Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I object.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. At this time, I yield to the Senator from Nevada such time as he may consume.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have the floor, correct?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we now return to the issue of how we make health care more affordable and accessible to the American people. This bill will try to reduce the liability, the insurance costs of doctors who deliver babies and doctors who work in emergency rooms, making the practice of those different disciplines more attractive to doctors and allowing, therefore, especially women who are having children more access to doctors. Especially in rural areas this is a huge problem because so many OB doctors have had to give up the practice of medicine because of the cost of their liability insurance. We return to that bill. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 633 But before we go on to that bill, I think it is important that we address other legislation that could also significantly reduce the cost of health care in this country and improve its delivery. One such piece of legislation has been reported out of the committee which I have the privilege to chair, which is the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It was reported out unanimously--unanimously. It is the patient safety bill, and it basically is structured so that it does, for example, make information as to how errors occur within the medical profession more available within the medical profession so people in the medical profession can learn from these errors. Today, regrettably, if you have an experience of doing a procedure inappropriately, having a medication which is inappropriately applied, or having an operating room that may not be set up correctly, and as a result errors result from that type of activity which lead to injury or problems for patients, that information is kept very close. It is not made available generally to the medical profession for the obvious reason that they will be sued. What this bill does is essentially try to create a better atmosphere for allowing that information to be shared and, thus, reducing medical errors. We know, for example, that there is a huge number of people in this country every year who are impacted by medical errors and that there are 98,000 preventable deaths that occur as a result of medical errors. This information would significantly reduce those occurrences by allowing this information--the information of how these errors occur--to be shared within the medical community. It would create a system for voluntary reporting of medical errors. It would establish Federal evidentiary privilege and confidentiality protections to promote the reporting of medical errors. It would produce better procedures, interventions, and safety protocols for eliminating errors and improving quality of care. It would permit safety data to be shared and disseminated nationally so other caregivers can learn from mistakes that have occurred without the fear of litigation. It is excellent legislation, such strong legislation, in fact, that it was reported unanimously out of the committee which I have the privilege to chair. Yet it has been stopped on the floor for reasons I find difficult to understand. I know it has cleared our side of the aisle, that the Republican membership is willing to move on it. In fact, we are willing to move on it by a voice vote on this side of the aisle. At this time I ask unanimous consent that the HELP Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 633, the Patients Safety Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I would inquire of the assistant leader of the Democratic membership if there is a timeframe when we could bring this bill to the floor.

Mr. GREGG. That would be excellent. I appreciate the response of the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on ``Crude Oil: The Source of Higher Gas Prices?'' on Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. in room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Witness List: Mr. William Kovacic, General Counsel, Federal Trade Commission; Dr. John Felmy, Chief Economist and Director, American Petroleum Institute; Dr. Justine Hastings, Assistant Professor, Yale University Department of Economics; Mr. George Bermann, Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law; and Dr. Mark Cooper, Director of Research, Consumer Federation of America.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, be authorized to meet on Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 2:30 p.m., in SR-253, for a hearing on near earth objects.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, be authorized to meet on Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 2 p.m., in SR-428A, for a hearing on Coast Guard oversight.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water be authorized to meet on Wednesday, April 7th at 2:30 p.m. to hold an oversight hearing on the detection of lead in the District of Columbia drinking water. The business meeting will be held in S-128 (Appropriations) in the Capitol.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 7, 2004, at 10 a.m., in open and closed session to receive testimony on defense intelligence programs and lessons learned in recent military operations, in review of the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal year 2005.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Financial Management, the Budget, and International Security be authorized to meet on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 2 p.m. for a hearing entitled, ``Legislative Hearing on S. 346, a Bill to Amend the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act to Establish a Government-Wide Policy Requiring Competition in Certain Procurements from Federal Prison Industries.''

