Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the new prescription drug bill, a bill that is going to benefit senior citizens starting June 1 of this year on a temporary basis, and then in a permanent program to benefit senior citizens starting November 15, 2005. If somebody wonders why a temporary program, why a permanent program, when we passed the first changes in Medicare in 38 years, very dramatic changes, by adding prescription drugs to the Medicare bill, we asked the people in the Department of Health and Human Services administering this new law how long it would take to put this new expansion and modernization and strengthening of Medicare into operation. They said they needed about 18 months to 2 years, probably about 6 months longer than it took to get the original Medicare bill in place after its passage in 1965. We didn't want seniors to have to wait 18 months to 2 years to get some money from it, so there is a temporary program of the drug card that will save seniors 25 percent on drugs, and also the subsidy for low-income American seniors and disabled who are under $12,000-a-year income--a $600 subsidy for that. So we have a new prescription drug program. This was a relatively close vote on the floor of the Senate. I think about 10 or 12 votes separated those of us for it and those of us against it. We have had colleagues who have opposed this bill continuing several attacks, and some of those as recently as today, on this bipartisan legislation that was passed into law and signed by the President on December 10, last year. This law represents years of hard work by Republicans and Democrats alike. We had the chance to fulfill a commitment to our seniors last year. We took that opportunity and we have delivered. I am glad we did. For the first time in the history of Medicare, seniors will have a voluntary prescription drug benefit. For the first time seniors will receive, in addition to a drug benefit, a coordinated disease management program, better coverage of preventive screenings, and protection against catastrophic drug costs. In regard to the coordinated disease management program, what we are trying to do is zero in on the 5 percent of the seniors who are responsible for 50 percent of the costs from Medicare. By zeroing in on them, we can enhance our quality of life during retirement and we can also save taxpayers some money by keeping people out of the hospital who otherwise might go immediately to the hospital if you were only concerned about getting sick people well. If you are concerned about keeping sick people from getting sicker, or keeping people from getting sick in the first place, it is always cheaper. It is always cheaper to prevent a sickness than it is to cure one. That is why we zero in on that 5 percent with coordinated disease management. The plan we passed helps to reduce drug costs by harnessing the buying power of 40 million Medicare beneficiaries to negotiate lower prices, and by speeding up the entry of lower cost generic drugs into the market. I remind my colleagues who insinuated that the bill was some fly-by-night idea cooked up in some back room and passed in the dark of night that over 350 outside groups supported this law, and that includes the AARP, the Alzheimer's Association, the National Council On Aging, and 347 other organizations. Do you think that 350 organizations in America that are concerned about the welfare of our seniors and the welfare of the disabled are going to put their reputations on the line for something that was hastily put together and passed at the midnight hour? That sort of statement does not do justice to Members of this body and some who are not even Members of this body now because it started 4 or 5 years ago. People then were working on a prescription drug program for seniors. This is something that was well thought out, well considered, compromised as necessary under the way we do business in the U.S. Congress, particularly in the Senate to accommodate bipartisanship because nothing gets done in the U.S. Senate that is not bipartisan. Now I would like to speak directly to some of the criticisms from my colleagues about this new prescription drug program, the strengthening and improvement of Medicare that prescription drugs bring to it. The first criticism is toward the administration because they are advertising on radio and television to the 44 million seniors and disabled of America. Probably a large percentage of them do not even know this program exists. The advertising is to tell them about the opportunities they will have under this new legislation. It is to alert them to the legislation and encourage them to get information about the legislation. Once a senior sees this sort of advertisement, then as I am talking to the seniors, I think of them having at least four areas where they can get help, at least four areas in the State of Iowa. One is the 1- 800 Medicare number. No. 2 is the AARP and the very good booklets they put out describing this. No. 3 in my State is the Department of Insurance that administers the federally funded SHIPP program where they can get one-on-one counseling from that program. Number 4, they can go to any congressional office and get help. What is this criticism about the administration advertising on TV? It is exactly what the law requires. Wouldn't you expect the President of the United States and the Secretary