Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I object.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that--I was to be the next speaker for 15 minutes, so I ask that I be granted 20 minutes on my time.

Mr. GREGG. Yes. I have a unanimous consent request that following Senator Hutchison, who will follow me, the following Senators be recognized in order: Senator Clinton for 15 minutes, Senator Chafee for 5 minutes, Senator Kyl for 15 minutes, and Senator Byrd for up to 45 minutes.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Maybe we can reserve this and discuss it for a second.

Mr. GREGG. I would like to have the opportunity to make sure the Republicans would have an equal amount of time.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I believe the proper implementation of WHTI is imperative. I wish to emphasize that the Departments of Homeland Security and State can move forward with the full implementation of WHTI before June I, 2009--but to do so they must comply with all legislated criteria. These legislated criteria are designed to ensure that the PASS Card protects the privacy of our citizens, that readers have been installed at all ports of entry, that all employees have been properly trained--in short, that the system works, before it is used by millions of citizens. And I emphasize that implementation, meaning putting the system into operation can occur at any time but no later than June 1, 2009, if the conditions, which are designed for proper operations, are met.

Mr. GREGG. On behalf of myself and Senator Byrd, we yield back the time.

Mr. GREGG. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, first I want to commend the Senator from Georgia for his excellent statement and discussion on what we are doing on the border and what we are doing generally in the area of fighting terrorism. I simply wanted to bring the Senate up to speed, and to the extent people are observing the Senate operations, the country up to speed--the listeners, anyway, up to speed on what we are doing on the border. Last night we completed the conference between the House and the Senate on the Homeland Security bill, with Congressman Rogers chairing the committee for the House and myself chairing it for the Senate. This is a bipartisan bill. It is a bill that passed the Senate 100 to nothing. It is a continuum of a lot of effort that we have made as a Congress to try to upgrade and significantly improve and make much more robust our efforts in order to secure our borders. I think we all understand that the threat to America comes from many different directions. But as we prioritize threats, the No. 1 issue we have to worry about is someone coming into this country with a weapon of mass destruction. The No. 2 thing we need to worry about is who is coming into the country and what products are coming into the country. What do those people intend? Hopefully, they are coming in legally. And what are the purposes of the products coming in? Hopefully, the purpose of the products is general commerce. But it is, first, to protect yourself from weapons of mass destruction and, second, to make sure our borders are secure. In order to accomplish both of those goals, we need to put significant resources into those agencies and efforts which are responsible for addressing those two major issues. This bill, the Homeland Security bill, does exactly that. It puts significant new energy and dollars into detecting and being able to manage a potential weapon of mass destruction that will come into this country. Equally important, it continues a 2-year effort that began in 2005 when we reorganized the flow of dollars within the Department of Homeland Security. It continues an effort to dramatically increase the boots on the ground and the physical and capital support efforts necessary to support the individuals who are protecting our borders and managing our borders. This chart reflects the dramatic increase, using a baseline of when President Clinton left office to today. In the area of border agents specifically, over 6,000 agents have been added, 4,000 just in the last 2 years. That is a 40-percent increase in border agents in the last 2 years. In addition, the bill we passed last night, while continuing the effort in the area of adding border agents, continues an aggressive effort to add detention beds. We understand, if you have agents on the ground who are hopefully catching people who are coming across our borders illegally, it does no good to catch those people unless you have some way to hold them. Up until this month, in fact, we had a policy known as catch and release because we simply did not have enough holding space for people who came into this country illegally. This bill continues the effort in the area of adding detention beds. Over the last 2 years, we will have added over 9,000 beds, almost 10,000 beds. The practical effect of this is we are getting real results. Beginning next month, the Department of Homeland Security will no longer have a policy of catch and release. They will be able to hold the people they catch and detain them, which is exactly what should be happening. In addition, we have dramatically increased the number of Customs agents, we have increased the number of detention personnel, and we have significantly increased our commitment to fencing along the border. This bill, as it was worked out last night, has $1.2 billion in it for putting up either physical fencing, vehicle barriers, or what is known as a virtual fence, which is the Secure Border Initiative where in some parts of the southwest border, where a physical fence doesn't make any sense, there will be significant electronic monitoring of the border, which will allow us to see who is coming across the border. Once they come across the border, because we have added all these new border security personnel--the totals of which are here, 14,000 border security personnel, almost 15,000--we will be able to catch them if they are coming across illegally. In addition, we have dramatically increased our efforts to recapitalize and support the Coast Guard. I think everyone understands the Coast Guard is one of the premier agencies in our Government. Their efforts during Katrina were exemplary. They have the primary responsibility for making sure people coming toward the United States over the seas are coming here as part of reasonable commerce or simply as tourists and are not coming here to harm us. In order to accomplish that, they have dramatically increased the review of shipping as it comes toward the United States at the port of embarkation--whether that is in Asia or somewhere else--and they have increased their interdiction capabilities should there be a suspicious cargo on a ship headed toward the United States. To accomplish this, we have significantly increased the commitment to the Coast Guard in the area of purchasing more cutters, fast boats, arming their helicopters, and just generally upgrading their capacity to do their job well, as they do it well. Over $7.5 billion has been put into the Coast Guard as a result of this effort. The practical result of all this new funding, all these new agents, new commitment to detention beds, is that we are moving toward a secure border. In the very foreseeable future, short term rather than long term, we will be able to manage this border in a way that is appropriate, making sure people do not cross it illegally. We will also manage our ports, making sure they are secure. We have a way to go there, but we are making significant progress. At the same time, in this bill we have made a commitment to reorganize the Department in some areas where it has not been functioning all that well, specifically in FEMA. congratulate Senator Collins for her leadership. She orchestrated a bipartisan, bicameral effort to reach an agreement on how FEMA should be reorganized. The language of that reorganization is in this bill. In addition, we have put in this bill significant language in the area of chemical plant security. The Department of Homeland Security today does not have adequate authority to secure our chemical plants. It simply cannot do it because it doesn't have the legal authority necessary to force our chemical plants to undertake policies which will secure them. With this new language--again, this language was