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on ``Improving the Administration of Justice: A Proposal to Split the Ninth Circuit'' on Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 10 a.m. in room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office building. Witness List Panel I: The Honorable Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Portland, OR; the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit, Phoenix, AZ; the Honorable Richard C. Tallman, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Seattle, WA; and the Honorable J. Clifford Wallace, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, San Diego, CA. Panel II: The Honorable Gerald B. Tjoflat, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Jackson, FL; and the Honorable John C. Coughenour, Chief U.S. District Judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I congratulate the senior Senator from Virginia for his excellent statement, especially for reflecting on some of the specific personal events which this bill tries to address: People who have been actually impacted by the fact they have not had a doctor available because the doctor can no longer afford to practice the type of medicine which this bill addresses, the delivering of children and emergency room medicine. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hagel be added as a cosponsor of S. 2207.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wish to, once again, recite what this bill is about because there has been some diversion, I am afraid, coming from the other side in the representations that were made. Basically, what we are dealing with is a bill that is going to try to make medicine more readily available to women who are having children. In rural parts of this country today, for example, in northern New Hampshire, if a woman is having a child, she has to drive a long way to see a doctor because there is nobody practicing obstetrics in northern New Hampshire. The baby doctors in that part of the State have found their liability premiums so exceed what they can earn that they can no longer afford to practice medicine. So women are put at risk because they have to get in their car and drive a long way on snowy roads, and it is very difficult, especially as they move into the later terms of their pregnancy. Secondly, this deals with people who walk into an emergency room, have an emergency and need to receive care. As was pointed out by the Senator from Tennessee, the majority leader, who is a doctor, there is a window of opportunity to care for people who have experienced trauma. If there isn't a doctor in that emergency room to take care of that individual, then you have a serious problem. This bill tries to address that by making affordable the practice of medicine in an emergency room. Today, we have a problem. Doctors who practice in emergency rooms do not make a lot of money. They are not making enough money to cover the premiums for the liability insurance they have because of the massive amounts of lawsuits which are filed. This bill will redress that issue. It will still give recovery to people. It will allow them to recover all the medical costs they have. It will allow them to recover all their compensation costs, and it will allow them to recover something for what is known as pain and suffering. But it will also allow doctors to practice their disciplines because it will make it possible for baby doctors and emergency room doctors to be able to afford the cost of the premium of their liability insurance--something many cannot do today, so they are getting out of the practice. It will, therefore, give women better care and people who experience trauma better care in this country. Madam President, it is my understanding, at this time, the Senator from West Virginia is to be recognized. Is that correct?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. At the end of the Senator's 10 minutes, does the Senator come back and retain the floor?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will be seeking the floor at the conclusion of the 10 minutes as the manager of the bill, for everybody's knowledge.

Mr. GREGG. I understand the motion to proceed has been reported.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a parliamentary inquiry?

Mr. GREGG. We are now moving on to the issue of how we give the American people better access to doctors, especially women who are having children, people who have experienced a traumatic event and have gone to the emergency room. Regrettably, in our society today we are seeing a lot of highly qualified people in the medical professions--not only doctors, but nurse midwives and ambulance professionals, EMT professionals--giving up the practice which they love; in the case of an OB doctor, delivering a baby, and in the case of emergency room personnel, especially the doctor, trying to save lives--having given up those professions or significantly curtailed the extent to which they practice their profession because the cost of their liability insurance due to lawsuits has gotten so high there is no way they can earn enough money to cover the premiums they have to pay to purchase the liability coverage. Of course, there is no hospital in America today which allows a doctor to practice unless that doctor has adequate liability coverage. This is a crisis. It is a crisis in a lot of States in this country. It is soon to be a crisis in even more States. There are 19 States which the American Medical Association has identified as in crisis. There is another group, I think 23, the American Medical Association has said moving toward crisis. The red States on the chart are in crisis and the yellow States are the States moving toward crisis. There are 11 States which are doing pretty good, which have their medical liability issues under control. This bill attempts