of HHS to carry out the law if we in this Congress said take X number of dollars and educate people about this legislation? I am surprised some of my colleagues would oppose providing seniors with timely and accurate and clear information about changes made in this law. Do you know why seniors need to know? Because this is not a program Congress and the President is shoving down anybody's throat. There are three words about this program that seniors ought to remember. One is it is voluntary. Second, it is universal; anybody who wants to participate can participate. Third, it is targeted because of the limited resources we have. It is targeted toward heavy subsidy to people with incomes under 150 percent of poverty, and targeted with a heavy subsidy to those who have catastrophic drug costs. But everybody benefits. On average, seniors are going to benefit to the tune of 50- percent reduction in drug costs. In January of this year several Democratic Members of Congress accused the administration of robbing the Medicare Program. Those are their words. Then they asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the ads constitute a misuse of Federal funds. I use the General Accounting Office quite often to do investigations for me, so I don't have any problems with anybody asking the General Accounting Office to investigate anything. That is their job. They do a good job of it. But the General Accounting Office confirmed for these Democratic Members of Congress that the law mandates the Department of Health and Human Services to educate seniors, and that the ads are not political, as they were accused of being political. The General Accounting Office report makes clear that the Department has a responsibility, in fact, to inform seniors and to make sure they understand the new benefits and how they might help the seniors and disabled of America. What information is currently available to seniors may be coming from unscrupulous sources as well, because in the February 17, 2004, New York Times there was a feature story about people going door-to-door offering what they called Medicare-approved cards though none at that point, nor maybe even at this point, have, in fact, been approved. And enrollment doesn't even begin until May. Don't you think, for consumer protection, people ought to know something about this legislation? Again, in regard to scam artists, one Federal official said these artists are fraudulently impersonating or misrepresenting Medicare by telephone and by door-to-door visits to beneficiaries' homes. In some cases, a caller obtained personal information about beneficiaries before even visiting their homes. These ads are not propaganda as confirmed by the GAO. They fill an important void that not only educates American seniors but will also prevent criminals and scammers from taking advantage of and potentially harming America's seniors and disabled. Educating our seniors on the new Medicare Drug Modernization Act is not only required by law, it is the right thing to do. If I could refer to another criticism of this legislation or maybe something that happened since the legislation, these accusations we have heard, that the so-called true cost of the Medicare bill was somehow hidden from Congress before the final vote, is simply political election year hyperbole. The opponents of the drug benefit are making this claim because the final cost estimate from the Center for Medicare Services, Office of the Actuary, was not completed before the vote took place. Let us be very clear. The cost estimate was not withheld from Congress because there was not any final cost estimate from the Center for Medicare Services to withhold in the first place. Their cost estimate wasn't even completed until December 23. That was 2 weeks after the President signed the bill, and a month after Congress passed it. So let us again be clear. We did not have from the Center for Medicare Services the official cost estimate on the Medicare bill before the vote because the bill had to be passed before they were going to come to a final figure. But we did have what Congress uses and the only figure we use in official estimates of anything. We had Medicare bill estimates from the Congressional Budget Office before we voted. And that is what Congress goes by. Even if we had had the Center for Medicare Services with some figure out there, that may have meant something to some people but there could not have been a point of order made on some estimate of the Center for Medicare Services because the only point of order is if it is contrary to the Budget Act. The Congressional Budget Office makes that determination. Around Congress, the Congressional Budget Office is God. Even if they are wrong, they are still God. They are the basis for determining whether a supermajority has to be required to move to legislation. If you violate the Budget Act and exceed the estimate of the cost, then you have to have a supermajority. We only go by the Congressional Budget Office. I happen to believe, as some people have criticized, maybe some Government official was muzzled not to communicate with Congress on something they believed. I happen to believe that no Government official should ever be muzzled from providing critical information to Congress. If that happened last year, that was wrong. These accusations about whether the information was withheld have raised