brokered by Senator Collins working with Congressman Barton and Congressman King--we have put in place a regime which will allow the Homeland Security agency to monitor and to require that high-risk chemical plants now have a decent security plan in place. There are other ideas out there for chemical security, some good ones. Senator Byrd has a significant number of good ideas in this area. Therefore, Senator Collins looked on this language, basically, more as a stop-gap language, to get things going, to make sure there was at least some initial authority for the Homeland Security Department, and thus this language sunsets in 3 years, so the Congress will have to reauthorize, and other thoughts and ideas in the area of chemical security can be pursued. This bill is a comprehensive, broad, and extraordinarily robust effort to tightening up and making a stronger commitment to securing our country and especially our borders and to make sure we have a Department of Homeland Security which has the resources it needs in order to accomplish that goal. There is a dramatic increase in the number of agents, dramatic increase in the number of detention beds, dramatic increase in the commitment to the Coast Guard, dramatic increase in the commitment to the monitoring and the capacity to handle a nuclear threat, and a dramatic increase to the issue of building a fence along the southwest border. We still have a have a long way to go. Nobody is going to argue about that. But in this debate, while we constantly hear this constant rumbling of negativism out there about border security--we aren't doing this, we aren't doing that--it should be acknowledged that significant progress is being made and a dramatic amount of resources is being focused on this effort by this administration and this Congress. In addition, as an aside, this bill had one item I would like to point out which I think is important, especially to people who live along the northern border. There is language in this bill which was worked out between myself and Congressman Rogers but primarily between Congresswoman Emerson and Senator Vitter. The purpose of this language will be to allow American citizens to cross into Canada and purchase drugs at a Canadian drugstore--Senator DeMint was also involved in this--purchase drugs at a Canadian pharmacy and bring them back to the United States without being subject to legal prosecution. There are a lot of people who believe they can go into Canada and buy American-made drugs which are being sold through Canada at a much higher discount than they can get those drugs in America. It may not be the case any longer because of what Wal-Mart is doing because Wal-Mart is putting in place a very robust, low-cost drug program. In any event, if Wal-Mart doesn't underprice Canada, people will be able now to go to Canada and purchase those drugs. I see Senator Dorgan here, and he has been a major player in this effort, also. They can purchase those drugs and not be subject to prosecution. This language took a long time to work out. It has the safeguards in it that I believe always were necessary before we could take this language and move it forward, and I am glad we were finally able to resolve this part of that puzzle. It is a bigger issue, but at least relative to people crossing the borders and purchasing drugs, which happens fairly regularly in New Hampshire and I know North Dakota and other places along the northern border, this is a step in the right direction. I congratulate all the people who have worked so hard to make this come to fruition. On balance, this is a truly excellent bill. We will be voting on it here, hopefully before the week is over. Absolutely I hope that is the case. It is very important we get these funds in place. As a result of that, we will continue this rather significant--I would call it dramatic--progress toward putting in place the capital, the resources, and the people necessary to secure our borders. But I would point out this caveat. No matter how many people we put on the border and no matter how much capital resources we put behind this--and we are going to do whatever it takes on those two counts--you still have the issue of human nature to deal with, which is, if a Mexican is making $5 a day and he can come to the United States and make $50 a day and he has a family to support, he is going to come to the United States. We have to figure out a comprehensive approach which will allow somebody to come to the United States, work a job that Americans are not willing to work or we don't have enough Americans to work, and be able to do that under a guest worker program that is responsible and allow employers the capacity to be able to verify that the individual is in this country legally. That is a critical element to securing our borders and making sure we do this right. So comprehensive reform should not be ignored. It has to be part of this whole package. But pending comprehensive reform, this bill, which we will vote on, the Homeland Security appropriations bill, is a significant, robust--actually, you could even call it dramatic--step forward in making sure our borders are secure. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to talk today a little bit about the progress we are making relative to securing our borders in the United States as a result of efforts made by this Congress and the administration. Before I do, I want to comment briefly on the presentation of the Senator from Illinois relative to the actions of this Congress and its passage of legislation or its investigative activity. It is truly disingenuous when the assistant leader of the Democratic side comes to the floor and says we have done nothing as a Congress when almost every major piece of legislation that has been brought to the floor of this Senate has been filibustered by the other side of the aisle. Bill after bill after bill has been stymied, stopped and, in fact--it is no secret--there is an open understanding around here that the purpose of the Democratic leadership has been to make it virtually impossible to pass legislation in the Senate in order that the Senate appear to be an ineffective body--their feeling being that if they can obstruct enough things, they can make an argument that Congress isn't functioning and they should be put in charge. It is an ironic position, of course, and has been on a number of times characterized as being similar to the situation when a man who shot both his parents, when brought before the court, asked for mercy because he declared himself an orphan. The fact is that the Democratic leadership of this body has decided to actively obstruct and try to stop almost any legislation of any significance that has come to the floor and, as a result, many things have been stopped because, as we all know, this is a body which functions essentially on a 60-vote majority, not a 51-vote majority. So, therefore, even though the Republican Party has 55 votes, we cannot pass something if there is united opposition. It has happened again and again. I do find it a bit disingenuous to make this argument--it is their right to make it--but I think an honest reflection of what is actually happening around here makes the argument rather superficial and inadequate in its essence and its purpose.