Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Will the Chair advise us as to the present status?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his exceptional leadership on this piece of legislation, along with the many members of the committee I have worked with and about whom I will talk later on as I discuss the implications of this piece of legislation. Also, I thank our House colleagues who produced an excellent bill on their own. As a result, we were able to merge the best of the two which, I believe, produce a superb package, although lacking in a couple of items, as alluded to by the chairman of the committee. It is basically an extremely positive package, and it puts us well down the road to addressing what is clearly one of the most threatening situations we have as a society, and that is the capacity of those who wish us ill--and, regrettably, there are a number of people and organizations in this world who wish us ill and would use weapons of mass destruction against us, which would include biological warfare. We saw, of course, the devastating impact of a biological event with the anthrax incident, and the President has been speaking about this as he has been moving through Europe on his trip, that some nations in this world are continuing to develop biological weapons and may be making those weapons available to terrorists. We as a nation, whether we like it or not, have to get ready to confront this threat. This bill will do a great deal to put us in a position to accomplish that. The bill is structured around a variety of points, and I will go into them in specific detail, but the concept of the bill is basically to significantly improve our Federal capability to deal with a biological event and prepare ourselves with adequate vaccines and adequate research in the area of developing vaccines to confront bioterrorism and, at the same time, look to the local communities and the States and significantly improve the public health capability of the States and the local communities so that they, as the first responders, will be able to manage an event should the worst occur, and we will be able to deal with it in an effective and prompt way. The bill makes a significant commitment of resources well beyond what we had anticipated making when we started down this road but which are necessary. In this war on terrorism, we cannot look at pricetags, we must look at results. It is going to cost a great deal to accomplish the results we need. This bill, although long-awaited, will definitely better prepare this Nation to respond to attacks which use biological, chemical, or other weapons of mass destruction. The bill provides grants to States and local public health agencies to assist in preparing for a biological terrorist attack. With these resources, unlike prior law, even small States such as New Hampshire are assured the ability to prepare and respond to a bioterrorist attack or other public health emergency. Because of the importance of State preparedness and the amount of resources that have been provided, I intend to play an active role in making sure these funds are not just received by hospitals and State and local governments but that they are well spent for the benefit of the American citizenry. An important part of this bill is ensuring that the funds are spent consistent with a State's bioterrorism plans. In addition, we have already begun oversight of the program and look forward to working with the administration and grant recipients as work under the grants begins in earnest. Further, under section 102, we will help ensure effective communication and cooperation among the State, local, and Federal agencies by creating a new Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at HHS. Also, the volunteer spirit has always been alive and well, especially in New Hampshire, and I am pleased this conference report includes several provisions which are designed to facilitate voluntarism in preparing for public health emergencies and especially bioterrorism emergencies. Title I also includes a number of provisions intended to further speed lifesaving products to citizens before we are faced with another serious threat of bioterrorism. Section 121 ensures that stockpiles of products are improved immediately so that there is an adequate supply to protect our citizens from bioterrorism and other threats. This year we provided the funding necessary to fulfill this commitment, and the Secretary is directed to improve not just the stockpile contents but the supply chain management of and local access to products. The bill improves the Secretary's authority to, one, prioritize and do research on new vaccines and therapies; two, rely on all available forms of proof of safety and effectiveness, including animal trials; and three, accelerate approval of these products. This is absolutely critical if we are to be prepared with adequate vaccines to make sure our citizenry is protected. Title II includes the expanded Gregg-Feinstein provisions initially passed by the Senate late last year as part of the appropriations legislation. As the recent anthrax attack has suggested, current authorities have been inadequate to ensure the Government can track the use of biological agents and toxins such as anthrax and botulinum toxins, West Nile virus, and the like, and to protect against their misuse. The bill makes critical improvements in the Secretary's ability to identify who is handling and doing research with these agents and toxins, to ensure they are qualified to handle these agents, and to ensure they are not restricted due to inappropriate background or current intent. The bill also ensures that universities, laboratories, and agencies working with these agents are registered, appropriately qualified, and have adequate security in place. Many of these agents are used in important research or for important therapeutic purposes in animals and humans. These uses must remain protected and promoted even as we protect the public from their misuse. The bill ensures important exemptions, for example, for FDA-approved products using or investigating these agents or toxins. Title III of the bill provides the FDA with additional inspection, recordkeeping, and detainment authority to ensure the safety of America's food and drug supply and increases the number of FDA food inspectors. Senator Kennedy spoke about this at some length. The bill also improves our capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to an attack on American farmers, livestock, and poultry producers, and certainly Senator Roberts deserves great credit for that. I know he is going to be speaking in a few minutes. Finally, it provides funds to community drinking water systems to allow them to assess any possible vulnerabilities and to institute measures to prevent tampering. Many have been concerned about having these vulnerability studies go to the EPA which does not have a solid track record of maintaining control over sensitive information. We must ensure that the EPA allocates resources and institutes procedures designed to prevent this information from falling into the wrong hands. It would do no good for us to develop these studies and then find that terrorists had been able to use these studies against us. Conferees also succeeded in reauthorizing PDUFA, which has already been mentioned by the chairman, which has so successfully ensured patients timely access to safe, effective, and lifesaving drugs. By collecting fees from pharmaceutical companies, FDA can hire additional reviewers and support staff and speed the drug review process without compromising safety or review quality. Under the agreement, the amount of funding FDA receives under the program will increase by over 28 percent, and in today's deficit environment this will be of significant assistance. Voluntary user fees are substantial and essential sources of revenue that the agency cannot afford to lose. I am concerned, however, that this bill does not include some of the following items that are particularly critical to the ability of this country to rapidly prepare for, detect, or respond to biological threats, including anthrax, smallpox, and botulism. In the antitrust area, the Senate bill included a bipartisan consensus provision supported by the Judiciary Committee that would extend protection to manufacturers of vaccines and their therapies for bioterrorism agents when the companies were engaged in discussions with the Secretary over how best to meet the unmet needs of the United States. It is critical these companies be able to discuss frankly with the Secretary their capacities and their strengths so that they can have rapid research and develop new vaccines and drugs that protect us against bioterrorism acts. This provision was, regrettably, dropped in conference over my strong objection. I will continue to press for it in other arenas. In many critical respects, this Nation remains unprepared for bioterrorism threats simply because the threat of unreasonable and abusive lawsuits has kept good ideas and good products from being available to our citizens. Examples include decontamination services and cleanup services for contaminated worksites, unavailable because of a threat a lawyer might sue the company. Lifesaving vaccines also remain undeveloped for these same reasons. Respirator manufacturers risk the threat of suit when volunteers misuse a mask in the midst of the chaos during a crisis. I intend to work for a solution this year with many of my colleagues who have expressed support for reasonable liability protections so we can bring on to the market the necessary devices and vaccines in order to address these needs and make sure our marketplace is able to respond effectively to the threat. Finally, I note my disappointment that the final package did not include critical new user fee programs for the FDA's device on animal drug centers and accompanying reforms that would dramatically improve regulation of those products. These programs and reforms are essential to ensuring that our Nation continues to be the leader in developing lifesaving therapies and technologies. However, I am heartened by the extraordinary bipartisan, bicameral support demonstrated for those provisions during the conference. I look forward to working with my colleagues, particularly Senator Dodd, Senator Hutchinson, and Senator Kennedy, in the development of a strong user fee and reform package. I understand the House intends to move this separately, and certainly I hope we will