questions as to whether Congress had access to a valid and thorough cost estimate for the prescription drug bill before the final vote. It should also be made clear that, while the cost analysis by the Office of the Actuary is perhaps helpful, it is not the cost analysis that Congress relies on, and it is not the one that Members make points of order against because we rely exclusively upon cost estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. It is CBO's cost estimate that we use to determine whether legislation is within authorized budget limits. For Congress, if there is a true cost estimate, it happens to be from the Congressional Budget Office. We had a true cost estimate from them. It is the only one that matters. When Congress approved a $400 billion reserve fund to create a Medicare prescription drug program, this meant $400 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office, not $400 billion according to the Center for Medicare Services. With all due respect to the dedicated staff who work at the Center for Medicare Services, Office of the Actuary, their cost estimates are irrelevant to our process of legislating, except to the extent to which a Member might want to have that as a factor. But it surely isn't going to govern what a majority of this body does. The Congressional Budget Office worked closely with the conferees, and the staff, on the prescription drug bill to ensure that a full analysis of projected costs was completed. The conferees and staff regularly and constantly consulted with the Congressional Budget Office throughout the development of the Senate bill, and also through the 3 months of arriving at a conference committee compromise between the House and the Senate. The Congressional Budget Office had to work nearly around the clock and on weekends for a month to do a complete, thorough, and rigorous cost analysis on the prescription drug bill. That official cost estimate was available to every Member of Congress before the measure was presented to the House or the Senate for a vote. It is also pretty disingenuous for the opponents of the Medicare bill on the other side of the aisle to suggest that the pricetag for the Medicare bill causes them concern. The fact is, they have supported proposals that cost hundreds of billions of dollars more. Don't complain to me about a bill costing $359 billion, or maybe it was CMS coming up with a larger number when in the first place those individuals are supporting bills that cost $600 billion or $800 billion--or in the other body. Last year, the Democratic proposal over there would have cost nearly $1 trillion, $605 billion more than our bill. In fact, as to the Senate Democratic proposal in 2002, when we had the debate on the tripartisan bill, when we had the debate on bills on that side of the aisle, we didn't pass them. But we had a long debate that summer. That Senate Democrat proposal was $200 billion more than the bill we enacted into law this year. Further, there were more than 50 amendments offered on the floor of the Senate during the debate on this Senate bill that would have increased the cost of the bill by tens of billions of dollars. Then people are complaining about $395 billion, or people are complaining about the cost estimate by the Center for Medicare Services, which is higher. The bottom line is there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that we had a true cost estimate for the prescription drug bill last year, and everyone had access to it before the vote. That source was our congressional God, the Congressional Budget Office. The impact on the Medicare trust fund is something also that needs to be addressed. I will speak about that a little bit. The trustees' report revealed yesterday the Medicare trust fund insolvency date has been moved up 7 years, to the year 2019. Most of the change is due to higher health care costs, changes in the economy, better data analysis and projection, and improved data on the health of beneficiaries. In the Medicare bill we just passed, we put money in there for enhanced quality care, particularly in rural America. Thirty States are below the national average of reimbursement. We gathered together in this Senate to pass overwhelmingly a bill to give equal treatment to rural areas that we give to urban areas on reimbursement for doctors and hospitals. That is responsible for 2 of the 7 years that Medicare is closer to insolvency than last year based upon the trustees' estimate. We all have to admit we have concern about the future solvency of Medicare. We have to stay focused on improving and protecting Medicare for future generations. We have to do this while not jeopardizing access to care. Another topic discussed this morning was the prohibition on negotiating. There is a paragraph in the bill that says the Federal Government cannot be involved in the negotiation for drugs. That was put there for a specific purpose. We want to keep the Federal bureaucrat out of the medicine cabinet. We learned our lesson from the VA. I will give a personal experience I had in the last month. I have been holding several town meetings since the first of the year in my State to help seniors understand this prescription drug program they have to make some choices on. Since the first of the year, I have held meetings in 32 different counties. In Des Moines, IA, the first question I had after my