Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, that is just enough time for me to once again thank the people who have brought this bill to fruition, especially Senator Schumer, Senator McCain, and Senator Kennedy. It is very strong legislation which is going to do a lot to make drugs more affordable for all American citizens, and innovation for new drugs to care for the people in America. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, how much time remains?

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from New York for their kind words. Obviously their efforts have already been highlighted and have been the key to this successful undertaking. The doggedness of Senator Schumer on this issue has managed to bring this to fruition. It is an important piece of legislation as has been outlined relative to the differential in cost. It will save people significant amounts of dollars on their pharmaceuticals, obviously, as they come off patent. It is important not to underestimate the innovation side. We didn't want to do something that basically undermines or chills innovation, because the ability of our health care system to function well today requires a pretty strong pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceuticals are really the process by which we are going to be caring for people as we go into the future. That is where the true discoveries are occurring, especially in the biologics area. We want to make sure we have an extraordinarily vibrant and strong research component, not only in the public sector through NIH, where we have doubled that budget, but in the private sector where people will invest in research, if they see a reasonable return. Some folks forget when they go to Canada to buy these drugs at a discounted price, they don't realize the cost of bringing a drug to the market is extraordinary. It takes about somewhere between 10 and 12, 15 years to bring a new drug to the market. It costs somewhere in the vicinity of three quarters of a billion dollars, $750 million to $1 billion, to bring it to the market. You can't do that unless you have dollars to support the investment and that length of time it takes to develop the drug. In a free market society, dollars flow where there will be a return. If somebody is going to find that they invest in a drug and that drug research comes to fruition and they produce a drug and immediately the drug is taken over or in too short of a time the drug's patent rights are taken over so there cannot be an adequate return on investment, people will not make the investment in trying to find a new drug. As a result, everyone will suffer. There will be fewer new and exciting drugs on the market that help people with health issues. So we have to have a strong and vibrant industry doing the research. That is why I have always been an aggressive advocate of a strong pharmaceutical industry. It is key to maintaining a health care system in this country which is going to be vibrant and effective for people. That being said, there is a time at which drugs need to come off patent. They have to be available at a lower price. They have to be available at a more reasonable price, the return having occurred on the original investment. What we saw, regrettably, under Hatch-Waxman, was there were games being played. There were games being played on both sides of the aisle, in fact. There were games being played on the brand-name side which would use the 30-month stay as a weapon, basically interminable stays. And there were games on the generic side where they might team up with a brand name and take advantage of the 180-day exclusivity clause and never bring the drug to market even though they had filed. This bill is an attempt to address those issues. It addresses them very conscientiously and in a positive way. It does it in a way that will not open up a whole new arena of litigation. It is going to do it in the context of the already existing causes of action which is the way it should be done, and it goes a little bit further than what the administration could do in their FDA rule, quite a bit further in some areas, certainly the 180-day issue. In addition, it has statutory support versus regulatory action which means it probably has more opportunity to survive a court challenge. We think this is an excellent bill. It is a bipartisan bill. I thank the original sponsors, Senators Schumer and McCain. I especially thank Senator Kennedy for his willingness to work across the aisleway to make sure we move it through committee in a prompt way and have it be done in a constructive manner. I notice the Senator from Maine is here. I suspect she wishes to speak on this as she has been an aggressive advocate for this type of approach, one of the leaders on this issue in the Senate. We regret she is no longer on the HELP Committee because she was a positive force on lots of issues but especially this one specifically. Now that she is chairperson of the Investigation and Oversight Committee, she has her plate full of her own accord. I yield to the Senator from Maine such time as she may consume.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for laying the foundation without which this piece of legislation could not have come forward. I thank him, and, of course, Senator Schumer--two key Members in getting this initiative going. I congratulate them for making this product a much better product this year. Also, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I yield the Senator from Arizona such time as he may need.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona, who is one of the original creators of this legislation and has done such extraordinary work in this area.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I will simply say I am always courteous to appropriators.