to create a national response to this problem so women who are having children or want to have children can see a doctor. If you are in a car accident and you have a serious injury, or you are walking down the road and you slip and fall and have a serious injury, or you have any other type of physical injury and you go to your emergency room, you will see a doctor who is capable of taking care of you. That is what this bill tries to address. The issue, of course, is these doctors want to deliver these services. It is not as if they want to get out of the business or out of the activity for which they have trained all their lives, such as delivering a baby. I have had meetings with doctors in my home State. I remember distinctly a doctor from Dover, a woman who loves to deliver babies. This is what really excites her about being a doctor. It is why she went to medical school. It is why she went to graduate school afterwards. But she has actually had to stop delivering babies. The only babies she now delivers are members of her own family. She has to get special dispensation from the hospital to do that because as an OB/ GYN she cannot afford the insurance necessary to cover her costs of delivering those children. We have regions in our State, and it is true in every State that has any sort of rural atmosphere, where we literally do not have any coverage at all, where a woman in northern New Hampshire who has decided to have a child has to drive 10 miles--10 would be conservative--20, 30, 40 miles or more in order to see an obstetric doctor, in order to get care during her pregnancy. It is darn dangerous in New Hampshire in the middle of the winter to drive those miles, especially if you are pregnant or, Lord forbid, you happen to actually be in labor. The local hospitals do not have doctors on call, do not have doctors, period, who are willing to practice delivering babies. So these women find themselves placed on the road in order to see a doctor. This is true across the country in our urban areas. A lot of hospitals are finding it very hard to get coverage in their emergency rooms--emergency room closed. In Phoenix Memorial Hospital--emergency room closed. Why was it closed? It was closed because the doctors who covered the emergency room could not afford the cost of the insurance they had to pay to meet the demands of the trial bar which has been suing the doctors. They had to back out of the business or out of the activity of covering the emergency room, so the emergency room got closed. You talk to hospitals across this country, and they are finding it very difficult to get doctors to do the call, to do their period where they have to come in and do their coverage responsibilities because of the fact the local doctors do not want to put at risk their insurance premiums as a result of going into the emergency room and practicing 1 day a week or 2 days a week, as has been the tradition. I know in the town I grew up in, Nashua, NH, the medical community, the physicians, would take turns. They would come on rotation into the emergency room and cover the emergency room. They were not all trauma specialists, but that was sort of their responsibility as being part of the medical community in the city of Nashua, and they were proud of it. Today it is very hard to get doctors who are not trauma specialists into the emergency room because of the fact these insurance premiums have gotten so out of control, and the trauma specialists themselves cannot afford the premiums because it is a low- paying area of the medical profession. As a result, they cannot work long enough hours; and they work outrageous hours already. There are not enough hours in the day for them to work in order to cover the cost of their insurance. This is a crisis. The same is true of baby doctors. I had a doctor in Laconia tell us-- Laconia, NH; a great town on Lake Winnipesaukee. I hope everybody will go up and visit this summer. It is a beautiful place to take your summer vacation. He told us he has to work 5\1/2\ months of the year to pay the premiums on his insurance because he delivers babies, and they are down to two doctors who do this in his area. That makes it economically unviable for him to practice obstetrics. When it takes 5\1/2\ months to pay your premiums and 6 months to pay your taxes, you only have 2 weeks of the year you earn for yourself, and you still have to send your kids to college and maybe even buy your wife something for Christmas--you cannot do it--or your husband. A lot of the OB doctors are, obviously, women. So it is serious. Yet we have in this institution tried time and again to raise the issue, and what has happened? We have been stonewalled by the other side. Why would the other side not even be willing to allow us to proceed to these bills? This is the third time we have tried this, to get to these bills to discuss how we are going to relieve the pressure on doctors who deliver babies and doctors who take care of emergency rooms. We are not even expecting it necessarily to pass. We would like it to pass, but we at least want to be able to debate it. Yet time and again the Democratic leadership of this institution has said: No, you are not even going to be allowed to proceed to the bill. That is what we are trying to get to today with the motion to proceed. It is a technical motion, meaning it is a way to try to get the bill to the floor so it is up for action. I heard the Senator from Iowa out here railing about a rule at the Labor Department, and he cannot get his amendment up. Well, one of the reasons he cannot get his amendment up is because we cannot move to this bill. If we could move to this bill, he could offer his amendment. So why is he voting against moving to this bill? Because it appears he is more inclined to support the position of the trial lawyers, who are resisting, in a manner of