presentation was from a woman who said her doctor said she ought to have such and such a pill, but the Veterans' Administration was not going to pay for it. Why? Because it probably cost more than some other drug VA thinks is just as good. But the doctor does not think it is just as good. We could have the same thing happening if the Federal Government is going to negotiate for all seniors. We do not need to have that. Our bill provides every therapeutic class have one of a kind available of every drug that is known to meet that need. We want the doctor and the patient to have access. We want to keep the Federal Government out of the senior citizen's medicine cabinet. Let me go into detail why we have it this way. First of all, the accusation is this legislation prohibits negotiation with drug companies. We have learned from 40 years of Federal employee health benefit plan about plans negotiating with drug companies and other health care providers to bring down costs. It has worked very well. We have different plans seniors can join to decide what kind of service they want. Then the plans are going to negotiate the drugs down. It has worked before. It can work now. It will work now. In fact, this is the only thing in the bill the Congressional Budget Office said was going to bring down the costs of the program. If the Government did it directly, it was going to cost more. That is what the Congressional Budget Office said. We are going to have negotiation with drug companies. This accusation could not be further from the truth. The truth is the Medicare prescription drug plans will be negotiating directly with drug makers. These negotiations are at the heart of the new Medicare drug benefit. The absurd claim the Government will not be negotiating with drug makers comes from the noninterference clause in the Medicare bill. This clause did not prohibit Medicare from negotiating with drug makers. It prohibits the Center for Medicare Services from interfering in those negotiations. Let me be clear. The noninterference clause is at the heart of the bill's structure for delivering prescription drug coverage to seniors and disabled. This clause ensures those savings will result from market competition rather than through price fixing by the Center for Medicare Services bureaucracy. This same noninterference clause was in the Daschle-Kennedy- Rockefeller bill and the Gephardt-Dingell-Stark bill in 2000. It is almost identical to the noninterference clause in the Gephardt-Dingell- Stark bill and the Medicare Modernization Act which was signed into law. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded the market-based approach in the new Medicare bill will result in higher prescription drug costs management factor for Medicare than any other approach being considered last year by the Congress. Here is what the Congressional Budget Office said about eliminating the noninterference clause in a letter earlier this year: The Secretary would not be able to negotiate prices that further reduce federal spending to a significant degree. The Congressional Budget Office said in the letter: CBO estimates substantial savings will be obtained by private plans. Let me be clear. Direct government negotiation is not the answer. We ran into that with the VA, the VA bureaucrats getting in the medicine cabinet of the veterans of America. The Government does not negotiate drug prices. The Government sets prices. The bill's entire approach is to get seniors the best deal through vigorous market competition, not through price controls. Even the Washington Post editorial page wrote on February 17: Governments are notoriously bad at setting prices, and the U.S. government is notoriously bad at setting prices in the medical realm. Price controls won't work, whether we are talking about all drugs or just so-called single-source drugs, as one of our colleagues from Oregon has proposed. The Congressional Budget Office said such a proposal would ``generate no savings or even increase Federal costs.'' It would seem, then, the devil is in the details. We did not rely on the Center for Medicare Services for price fixing but instead created a new drug benefit that relies on strong market competition and creates consumer choices. This approach has been analyzed by experts as getting the best deal for seniors on lower drug prices. To sum up, it is an election year and plenty of people are using Medicare to play politics. The new Medicare law is a bipartisan proposal that resulted from years of work by both Republicans and Democrats. The new law creates a volunteer benefit that is targeted to low-income seniors and those with high drug costs. The new law lowers drug costs by speeding the delivery of new generic drugs to the marketplace, lowering costs to all Americans, not just those on Medicare. The new law also revitalizes the rural health care safety net with the biggest package of rural payment improvements in the history of the program. The AARP has made that clear when providing its strong endorsement that the Medicare bill ``helps millions of older Americans and their families'' and is ``an important milestone in the Nation's commitment to strengthen and expand health security for its citizens . . . '' I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I am going to wait a while, because I have spoken so many times, I ought to give other Members an opportunity.