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as the Senator knows, by holding the bill at the desk, it will not be referred to the committee of jurisdiction which I happen to chair, and which the Senator from Missouri is a member, as is the Senator from Maryland, and whose abilities I greatly respect. Obviously, I always have reservations about not having a bill referred to the proper committee of jurisdiction and have it step outside the proper process in the Senate, which is the bill should go to the committee of jurisdiction. But I believe the Senators from Missouri and Maryland are addressing a critical problem, and one for which, as appropriators, they have a unique responsibility. This issue has to be resolved. I hope in resolving it we can also address issues such as the Corporation of National Service, which is a very strong organization, and which because of the mismanagement of these funds may be cut out of the funding process. But I am not going to make the objection which logically a chairman should make to this type of request of holding it at the desk because I do think the Senators from Maryland and Missouri are doing very excellent work here, and it needs to be passed quickly. Therefore, I am willing to forego the committee of jurisdiction to get this bill through. I congratulate Senators for bringing the matter to the attention of the Senate.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, how much time does the Senator need? I would be happy to yield on my time.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue which we, as the Senate, are going to address for the next 2 weeks, which is the question of how to put in place a drug benefit and to reform the Medicare system so that it is more viable. This is, obviously, the most significant piece of legislation in the area of spending on which any of us in this Congress will vote. In fact, in my years in Congress, this is the most significant piece of spending legislation I have ever seen because it represents the most dramatic expansion, the greatest expansion of an entitlement in our history; therefore, it needs to be done right. In my opinion, there are issues which need to be addressed and which we need to discuss in order to accomplish that. To understand the issue and to put it in context, you have to go back to the beginning of the problem. And the beginning of the problem, I hate to say it, was when I was born--1946, 1947 through 1955. It was that postwar period, where America was full of itself, and our people were returning from the war, and we repopulated our country with the largest baby boom in the history of our country. That baby boom meant an explosion of people in our country, people who have contributed, I hope--people think immensely--over those years and decades since that time. But in each decade, the postwar baby boom generation has moved forward, it has changed fundamentally, not only the demographics of the country but also the reaction of the country to various issues. For example, in the 1950s, we had to build literally hundreds of elementary schools in order to accommodate this generation. In the 1960s, there was, of course, the great upheaval of social consciousness, which was driven primarily by the coming of age of the baby boom generation and their concerns about civil rights, about the war in Vietnam, about the rights of women. So as this generation has moved through the tube of its time, there has been a bubble which has significantly changed all around them. Now that generation is headed for retirement and, as a result, our retirement systems which were put in place with a very appropriate social purpose of making sure that senior citizens were properly cared for, which arose out of the period of the Depression in the 1930s, where so many people suffered--I was not alive then, but history tells us and the people who experienced it tell us that this was a period of immense trauma--we as a culture decided we were wealthy enough and strong enough to make sure that never happened again to our seniors. So we put in place the Social Security system and the Medicare system as an effort to try to make sure seniors could live their final days of their retirement in dignity, financially and in health care. These systems have been extraordinarily good systems for our Nation. But now as this generation heads into retirement, these systems are going to come under immense pressure. The whole concept of both of these systems was that there would be a pyramid where you would have a large number of people working and a smaller number of people retired, like a pyramid. So that the large number of people working could be paying into the retirement system and benefiting those people in retirement. So the pyramid would work as long as there was a larger working population than retired population. The practical effect of the baby boom generation, the demographic effect, is that when we hit the retirement system, we go from a pyramid to basically a rectangle where essentially you will have about as many people working as retired. For example, in 1950 there were 12.5 people working for every 1 person retired. This year, there is something like 3.3, 3.5 people working for every 1 person retired. By the time we hit 2030, there are going to be 2 people working for every 1 person retired. The number of people retired today is 40 million. The number of people who will be retired in the year 2030 will be 70 million, a 75 percent increase. So the system, which was structured to be a pyramid and has worked very well as a pyramid, simply won't work effectively as a rectangle. You can't have about as many people working, paying retirement benefits, as you have people taking those benefits because the practical effect of that is you would have to dramatically increase the taxes on working Americans in order to support nonworking retired Americans to a point where working Americans' lifestyles would be significantly reduced. The debate today has to be put in the context of two fundamental issues: One, how do we