extreme intensity, any action in this area to try to improve the ability of doctors to deliver care, by making more doctors available to women specifically, or more doctors available in the emergency room, and who are resisting that so aggressively they have told the leadership of the other side, the Democratic leadership: You shall not, if you expect to continue to get our support--the trial lawyers' support--allow this bill to be debated on the floor of the Senate. You shall not allow a motion to proceed. So it is an ironic situation, to say the least. We hear the Members of the other side saying they want to offer amendments, they want to get this issue up and that issue up. Yet they are filibustering a motion to proceed to a bill which, if we did proceed to it, would allow them to offer the exact amendments they claim they cannot raise. But it appears there is a countervailing force here which is, maybe they do not want to offer that amendment so much they would affront the trial lawyers by allowing this bill to proceed. That appears to be the case. But in the end, who is the loser? Who is the loser? Well, the loser is, obviously, the doctors who cannot practice what they have been trained to do. We are about to hear from one member of that profession who is an extraordinary example of that profession in quality and ability. And, secondly, the most important, the women, especially in rural areas, who cannot see a doctor if they are having a baby; and people who walk into that emergency room under extreme stress and trauma and suddenly find there is nobody there to take care of them. Mr. President, I will reserve my further comments because I do see the leader is on the floor. Of course, this is an issue which he has an intimate knowledge of and an intense desire to move forward. I congratulate him for his efforts in this area, and thank him for making this time available to us. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to talk about the approach being taken by the other side of the aisle toward a lot of issues in the Senate but specifically two dealing with jobs; that is, this attitude of obstruction for the purpose of basically stopping legislation and not allowing this body to move forward and do the business of the people. There are two bills pending in this body. One is the JOBS bill, which deals with correcting the tax structure of the United States so we are no longer out of compliance with a ruling made by the WTO, which ruling, if it is allowed to stand, will have the practical effect of raising duties on American products sold overseas rather significantly. In fact, they could raise as high as 18 percent, as I understand it. The effect of those duties, of course, which have now been ruled legal under this international tribunal that we subscribe to as a member state, will be that those American goods are not as competitive as they should be, and therefore those American goods will not be able to be effectively sold into those markets overseas. The practical effect of that will be that jobs will be lost here in the U.S. The other side of the aisle continues to filibuster that bill. The effect of the filibuster will be that these duties will go into place and jobs will be lost. This bill which is called the JOBS bill is just that, a jobs bill. Yet we hear from the other side of the aisle what appears to be and must be crocodile tears on the issue of creating more jobs, because they have the opportunity to pass a piece of legislation that will clearly impact the creation and maintenance of jobs in the United States, and they are obstructing it and filibustering it. We hear from the other side a great deal about outsourcing, American jobs being moved overseas. The practical effect of objecting to this bill, obstructing this bill and of filibustering this bill, is that those jobs will probably move overseas because those manufacturers, in order to avoid the duty, are going to have to move overseas in order to be competitive with the products in those nations where they are selling them. So the effect of the filibuster and obstruction we are seeing on the other side on the issue of the JOBS bill is to basically energize the loss of jobs in the U.S. and the outsourcing of jobs overseas. Therefore, when we hear all this discussion and concern about the creation of jobs in this country today from the other side of the aisle in the context of the Presidential election, one wonders how serious they are, because clearly if they are serious they would pass this bill which, by the way, is supported by a majority of the Senate. The objection to this bill is not the underlying law. It is not the correction to the tax law which will allow these jobs to be retained in the United States. It is, rather, they wish to bring forward extraneous legislation and put it on this bill, legislation which we voted on a couple of times before in committee and which we voted on at least once on the floor of the Senate. Therefore, it is a tangential idea and a desire to make a political point, and their willingness to pursue that tangential idea and desire at the expense of these jobs, I find, is cynical and clearly inappropriate. That is the first bill being stopped. The second bill is a bill I managed and which just came out of conference, and it is the pension reform bill. It did not have everything in it that I wanted. It did not have everything in it the House wanted. But it has key pieces of legislation in it which will have a direct impact on jobs. I called this pensions bill the ultimate jobs bill because, quite honestly, that is exactly what it is. If this pensions bill is not passed and passed promptly, the practical effect is there will be a misallocation of up to $80 billion of resources within the investment community and in the small and large business communities of this country. What has