Mr. GRASSLEY. No. Right now I am not going to.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Doubled.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Very frequently.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada is entirely right, 100 percent right. He may have not heard me say this, but I keep referring during this debate to a statement made by the Washington Post describing a Democratic tax aide as saying there was not a whole lot of incentive for the other side to move this bill along because as sanctions come on and people get laid off, that is going to benefit them in the next election. I said to my colleagues and I say to the Senator from Nevada that is politics getting in the way of good policy. I hope the other side realizes that the best politics is good policy.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am aware of that, and it gives me an opportunity, because I did not highlight it in my remarks, to compliment the Senator from Nevada because he is the brains behind that amendment. That amendment probably will do as much good--or at least almost as much good--as the underlying legislation. It is a part of this bill. It ought to be passed, and I am sure the Senator from Nevada will be constantly reminding people on the other side of the aisle that their voting against cloture has also, at least temporarily, killed this provision as well.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

Mr. GRASSLEY. We just had a cloture vote on the bill. I have spoken before about that not being my preferred route for moving a strongly bipartisan bill, but leadership decided to do it. Obviously, I want to get to finality, so I voted to close debate and move on. The JOBS bill is a bill to create manufacturing jobs. It should not have required a cloture vote to get it passed. But politics have stepped in the way, and that seems to be the rule of the day. I wanted to act on this bill last year because I was fearful that elections this year and the politics connected thereto would get in the way of the Senate's ability to do its job. It looks as though I may have been right after all. The procedural shenanigans when we first brought up the bill confirmed my worst fears. Senator Baucus and I had an agreed order of amendments that would have improved the bill and brought important relevant issues forward. Many of those issues included in this amendment by Senator Baucus and I were at the request of a lot of people who voted against cloture. The agreement we had was undermined by the Democratic leadership. They would prefer to turn a bipartisan bill into a political football. That is inexcusable because we have worked hard throughout this process to make sure everyone's concerns, Republican and Democrat, were incorporated in the bill. You should not play political games with a bipartisan bill that preserves the jobs of manufacturing workers across the land, and probably greatly increases the number of manufacturing jobs. I would like to repeat points I made yesterday about the bipartisan aspects of this legislation. The construction of the JOBS bill began when Senator Baucus was chairman of the Finance Committee. He held a hearing in July 2002 to address the FSC/ETI controversy within the World Trade Organization. We heard vital testimony from a cross-section of the industries that would be adversely affected by repeal of the Extraterritorial Income Act. We also heard from U.S. companies that were clamoring for international tax reform because our tax rules were hurting their competitiveness in foreign markets. Their foreign competitors were running circles around them because of our international tax rules. That is what we were told during the hearing. Also during the hearing, Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Senator Hatch expressed concerns about how our international tax laws were impairing the competitiveness of U.S. industry. In response, at that particular time, still in 2002, Senator Baucus formed an international tax working group with Senator Graham, Senator Hatch, and this Senator. It was open also to any other member of the Finance Committee who wanted to serve and had an interest in this issue. This bipartisan Finance Committee working group formed the basis for the bill that is now before us. We directed our staff to engage in an exhaustive analysis of international reform proposals to glean the very best ideas from many different sources, and as many as possible. Senator Baucus and I also formed a bipartisan, bicameral working group with the chairman and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee in an effort to find some common ground on dealing with repeal of the Foreign Sales Corporation extraterritorial income language in our law that had been declared contrary to our international treaty obligations. After that effort failed, working with the Ways and Means Committee, Senator Baucus and I continued to work with our Finance Committee colleagues on bipartisan development of the repeal of that language and also to expand and improve the international tax reform package. We continued our bipartisan efforts when I became chairman last year. In July 2003, following on the impetus of the Baucus hearings, we held two additional hearings on FSC/ETI and the international reform issue. These two hearings concluded our final bipartisan effort in reviewing all of the policy options for creating the bill now pending before the Senate. Let me emphasize that there is not one provision in this JOBS bill that was not agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats. We have acted in the best faith to produce a bill that protects American manufacturing jobs and makes our companies globally competitive. And we did this in a fully bipartisan manner, which is what the American people expect us to do on such an important issue as manufacturing jobs and our Nation's economic health and also because, quite