be able to do the same in the Senate. There are a lot of people who worked very hard on this bill to make it a success. Certainly Senator Kennedy was a leader, and he is to be congratulated for his foresight in this matter. Senator Frist, whose knowledge in this area is unique and brings so much to the table in the Senate, was a major player in designing much of this bill; Senator Enzi and Senator Tim Hutchinson for their critical role in ensuring the capacity of all States, but especially rural States, to have capacity to prepare for attacks. Senator Susan Collins played a critical role in developing the Senate food supply safety provisions, a role reflected in a long history working to pass such legislation. Senator Hutchinson also played the single most critical role in the provision protecting America's agricultural livestock and poultry provisions. His animal enterprise provision, which will protect our folks working on the next generation of lifesaving vaccines and medicines, is absolutely essential. I am also pleased with the inclusion in this bill of so much of Senator Hutchinson's legislation concerning improvement in the ability to bring antibioterrorism products to the American citizen; Senator Sessions for his tremendous effort with regard to the minor use, minor species provisions, which would have provided safe and effective drugs for minor animal species for which therapies are currently unavailable. Unfortunately, this provision was not included in the final bill, but it is sound policy and I will continue to support his efforts and to pass this legislation; Senator Roberts whose attention to the issue of farm policy and the effect of bioterrorism issues relative to our farm community was absolutely critical to the design of this bill. At a staff level, I have an exceptional staff. They have worked thousands of hours, days and nights, and I thank them very much. Vince Ventimiglia, Steve Irizarry, and Katy French did a superb job. I also thank the majority staff led by David Nixon, and the many people he has working with him. Also, I thank Dean Rosen on Senator Frist's staff. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Kansas, Mr. Roberts.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will speak briefly on the pending legislation, which is the trade promotion authority, the trade adjustment authority, the Andean trade agreement, the general agreement on tariffs language. There is that old adage: If there are two things you do not want to watch being made, one is sausage, the other is law. Regrettably, that applies to this undertaking. For reasons which still escape me but which appear to be necessary from the standpoint of the administration, there was a negotiation which occurred which involved how this bill would come to the floor. The majority leader decided to, out of the course which is typical, hook three major pieces of legislation together: Andean trade, trade adjustment, and trade promotion. Traditionally, trade promotion, which has historically been noted as fast track, has been taken up as a single issue. It was not linked to trade adjustment nor with another treaty, which in this case would be the Andean trade promotion agreement. But the majority leader decided to bring the three to the floor, and the administration, working through the leadership on the Republican side of the aisle, working with Senator Grassley, Senator Lott, and Senator Gramm, entered into extensive negotiations as to the makeup of the final package. The result of that was, as I mentioned, something you probably should not watch, whether it is the making of sausage or the making of this piece of legislation because within this bill there are major new initiatives which have very little to do with trade, but a great deal to do with bad public policy, as we try to address issues such as health care and people losing their jobs. There is no question but that the trade adjustment concept is a very important one. I have used it extensively in my role in public policy. There have been instances in New Hampshire where people have been put out of work because of what appeared to be unfair trade activity, and we have used trade adjustment to assist those individuals. It has been very successful. Its purpose--the original concept of trade adjustment--was to train people, to give them new talents, new abilities, new capabilities, so they could go back into the workforce after losing their job because the job which they lost no longer existed because trade, competition had basically left it behind. We helped those people get back into the workforce and actually have more talent, more ability, and thus be more productive and actually end up being citizens who have a better earning capacity. That is the goal of trade adjustment, a very laudable goal, appropriate goal, and something which actually has worked rather well, at least in my experience as it has been applied in New Hampshire. I used it aggressively both as Governor and since then, on occasion, I have had the chance to use it to help people in my role in the Senate. But this bill takes the trade adjustment concept and moves it into an entirely different exercise. It moves it into an exercise of what basically amounts to welfare, in many instances, and to social engineering, in other instances, and into an attempt to address a health care need which is significant but which, when addressed in the manner in which it is addressed in this bill, puts us on a path which could lead to a radical expansion in the cost of health care for the taxpayers of America who have to bear the burden of these types of initiatives. The bill has in it two major new entitlements, something called wage subsidy, which is a European model program that essentially says you are going to pay people to take less productive jobs. Somebody who is out there working hard, earning money, paying taxes, they are going to take their tax dollars and pay somebody who is out of work to take a job where that person will be less productive, encourage them to move into a less productive job--just the opposite of what the original purpose of trade adjustment was--a concept which is purely reflective of what is done in our European neighbors' economies, where they basically pay people to be nonproductive citizens. That is the first entitlement initiative called wage subsidy: A person gets $5,000 to make up the difference between what they were being paid in the job they lose and the job they take. There are no limitations on this. There is no requirement of necessity. There is no requirement that there be an arm's length agreement. There is no requirement, if there is a similar or substantially similar job out there that the person could have taken at an equal amount of pay or better, that the person take that job. There is no requirement the person stay in the community. There are none of the requirements that are the concepts built around trade adjustment, which are a person should basically be retrained, given new talents, new opportunities to find a new job within the marketplace where they lost their job. None of those protections are there. There are no protections against fraud and abuse, mismanagement of this brand new entitlement. And it opens the door to a massive expansion of this concept, which we see. It is not as if that is a concern that is not relevant. We see that course of action being followed in our sister states, sister economies around the globe, where you have this concept of: If you pay people to do less and be less productive, that is actually an appropriate government policy where you take taxpayer dollars out of one person's pocket and put them in another person's pocket and don't ask that person to be more productive. You actually ask them to be less productive. That attitude of governance, which is paternalistic and which is what dominates the continental European economies, has huge impacts on your productivity as a society and, therefore, on your creation of jobs and wealth and, as a result, on your creation, maintenance, and improvement of a standard of living. There is an interesting article by Paul Johnson, one of the great historians of the last 20 or 30 years, on this specific point which is contained in a book entitled ``Our Times.'' It is one of the reasons he views the European economy as having failed to maintain itself, because the European economy pursued this paternalistic approach toward economic activity on which we are embarking as a result of choosing this type of brandnew entitlement. The second major entitlement in this bill is the health care entitlement, much more complex and difficult. The wage subsidy is just a pure outrage. If you have any interest in marketplace economics, it is an affront. If you happen to believe in a paternalistic approach to governance, it is a great program. But if you believe in the marketplace, it is an affront. The health care entitlement in this bill, which has no place in trade promotion--it should be debated in the context of major health care reform--is much more complex but equally problematic because it creates a brandnew major entitlement. Basically what this says is, if you lose your job because of a trade-related activity, the Federal Government will come in and pay you 70 percent of the cost of buying health care under the terms with which you held health care prior to losing your job or under some sort of pooling agreement. It doesn't say you can go out and buy health care in the private marketplace or that you can join some other group such as an association and buy health care through that. It says you have to buy this new health care through your old health care provider or some new pooling agreement, a State-sponsored pooling agreement. This concept is a prefunded tax credit, essentially a welfare payment. That is a new title for it, such as when someone comes up with a term to try to avoid the real meaning of what is happening. In this instance, what we have is a welfare payment which is being made to an individual who loses their job. It is perfectly reasonable that we try to figure out some way to give reasonable health care coverage to people who lose their jobs. That is perfectly reasonable. But to do it in this narrow band of activity outside of a more substantive reform of the health care arena is to step us off on a path which is slick and which is clearly downhill and which will probably lead to incredible mismanagement of our health care initiatives and our attempts to correct the health care