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to talk about the progress we have made relative to securing our borders because this is one of those situations where the facts on the ground have not yet caught up with the public perception, which is understandable. That happens a lot in all sorts of areas where things are moving in the right direction, which were broken but are being repaired; there is still a perception that things are fundamentally broken. We are moving in the right direction relative to the borders. Since 2005, we have made rather significant strides toward putting in place the infrastructure and the people necessary to secure the borders. I have the good fortune to chair the Subcommittee on Homeland Security. It may well be the only major appropriations bill that gets out of this Congress before we adjourn in October. That bill and the precursors to it, including the appropriations bills which we passed over the last 2 years and the supplementals that have gone with those bills, have allowed us to significantly expand our commitment to homeland security. This has been an aggressive step taken by the Republican Congress and the administration. Back in 2005 we took a look at the problem when I assumed the leadership of this subcommittee, and we basically reoriented this whole funding stream within the Homeland Security Department, relative to the issue of weapons of mass destruction and border security. We concluded that those were the two major threats on which we as a committee should focus. So we took significant amounts of funds at that time and moved them into those accounts. Initially, back in 2005, the administration wasn't too excited about that, but after they took a hard look at what we were doing, they felt it was a good idea and they decided to join us in our efforts. Now, since 2005, that effort has accelerated and has gained strength and has actually made significant gains. By the time this next bill passes, which I hope will pass before we leave at the end of September, it is expected we will have put in place almost 4,000 new border agents, which is a 40-percent increase in border agents--people physically on the ground; we will have put in place almost 10,000 new detention beds so that when we catch people, we don't have to release them. That was really an inappropriate policy that was being followed, which was when somebody was caught coming across the border, they were simply either taken back across the border if they were Mexicans, or they were released and told to come back and appear for a court date if they were not Mexican. And what we found was that nobody came back for those court dates. So with the 10,000 additional beds we put in place, that policy of catch and release will be curtailed. We have added hundreds of miles of new fence, and we will continue to add new fencing where it is appropriate. We have dramatically increased the Customs and Border Patrol agents so that we are now up to 18,000 Customs officers, I am talking about--not Border Patrol--Customs officers who monitor our ports of entry, in addition to our Border Patrol individuals. We have greatly increased the commitment to the Coast Guard, which is the first line of defense relative to our ports and also plays a major role, of course, along the access points of our coastline for people who are coming into the country illegally. We have added $7.5 billion to the Coast Guard accounts which are going to give them the new capability they need for the boats and the aircraft, specifically upgrading their aircraft, upgrading their helicopters. All of this is in order to give the Coast Guard the ability to intercept people who may be coming here to do us harm. We dramatically increased our commitment in the area of nuclear detection. We set up the Nuclear Deterrence Office, which basically is a focused effort on the question of how to deter a nuclear attack and also respond to it should it ever occur--God forbid it should ever happen. That is obviously the intention of some of our enemies. They want to accomplish that. We need to be focused on trying to stop that from happening. We have dramatically expanded the intelligence capability of the Department of Homeland Security Analysis Center by adding over a half a billion dollars for that. These are increases that are making a difference in our capacity as a country to know who is coming into the country, what is coming into the country, and whether the people who are coming into the country represent a threat or whether they are just people who are coming to pursue appropriate lawful activity in the area of commerce or just in the area of visiting us or taking advantage of our educational system. These are major steps forward. All problems haven't been solved yet, and we all understand that. But if we continue on this path toward significantly upgrading our capabilities in the area of our feet on the ground, our boots on the ground, and technology supporting those boots--and later this week there is going to be the release of the accounting for the security program for the entire border, which will be a major step forward. It will mean we will be able to start construction of major technology improvements along the borders to use our advantages in technology to be able to police our borders. Then, in addition, recognizing that should somebody actually breach our borders with some weapon that might harm us, we will have the capacity to try to mitigate the effects of that through better technology and the research that surrounds that effort. We have basically made a huge commitment in this area, dramatically increasing our funding, dramatically increasing our personnel, and dramatically increasing our technological capability. It is very likely that within the next year--in fact, it is probable, not likely--the results of this are going to become very clear to the American people. But as with many things--the perception that the border remains an open sieve, which it was and it shouldn't have been, but it was, especially along the southern border; and the perception that we don't have in place the technology to protect ourselves, which we didn't; the perception that we had not adequately upgraded the Coast Guard to do its job, which we hadn't--all remain the perception in the marketplace, and understandably so. But the facts on the ground are that we are significantly upgrading our capabilities along the borders; that we have significantly upgraded our technological capability and we are continuing to expand that dramatically; that we are significantly improving the capacity of the Coast Guard, and that systems such as US-VISIT, which basically tracks who is coming into the country through a fingerprint process, are up and running and appear to be giving us significant results. So I think we should talk about the good that is happening and our efforts to do the right thing along the borders, which is secure them and the progress that we are making. We should recognize that although we are not there yet, we are clearly on a path toward accomplishing our goal, which is to make sure that the people who come into this country, first, come in legally and, secondly, when they come in they do us no harm and their purpose is to do us no harm; and thirdly, that the product that is coming into this country is for the purpose of commerce, not for the purpose of harming us. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the nomination.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed to the vote.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act of 2006 to improve quality and reduce the cost of health care. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act addresses three important problems in our Nation's health care delivery system: rising costs, broad variations in the quality of care, and a lack of information on health care quality and cost. Among the most pressing issues that need to be addressed in the area of health care is the issue of rapidly rising health care costs. The United States spends more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other industrialized country. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), total health expenditures are estimated to be $2.16 trillion in 2006 and are projected to rise to over $4 trillion in 2015. The pressures of rising health care costs are being felt by consumers, providers, employers, State and local governments, and the Federal budget alike--with no end in sight. Premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 9.2 percent in 2005--the fifth consecutive year of increases over 9 percent. Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing expense to employers, consuming more and more of each company's bottom line. From a Federal budget perspective, over the next 10 years, Medicare will grow on average 8.5 percent to $885 billion and Medicaid will grow similarly at 8 percent to $413 billion. These programs along with Social Security will take up 56 percent of the total budget in 2016. Such rate of growth is unsustainable. Despite this enormous level of spending, there is wide variation in the quality of the care Americans receive. In addition to the existing crisis of ever increasing costs, we are now learning that there are vast variations in the ratio of spending to outcomes, meaning that more care is not necessarily better care. A recent report by the Dartmouth Atlas Project demonstrated this point and showed no correlation between high utilization of services and high quality of care. This information provides an opportunity to improve care and reduce costs. We simply cannot afford business as usual in health care, especially when we have no way of determining the value of what we are purchasing. The Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) also reports wide variation in health care practice. AHRQ claims that millions of Americans fail to receive necessary care resulting in complications and increased costs. Others, they say, receive health care services that are completely unnecessary, which also increases costs. These problems are compounded by a third issue the lack of information available to consumers and purchasers on quality and cost. Currently, health care consumers do not have the tools necessary to make sound quality and cost decisions about their care. The few tools that are available to them are based on limited amounts of privately held data and their analysis is often not broad enough to provide the most accurate results. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act gives consumers, employers, providers and others the tools they need to begin controlling unnecessary spending; improves quality of care in our nation's health care delivery system; and provides the public with reports to make informed health care decisions. The bill works by sharing taxpayer funded Medicare data with private sector Medicare Quality Reporting Organizations (MQROs), allowing them to develop reports to measure health care quality for the public. Consumer groups, employers, insurance companies, labor unions and others have repeatedly requested access to Medicare claims data to improve the quality of the health care provided to their members, employees, and beneficiaries and to help control the ever-rising costs of health care. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act ensures that the data collected by Medicare and paid for by the taxpayer can be utilized by qualified organizations to measure quality and control costs while protecting beneficiary privacy. The measure also empowers consumer groups, providers, employers, insurance plans, labor unions and others by allowing them to request health care quality and efficiency reports from the newly-formed MQROs--information that will assist in better-informed purchasing decisions. Further, the bill provides for the public release of all reports, including detailed information on the methodology, standards and measures of quality used in developing the reports ensuring the information is available for the general public. In addition, MQROs that contract with the Department of Health and Human Services will be authorized to aggregate both private and public data, providing a significantly more robust assessment of both quality and efficiency. In the development of this bill, my first goal was to protect beneficiary privacy. Specifically, the bill limits the number of MQRO participants and explicitly holds them to the strict standards of both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Privacy Act. It also requires MQROs to have operational standards and procedures in place to provide for the security of the database. Lastly, the bill requires a privacy review by the Department of Health and Human Services of each analytical report prior to release. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act promotes the development of model quality standards through a newly established Quality Advisory Board within the Department of Health and Human Services and encourages the Administration to continue its extraordinary work with providers, consumers, insurers and others in the health care community toward sound quality measurement for all patients. Collaborative groups such as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA) and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) are working hard to establish standards and the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act encourages their work to continue. Under the bill, researchers are granted additional access to Medicare data and are allowed to report in a provider- and supplier-identifiable format as long as they meet existing strict criteria for the use of Medicare data within CMS. Some of our best information on quality and efficiency has been borne of fine academic institutions and private study and they, too, should have the opportunities to use this data to improve our health care system. In closing, the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act is needed in order for America's health care system to improve. The public needs to understand the quality of the care they are purchasing and the time has come for the health care community to compete on quality, value, and cost payment should not simply be for the volume of care provided, but instead for the quality of the care provided. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act takes important steps to provide health care consumers with the information they need to make educated decisions about health care; information they already have to make decisions on nearly every other product they purchase in the marketplace. It requires that information paid for by the taxpayer and held by Medicare is fully available to improve our health care system. The public will then finally have the tools necessary to make informed health care decisions for themselves and their families. This bill has the support of groups that represent consumers, providers, employers and insurers. I hope my colleagues will see the merit of this legislation and that it will be considered before we adjourn this year.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act of 2006 to improve quality and reduce the cost of health care. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act addresses three important problems in our Nation's health care delivery system: rising costs, broad variations in the quality of care, and a lack of information on health care quality and cost. Among the most pressing issues that need to be addressed in the area of health care is the issue of rapidly rising health care costs. The United States spends more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other industrialized country. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), total health expenditures are estimated to be $2.16 trillion in 2006 and are projected to rise to over $4 trillion in 2015. The pressures of rising health care costs are being felt by consumers, providers, employers, State and local governments, and the Federal budget alike--with no end in sight. Premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 9.2 percent in 2005--the fifth consecutive year of increases over 9 percent. Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing expense to employers, consuming more and more of each company's bottom line. From a Federal budget perspective, over the next 10 years, Medicare will grow on average 8.5 percent to $885 billion and Medicaid will grow similarly at 8 percent to $413 billion. These programs along with Social Security will take up 56 percent of the total budget in 2016. Such rate of growth is unsustainable. Despite this enormous level of spending, there is wide variation in the quality of the care Americans receive. In addition to the existing crisis of ever increasing costs, we are now learning that there are vast variations in the ratio of spending to outcomes, meaning that more care is not necessarily better care. A recent report by the Dartmouth Atlas Project demonstrated this point and showed no correlation between high utilization of services and high quality of care. This information provides an opportunity to improve care and reduce costs. We simply cannot afford business as usual in health care, especially when we have no way of determining the value of what we are purchasing. The Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) also reports wide variation in health care practice. AHRQ claims that millions of Americans fail to receive necessary care resulting in complications and increased costs. Others, they say, receive health care services that are completely unnecessary, which also increases costs. These problems are compounded by a third issue the lack of information available to consumers and purchasers on quality and cost. Currently, health care consumers do not have the tools necessary to make sound quality and cost decisions about their care. The few tools that are available to them are based on limited amounts of privately held data and their analysis is often not broad enough to provide the most accurate results. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act gives consumers, employers, providers and others the tools they need to begin controlling unnecessary spending; improves quality of care in our nation's health care delivery system; and provides the public with reports to make informed health care decisions. The bill works by sharing taxpayer funded Medicare data with private sector Medicare Quality Reporting Organizations (MQROs), allowing them to develop reports to measure health care quality for the public. Consumer groups, employers, insurance companies, labor unions and others have repeatedly requested access to Medicare claims data to improve the quality of the health care provided to their members, employees, and beneficiaries and to help control the ever-rising costs of health care. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act ensures that the data collected by Medicare and paid for by the taxpayer can be utilized by qualified organizations to measure quality and control costs while protecting beneficiary privacy. The measure also empowers consumer groups, providers, employers, insurance plans, labor unions and others by allowing them to request health care quality and efficiency reports from the newly-formed MQROs--information that will assist in better-informed purchasing decisions. Further, the bill provides for the public release of all reports, including detailed information on the methodology, standards and measures of quality used in developing the reports ensuring the information is available for the general public. In addition, MQROs that contract with the Department of Health and Human Services will be authorized to aggregate both private and public data, providing a significantly more robust assessment of both quality and efficiency. In the development of this bill, my first goal was to protect beneficiary privacy. Specifically, the bill limits the number of MQRO participants and explicitly holds them to the strict standards of both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Privacy Act. It also requires MQROs to have operational standards and procedures in place to provide for the security of the database. Lastly, the bill requires a privacy review by the Department of Health and Human Services of each analytical report prior to release. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act promotes the development of model quality standards through a newly established Quality Advisory Board within the Department of Health and Human Services and encourages the Administration to continue its extraordinary work with providers, consumers, insurers and others in the health care community toward sound quality measurement for all patients. Collaborative groups such as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA) and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) are working hard to establish standards and the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act encourages their work to continue. Under the bill, researchers are granted additional access to Medicare data and are allowed to report in a provider- and supplier-identifiable format as long as they meet existing strict criteria for the use of Medicare data within CMS. Some of our best information on quality and efficiency has been borne of fine academic institutions and private study and they, too, should have the opportunities to use this data to improve our health care system. In closing, the Medicare Quality Enhancement Act is needed in order for America's health care system to improve. The public needs to understand the quality of the care they are purchasing and the time has come for the health care community to compete on quality, value, and cost payment should not simply be for the volume of care provided, but instead for the quality of the care provided. The Medicare Quality Enhancement Act takes important steps to provide health care consumers with the information they need to make educated decisions about health care; information they already have to make decisions on nearly every other product they purchase in the marketplace. It requires that information paid for by the taxpayer and held by Medicare is fully available to improve our health care system. The public will then finally have the tools necessary to make informed health care decisions for themselves and their families. This bill has the support of groups that represent consumers, providers, employers and insurers. I hope my colleagues will see the merit of this legislation and that it will be considered before we adjourn this year.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate the Senator from Maine, the Senator from Alaska, the Senator from Iowa, and the ranking members of those committees--Finance, Commerce, and Homeland Security-- for bringing forward this extremely important piece of legislation relative to port security. It has a lot of the initiatives in it that are necessary to be sure we move forward with a legal framework which will allow us to secure our ports. But I did want to make these points about what we have already done and what we are doing, even though we may not have had the actual authorization language in place, because I think people listening to this debate may presume: Well, because they are actually debating this language, maybe nothing has been done on this point or on that point which has been raised, such as monitoring, such as Coast Guard enhancement, such as expanding the number of Customs officers. Nothing could be further from what is actually occurring on the ground. We have moved forward. Granted, we haven't done it under the context of authorization language; we have done it through the appropriations process. But we have moved forward very aggressively with the funding of port security as a Congress and as an administration. The Senate specifically has taken the leadership in this area. When the Homeland Security appropriations bill was on the floor under the authorship of Senator Byrd from West Virginia, we increased port security funding, which is already fairly significant within the Homeland Security appropriations bill; we increased it by over $600 million specifically for port security initiatives. As a result, that additional funding, coupled with the funding which was already in place and which has been growing over the last few years, represented a very strong commitment to trying to upgrade our ports because we all recognize--there is no subtlety to this--the ports are a significant point of vulnerability for our Nation. Just to put this in context, if we are able to pass the Homeland Security appropriations bill as it passed the Senate--and I suspect we will be fairly close to those numbers as a result of the support we have received from Senator Cochran and from the leadership of both the House and the Senate in giving us the allocation plus some additional funds for emergencies to accomplish the type of funding initiatives we need--we will add 460 new Customs and Border Patrol agents purely for the purpose of port security. That is on top of the agents we already have, which number in the hundreds. We will add over $211 million for nonintrusive inspection equipment. We will add $139 million for container security initiatives, $60 million for Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, and $27 million for the automatic targeting system. We have also committed massive amounts of dollars to the Coast Guard and to enhancing the Coast Guard's capability because they truly are the front line of port security. Our goal in the area of port security is not to wait for the ship to arrive in an American port before we actually know what is on it and before we have a chance to inspect it but to inspect that cargo before it even leaves the docks of the foreign nation that may be shipping it to us and to be sure we have the capability under any scenario to intercept a ship should we deem it