frankly, nothing gets done in the Senate that does not have a bipartisan approach. But these efforts toward bipartisanship and all the other efforts that went into it do not seem to be enough for some. I believe some people don't want this bill to pass. I will bet those very same people will end up voting for it anyway, if we ever get to that point, because I don't think they can openly oppose it. That would be bad form, considering all the talk there has been in this body about outsourcing and offshore manufacturing. Instead, these people who might not want to see this bill pass would try to destroy the bipartisan product with amendments on controversial issues that are what we call ``not germane'' but are also totally unrelated to the JOBS bill. That is why we found ourselves facing the cloture vote today. The cloture motion did not get the 60-percent supermajority. Consequently, we are in a position of limbo on this legislation. I am speaking because I want people to reconsider their position, particularly in light of all of the products that I have read that are going to have a 5-percent tariff on them, making our manufacturing less competitive and consequently losing jobs to a greater extent. When I think about efforts, for political reasons, to destroy this bill, I can quote, at least, from a Washington Post article that quoted a Democratic tax aide as saying--and this person is not named in the article-- There's not a lot of incentive for us to figure out this problem-- Meaning the FSC/ETI problem. This Democratic aide went on to say: Allowing the extra-territorial income controversy to fester would yield increased sanctions that could benefit the Democrats in November. Well, that is exactly what is accomplished by not getting the supermajority of 60 to stop debate and to move on. This is, in fact, festering. Now, all of this, to me, is an appalling statement, whether it comes from a Member or whether it comes from a top staffer of a Democratic Member, because this debate should be about policy, not about petty politics. Today, Democrats said no to cloture; Republicans said yes to cloture. The Democrats are on record opposing the provisions in this bill. Some of those provisions, if we don't get beyond where we are now, will be killed because of this morning's vote. This bill will end $4 billion a year of European Union tariffs against U.S. exports. These sanctions are already being imposed against many U.S. products. I named over 500 of them. They fall into the category of grain, timber, paper, and various manufactured goods. Those sanctions started on May 1. They increase 1 percent each month we fail to act, adding up over 12 months to 17 percent. They will be 13 percent by the end of this year. That is too politically tempting for some to let pass. We could have ended the $4 billion in sanctions with this bill, but the Democrats said no. The Congressional Budget Office says we have lost 3 million manufacturing jobs since the middle of the year 2000--6 months before President Bush became President--when a depression in manufacturing set in. The JOBS bill provides $75 billion of tax relief to our manufacturing sector to promote rehiring in U.S.-based manufacturing. But the Democrats said no. The Democrats claim they are worried about the scope of proposed overtime regulations--regulations that are not even out yet, not final. But how can you worry about overtime if you don't have a job in the first place? You have to have a job to earn overtime. We need to address the manufacturing job loss right now by voting for the bipartisan JOBS bill. The JOBS bill gives a 3 percentage point tax rate cut on all income derived from manufacturing in the United States. This will not benefit manufacturing offshore. So you can see this is tilted toward encouraging manufacturing in the United States, creating jobs in the United States. This reduction in taxes starts as soon as the President signs this bill. This manufacturing rate cut applies not only to big corporations but to sole proprietors, partnerships, farmers, individuals, family businesses, multinational corporations, and foreign companies that set up manufacturing plants in the United States and hire workers here. This should keep the Government out of their pocket while they try to recover from the economic downturn by lowering this tax and also because it is an incentive to expand production here rather than overseas. But on that vote we had about 2 hours ago, the Democrats said no. The JOBS bill extends the research and development tax credit through the end of 2005. This credit is a domestic tax benefit that incentives research and development, translating to good, high-paying jobs for Americans here in America, not overseas. But the Democrats said no today. There are other important provisions in this bill. The bill extends for 2 years tax provisions that expired in 2003 and 2004. This includes items such as the work opportunity tax credit and the welfare-to-work tax credit. Why did the Democrats say no to these measures that are meant to help lower income people and young people get into the workforce to work their way up the economic ladder--particularly to move people off welfare into the world of work, because in the world of welfare, you are going to be in a life of poverty. If you move people over here and give them an opportunity to move up, quite frankly, they are going to be able to improve themselves, enhance their opportunities, enhance their livelihoods. There are also in the bill enhanced depreciation provisions to help the ailing airline industry. There are new homestead provisions for rural development. These provide special assistance for businesses in counties that are losing population. It provides incentives for newly constructed rural investment buildings, for starting or expanding a rural business in a rural high outmigration county. But the Democrats said no when they voted to