problems. Right on the face of it, this creates an unbelievably difficult situation for people who are working and don't have health care. If you are working and you don't have health care today, you are now going to be paying taxes, probably increased taxes, to pay for somebody who is going to get health care who is not working. How fair is that? You can't afford health care. You are paying taxes. Your taxes go up so that somebody who doesn't have a job but who has a variety of different support mechanisms, including an additional 2 years of unemployment, significant benefits in the area of retraining, significant other benefits which are tied to trade adjustment--that person will also now get a 70- percent payment from you, the working American who does not have health care, to that person, the nonworking person who does not have health care, which creates a perverse incentive in the marketplace for the person who doesn't have health care, who is out of a job, to stay out of a job or maybe the person who needs health care who has a job to give up their job in order to get health care coverage. It is very bad policy. It is unfair. It is extremely unfair to the person paying taxes who does not have health care coverage. The second problem with it is, by demanding that the person who is getting this new coverage, the 70 percent of tax dollars to pay for that health care insurance--how many people in America today have 70 percent of their health care paid for them by the Federal Government? I guess the Part B premium on Medicare is the only people who will be competitively in the same situation; about 75 percent of your Part B premium under Medicare is paid for by other taxpayers. But in this instance, that 70-percent subsidy which comes from other taxpayers will now have to be used to purchase the highest cost health insurance that is probably out there, which is the health insurance left over from the job you just lost. You can't buy anything other than a COBRA-based health policy or this new State pooling concept which does not exist. I am willing to almost guarantee it is not going to exist in most States because most States don't have enough people who are affected by trade adjustment to create a pooling agreement which would be viable through which to buy that health care insurance. They would have to set up an entirely different group of people to participate in the agreement. Maybe they will do that, but most States are not going to set one up just for trade adjustment. As a result, a person will have a 70-percent subsidy to buy the most expensive health care rather than allowing that person to go out in the marketplace and make an intelligent and thoughtful decision as to where they will buy their health care. You have immediately created an entitlement which is going to be driven perversely in the amount of cost it will incur and where the dollars are going to flow in order to purchase health care, instead of creating an atmosphere where the person without health insurance, who is out of a job, becomes an intelligent consumer of health care where they go out in the marketplace and say: What do I really need? What can I really afford here? And what do I really need in health care insurance? They look around and figure out what their best options are. You are instead saying to that person: You must go out and buy the highest end insurance out there. You may not need it, but you have to buy it. Of course, 70 percent of it will be paid for by the poor person working down the street who has a job and doesn't have health care at all. It makes no sense. If you wanted to throw a door open and look out over an abyss of massive complication, this is it. To step into the uninsured health care issue in this manner is to do exactly that. It is a massive new entitlement in its own right but a colossal mistake from the standpoint of health care policy and a major entitlement initiative as it expands from here. This is going to basically become a roadmap for the future. It will be a rut that is going to be very hard to get out of intelligently as we move down the road of health care reform, especially for uninsured Americans. This is a big issue, something that has to be handled with a little more thought and foresight. These are the two huge entitlements from a public policy standpoint. Financially, they are not scored that aggressively in this bill. But from a public policy standpoint, these are the two massive new entitlements in this bill. They represent an explosion of new entitlement activity that is incurring in this Congress and under this administration. The farm bill, scored at $80 billion when it first came through here over budget, is now somewhere over $100 billion, probably more than that, and most of it is in a new entitlement program. There are a variety of other ones in the wings coming at us, whether they are mandated private sector activities or whether they are going to be something such as a drug benefit which now has a floor on it of $350 billion with no ceiling in sight. When I came here in 1992, having just served as Governor of my State, my focus was mainly on two things. In fact, it was the main focus of four or five of us as new members, as Republicans, including Senators Coverdell, Bennett, Kempthorne, Hutchinson, and later Campbell. The focus was on unfunded mandates that were being put on the States. The second was the explosion of entitlement costs. We took aggressive action because we were facing a significant deficit and had been through many years of it, to try to get entitlements under control. We aggressively pushed that as new Members of the Senate. It is sort of like ``deja vu all over again,'' to quote Yogi Berra. Here we are facing a deficit, and we don't know how severe it is going to be. We are piling on entitlements, and the most difficult spending to get under control in Government is entitlement spending because it is automatic. It creates interest groups and basically is not capable of being reined in efficiently or effectively in public bodies that go up for election every 2 and 6 years. I think the trades made in this bill are difficult, to say the least. To get fast-track authority--a procedural process for the President to have an opportunity to make his points on trade agreements, which cannot be amended by the Senate, that is a very important point on administrative prerogative, but it is procedural. In exchange for that procedural right, we are trading away very significant new entitlement initiatives which have explosive potential and are bad public policy. As a result, I have deep reservations about this package. I regret it has been negotiated in the manner it has been by our leadership in the Senate. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. I object.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will say this quickly and then I will yield to the Senator from Missouri and then to the Senator from Tennessee, but I rarely disagree with the Senator from Iowa. I consider him to be one of the best Senators in the Senate. He is certainly a thoughtful and effective Member of the Senate and a strong leader, especially for free trade. I certainly support his commitment to the trade promotion authority, but the price of that trade promotion authority should not be the creation of a brandnew entitlement which has explosive potential and is regrettably not a new idea. In fact, it is a very old idea. It is a European industrial socialist policy idea which has failed in Europe, failed in the old countries. We should not bring it to the new country. I yield to the Senator from Missouri 5 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Obviously, the Senator is the leader on the floor, and we certainly recognize that right. I reserve my time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, in a few moments I believe there are other Members coming over to speak, but let me outline once again some of the problems of this language. Remember, the way this is structured is that if one loses their job as a result of trade activity, they can take another job that pays less, and then the taxpayers pay them $5,000 a year for taking a job that pays less if they are over 50 years of age. There is no training requirement language. There is no requirement that if there is a similar suitable job that pays the same, you take that. Say you lost your job at a manufacturing industry which was trade affected, and there was another job down the street in the manufacturing industry, in the same business, but that company had been able to compete effectively. You can take a job there at the same amount. There is no requirement you must take that; you can work for your cousin, brother, anyone, take a less paying job, and get paid $5,000 from the taxpayer to do that. There is no requirement to remain in the community. A key in the trade adjustment language is that workers remain in the community. The concept was to revitalize the community through the trade adjustment language. There is no requirement to do that. I can see a lot of people losing their jobs--hopefully not a lot--in the Northeast or the Chicago area or the northern part of the country. Say they are 50 years old. They will say: Hey, I'm out of here; I'm going south where it is warm. I will get a job being an assistant golf pro, which is what I always wanted to do, and I will get $5,000 from the taxpayers to do that. There is no requirement to remain in the community. There is no requirement for economic damage. In other words, there is no requirement that you need the money. There is a $50,000 payment level, but if you have a lot of assets or your spouse happens to have a high income, you still can benefit from this program. There is no arm's length requirement. I can see a situation where an agreement may have been reached in the small business just having tough times. They close the store and open across the street, and they get a $5,000 subsidy. Maybe it is just a family situation and you work the system so you can go to work for your son who is running a construction business. The chances to manipulate the system because there is $5,000 of taxpayer money pouring in to support you are very significant. There are a lot of structural problems as well as philosophical problems that we as a society are going to begin to pay people to be less productive. That is a concept which goes against American entrepreneurship. I would like to yield to the Senator from Missouri, but I believe we are going back and forth.