happened today is that companies fund what is known as a defined benefits plan under rules which they say, in order to determine how much they are going to pay to the plan each year, they have to look at the rate of return on the 30- year Treasury bond. The 30-year Treasury bond is a vehicle which does not exist anymore. We do not sell it, basically, as a country. Therefore, the price of a 30-year Treasury bond has been moved to an artificially low number, and the practical effect of that is that companies, businesses, and unions which must see their pension funds funded for these defined benefits plans are going to see those payments to those defined benefits plans increased at an arbitrary rate based on a nonexistent bond vehicle, the 30-year bond. It is technical, but it is an important point. This pensions bill corrects that situation. It sets up a new structure for defining how much must be contributed to a defined benefits plan for a period of 2 years based on a bond rate which does actually exist, which is a market basket of corporate bonds. The practical effect of that will be an appropriate allocation of money into these defined benefits plans, leaving dollars available to invest in new plant, new equipment, and expansion of business in the United States, which leads directly to jobs. Thus, if this pensions bill is not enacted in the next week, we will have these arbitrary reallocations of funds occurring by April 15. This pensions bill will have a direct and proximate effect on the ability of business in the United States to be competitive, to create investment, and, in return, to create jobs. Yet, once again, we were told by the leadership on the other side of the aisle--at least the leadership in the committees, Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus--that they oppose this bill and they are going to use all their means available to them to stop it. They can stop this bill. There is no question about it. They can stop it for at least 2 or 3 weeks, and the practical effect of that will be that we will go beyond the April 15 funding date, and this rather horrific misallocation of resources will kick in, the practical effect of which will be instead of investing to create jobs, they will be investing arbitrarily in these defined benefits funds at a rate which is not reflective of what the actual return rate on those funds would be if they had an appropriate market basket of corporate bonds on which they were basing their yield rates. Yes, they can hold this bill up. And, yes, I guess they intend to hold this bill up. What is the effect of that? It is going to cost Americans jobs. It is going to mean jobs will not be created. It is going to mean investment will not be made. It will mean dollars will be arbitrarily allocated rather than flowing where they can most effectively be used through investment in new plant and equipment and the resulting jobs that occur from that. So, once again, we see from the other side of the aisle an attitude that says: We are going to obstruct you; we are going to stop business in the Senate. We don't care that in the process of doing that we are going to create an atmosphere where jobs are lost, as in the case of the JOBS bill where the duties are increased against American manufacturers and maybe as a result jobs have to be outsourced. In any event, we will certainly have our products being less competitive, which means probably fewer jobs will be created in those businesses and maybe jobs will be lost in those businesses in the area of the pensions bill. They do not care. They are going to obstruct, and they are going to stop this bill because they are tweaked about the issue of how far it went and, as a result, what is going to be the impact. Jobs will be lost because the dollars for investing in plant and equipment will not be available. It is a rather cynical strategy from the other side of the aisle. First, they go out to the public in the Presidential campaign and say: Why don't we have more jobs? Then, on the floor of the Senate, they are aggressively pursuing strategies which stop us from creating more jobs. It is a lot like the kids who killed their parents and then go to the court and claim they should receive special treatment because they are orphans. These folks on the other side of the aisle are shooting the programs which would create jobs, and then they are going out in the Presidential politics arena and saying: Why aren't we creating more jobs? The cynicism of it is rather extreme. From my standpoint, I certainly hope they are not going to continue this practice because, in the end, it means people in America will not have jobs and will have fewer opportunities to work. For me, that is not right. I hope we can pass this pensions bill this week, and I hope we can pass this JOBS bill this week, but it certainly doesn't look like that is going to occur. I yield back the remainder of my time. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, later on, we are going to move to the medical malpractice bill, which is an important piece of legislation. It will allow women, especially, to have access to OB/GYN doctors, some of whom are giving up their practices of delivering babies because of the cost of medical liability insurance. It will also address the issue of doctors in emergency rooms and make sure those doctors are able to practice in emergency rooms so people, when they are seriously injured and they go to an emergency room, will have doctors. We will be on that bill at 11 o'clock.