids are used in over 30 commercial crops and have had the effect of cellular proliferation in breast cells, a sign of cancer and neurite retractions in neurons which is a sign of neurodegenerative disease. Nora Xu, a 17-year-old from Naperville, IL, has developed a different method of determining the crystal structure of nanocrystalline superlattice thin films. Using a three dimensional model of the nanocrystalline superlattice, she found that x-ray scattering pattern intensities can be applied to molecules and atoms. Her work has potential in the area of optical and electron microscopes and the ability to deliver drugs to cancerous tumors. Mr. President, these are 17 very talented, hard-working, motivated young men and women who are making advances in music, science, literature, mathematics, and technology for the betterment of society. I would like to thank all these young people for their willingness to seek out new horizons and make the world a better place. I would also like to personally thank the Davidson Institute for their support of these young individuals. In an ever-changing world, it is the young who show hope for the future. I can honestly say, after learning about every one of these kids, that I have great hope for the future.