Mr. GREGG. Therefore, I hope people will join me in supporting this amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will make my statement and then we can go to the vote. First, I thank the many Members who have come to the Chamber and supported this amendment. There have been a number of points made that I think have been extremely appropriate as to the failure of the language in the bill and the need to have this amendment to correct it. I want to respond to a couple points made by the Democratic leader. First, this issue of the deal. A number of Members spoke and said this is a lousy idea. It is really not a very good policy, the concept of paying people to take less productive jobs, having the taxpayers pay people to take less productive jobs. This is not good policy, but I have to be for it because there was a deal agreed to. As far as I can tell, there were only six people in that room at the most. So maybe those six people have reached an agreement, and around here, if you give your word, you have to stand by it. I respect the people who came to the Chamber and said they are going to stand by their word. For the rest of us, we should look at the policy of whether or not this is a good idea, and it is not. It is called a pilot program, and the Democratic leader said it was a pilot program for which they wanted $100 million, and they agreed to $50 million over 2 years. As he described it, it is a central component of the understanding they reached. Mr. President, $50 million is a lot of money, but around this building, it does not even deserve an asterisk. So there is something more at work. We are not talking about $50 million if it is a central component of the agreement. We are talking about something people expect to expand radically over the years. This is a brandnew major entitlement which will expand dramatically. It is not some benign little pilot program. If it was, it would not be a central component of this agreement. Thus, this attempt to dismiss it is as something marginal clearly does not fly, even though it is alleged to be a pilot program. There was also a statement made that this is an attempt to benefit older workers. Actually, the language of this bill does the exact opposite. We have on the books the age discrimination language which says you cannot discriminate against somebody in their job who is over 50 years old. We have on the books laws which say that older workers should be given deference and should be allowed to retain their jobs and should be allowed to improve their position in the workplace and should not be discriminated against because of their age. This amendment says exactly the opposite. It says to the older worker: When you lose your job due to trade, we are going to say you are not capable of getting a better job; we are going to tell you go find a lesser job, and then we will pay you from the other taxpayers of America $5,000 to do that. It takes the theory of ``you cannot teach old dogs new tricks'' and says: Not only can you not teach old dogs new tricks, but we are going to pay you $5,000 to forget everything you have learned and take less of a job. It makes absolutely no sense in the context of the other laws which we have on the books relative to age discrimination. In fact, it flies in the face of years of attempts to make sure that as people get further into the workforce, they are not discriminated against. Of course, as has been outlined, it has no structure to it, no controls to it. Under the trade adjustment concept, the whole idea is to train people who lose their jobs as a result of trade activity, to train them to get a better job, to give them opportunities to get a better job. This language says you should get less of a job. It reduces your employment capability. There is no training language in this bill. In fact, you cannot train under this bill. It basically rejects the training language of the trade adjustment language. There is no requirement that you take a similar and suitable job. So if you have the ability to do something that is unique and you can take it across the street after you lose your job somewhere and get paid just as much or maybe even more, there is no requirement that you do that. If you would rather do something that maybe pays you a lot less because it is more socially acceptable to you, it is more in tune with your lifestyle--the example has been used of going and becoming an assistant pro at a golf course because you would rather play golf rather than work in a steel factory--you can do that; that is your right; you should be able to do that. Pursuit of happiness is part of our culture, but you should not get $5,000 from the taxpayers who are still working somewhere on the line to do it, which is what this bill tells you. If there is a similar and suitable job, you are not required to take it. You are not required to remain in the community, which means it undermines the community. I talked at length about that last night. You are not required to have a need for the job. Your spouse could be making $100,000, $200,000, or $300,000. If you had a job where you earned $50,000 and you take a lesser job, you still get $5,000 from the taxpayers of America, even though your spouse may have a huge income. There is no test relative to the manipulation of the system. An employer may be closing down one plant on trade adjustment language, opening up another facility in a different area, moving people into there, and getting a $5,000 payment. There is no language about that. There are no controls. There is no control in the area of meeting the needs relative to, as I said, staying in the community. And there is no arm's length control. You could work within the family, for example, move from one job to another. Maybe your son runs a construction company and you are working for a steel mill and the steel mill goes out of business; you go to work for your son's construction company and the taxpayers of America would have to pay you $5,000. Those are the technical issues that lie with this question. The bigger issues are these: No. 1, it is a brandnew entitlement with immense potential. No. 2, and most importantly, it undermines our basic philosophy of how we have had our economy structured the last 200 years.