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am, of course, always impressed by the Senator from North Dakota, although there is a darkness to his presentation. There is a sense of doom he puts forward I am not necessarily a subscriber to. But he certainly is a person who has committed himself to understanding the numbers and trying to present them in a form that most adequately and appropriately reflects his view of where we are as a Nation fiscally. It is hard to guess, but I suspect it was in the range of 50 different charts. There were a lot of charts. Some of them were charts that were charts on top of charts which restated the chart that came before the chart, but they were good charts. They were excellent charts--very colorful and nicely presented. What we did not see was a chart that presented the Democratic budget. Where is it? Where is the budget from the other side of the aisle that addresses all these concerns which have been raised by the other side of the aisle about the Republican budget? It does not exist. No budget has been offered. No budget was offered in the committee, and no budget is going to be offered here in the Chamber. Why is that? Because if you look at the substance of what is being presented by the other side, they are basically saying, in order to address this problem, they are going to raise taxes. That is the only logical conclusion you can reach by looking at their position. What does a tax increase in the middle of a recovering economy do? It stifles it. It creates a compression of that economic recovery, causes it to retract itself, and it will cost jobs. The worst fiscal policy we could pursue would be to raise taxes. Maybe that isn't their proposal, but we don't have a proposal from them to reflect what it would be. No responsibility is put forward for actually answering the questions which have been raised, assuming they are even legitimate questions, from the other side of the aisle. So let's turn to the nominee of their party to see if that individual has maybe put forward his concepts on how we address the fiscal policies of the United States. Yes, he has. In his campaign through New Hampshire--where he spent a considerable amount of time, and we very much appreciated it because he spent a considerable amount of money--he presented programs which totaled $1.7 trillion of new spending over the next 10 years. That is a budget proposal--a budget buster, but a budget proposal. He offset that with tax increases of approximately $700 billion during that same time. So he is going to add to the deficit, which has been outlined by the Senator from North Dakota in very colorful terms, an additional trillion dollars over the next 10 years. I can understand why they don't want to bring their budget forward. If their nominee, who is a Member of this body, is proposing he is going to increase the deficit by a trillion dollars, by increasing spending by $1.7 trillion and taxes by $700 billion, such a budget could be appropriately called a tax-and-spend budget. Let's look at the substance of what the practical effect of the proposal would be that has been brought forward by the Senator from Massachusetts, his $700 billion tax increase, for example. What would that effect be? If you are going to look at the Senator's charts over the next 4 years, where he claims if we went on under current law, the deficit would go down by another $135 billion, which is essentially a tax increase, because what he is saying is under current law, taxes will go back up because taxes expire, what taxes are they talking about increasing on that side of the aisle under that theory? They are talking about repealing our expansion of the 10-percent bracket so the people in the low-income areas would have a 10-percent bracket. That would be repealed. They are talking about repealing our increase in the child tax credit, rolling it back from a $1,000 credit to a $700 credit. They are talking about repealing our efforts to reform the marriage tax penalty so when you get married, you don't get hit with an extra tax. All of those taxes would have to be repealed to meet the Senator's proposal relative to reducing the budget over the next few years by $135 billion, because those are the ones that expire. If you look at the proposals of the Senator from Massachusetts, the same effect would occur. His proposal for $700 billion of new taxes is a proposal to repeal, as a practical matter, the child tax credit, to restart the marriage penalty, and to make it difficult for people in low-income brackets, in the 10-percent area, to get a 10-percent tax burden versus kicking it back up to 15 percent. Now, all these initiatives, under the leadership of the Senator from Iowa, which are targeted to low-income Americans, were taken as an attempt to address those legitimate concerns about people who are in the middle- and low-income brackets and want to have a fair tax rate. We passed those laws, but they will expire. I guess it is clearly the position of the other side of the aisle that those expirations should be allowed to occur, and therefore the taxes should go back up. That appears to be the core of their budget. It is coupled, of course, with this spending initiative. We had debate on the budget on the floor of the Senate. During the budget debate, the other side of the aisle, which never brought forward a budget, proposed spending increases of $379 billion. They proposed tax increases of $276 billion. I believe those are the numbers, but they may not be exact. Those were the amendments brought forward from the other side of the aisle--massive tax increases, massive spending increases. They have now been confirmed by the policies of the nominee of their party--or the presumptive nominee--who has proposed $1.7 trillion of new spending, $700 billion of additional tax increases, for a $1 trillion add-on to our deficit. So I don't think, when the other side of the aisle comes forward and presents--very expansively and very well, obviously, because the Senator from North Dakota is a well-spoken individual who understands how to make a good presentation, and he always has--I don't think they can do that in good conscience if they don't also present