to have suspicious cargo while it is at sea. In order to accomplish that, we have committed over $7.5 billion to the Coast Guard for border security. Of that, approximately $4 billion was specifically for port security, and about $2.1 billion of that was for an improvement of what is called their deepwater assets, which is really a misnomer. In my opinion, it should be called the inland water assets because essentially these new facilities, these new boats and aircraft are going to allow us to make sure our ports are more secure. The Coast Guard inspection effort was increased by $23 million for security assessment of foreign and domestic ports. That will allow the Coast Guard to pursue very aggressive unscheduled inspections of both foreign and domestic ports to see what their standards are. We have committed $10 million to set up two new interagency operation centers on top of the three operation centers we have already, which are port-oriented operation centers, which are very important to make sure we have a coordinated effort around especially our major ports in this country. We have $10 million of Coast Guard funding to do port security exercises. This is critical. We can't really plan effectively in a vacuum. We have to actually send out an exercise where we create an event which is artificial but which is treated as if it is real and have the Coast Guard and the various agencies engaged in the process of making sure they can respond to that event. We have added $786 million for the purposes of upgrading the cutter program and $50 million for the fast-response cutter program. Over 12 of the medium-endurance cutters are going to be dramatically upgraded, and we are purchasing 5 patrol boats and 16 medium-response patrol boats. This is a lot of new hardware which will be put in the hands of the Coast Guard. On top of that, in the aircraft area, we are adding two major new patrol aircraft. We will have had 71 helicopters, as a result of this bill, armed, which is a major step forward. We only have I think two or three--maybe five helicopters armed today. Interestingly enough--and this is a little aside, a little vignette-- the Coast Guard has determined that they have 100 percent interdiction when they try to stop a boat with an armed helicopter versus a much lower interdiction rate when they try to stop a boat with an unarmed helicopter. We have extended the life of 18 of the helicopters--I am sorry--18 of the HC-130 planes, we have reengined the entire helicopter fleet, and we have dramatically expanded the mission capability of the HC-130J airplanes. So the Coast Guard has been given a robust infusion of funds for on- the-ground capability in port security and out-in-the-port capability for port security. In addition, in the appropriations bill which passed the Senate 100 to nothing, there was a $210 million commitment to support security grants, which was a significant increase. There was a $178 million commitment for the purchase of radiation portal monitors, which are obviously key to determining the major threat, which is the threat of a potential dirty weapon being brought into the United States through a port or a cargo vessel. So if you look at the authorization language in this bill relative to funds which this bill calls for in order to meet what are the needs of the ports, we have actually passed as an appropriation in the appropriations process essentially almost all the money. It is nice to have it authorized, but essentially what we have already done is appropriated. The only major difference would be in the port security grants, and even there we have made a very significant downpayment as a percentage of what this bill calls for. So there has been a strong commitment made already in the area of appropriating funds in order to make sure our ports are more secure. I did want to make that clear so that people watching this debate, as important as the debate is, would realize we haven't been waiting for the language to be brought forward. It is important language. It is critical language to do the job right. But we as a Congress, and the administration, have been moving forward to make sure that Homeland Security and especially the Coast Guard and those people who are responsible for making the decisions as to how we inspect, and the Customs and Border Patrol departments, have the resources they need in order to effectively begin to secure our ports. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Maine is going to proceed with an amendment, but I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of her proceedings for the amendment, I be recognized to speak on the pending legislation.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have listened to the Senator from Massachusetts speaking. In many ways, I find it a bit disingenuous. I had planned to speak specifically about other points relative to this resolution. I think it is appropriate to respond to some of what he has said. Of course, he is the former standard bearer of the party in the prior election and, therefore, a voice of considerable import on policy in this Nation relative to the position of the Democratic Party. The Senator gave a litany of what he deemed to be errors--some of which I agree were errors--that have occurred relative to the way we have pursued this battle in Iraq. It is a litany as if he is a Monday morning quarterback and had the answer now to what would have been the correct process. It sort of makes you think that if he were giving a discussion about the Red Sox, he would not have put Bill Buckner at first. He would not have picked Bucky Dent. He would have given Carlton Fisk his contract. Or he would not have traded Babe Ruth. When you come to the Senate floor and pick out a series of events as unique items that flowed within the context of a major effort to confront the terrorist threat to this Nation--he uses the term ``hubris'' and mismanagement. I would say it is a bit of hubris to take that position on the Senate floor. The Senator failed to mention, for example, that as a result of the initiatives of this administration, led by this President and this Secretary of Defense, over 50 million people today are free who were not free; that women in Afghanistan are no longer closeted in their homes and threatened with death if they wear the wrong garment on the street, or shot in soccer stadiums in Afghanistan, but women have the right to move about as they wish; that there have been elections in Afghanistan that have brought to power a democratic government, which is under pressure today, yes, because of those forces that represent our enemies, and our enemies seek to undermine that democracy. He failed to mention that Iraq, which has suffered for 20 years from a genocide executed by a homicidal leadership, is now free and that the people of Iraq no longer have to fear mass murder of the proportions that occurred under Saddam Hussein; that a government that was and had produced chemical weapons and used them against their own people-- specifically the Kurds--was no longer in power; that we have had a series of democratic actions in Iraq that have led to a freely elected government, which involves a coalition of very disparate groups-- Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and subdivisions within those various clans of political purpose; that that government is moving forward, and that it has stood up an army that is a responsible army, not one of threat to its people but an army of defense of its people. And it is in the process of taking responsibility or defending those people from forces in that nation who wish to return to chaos, to genocide, and to a government that is lawless in the name of fanaticism. He failed to mention any of that as the results of the efforts of this administration. Those are pretty big things. Instead, he picks out the little events--fairly big in some instances--of error. Yes, there have been some errors, and nobody denies that for a second. But the purpose is to defeat our enemies, and we have set as a goal in that process setting up a government in the nation of Iraq that will speak to the basic values that are fundamentally western--individual liberty, democracy, rights for women, and a marketplace economy. And we have had considerable success in that effort. We are not there yet, and