Mr. GREGG. Did the Senator yield back the remainder of time?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand the other side is going to yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Texas, and then we will go to 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona. We are alternating.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the assistant leader, Senator Nickles.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Missouri for his excellent thoughts, and I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Utah.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, if that is a unanimous consent request, I don't think we need to have anything written up--with no second degrees.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a section of the trade adjustment language in this bill. I congratulate the managers for the hard work they put into bringing this bill forward. Trade adjustment is part of the three basic bills. There are four bills altogether, but I now address the three bills--the Andean trade bill, trade promotion authority, and trade adjustment. The trade adjustment language in this bill has some huge problems and sets off on a new policy course in a number of areas which I believe are extremely problematic and inappropriate. One of the issues it raises is that of how you deal with people who do not have health insurance. I do not want to speak specifically to that, but I want to allude to that. In this bill there is a brand new major entitlement which will say if you are put out of work, allegedly because of a trade event, you will have the right to get health insurance and have that health insurance paid for by the taxpayers, or 70 percent of it. That will create the anomalous situation, the really terrible situation that people who are working for a living, working hard, working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and who do not have health insurance, will end up paying an increased tax burden to pay to subsidize the health insurance of somebody who does not have a job, is not working, and who is already getting significant unemployment benefits, training benefits, education benefits, and now will be getting very significant new health insurance benefits. The practical implications are significant, obviously. You are going to create two classes of citizenry in this country, one of which is the working American who does not have health insurance and the other is the nonworking American who does have health insurance. The person who is working is going to be scratching his head and saying: What am I doing? Why am I toiling all these hours to pay for something I cannot afford for myself for somebody who doesn't have a job and who may not get a job because they are getting such good benefits that getting a job they may lose those benefits? So it creates some serious problems. Basically, it is opening the door to a massive expansion of an entitlement program in the area of health care. That worries me a lot. If we are going down that road, we should do it in the context of comprehensive health care reform. We should look at all the people who do not have health insurance in this country, not just a slice of people, and make sure all those folks get a fair shot at health insurance, not just a small slice. But the more problematic, from the standpoint of policy, is this new concept called wage insurance, which is in the trade adjustment bill. Basically, we are going to pay people to work less productively is what this amounts to. This is sort of a French system of economics. We are going to say to someone: If you are out of a job because of a trade adjustment situation and you take another job where you earn less, the Federal Government will now come in and pay you the difference between what you made in the old job and what you make in the new job, up to $5,000. That creates a huge incentive for people to take a job where they are less productive, to take a job that they might enjoy more, which they might like more but which doesn't pay as much because everybody else in the country is going to pay them something to take that job. It is a management of the marketplace which undermines all the concepts we have in our country today of having money flow and having people work in their most efficient way in order to create the most productivity, in order to create the strongest economy. One of the geniuses of our economy is that we are resilient and flexible. If you look at what has happened to Japan over the last 10 years, they have been in recession. Look at what has happened to France over the last 20 years and their productivity has essentially been flat. So their standard of living has not grown the way our standard of living has grown. Look at the country of Italy where if you get a job you get it for life. Again, you have low productivity growth and you have essentially a flat economy in the context of our economy. All these countries are functioning in a manner entirely different than ours because they basically create an economy where productivity is not rewarded, where efficiency is not rewarded, where having capital flow to its most efficient place is not rewarded--it is actually penalized--whereas in America, our genius as an economy has always been that we are a mobile, flexible economy where the money and the productivity and people's jobs flow to the place where they are going to receive their highest economic reward. We create incentives for people to go to work where they are going to get their highest economic reward. As a result, we rebound from economic slowdowns quickly and we have an incredible rate of productivity in this country--we have for the last few years--and we have economic growth. What this proposal does, essentially, is reverse course. It goes back. It takes the socialistic concept that the Government should pay you for not working, or at least for not working efficiently, and puts it in place. It is an idea that has been tried, of course. It is being tried. It is being used in many of our sister countries--France and Italy being the two best examples. But it is a system which has totally failed. It is a 1950s idea of economics which essentially said that the state can better manage the economy of a country than the marketplace. In its extreme, it essentially has productive citizens paying to have people who are doing less productive jobs stay in those jobs. The idea that when somebody loses his job where he is earning a good salary--let's say in a steel mill because that seems to be the industry most affected--and then that person looks around and says, I didn't like working in the steel mill, I am going to go out to the golf course where I can be a starter and get my free round of golf every day because that's what I would really like to do, that person, as a result of taking that job which he enjoys more but which pays significantly less, is going to be paid by all the other people in America who are working hard every day, maybe doing jobs they do not find that exciting but at least jobs at which they are being extremely productive. That person who goes to the golf course is going to be paid up to $5,000 for taking this job which pays less than what he was receiving as a steelworker. It is outrageous. It is incredible. It is a rejection of everything we conceive as marketplace economics as a country. And it opens the door to proposals and concepts which will significantly undermine our productivity as a society, which will lock in place job activity which is not producing but which is draining from the economic growth and will inevitably undermine our vitality and will end up costing us jobs. If a person is thrown out of a steel job and takes a job in some other position that pays less because that is the job they want or that is the job they can get, there are alternatives which we put in place to try to help that person improve their position. Under the trade adjustment assistance language that person gets more training, more education, more educational opportunities. Under trade adjustment assistance, that person gets longer unemployment benefits so they can look harder for the job they want. But that person--for taking a job where their income is less and probably, therefore, they are being less productive in a society that ties productivity to income to a large degree--surely should not get a stipend to take a job which pays less. It inverts the whole system of how we reward people in our society. We are rewarding someone for taking a job that pays less and saying: Here is $5,000 on top of whatever you are being paid. I can see a lot of small businesses, medium-sized businesses in this country that are marginal today where their employees could say, because they might be a small business where all the employees are participants, we are going to have to go out of business. Let's make sure we go out of business for a trade reason. Let's figure out some way to do that because we can move on and do something else and get $5,000 of assistance on top of whatever job we take. The unintended consequences, the perverse incentives are truly--well, they can't be anticipated, but we know they are going to be significant. This is one of the worst ideas I have seen come forward in this Congress, the idea that we are going to basically pay people to take lesser paying jobs. It is almost, on its face, a reason to reject this bill. When you couple it with some of the other problems with this bill, it becomes a heavy burden for those of us who support free trade to support a bill with this type of language. So I do intend, at some point, as we go forward, to offer a motion to strike this alleged wage insurance program. I hope Members will join me in rejecting this concept which can best be described as French economics. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the present regular order?

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