benefit senior citizens with a reasonable drug program that is going to give them adequate drug care, adequate prescription drug opportunities; but, two--and we can't forget this issue in addressing the question--how do we make sure that in doing that, we don't set up a situation where the next generation of young people--these folks who are working as our pages, people who are in high school today, people who are in college today, people in their twenties today--don't end up with a tax burden that is so large that we significantly reduce the quality of their life because we have decided this year to give seniors a benefit which we cannot afford 5 or 10 years from now because there will be so many seniors who are retiring. We have to keep in mind, as we go through this reform effort and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, those two groups-- seniors and young people who will have to pay the taxes, our children and grandchildren, in order to support that program. This brings us to the question of what type of program should we have which can accomplish that. To begin with, we have to put in place a Medicare Program which is cost sensitive, which has in place marketplace forces which allow us to maintain a reasonable cost so that we don't have a growth rate in Medicare that is so great that it simply overwhelms the ability of working Americans to pay the taxes to support it. We know, for example, we already have a $13.3 trillion unfunded liability in Medicare. We know, for example, that under the present Medicare system, the costs of Medicare are exceeding the income of Medicare by about 71 percent and that by 2026 the Medicare system will be insolvent under the present structure, insolvent because it has this huge unfunded liability as a result of the huge demographic group, the postwar baby boom generation, entering the system. These are facts that cannot be changed. The people are alive, the baby boom generation exists, and we will retire. We will, therefore, be on the Medicare system and on the Social Security system. We have to find some way to address the Medicare system in a manner which will allow us to make it affordable as we move into the outyears. This means putting some cost sensitivity into its structure. If we are going to add a new benefit to Medicare, we have to be sensitive that it does not at the same time create a massive new unfunded liability. If, for example, we simply put on to the Medicare system a $330 billion new drug benefit, which was the proposal last year from someone--that was the number; today it is $400 billion--that $330 billion drug benefit over 10 years translates into a $4.6 trillion add- on in unfunded liability in the system, which just means you have to raise taxes by that much on working Americans, on our children and their children, in order to pay for it. So we have to be thoughtful about how we do this. As a parent and hopefully a future grandparent, I don't want to reduce the lifestyle of my children and their children and their ability to participate in the American dream simply to support me when I am retired. What does this bill do? This bill has two fundamental problems, both of which go to the issue. First, it adds a $400 billion drug benefit, but it does it in a way that essentially says: We are going to take a lot of people who are already paying for their benefit, middle-income Americans, Americans who have worked and have obtained a retirement benefit, which includes a drug benefit, and we are going to move them from the private sector on to the public sector. We are essentially going to nationalize the drug delivery system for everybody who is over 65, whether they want it or not. That policy has some fundamental flaws. What do we need as a drug benefit? What we need is to make sure that people who cannot afford to buy drugs today, people who are making the difficult decision between purchasing a meal or maintaining their residence and buying the drugs they need to be healthy, those folks who have to make that type of choice, that they have support, that they have a drug assistance program that helps them buy pharmaceuticals and assists them in a way that allows them to live a decent lifestyle without having to make terrible choices between the basics of life, such as food and housing versus their medical care. We do need a drug benefit that does that, that takes care of the low- income individual who is not covered today by a drug benefit. And we need a drug benefit that says you don't have to spend your life savings in order to pay for your drugs. You don't have to wipe yourself out financially in order to be able to care for yourself physically as a result of your needs to purchase pharmaceuticals. So we need catastrophic coverage, where over a certain level you basically have an insurance program that comes in and pays your costs. But this bill doesn't do that. What this bill does, as I mentioned, is it says to everyone that you shall have drug coverage, and it takes literally 40 percent of the seniors, as a conservative estimate, who presently have some sort of private coverage program and moves them onto the public coverage system. As a practical matter, in doing that, it spends a lot of money but, more importantly, it creates a lot of outyear liability because it essentially says the Federal Government shall have a nationalized drug system for everybody over 65 which will be paid for by earning Americans who are in their twenties and thirties and trying to raise families. Whether or not they are wealthy, they are going to have this sort of drug benefit. That really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, in my opinion. It would make much more sense if the drug benefit in the bill said something to the effect of, if you are a low-income individual and you don't qualify for a State program, which already gives you a drug benefit--which is Medicaid, basically--and your income