continue the debate rather than reach finality on this bill. We have a provision that allows payments under the National Health Service Corps loan repayment program to be exempt from tax. This is also for rural development--again, responding to a lot of Senators who support that because they are concerned about having high quality health care in rural America. The JOBS bill includes brownfields revitalization. The bill waives taxes for tax-exempt investors who invest in the cleanup and remediation of qualified brownfield sites. It includes a mortgage revenue bonds provision. That proposal would repeal the current rule that mortgage revenue bond payments received after the bond has been outstanding for 10 years must be used to pay off the bond rather than issue new mortgages. There are 70 Senate cosponsors of that bill. But the Democrats said no today on the cloture vote. We allow deductions from private mortgage insurance for people struggling to afford a home. The no vote on today's cloture motion was a vote against homeowners. We have extended and enhanced the Liberty Zone bonds for the rebuilding of New York City because of September 11. We included $100 million in tax credits to be used on rail infrastructure projects in the New York Liberty Zone. The Democrats actually tied up funding for the Liberty Zone to prove a political point on a Labor Department overtime regulation that isn't even finalized. Well, we tried to help some Senators with that provision. Yet they voted no. There is a lot here to help economic development. We have increased industrial development bond levels to spur economic development. We have bonds for rebuilding school infrastructure. We have included tribal bonds, which allow Native Americans to obtain bond financing for reservation projects in the same manner as State and local governments. We have a new tribal new markets tax credit. This would add $50 million annually in new markets tax credits dedicated to community entities serving Native Americans. The JOBS bill provided $500 million over 3 years in the Federal tax credits to States for intercity passenger rail capital projects, and for so-called short-line rail service. Was it worth killing off these important priorities by voting against an unfinished regulation? But that is what the Democrats did with this cloture vote. We also have a special dividend allocation rule for the benefit of farm cooperatives. We have provisions that help cattlemen when drought, flood, and other weather-related conditions--all beyond the control of the individual farmer--might wipe out their livestock. We have a provision to benefit rural letter carriers. The JOBS bill enhances a broadband expense so people in rural America can have a quality of life through IT, the same as those people in urban America. We have included the Civil Rights Tax Fairness Act so people who win lawsuits actually get benefits from them because we have some people winning lawsuits and by the time they pay their taxes and pay the lawyers, they do not have anything left. So what good does it do to win a civil rights lawsuit? Our bill includes a tax credit for employers for wages paid to reservists who have been called to active duty. There is a lot of that now because of the war. The Democrats voted against cloture and killed all these measures. All these benefits are being held hostage because the other side is pushing for a vote on a nongermane amendment. When we are faced with 5-percent sanctions, and next month it is going to be 6 percent and the following month 7 percent and eventually 17 percent after a year, I think in that environment it is fair to call this obstruction and maybe, in the case of this divided vote, political obstruction, partisan obstruction, particularly when this bill was developed in complete cooperation with the Democrats, not only on the underlying bill, but a lot of these amendments that were added by Senator Baucus and me were a direct result of trying to satisfy Democrats as well as Republicans. That sort of obstruction did not work in 2002, and I do not think it is going to work today. When it was tried in 2002, Mr. President, do you know what happened? That sort of obstruction was supposed to win the Democrats continued majority in the Senate, and it cost them the majority. Do you know why? Because politics is not good policy, but good policy is good politics. It is inexcusable to hold up a bill that will benefit millions of manufacturing jobs to score political points. We have worked hard throughout this process to make sure everyone's concerns--both Republicans and Democrats--were in this bill. In the committee, we did more to satisfy the Democrats. There were two votes against this bill and those two votes were from Republicans. How is that for a Republican chairman working with the Democratic leader of that committee to get a bipartisan bill to satisfy the Democrats, and in the process I irritate two Republicans? But it is still a bipartisan bill. We tried to make sure everyone's concerns were taken care of in this bill. We see that concern reflected in the amendments I just listed. Anyone who voted against cloture voted against all those items I just listed because a few on the other side--or maybe I should say all on the other side--wanted to vote on another amendment, an amendment that was not germane. Then we had some people on the other side who were involved in that amendment saying all these amendments I listed are nongermane as well. Every one of them is in the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, and every one of them is a tax-related item. So tell me tax-related items are nongermane and use that as an excuse to bring up a nongermane amendment that is in the jurisdiction of the Labor Committee. It just does not make sense. It is not true. I hope somehow there can be some accommodation and get serious about the manufacturing job crisis that is facing America. We need to move this JOBS bill forward. Sooner or later, it is going to move forward because the more we tack on 1 percentage point a month for the next 12 months and get up to 17 percent, there are going to be enough businesses, as well as working people, complaining, and I hope they forward their complaints to the Democratic Party in the Senate because those are the people who voted against cloture.