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, this amendment deals with one of the issues in the trade adjustment section of the bill. This bill, as has been mentioned in numerous discussions here, has four major sections, four major issues. One of them is trade adjustment. First off, I do not think all these issues should have been joined. Historically, the Congress has taken up trade promotion authority, which used to be known as fast track, independent of these other issues. It has taken up trade adjustment as a freestanding bill. And certainly it has taken up the Andean trade preference bill as a freestanding bill. They should not have been merged, but, unfortunately, they were merged. As a result of being merged, I believe a lot of language has been basically hooked to the train because they know the train is leaving the station. The language, regrettably, is not good. It is not good policy. In fact, it is extremely detrimental policy. It should be rejected by the Senate. However, it is part of the package, and there is concern about the whole package going down if this language is deleted. In my opinion, some of this language is so egregious, we as a Senate need to be on record about it, and we should defeat it. Two of these sections that are egregious, because they open huge new entitlement questions, are the health care section of the trade adjustment language and what is called the wage insurance section, wage subsidy section of the trade adjustment language. The health insurance language has been talked about quite a bit. I have certainly talked about it. It basically, in a very haphazard way, addresses one of the fundamental issues we as a Congress have to address, which is how we deal with people who are uninsured in our society in health care. In my opinion, doing it in this very narrow way is taking a step down a path which will probably lead to having poor policy overall in the area of health insurance, something I have spent a lot of time working on in the Senate. Therefore, I think this is the wrong vehicle in which to have that type of language. I am not addressing that tonight. What I have proposed is a motion to strike the wage subsidy language in this bill. What is wage subsidy? It is very important to understand this right upfront. What this is is a new concept, a concept which essentially says that if you lose your job as a senior citizen--not a senior citizen, I am not a senior citizen-- if you lose your job and you are over age 50--although you do qualify to be a senior citizen over age 50; I get all these forms now that tell me I am a senior citizen--if you lose your job over age 50 as a result of a trade adjustment event, and then you go out and take another job, you will have a right--this is the point, the big point of context--you will have a right to receive, if the second job you take pays you less than the job you lost as a result of trade activity, you will have a right to get from the taxpayers of America up to $5,000 to make up the difference between the job you lost and the job you have taken. This is a concept which, as I mentioned earlier, is in great vogue in places such as Italy and France but which goes fundamentally against the free market society we have in our country and which has been the dynamic that has made our society so strong. That dynamic is essentially this: We have a marketplace which says we want people to be the most productive they can be; we want them to have jobs where they are going to obtain the best benefit, not only for themselves but the best benefit for the whole, by doing the best they can in a job that is producing economic activity that is benefiting everyone. The way you do that is you allow the marketplace to decide what a person's value is within the marketplace, and the person can move from job to job and improve their standing and, as a result, improve their own personal income but also improve the economic activity of the whole country. What this bill is proposing is that we no longer do that, that we reward people for taking a less efficient job, for taking a job where they are less productive, and for taking a job which basically is less of an incentive for them to be productive than what they presently have, and we are going to reward them for that. We are going to reward them for stepping out of the mainstream of the marketplace, where they have been successful, and stepping backwards. It is really a unique concept for us as a country to pursue at this time. It is especially ironic in light of what has happened in such other industries; for example, the whole technology industry, where you had a huge reorganization as a result of the late 1990s activities and the Internet and the boom in the Internet and then the bust in the Internet, people having to move from job to job. Suddenly we are going to say we no longer have any confidence in the marketplace. We are going to tell people, you can take a lesser job, be less productive, but we will pay you more money and use tax dollars to do it. It is a concept which is used in France and Italy, but it certainly is not appropriate here. I want to talk about the specifics of how this is structured. The structure of it is also unique. It abandons all the basic rules and regulations under the present trade adjustment authority. Then I want to talk about the philosophy of it. To outline what it does, it says, if you lose a job as a result of trade and you are over 50 years old and you get a new job within 26 weeks and the new job pays less than the old job, then the taxpayers will make up the difference up to $5,000 if the job pays less than $50,000. It does not require any training. It does not require that you choose a similar or suitable job that is available. In other words, if there is a job out there that is equal to what you are presently doing and you can have that job or you want to take a different job that pays a lot less--I can think of a lot of reasons somebody might want to do that if they are over 50 years old--then you can take that job that pays less and the taxpayers have to make up the difference. You do not have to take a similar or suitable job. It does not require that you remain in the community, which is something the trade adjustment clause has required. There is no limitation based on necessity, and the program does not consider whether wage rates at the new employer have been altered or negotiated or manipulated to basically make a deal. These are all big issues. There is no requirement that the relationship be arm's length between the new job you take that is subsidized by the taxpayer and the old job that you lost. There is no protection afforded to other workers who may be displaced. It just runs to the people who are over 50 years old and who are subjected to trade adjustment. The fact that there is no training required flies in the face of the whole concept of the trade adjustment proposal. Anybody who has spent any time with trade adjustment knows its real strength is that it says to a person who loses their job because the industry they are in maybe can't compete with products coming in as a result of a trade agreement or for some other reason--we say to that person, we are going to give you all sorts of training options so you can improve your position, improve your knowledge base, and move forward, hopefully to a higher level job in a different sector that has not been so significantly impacted by trade. That is one of the key ingredients to trade adjustment. The wage subsidy has absolutely no training requirement. So it basically throws out one of the key components of trade adjustment. Another key component is that if there is a similar or suitable job available, you should take it. Why shouldn't you? Let's say you are working for an employer for whose product you have a skill that you have developed but the employer didn't do a good job competing in that area. That skill is unique and it is special. And there is another employer over here across the street who is making the same product and is competing well in the international marketplace. If that job is available to you, you should take it. Under trade adjustment, you are supposed to take it. Under this proposal, you don't have to take that job. You don't have to take a similar, suitable job. So basically it throws out the concept that people should be encouraged, before they start getting Federal benefits, if the availability is there, to move laterally and even move up. No. Instead, you can take a lesser paying job where you are less productive and the taxpayer comes in and pays you $5,000 to do it. You don't have to remain in the community. One of the keys to the whole concept of trade adjustment was that you would remain in the community. This is a bill that is structured around the concept of trying to keep people and communities vibrant when they are hit by a huge trade event. That grew out of the textile and clothing fights, problems not only in the South but in the North. In my State, where we had all our shoe factories closed, all our textile mills closed, we have recovered dramatically because the people who were working in those textile mills and those shoe mills moved into industries which were competitive and which involved being retrained. Actually they ended up, in most instances, with higher paying jobs; certainly their kids did. By staying in those communities, they are being productive citizens. That is a concept. Under this bill, you can leave the State, move across the country, and take a job somewhere else. And if it pays you less than what your old job paid you, even though there may be lots of jobs in the community that paid you more, you just wanted a job that paid you less, the taxpayers pay you $5,000 for taking that job and for leaving your community. It is an incentive to leave your community rather than an incentive to stay. It does not require any showing of need before the person gets this money. It is just basically a payment. If you meet the requirement of $50,000, you get paid. There are a lot of people out there who might have personal assets, wealth, or who may be part of a family who has an income who certainly doesn't need a $5,000 subsidy coming from the Federal Government. Other taxpayers are working hard. There should be, obviously, some threshold standard to meet as to assets which the person has, or as to what their income is as a family, rather than simply sending them the money. A steelworker might get laid off from a steel plant. He or she may go to work for his or her son who runs a construction company, take a significant cut in pay, have the taxpayers pay a $5,000 supplement. Basically, this is a great deal for the son. He gets an employee with $5,000 of the cost of that employee picked up by the taxpayers. No arm's length necessity, no limitations on arm's length transactions, no requirement that they be arm's length, no requirement that there be any review for the purposes of fraud or abuse. There could be all sorts of deals made out there--and I can see them actually occurring--where somebody closes a plant, alleges it is trade adjustment, reopens another facility, or has somebody else reopen another facility--I am not talking large numbers of people here maybe-- and they work it out for a couple years where these employees will get this $5,000 payment from the taxpayers and they do not have to pay it. As a result, they have a huge windfall and a gaming of the system. It is a very distinct possibility. Of course, without the arm's length transaction, there are all sorts of implications for the ways this could be gamed by somebody. One does not even have to be that creative to game the system. The actual language of this section is poorly drafted, to be kind, and has significant problems substantively in its application beyond the policy problems--beyond the huge policy problems--of being a totally new approach to how we address our productivity as an economy and how we approach market forces in our economy. It is important to remember that the TAA proposal had some core purposes. I alluded to them, but one of them is, of course, to retrain people who are dislocated. It has had tremendous success in this