is, say, under 200 percent of poverty--I'll just pick that as a number because I think that is a reasonable number--then you shall receive assistance in purchasing your prescription drugs. There are about 4 million to 5 million people in that category. There are 40 million seniors. In the category between those covered by Medicaid and those at 200 percent of poverty, there are approximately 4 million to 5 million people. The cost of doing that part of the drug benefit to make sure you had a reasonable drug benefit--and essentially those low-income seniors have the support they need to pay for their drugs--can be $135 billion to $185 billion, depending how you score it. But it would not be $400 billion. So you could set up a reasonable program targeted at low-income seniors to make sure they had fair and reasonable coverage, with the support of the Government. Other seniors who are over that income level should have the protection of a catastrophic program. But they should not have the protection of a public program because they already have it. It has been estimated that 75 percent of the seniors in the country today already have some form of drug coverage. Why should the Federal Government come in and replace that? Why should the Federal Government come in and say to General Motors, which negotiated a contract with its employees that when they retire they would get a health care package that gave them drug coverage--why should you, a person working at a restaurant in Claremont, NH, in your twenties, trying to raise two kids and send them to school--why should your Medicare and health insurance tax be taken to pay for a drug benefit for somebody who retired from General Motors, who already has a benefit under the terms of the agreement they negotiated with General Motors? All you are essentially doing is saying, if you do that, that some poor guy or woman who is working hard to make ends meet in Claremont, NH, in a restaurant is going to bear the burden of what General Motors should be bearing for its retirees. You are replacing the obligation of General Motors with the obligation of some poor guy or woman in their twenties or thirties who is trying to raise a family and is working in a restaurant, and they have two kids going to school. They have to buy a Chevrolet, which is a pretty expensive experience. They should not have to pay for the health care of the person who made that Chevrolet. But that is what this bill essentially does. The bill basically frees up, within 5 years--not immediately because there are contracts in place--certainly by the time the baby boom generation retires, which is 2008, it basically frees up corporate America from any obligation to bear any cost relative to retirement in the area of drugs. Now, there may be some unions that will negotiate a strong contract with their corporations and they will force them to come and do some sort of wraparound. But the core of the drug benefit will always be from here on out, once this bill is passed, that the public sector will bear the burden of all the costs for drugs for all Americans, no matter how wealthy they are, no matter what their income is, whether they had a union contract, agreement, or a Medigap policy that covers the drug costs. The practical effect of that is going to be that when the baby boom generation--my generation--hits retirement beginning in 2008, we are going to escalate the cost of this benefit radically--radically. So $400 billion is a conservative number for 10 years and, over the life of this program, $4.6 trillion is an incredibly conservative number. This benefit, which is a very legitimate benefit and a very appropriate benefit, should be targeted at people who need it, people who cannot afford it, people who are having to make the tough choices in their life between the food they eat, the housing they have, and the drugs they pay for. Those folks deserve Government support. But Bill Gates, when he retires, does not deserve Government support in the area of purchasing his drugs. Under this bill, he would get it. So that is the first and most fundamental flaw in this bill. It essentially nationalizes and moves from the private sector literally millions of people who are presently capable of having, and who are in, programs that take care of their drug benefit. It does an aggressive job, I admit, on the low-income person and that should be kept in place. There are a variety of ways to do that. But we should not nationalize the system for everyone. The second flaw in this bill, the most fundamental flaw, is the issue of how you control the overall cost of Medicare. This is at the essence of the future financial soundness of this country. Today, Medicare consumes about 14 percent of the GDP, if you include retirement benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you applied the projections to the Medicare, which are in place, the fact that we have a $13 trillion unfunded liability, and if you apply the unfunded liability projections to Social Security and Medicaid, then you will end up by 2030 having those three--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--absorbing 14 percent of the GDP. They do not do that today, obviously. Today, the Federal Government absorbs about 19 percent of the gross domestic product. So you could see that if you project the cost of Medicare and Social Security out to 2030 and you have it using up 14 percent of the gross national product, and today we do all Government spending, all the Government responsibilities, including education, national defense, and all the different issues of core Government needs we manage with 19 percent of the gross national product, we can see that by the time we get to the year 2030, there is not going to be anything left that the Federal Government is going to be able to do other than take care of the retirement accounts. We are not going to be able to do national defense, education, roads, parks-- all