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, prior to our cloture vote on the FSC/ETI bill, I read a list of some products that, if they are going to be shipped out of the United States and exported to Europe, are going to have, right now, a 5-percent tariff added to them because of European retaliation against the United States because we have not passed this legislation yet. That is going to cause jobs to be lost. That tariff is going to go up, over the course of the next 12 months, 1 percent every month, to 17 percent. I will be a little bit more specific in how some of those products and the manufacturers of those products, or the producers of those products, will be affected. In jewelry manufacturing, we would have $2 billion in annual exports being jeopardized. Ninety-five percent of jewelry manufacturers are small businesses, so obviously it would have a huge potential impact on jobs. Folks such as Stamper Black Hills Gold in South Dakota are targeted, as one example of jewelry manufacturing. Racehorses: The average value of U.S. exports of racehorses is about $100,000. At 5 percent, that is an extra $5,000 cost to our exports. By the end of the year, it will be an extra $14,000 on average. For high- value horses, it will be several times more. These sanctions would impact States such as New York, California, Florida, and Maryland. In the area of dairy, we will have sanctions on cheese exports impacting States such as Wisconsin, Vermont; fruits and vegetables, California; citrus fruits, peppers, Florida, and tomatoes, as an example. I could go on and on, but I will include for the Record a list beyond what I have just referred to. We have over 500 items that have been targeted already with sanctions on them. I ask unanimous consent to print that information in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I know the Senator from Wyoming wants to speak. I will not give a long speech at this point on the vote that just occurred. I wish to take a second to respond to the partisanship aspect of this debate. I cannot speak for anybody but this Senator. It would be one thing if the overtime amendment were the only one that we had to deal with, but we have seen lists, I think, of up to maybe 10 nongermane amendments that may have been potentially part of this debate. So you can understand, there may be 10 legitimate issues that are nongermane to this debate which ought to be discussed on the Senate floor, as per the right of every Senator, as expressed by the Senator from Nevada; but they don't all have to be discussed on this very important bill before the Senate. This is a very important bipartisan bill before the Senate. It is one thing to deal with an overtime amendment; it is quite another thing to deal with an environment in which the minority may be expecting us to deal with vast numbers of nongermane amendments. That is very difficult and it is that sort of environment which brings about a cloture vote. As my friend from Montana has stated, I hope we do get this behind us. The germane amendments will take very little time and we can then move past this bill. This bill will pass overwhelmingly when we get it up for a vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I wish to correct the record with respect to some comments made by my friend and colleague, Senator Harkin. Senator Harkin said that the managers' package was non-germane amendments. All of the amendments were tax relief measures that were requested by Members on both sides of the aisle. The bill before us is a tax relief bill. It deals with a tax incentive designed to help our exporters. This bill deals with tax relief for domestic manufacturers and international tax reform. The sum and substance of this bill is about tax relief. The managers' package is about bipartisan tax relief. It is germane to this bill. The amendment of my friend from Iowa is a labor law matter. It is not in the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, earlier today in my floor speech concerning the products on the European Union sanction list, I offered to put this sanction list in the Congressional Record. However, the complete list is over 300 pages and would be too costly to reproduce fully. Nevertheless, the complete list and description can be found on the Senate Finance Com- mittee's website, at www.finance.senate.gov.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the Senator has asked to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask the Senator from Texas to answer the question of the Senator from Nevada, if she would, please.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GRASSLEY. On behalf of Senator Hutchison, I call up amendment No. 2888.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as the first order of business, I withdraw the pending amendment No. 2899.

Mr. GRASSLEY. How much time do I have?

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 23, 2004, at 9:30 a.m., in open session to receive testimony on the Atomic Energy Defense activities of the Department of Energy, in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2005.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 at 9:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on U.S. & Mexico: Immigration Policy and the Bilateral Relationship.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet on Tuesday, March 23rd at 2:00 p.m. to conduct an oversight hearing to examine the ``United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea''. The meeting will be held in SD 406.