area. In fact, in 2001, 75 percent of dislocated workers who sought service got jobs and averaged 100 percent of their predislocation earnings. Furthermore, 86 percent were still working after 6 months in those new jobs. The theme of trade adjustment is: Give people training so they can move to a new job when they lose a job and have that job be a better job. That is logical; that makes sense. Unfortunately, this proposal says: No, we are going to tell people when they lose their job, to get a job that pays them less, which means they are less productive; and it also probably means they have chosen a different type of activity that is maybe more lifestyle appropriate to them, but they are doing it all at a subsidy from the taxpayers. It is not too farfetched to presume that if you are 50 years old and you lose your job through trade adjustment and you are working in the Northeast that you may want to go to Florida or you may want to go to Arizona or New Mexico because you are tired of the snow, you are tired of the winters. All that shoveling does catch up with you when you get a little older sometimes and trying to get your car started in the cold weather. Madam President, you can see where this proposal is going, basically, to create a huge incentive for people to leave those communities in the North, move to the Sun Belt, take jobs that pay significantly less, have the taxpayers send them $5,000 as a benefit, and go into, basically, semiretirement. We could almost call this the ``Disney World Employment Act.'' Disney World is going to be overwhelmed with people in their fifties who want to come down and maybe do the Adventure Ride and the Jungle 3 days a week and spend the rest of the time enjoying Florida's weather and golf courses and get a $5,000 bonus. That is not the concept of trade adjustment. If somebody wants to do that, that is fine, but the guy or woman who is out there working on a factory line somewhere paying taxes or working in a restaurant paying taxes or working in a computer company paying taxes should not have to subsidize that sort of mismanagement of our economy, that sort of activity which is going to basically redirect productivity to nonproductive activity and take tax dollars to do it. The way the bill is drafted flies in the face of all the basic policy we have passed in Congress relative to age discrimination. Basically, the concept of age discrimination we passed has been that when people hit age 50 or 55 and want to work, they should not be discriminated against in maintaining and improving their position in the workplace. What this bill says is: When you reach age 50, we are going to create an economic incentive for you to reduce your productivity and to reduce your position in the workplace. It is totally inconsistent with the Age Discrimination Act and the Older Americans Act because it is basically subscribing to a theory that when you hit 50, you should be pushed into a job that pays you less and have the taxpayers come along and subsidize it. That is the opposite of what we thought the Age Discrimination Act was. The purpose of the Age Discrimination Act was when somebody reaches 50, they cannot be pushed out of their job because of their age and they should be encouraged to continue to improve in their productivity by growing in their job. The language says if a person is over 50 and loses their job, we do not have any confidence they can find another job that is going to pay them more; we do not have any confidence they can go through trade adjustment training and improve their position; we do not believe what we said in the Age Discrimination Act or the Older Americans Act. No, rather, this language believes you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. So instead of trying to teach him new tricks, we are going to pay him $5,000 a year to forget everything he knew, everything he learned at his workplace, and take a lesser job. What an outrageous policy that is. On the specifics, this language, first, is terribly drafted because it has no training requirement, no requirement that similar and suitable jobs be taken, no requirement you remain in the community, no requirement that it be based on necessity, no requirement for arm's length, no requirement you check for fraud and abuse, no requirement there be a necessity, some sort of test as to whether or not the person should get the $5,000, and it does not protect anybody else except people over age 50 and actually creates an incentive which flies in the face of all the age policy, antidiscrimination language we passed in this Congress for the last 10, 15, 20 years. Other than that, it is a great idea. Beyond those specific problems in the drafting, there is a bigger issue at stake and it goes to something I mentioned earlier and have alluded to, and that is the question as to how our economy remains resilient. I happen to believe, and I think there are a lot of people who agree with this, especially ironically in Europe and in Japan today, that one of the key elements of the resiliency of our economy is the flexibility of our workforce and the fact that we have a workforce which is dynamic and is capable of moving with the times from jobs to jobs which are more and more competitive. I take my State as the classic example. Twenty years ago in my State--maybe 30 years ago now--we were a textile, woolen mill, shoe factory State, where most of the people worked in large factories. In fact, up through the middle part of the last century, we had the largest continuous mill in the world in Manchester, NH. It was built in the 1800s and functioned right into the 1900s. Then everybody moved to the South. All our textile mills closed, our shoe mills closed, and they took all this business down south where they could get a different wage rate. So New Hampshire had to adjust. I remember when I was growing up in Nashua, NH, we lost our single biggest employer. They left the city and we had to adjust. So those people in the mills that had been textile and shoe mills had to find something else to do. They started moving into technology-related activities. Slowly, we developed this technology-based economy to the point where today more people on a per capita basis work in technology-based activities in New Hampshire than in any other State in the country. What has been the practical impact? It has meant that we went from a per capita income which was in the mid-thirties--relative to other States we were about 35th, 36th in the country in the 1960s and 1970s-- to a per capita income which is now fourth in the country. That has been a function of the fact that we have not changed our people but we have retrained our people. Our people have shown the initiative and the creativity to take new jobs, different jobs, and people have come to New Hampshire to employ them. Jobs have been created in New Hampshire, and we have created an economic climate where we have seen this huge expansion. This is not a unique New Hampshire story. This is an American story. We, as a culture, are constantly moving through different forms of value-added activity where we create new concepts, new initiatives, whether it is in the technology area or whether it is in the medical area or whether it is in the widget area or whether it is in the Starbucks area. There is always a new idea in America that is creating jobs and activity. Regrettably, on the other side of the coin there are quite often industries which have not kept up with the times or which can no longer compete for some reason with some international company that maybe is able to do something at a lower wage. Those people who are in those jobs for the most part find themselves with opportunities in other industries which are growing. We have not pursued the Italian model where, when you get a job, you have that job for life, literally have it for life, and that company cannot fire you, or the French model which essentially says, when you get a job, first you do not have to work too hard and, second, if you lose that job you are basically taken care of as if you still had the job and you get to retire very early. In fact, I remember the truckdrivers in France about 3 years ago struck because they wanted to be able to retire at full pay when they were 55. Well, the life expectancy has extended quite a bit, so basically you had people working half their working lives and retired half their working lives, and they basically ran out of money. It becomes a pyramid that is inverted after a while in the classic Mark Twain story where there is only one person still working and everybody else is taking, which totally undermines productivity when there is that sort of approach to the economic structure of your country in what amounts to an alleged market economy. We have not pursued that course. We have instead pursued a course to maintain flexibility. We want people to be able to move up and always improve, and if somebody has gone on hard times because the competition from an international commodity has been overwhelming and they have lost their job because of it, we have trade adjustment to help train that person and move up and improve their life. We do not want to say to that person, you should move down in your economic activity, you should slow your productivity, you should reduce your efficiency, you should take a job which we, the taxpayers, or everybody in America, all taxpayers, have to end up subsidizing so that you can have a job that pays you less where you probably are asked to do less and where the skills which you have are probably not adequately used. If you as a citizen lose your job because of trade adjustment, whatever the job might be--steel is being talked about today so let's say it is steel--and there is not a similar job--if there was a similar job, theoretically you should take it but, of course, under this language you do not have to--but you decided that you wanted to go to Florida and become a greens keeper, that was always your dream and you were 50 years old and you thought you might be running out of time and you wanted to be on that golf course every day and play a little golf when you were not working on the golf course, or maybe be a part-time golf pro, that is your right. You can do that, but there is absolutely no reason that we should come along and, as a society, subsidize your taking that position and doing that job which basically you are overqualified to do. You could do something else if you wanted to that would pay you significantly more and which would be much better in the sense of the overall economy potentially. This is one of the worst ideas to come down the pike in a long time. It, obviously, arises out of a philosophy which is attracted to the way things occur in France and in Italy. It is a 1950s form of economics which was in vogue at one time, sort of a quasi-socialist view of the world which says essentially that someone should always be able to receive a benefit from the government, even if they are making choices which are basically counter to what the government policy should be. It is a