the important functions to have a strong Government and a good society. They are not going to be affordable unless we are willing to radically increase the taxes on the working Americans of this country who will be our children and our grandchildren. That is why I say reforming Medicare--and Social Security, for that matter, which I have already worked on extensively--is one of the most fundamental issues we face as a country, getting those costs under control in the outyears. Does this bill do that? This bill attempts to create a market force in the area of Medicare by setting up something called PPOs, preferred provider groups. The practical effect, though, is there are very few likely scenarios under which the PPOs will be viable, under which private market forces will come into play. We will still have, basically, a price-controlled situation, a single-payer situation. We cannot reform Medicare unless we bring into Medicare market forces. We cannot control the price and delivery of health care unless we start to put in place some sensitivity to the quality of care that is being delivered in the context of how it is being delivered, when it should be delivered, and the amount that should be delivered. We cannot do that in a single-payer system. We cannot do that in a price- controlled system. We can only do that if we have market forces that are competing and, thus, bringing to the table the essence of competition, which is competing on the basis of price and quality. This bill in name attempts to do that through the PPO process. It is projected, however, by CBO, the Congressional Budget Office--there are so many initials thrown around; we confuse people--that only 2 percent of the Medicare recipients will take advantage of this market-oriented approach. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget projects it at a much higher level. They say 45 percent will take advantage of this program, and that is because they are optimistic, and it is because it is their plan. I think the Congressional Budget Office has taken a much fairer and objective look at this. They have said: What in this plan creates an atmosphere which would cause somebody to leave Medicare and move over to a private provider? There is virtually nothing in this plan that would cause somebody to do that. There is no market force which is allowed to be brought into play to accomplish that because of the way the pricing mechanism is set up under this bill. The practical effect is that the market has been taken out of--at least in a real sense, not in an illusory sense; it is there as a stated purpose--but as a practical likely effect, it has been taken out of the game. So we are going to move forward into the next generation with the same program that we presently have with a drug benefit on top of it, which drug benefit essentially will cover everyone, no matter what their income levels are, no matter what their benefit structures are. They already exist. Instead of improving the system, what we are going to end up with is the same old Medicare system, a 1950s car with a brand new paint job on it in the form of the drug benefit but without anything in it that is going to fundamentally improve it as it moves into the next generation and the need to control costs in the next generation. The practical effect of it will be that the $13.3 trillion unfunded liability that already exists in Medicare will have $4.6 trillion of new unfunded liability put on top of that for the purpose of the drug benefit, which are all massive numbers, but they come down to this: For a child born today--John Jones or Mary Smith--when that child takes his or her first breath, that child gets with that breath a debt of $44,000 to pay for Medicare. That debt is going to have added to it $15,000 after this bill passes to pay for the new Medicare benefit. Yes, this bill does take care of our seniors and our baby boom generation group who are becoming seniors in a very generous way. One- half of the equation is addressed--seniors. That is always politically very attractive. It polls very well. It gets you through the next election. It makes you a hero with groups of people who are concerned about seniors' rights. But the other half of the equation is our children and our children's children. It leaves them with an extraordinary bill and with no opportunity to affect it. The great tragedy is this drug benefit gave us, the Congress and the executive branch, the first and best opportunity to substantively reform Medicare using the drug benefit basically as the carrot that brings along the reforms. We could have used this benefit in an extraordinarily constructive way to assure that my generation, the baby boom generation, is not an undue burden on our children and our grandchildren or on that fellow or woman working in a restaurant in Claremont. Instead, what we have done with this bill is added a drug benefit which will make my generation very happy and seniors who are receiving it today very happy, which will leave in place a Medicare system that has a $13 trillion projected unfunded liability and which will leave with our kids a debt which is both unfair, inappropriate, and, ironically, unnecessary were we approaching this with better policy. I suppose, in understated terms, I have reservations about this bill. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. That was not a part of the request, but if the leader wishes, I will make that part of the request.

Mr. GREGG. How long does Senator Mikulski wish to speak?

Mr. GREGG. I am seeking the right of recognition at 10 to speak on the Medicare bill for half an hour.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that at 10, I be recognized to speak on the prescription drug/Medicare reform bill for up to half an hour.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I support the efforts of the Senator from Vermont and thank him for discussing this issue with me.

Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator share my view that the United States and other members of the international community should continue to strongly support the Special Court and vigorously pursue Mr. Taylor and other indicted war criminals?

Mr. GREGG. I agree with Mr. Crane's statement about the indictment of Charles Taylor. As much as anyone, I want to bring peace and prosperity to West Africa. But, Mr. Crane has a mandate to bring to justice those most responsible for the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, and the trail led to Charles Taylor. Not indicting Mr. Taylor would have been outrageous. Justice would not have been served. I also want to read from a Washington Post editorial, dated June 5, 2003, that summarizes the issue. It said, and I am quoting: After years of afflicting his own country with the worst kind of brutality and aiding and abetting a cruel civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, Mr. Taylor is now being pressed on his own soil by rebel movements bent on driving him from power. That he was out of the country this week was no accident. The purpose of his trip to Ghana, organized by the Economic Community of West Africa and a United Nations contact group that includes the United States, was to join peace talks with Liberian opposition groups. Military and political weaknesses, not strength, drove him from his haven in Liberia to the Ghana peace parley. Fear of international justice is what has sent him scurrying back home. . . ..The idea of Mr. Taylor working out an eleventh-hour agreement that restores peace and stability to Liberia strikes many human rights observers as ludicrous given both his record of broken pledges and his overwhelming contribution to that country's misery. Faced with tightening international opposition, he now says he will consider stepping aside if that will bring peace. He's now even making noises about supporting a transitional government of national unity while remaining on the sidelines. Mr. Taylor, as usual, has it all wrong. He is in no position to guarantee any deal, let alone a peace agreement, as Mr. Crane said yesterday. Indicted as a war criminal, Charles Taylor today is nothing more than a wanted man. In short, I agree with the Post's editorial and commend Mr. Crane for taking decisive action to indict Charles Taylor.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Vermont. He is correct about my longstanding interest in Sierra Leone. With respect to the Special Court, I am well aware of the events of the past week, where the Prosecutor of the Court, David Crane, unsealed an indictment for Charles Taylor, while Mr. Taylor was in Ghana. Unfortunately, the international community did not act in time and Mr. Taylor was able to escape to Liberia. In doing so, the world missed a great opportunity to bring to justice one of the world's most notorious war criminals and advance the cause of international justice.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, today, I join my esteemed colleague, the Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, in introducing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2003. In the past, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, bills received bipartisan votes at the end of a long, divisive and arduous process. What makes today's introduction of a bipartisan IDEA bill so unique is that it is bipartisan in its inception. The reason this is a bipartisan bill is because it strikes the appropriate balance between protecting the educational rights of children with disabilities while simultaneously making IDEA less litigious and compliance based. Above all, the bill is designed to ensure that IDEA resources are directed to help children with disabilities obtain the same opportunity to succeed as all other students. The bill streamlines State and local requirements to ensure that paperwork focuses on improved results for children with disabilities. By eliminating the need for an 800+ procedural checklist, these amendments favor the improvement of educational and functional results for children with disabilities over burdensome bureaucratic rules. The bill responds to concerns that we've heard from both parents and school administrators alike on how the law has evolved into a full employment government program for lawyers. Over and over again, we hear of fights about past procedural issues and technical errors instead of making sure that the children are being well served in the here and now. The bill includes many common sense provisions to alleviate the stress in disagreements between schools and parents and encourages them to seek out mediation to address their concerns before they move to formal hearings. The bill restores trust by; providing parents with better access to information and resources to understand their rights and work through conflicts; making clear that parents can request an initial evaluation of a child for IDEA services and making it easier for parents to make changes to their child's individual education plan; requiring complaints of either the school or parents to be clear and specific before going to due process; and requiring hearing officers to make decisions based upon substantive grounds not technical issues that have no bearing on a child's education. This bill currently does not specifically address the issue of full funding, because Senator Kennedy and I decided at the very outset to postpone that issue to the floor, since that is an issue that merits the attention and active participation of the entire Senate. However, in addition to simplifying funding formulas so that both States and local school districts have a better indication of the funding available, the bill includes 2 key provisions that will provide additional fiscal relief for