their budget at the same time, their answers to this problem. If they are going to be fair about it, they have to bring forward the answers of their candidate for President, because they keep referring to our President, President Bush, who happens to be everybody's President right now and hopefully will be for the next 4 years. But they have to present it in juxtaposition to what their candidate for President is talking about. If he had a budget on the floor today, it would be a $1.7 trillion increase in spending, increase in taxes, adding $1 trillion to the debt, and a lot of people who don't deserve to have their tax increased--people in the 10-percent bracket, married people, people who have children going to college--would be stuck with a brandnew tax bill. That is a brief response. There is a much more extensive response, but my time is limited. The Senator from Iowa wishes to proceed. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to speak on the welfare reform bill. This has been an extraordinarily successful initiative which we began a few years ago. Its success is tied with the fact that States have been given a great deal more flexibility in the area of how they handle their welfare account. The fact is, we have set up as a purpose, as a government, that people who are on welfare will be given the opportunity, the skills, and the incentives to move off of welfare and move into a work environment, which is something that gives them personal credibility and personal self-respect, and at the same time assists us in reducing the public welfare rolls. It has been a huge and overwhelming success. One of the elements of moving off of welfare, of course, is the need of parents to have transitional support, especially single mothers as they go into the workforce while dealing with their children during the time they are working; in other words, some sort of childcare assistance. As part of this bill, we intend to offer an amendment for reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant Program, called the Caring for Children Act of 2003. This amendment came out of the committee which I chair, the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, unanimously. It came out with bipartisan support, obviously. It is an attempt to update our childcare block grant initiative and make it more meaningful for the issues of today. It also gives the dollars it needs to be effective. The bill will not only stress increased spending, it has $1 billion of new funding from the discretionary accounts. Earlier today, there was a vote on an initiative to add $6 billion over 5 years to the childcare development grant. That money would be mandatory, and it was not paid for; it was outside the budget. There was a euphemistic attempt to pay for it--a superficial attempt-- actually, what amounted to the ultimate shell game attempt as an offset which was cited and which has been used on, I believe, 17 different occasions as a claimed offset in this body. The real effect of the bill was to go way outside the budget and add a huge new tranche of dollars beyond the budget which would be fine had it been realistically offset. But it wasn't. This bill has in it a true increase which is an appropriate increase of $1 billion over that period of the bill. That is a significant infusion of new funds. Plus it addresses some of the concerns of the program, one of the concerns being as children are getting childcare they should also be getting some sort of development in the capacity of learning. Obviously, these are very young children. But they should have a learning component in their childcare experience, something that will put them in a position where they will be able to be at a level where their peers are--other young children who are receiving childcare. It has language in it which encourages the States to include a voluntary guideline initiative in the area of prereading and language skills. The absolutely critical essence of learning is language skills and the ability to do phonics and identify letters and be able to get ready for reading. This bill has in it that language. It also has in it a commitment to low-income parents. At least 70 percent of these dollars has the flow-through stage, actually, to the parents--in many cases a single parent. So the parent is getting the benefits. And we aren't simply siphoning it off into the bureaucracy, which often happens, regrettably, through administrative overhead but, rather, directing this money to the hands of the parents, especially the low-income parent so the parent can use this to assist them in transitioning off the welfare rolls by taking care of their children during the workday. It gives parents a significant amount of choice. They can use different daycare types of facilities. Some which are faith-based are allowed to be used, or they can use it even if it is being provided by relatives and neighbors. That is important. Further, the bill addresses a need to make sure that States focus on improving the quality of childcare. This is a very significant concern that many of us have, which is that a lot of the childcare today is, unfortunately, not of a quality that gives the child the support services they need or the academic assistance they might need in order to be brought up to speed with peers who are in different childcare delivery systems. It allows States to set aside a certain percentage of the money in order to assess quality and try to improve quality. This gives the States more flexibility in this area, but it also gives them an impetus to go in the right direction. It is, therefore, a bill which does a lot of good. As I mentioned, it was reported out of our committee unanimously. It will be, hopefully, added to the base bill either by a formal vote or as part of the managers' amendment. But we have to get back to the fundamental quandary which