view of the world which seems to have incredible disregard for those Americans who are working and who are paying taxes, because it is essentially saying to those Americans who are working hard every day and paying taxes, we are going to subsidize someone to the tune of $5,000 to take a job they do not necessarily need to take in many instances, but we are going to subsidize them, and then we are not going to ask that person to train. We are not going ask that person to take a similar job. We are not going to ask that person to stay in the community. We are not going to find out whether that job was agreed to at arm's length. We are not going to check on the abuse. We are not going to check on even whether the person needs the job from a financial situation. We are simply going to pay that person $5,000 to take less of a job, simply because they were allegedly put out of work as a result of a trade event and because they are over 50 years of age. It delivers the wrong message to somebody who is working pretty hard, who is under 50 years old and happens to lose their job because they do not have this opportunity. It clearly delivers the wrong message to somebody who is working very hard trying to make ends meet, paying a significant amount of their income in taxes, and suddenly finds they are supporting someone to the tune of a $5,000 benefit that creates less efficiency, less marketplace productivity, and undermines the basic concept of our approach as a nation to how one remains vibrant in a competitive world. So this language, I would hope, would be deleted. Tomorrow we will have a vote on it. I appreciate the courtesy of the Senate, and especially the staff of the Senate, for listening. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I find the discussion of the Senators from Massachusetts and Illinois and Minnesota most interesting. It reminds me of that old story of the attorney up in northern New Hampshire who received a report from one of the logging camps he represented. There were seven people in this camp, five men and two women. The report came in that 50 percent of the women were marrying 20 percent of the men. The numbers which have been thrown out here are, to say the least, a bit disoriented, dysfunctional, and inaccurate. They certainly don't reflect this President's commitment to education. In fact, I don't think anybody can seriously question this President's commitment to education. He not only has made it a priority, he has essentially made it his No. 1 domestic priority after the issue of fighting terrorism, which of course is our Nation's No. 1 issue right now. It was under his leadership that we passed a landmark piece of legislation in which obviously the Senator from Massachusetts played a large role, as did the Senator who is presiding at the present time. That legislation essentially reorganized the way we approach legislation at the Federal level as it affects elementary and secondary school education. Basically, it took a large number of programs and merged them together and turned that money back to the States with more flexibility, the purpose of which was to give the States and the local communities specifically more dollars with fewer strings and, in exchange for giving them more dollars with fewer strings, expect more for those dollars and have standards which have to be met to show that that has occurred; in other words, specifically saying, we don't expect any children to be left behind. The Federal role in elementary and secondary education is a fairly narrow role; 92 to 93 percent of the money comes from the local communities or the States; they have the priority role in education. The Federal role in education has picked two targeted areas on which to focus. No. 1 is low-income kids, making sure they are not left behind. No. 2 is special needs kids, special education kids. This ESEA bill which we passed, the No Child Left Behind bill, essentially said we will give the local communities more money with fewer strings, fewer categorical programs; but in exchange for that, we will expect that especially low-income kids have a better opportunity to learn and that they are not left behind; we will ask the States to set up standards which test that. What did the President do? He didn't give them less money. He gave more money into this program. If you look at the chart the Senator from Massachusetts held up, you will see that the increases in the Federal commitment to education have been massive over the last 2 years: 19 percent over the base 2 years ago; 16 percent on top of the 19-percent base; and then 3 percent on top of that, with the practical effect being that the dollar increase has been absolutely huge, as has the percentage increase for education. In fact, what the President did was consolidate that money into basically a more focused stream so that it goes back to the States in a more effective way. I have charts to reflect this, but I am not sure they are here. Hopefully, they will be arriving soon. In any event, if you look at what we did, what the President did, you see he put the money into title I. Yes, some of these other programs-- they held up five or six different programs--have been zero-funded. They should have been, because they were a little bits of money tossed around for the purposes of some Member of this legislative body getting out a press release. What the President said was: Let's not do that. Let's put this money into one focused stream and have those dollars flow directly back to the communities. The practical effect of that is that the title I dollars over the last 2 years, the President's increase in title I spending, the money going to low-income kids, has seen a $2.5 billion increase. If you take all the money that went into title I, all the increases during the administration of President Clinton, which was 8 years, not 2 years, his increases only amounted to $2 billion in that account. So in 2 years the President has exceeded by 20 percent the amount of money that went in as increases over 8 years into the Clinton accounts. This concept that the President has not funded education is absolutely fallacious. You could hold up another chart on this relative to special education which would show the exact same thing. In fact, it would show that President Bush has made a stronger commitment to special education than President Clinton ever did during his entire term in office. President Bush in the last 2 years, in both of those years, has increased special education by $1 billion each year. President Clinton, of his entire 8 years, in only 1 year, the last year when he was basically forced into it, did he increase special education by $1 billion. In every other year, for the 7 prior years, his increase in the special education amount was actually negligible. As we know, special education has a huge impact on the local tax base. The failure of the Federal Government to pay its fair share of special education has been one of the real problems local communities have had. President Bush has made, from the start, a major commitment to funding special education, increasing that funding by over $2 billion, $1 billion in each year of the last 2 years and, as a result, has lived up to a commitment he made during the campaign which was that he was going to move towards full funding of special education. This concept that the President is not funding education really doesn't hold water. Then there was some discussion of postsecondary activity and this consolidation issue, this ``bloody shirt'' that the other side continues to draw across the floor. Let's talk about a little bit of history. This concept was reported as a concept, as a trial balloon in the New York Times. That is where the issue comes from. Somebody in OMB, which is not the education policy arm of the administration, threw out the idea: We have to pay for the Pell grant shortfall which is $1.3 billion. One way to do that would be to disallow consolidation of student loans. That is one of the many ways we could do it. It was reported in the New York Times as a concept. It was a trial balloon. The education arm of the administration, which is the Education Department, immediately rejected it. The OMB was told to forget it. In fact, the OMB called around the Hill to the staff of the appropriate committees and members of the appropriate committees and said they would not pursue it. Yet for 3 weeks now we have heard it as if it were a policy. How outrageous. I refer to the approach the other side is taking as the thought police, where, if you have an idea, you just beat it into the ground, like those mullahs who run around with sticks and beat people if they have ideas. This idea doesn't even exist as a policy. Yet we continue to hear about it. What does exist as a policy, however, is what this administration has done in the area of postsecondary education, which is huge in the way of funding. The largest increase in Pell grants in the history of this country has occurred under this administration. More students, 500,000 more students, will get Pell grants this year than got them in the last year of the Clinton administration. This administration has committed huge dollars into this program. The rate of interest which a student will pay on their student loans will drop to below 2 percent by the beginning of next year--below 2 percent--as a result of this administration supporting language which allowed those loans to be reorganized in a way that students could get a less than 2-percent rate of interest on their student loans--incredibly low-cost money to help kids go to school, huge benefits to students trying to go to graduate school. And equally important, the tax bill which passed this Congress and which a number of Members on the other side did vote for but nobody who just spoke voted for, the tax bill which passed this Congress gave a massive increase, something in the vicinity, I think, of $30 billion of incentive money to help parents fund their children's education in the expansion of the Coverdell accounts, the expansion of the deductibility of interest for student loans, and a variety of other initiatives--teacher tax credits for people who stay to go on to teach, a supplemental payment there--all sorts of initiatives which dramatically increased the funding available to assist parents who are trying to put their children through school. So to come to the floor of the Senate, as some of the Members have from the other side for literally 3 or 4 weeks now, to berate the administration for the consolidation proposal, which was never a proposal, which was simply a trial balloon, and to berate the administration for not funding education is, in my opinion, tilting at windmills by the other side and trying to set up straw men because the issues hold no water on the basis of fact. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Ohio letting me go forward, and I appreciate the courtesy of the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes of that time. I understand the Senator from Ohio would like 15 minutes off that time.