school districts than what is provided to them under current law. First, we allow school districts to treat 8 percent of their IDEA funds as local funds. This will allow school districts to better align funding among programs based on local priorities. Second, we require States to reserve 2 percent of their overall IDEA Part B grant to establish risk pool accounts to provide new resources to assist local school districts and charter schools in addressing the costs of providing services to high-need children and unanticipated enrollment of students with disabilities. Finally, the bill addresses the discipline provisions in current law that schools and parents have found to be confusing, hard to administer, and have resulted in outcomes that were not always fair to every child. The bill simplifies the framework for schools to administer the law, while ensuring the rights and the safety of all children. Importantly, the bill will require schools to consider whether a child's behavior was the result of their disability when considering disciplinary action, and ensure that individualized education plans contain positive behavioral interventions and supports when a child's behavior impedes his or her own learning, or that of others. Senator Kennedy and I were determined to make this a bipartisan process from the beginning. We have crafted a bill that we're confident will be overwhelmingly supported by both Republicans and Democrats--and most importantly by parents, the disabled community and the school community.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following resolution from the HELP Committee be printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to a proud New Hampshire institution celebrating an important milestone this year. For 130 years, Fosters Daily Democrat, a now daily newspaper serving the people of the city of Dover and New Hampshire's seacoast region, has provided exceptional coverage of local and State news. Since its founding by Joshua L. Foster, the paper has remained under the ownership and direction of the Foster family and is the only daily newspaper in our Nation displaying a family name in its banner. In order to understand the significance of the milestone Fosters is celebrating this month, it is important to recognize just how much news the publishers, editors and reporters have witnessed and brought to the Dover area since June of 1863. The 1860 census lists a little over 8,500 Dover residents. Today the city is proud to have nearly 27,000 residents. During its first decade, Fosters witnessed a time of tremendous production and growth in the Cocheco Print Works and Pacific Mills, two the most important employers in town. The Mills, which harnessed the power of the Cocheco River, produced some of the finest cotton products in the nation and employed 1,200 workers. The Print Works was churning out in excess of 65 million yards of printed cottons a year to an increasingly global market. In addition to reporting on the area's growth and prosperity, Fosters also brought one of the worst disasters in the history of the city to its readers--the great flood of March 1896. As any New Hampshire resident knows, tremendous amounts of rain in the early spring aided by melting snow from the previous winter, causes flooding. This was certainly true on March 1 and 2 that year when the city lost three bridges, numerous businesses, and incurred tens of thousands of dollars in economic hardship to a deluge that caused raging currents and swept large chunks of ice into the middle of town. Fosters was on hand to cover it all. When President Theodore Roosevelt visited Dover in 1902, Fosters was there. When 545 residents of Dover served in World War I, Fosters brought their stories to New Hampshire, and again in World War II when 2230 Dover residents fought to defend our Nation. And in 1973, when Dover, the oldest continuous settlement in New Hampshire, and seventh oldest city in the United States, marked its 350th birthday, Fosters Daily Democrat marked 100 years of publishing. Since the middle of the 20th century it has followed countless Presidential candidates trudging through our State in the cold and snow. Fosters Daily Democrat has been there every step of the way to make sure its readers stay informed and in touch with issues that concern them. In addition to its coverage of events in and around the Dover area, the paper also brings its readers coverage of national and world events, including the war on terror. In a recent editorial, March 29, Fosters cautioned its readers to be wary of folks ``who seek mightily to undermine the American way of life and their intent to perpetrate atrocities against innocent people either directly or by aiding and abetting those who would carry out such deeds.'' Today, the paper holds true to the words of its original editor, Joshua Foster, who in the first editorial published in June 1873 pledged that, ``Whatever may tend to benefit this people and enhance their prosperity, will receive our warm and enthusiastic support.'' For 130 years, five generations of the Foster family, currently led by Bob and Terri Foster, have brought news from Dover City Hall, the New Hampshire Statehouse and locations around the globe to the front porches of New Hampshire's seacoast. On this special anniversary I sincerely congratulate them on the tremendous job they continue to do, thank them for the important public service they perform, and wish them the best of luck in the future.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Washington for her comments. I agree that the manner in which LIHEAP contingency funds are distributed should be examined. I would be happy to work with the Senator on this important matter as the H.E.L.P. Committee works towards reauthorization of this program in the coming months.