we do not know if we will accomplish the final goal because, obviously, there are forces at work who do not wish to have us accomplish that goal. But to dismiss this as a failure and to point to a series of incidents as an example of failure and never acknowledge the 50 million free people, the fact that an entire half of the population that had been written out of the ability to participate in civilized life-- specifically women--are now brought into the process of having a decent lifestyle, the fact that we have had elections, the fact that we have an army in place that is their army, the fact that we are moving toward a nation based on democracy and law--we have a long way to go, but we are moving that way--to dismiss that and say that because of a series of errors, which he deems to be errors--and in some instances I agree-- we should call for the removal of the Secretary of Defense because of those events is just ignoring reality. In fact, he used the terms on innumerable instances, saying he did not want to see a partisan fight; he thought the Secretary of Defense should be above politics. So how can you then come to the floor of the Senate and make the speech that was just made? It was ``overtly political,'' to use his term, which was for the purpose of exuding a political strategy that if you attack the Secretary of Defense, you weaken the Presidency and will do better in the election. It was, to use his term, ``a viciously partisan attack.'' There is inconsistency which cannot go uncalled. So let me point it out. This proposal is not an attack on Donald Rumsfeld. That is not the purpose of this attack. That is the politics of this attack. It generates a good press release, and it is a sound bite event to call for the Secretary of Defense to resign. But that is not what this is about. We all know that. This is about the policy of fighting people who have determined that America should be extinguished from the face of the Earth, that Americans should be killed and our culture should be destroyed, and whether our efforts in Iraq are a legitimate part of that defense as we confront that threat. It is the position of the other side, it appears, that Iraq is not part of the battle or essential to the battle against Islamic fascism, Islamic fundamentalism. I find that position to be untenable. That is hardly the position taken by our enemies. The words of Zarqawi and the words of bin Laden have been very specific: Iraq is where they see the war being waged. Their purpose is to use Iraq as a bootstrap to pursue their goals of basically undermining and destroying western culture and killing Americans. You need to believe their words. If your enemy tells you what they are going to do, and your enemy then does what they tell you they are going to do, you have to start taking them seriously when he tells you something else. And when Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi say Iraq is where the war is being fought, where the effort to pursue Islamic fundamentalism is being pursued and aggressively undertaken, then you have to take that seriously. But it appears that the other side believes that Iraq is a distraction to our efforts. Well, the track record doesn't show that. Have we been attacked in the United States since 9/11? The reason we have not been attacked, in some measure, is good luck, good fortune, but it is also the fact that this administration has put into place an aggressive effort to fight terrorism not in America--Islamic fundamentalism and fascism--not on our soil but to take the fight to their soil and to meet them where they are. That policy appears to be working. We can't take great solace, obviously, because who knows when they will attack us again and when they will breach our capacity to be secure. I don't claim that we are anywhere near secure. In fact, I made it very clear that I have serious reservations about things we still need to do to make ourselves secure. But the fact is that the concept, the basic philosophy of pursuing the terrorists, the Islamic fundamentalists, the Islamic fascist movement, on their territory versus waiting for them to attack us and hoping to get them through our intelligence capability before they do that is a policy which is the correct policy. Yet the other side of the aisle has had enough of it. They have had enough of it. So they want to use the stalking horse of attacking the Secretary of Defense as a process for basically undermining the policies and efforts which have led us at least to this point to some level of security as a nation. They don't appear, from what I have heard here so far, to really even have an offer of an alternative that is specific enough that it could be said to be a real alternative. A letter was sent to the President outlining their alternative. They outlined four initiatives in this alternative. Three of them we are already pursuing and pursuing aggressively. The response from the administration was put in the Record earlier today by the Senator from Arizona. The diplomatic process is going forward. I heard the Senator from Massachusetts talk extensively about the diplomatic need, that this should be resolved diplomatically, and I believe his words were that there is no military solution, there is only a diplomatic solution. I only point out the obvious: You can't get to a diplomatic solution without having a military on the ground that makes things stable enough so that diplomacy can go forward. If you withdraw the military, you have chaos, and there is no diplomacy that is going to straighten that out. So that argument is a little disingenuous, to say the least. Sure, there isn't a military solution in the sense that this is a war involving nationhood, nation against nation in the tradition of the wars of the 20th century, but there are military actions that can be taken and need to be taken which involve finding those people who wish to do us harm and eliminating them before they can do us harm. And a big part of that involves the intelligence and the on-the-ground capability which we gain by being in Iraq and having an influence in that nation which is leading toward a form of democracy. Another big part of that which is again military based is allowing Iraq to evolve to the point where it can actually show the rest of the Islamic world that democracy is not an enemy, that democracy gives people good options; that giving people rights, especially women, is not bad for them but actually is good for them; that a culture which is open, which is market oriented, which has a reasonable level of freedom, is a better way of life than a culture which is closed and which denies people the rights to participate other than through some sort of extremist control, such as the Taliban had. It becomes a beacon of opportunity to look to. We are not there yet, but we are never going to get there if we don't make the effort. So if we look at their proposals--and, as I said, three of them have already been met. What is the fourth one? The fourth one is to begin what they refer to as--I will quote this. This is actually not their fourth one, it is their second one--although the other three have been met--in their letter to the President: . . . beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year. This year. The Senator from Massachusetts kept saying a year from now to begin the redeployment. Their position is not a year from now; their position is this year to begin redeployment. What does this term ``phased redeployment'' mean? I wonder how many focus groups they ran that one through before they decided to use that terminology, ``phased redeployment.'' I will tell you what it means. It is a phrase, the purpose of which is to give political cover to those who wish to stand in opposition to the administration relative to what is happening in the war against the Islamic fascists. In practice, were it ever to be executed--in other words, if you were actually to start pulling down troops before the end of this year--you would have set an arbitrary date and you would start removing American troops. What would happen to the troops left there? We all know Iraq is not yet ready to defend itself. Would that not put at even greater risk American soldiers left on the ground? How could you look the people in the face who are in the divisions and who are in the