confronts us today, which is that the base welfare reform bill that is pending before the Congress is being held up by the other side of the aisle. This is becoming a pattern of obstruction which we have seen throughout this session of the Congress, and it appears its intensity is actually increasing. Bills are coming to the floor now which are important pieces of legislation on which there is a general consensus. As I mentioned, this language reported out of our committee to strengthen the block grants for childcare was reported unanimously. Yet these bills are being stopped dead in their tracks by the insistence of the other side of the aisle to put on these bills extraneous issues which are of a politically charged nature, the purpose of which is not to pass them but simply to generate a political vote which can be used in the coming election. We all do that. We all set up the political votes. But they should not be used as aggressively as they are today by the Democratic Party as a means of stopping legitimate legislation. The obstruction coming from the other side of the aisle is unconscionable. Last week, for example, a bill which would have corrected the problems which many of our manufacturers in this country are going to confront, specifically a duty that is going to be assessed on their goods sold overseas, a duty which could go up as high as 18 percent-- and that duty was a function of the fact we lost a World Trade court decision which allows this duty to go forward--that bill which would have corrected that, put an end to the duty and thus allow manufacturing jobs and service-oriented jobs in the United States to continue to expand and flourish, that bill was killed in this Senate because of extraneous issues which the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Party, decided they wanted to bring forward. They would not allow the bill to go forward without those extraneous issues being voted on. The bill had absolute consensus. There was a belief, there is a belief, there should be a belief, that American jobs should not be lost as a result of our tax laws being found illegal by a body which we subscribe to, the World Trade Organization, and that we should correct that problem, and we can correct it rather effectively, and that correction will save jobs in the United States. That will not happen now because of the obstruction coming from the other side of the aisle. It is one in a series of obstructions. Now we see the exact same thing happen in the area of welfare reform. Literally, in the last 5 years, there have been very few laws as successful that this Congress has passed as welfare reform. It was so successful--it was an idea put forward on this side of the aisle--once it passed and started to work, it was immediately adopted by the other side of the aisle as theirs. President Clinton had the right to take credit; he was President when the bill was passed. He was President and takes credit as one of the strong elements of service of his Presidency. And I am glad he takes credit. Now when we try to reauthorize and improve it significantly through the block grant proposal which we brought out of our bipartisan committee, now when we try to move the bill forward so we can continue with the welfare reform experience of the last few years and make sure that experience continues to allow people to move from public assistance to work and give people self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem as a result of attaining work, that bill has been stopped once again by the Democratic membership of this body coming forward and saying they want to cast a political vote on an unrelated issue. It is these actions that one has to question the purpose. Why, when bills have been agreed to which will significantly improve the lifestyle of Americans, the number of jobs Americans have in the case of the tax bill which was just stopped last week, or the number of people moving from welfare to work, which is getting good jobs and moving out of a public assistance situation and getting self-respect, why are these bills being stopped for purely political purposes by the other side of the aisle bringing forward extraneous amendments. It is an unconscionable action, in my opinion. It is regrettable that the childcare block grant proposal, the reauthorization of which came out of our committee unanimously and which represents a significant improvement, especially in this area of trying to get learning into the childcare experience, trying to get quality in the childcare experience, giving States more flexibility and putting more money into the program in the context of a responsible budget bill, why that would be stopped also is beyond me. It is not beyond me; it is fairly obvious. The purpose here is to make a political statement. It is a political statement, come heck or high water. It does not matter that the making of the political statement will cost people jobs and make it harder to move from welfare to work, creating a poorer and a less well- financed childcare block grant program. It is unfortunate. It is the politics of the day. I know the American people do not focus too much on what we do in the Senate in the day-to- day regime. I hope the American people take the time to learn what has transpired in this body in the last 6 to 8 months. The obstructionism on the other side of the aisle has become the cause of the day, the purpose of every event. This obstructionism continues and grows as we move closer to the election. The practical effect of this obstructionism coming from the other side of the aisle is that good things which help working Americans keep jobs, move from welfare to work, ensuring their kids have quality daycare, good things like that are being stopped as a result of this unrequited obstructionism coming from the other side of the aisle. I yield the floor.