brigades who have been left behind as you started to pull people out prematurely and said: Oh, good luck, you are now a bigger target because we aren't there to give you the cover you need. Phased redeployment before the end of this year, arbitrary date set for the purposes of making a political statement as we head into an election--it is not very good policy, to say the least, even if it is policy. It isn't policy. It is just politics, a political statement. With whom are they going to replace Donald Rumsfeld? Howard Dean? Ned Lamont? I mean, these are the standard bearers of the position of their party. They want to take out Donald Rumsfeld and I presume they want to put in Howard Dean and Ned Lamont, two people whose purpose it is to speak for the party--one being the chairman of the party, one being the most recent standard bearer of the party--to immediately withdraw, to take our troops out of there now and to let happen what happens. I am not going to use the pejorative to describe that. I think the American people are sophisticated enough to recognize that policy makes no sense. Howard Dean as Secretary of Defense? Maybe we should amend this and say ``and we shall replace him with Howard Dean.'' Howard Dean was a pretty good Governor from Vermont. I enjoyed working with him when I was Governor of New Hampshire. He wouldn't be a very good person in the Defense Department. He is not a very good person on foreign policy, and he clearly does not understand the threat, in my opinion, that the Islamic fundamentalists reflect. The Howard Dean-Ned Lamont policy is a policy based on naivete. It is a policy that rejects the reality of the situation, which is there are people out there who wish to kill us and destroy our culture, and there are a lot of them, unfortunately. They feed off weakness, and they believe we are weak and will believe we are truly weak and will be able to make that case should we begin a phased withdrawal this year when we have no military capability of covering that withdrawal and protecting our troops who are left behind. It is a policy that is firmly grounded in Birkenstocks and clearly not grounded in the reality of the world as it is but the world as they wish it were. We have a truly extraordinary military. I recognize everybody on both sides of the aisle understands that. There isn't a Member in this Chamber who hasn't been to a funeral and tried to console a member of a family of someone who has been lost in this war, in this battle. These are exceptional people who defend us and who carry forward our flag. They need to understand that their purpose is good and their purpose is right. And it is. Their cause is to find the people who wish to do America harm and who have said they intend to do America harm and to eliminate them before they can attack us and do us further harm. Iraq is an integral part of that cause. Have there been mistakes there? Absolutely. Absolutely. It is terribly unfortunate, and we all recognize that. But have there been successes there and very significant successes there? Yes, there have been. As I said before, 50 million people, between Iraq and Afghanistan, are now free, women brought from behind the closeted doors of their houses into society, press availability, elections, governments formed, security forces who report to a government. We have a long way to go, but these soldiers have served extraordinarily well, and they have accomplished a great deal. To use this attack on Donald Rumsfeld as a stalking horse as an attack on the policies of Iraq I don't believe does anybody any good. If the other side of the aisle wishes to debate the Iraq issue in context of the policy, fine, but to personalize this in such a manner-- to quote the Senator from Massachusetts--is viciously partisan and overtly political and is not constructive to our ability to pursue this war or to our need to assure our soldiers in the field that they fight for our right and just cause. Under the leadership of this President and the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Rumsfeld, the military has received the largest increases in resources since World War II. We have taken an approach to the military which has been to essentially get them whatever they need to do the job and do it right and make sure our soldiers are safe. Errors have been made along the way in accomplishing that, but the attention and the commitment to resources have been there, and this President and this Secretary of Defense take a second seat to no one in our history relative to their commitment to the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under Section 308(b) and in aid of Section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of Section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the 2006 budget through August 4, 2006. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2006 Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, H. Con. Res. 95. Pursuant to section 402 of that resolution, provisions designated as emergency requirements are exempt from enforcement of the budget resolution. As a result, the attached report excludes these amounts. The estimates show that current level spending is under the budget resolution by $11.869 billion in budget authority and by $4.030 billion in outlays in 2006. Current level for revenues is $6.590 billion above the budget resolution in 2006. Since my last report dated July 11, 2006, Congress has cleared and the President has signed the following acts which have changed budget authority, outlays, or revenues for 2006: the Returned Americans Protection Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-250) and an act to provide funding to facilitate the evacuation of persons from Lebanon (P.L. 109-268). In addition, the scoring for the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 was added to the report. I ask unanimous consent to print the following information in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I would like to ask the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, to clarify provisions of H.R. 4 that address the payment of lump sums from hybrid pension plans. My first question relates to a clarification of the effective date of those provisions. As you are aware, under the so-called whipsaw method of calculating lump sums, younger workers would receive much larger lump sums than identically situated older workers. This result is one that Congress never intended. Furthermore, the practical effect of the whipsaw calculation would be to reduce benefits for all participants, young and old, in cash balance plans. Therefore, the intent of the whipsaw provisions is to put this issue to rest. Accordingly, the provisions are effective for distributions made after the date of enactment, regardless of why they are made.

Mr. GREGG. My second question relates to the definition of ``market rate of return'' in the whipsaw provisions. My understanding is that the term ``market rate of return'' is intended to allow plans to adjust benefits in ways that benefit participants. For example, a plan could provide a variable market rate of return and, in addition, protect participants by preventing the rate of return in their accounts from falling below a reasonable, minimum level without having to reduce the variable market rate of return. My further understanding is that the term ``market rate of return'' is intended to include a fixed rate of interest that is no greater than the yield on long-term, investment- grade corporate bonds at any time during a reasonable period before the rate is first applied under the plan; is this correct?

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wanted to speak briefly about the status of the budget relative to defense spending, really more for the purpose of information for my colleagues, because we are getting into a process where there is tremendous confusion over how much we are spending and where it is coming from and how it is being spent as a function of what has been the administration's view that they can fund this war out of emergency supplementals ad infinitum. Traditionally when you fund a war such as this--I guess there isn't much tradition, and hopefully it won't be a tradition for war. But if you look back over the wars we have fought as a nation that have gone on for a while, they have usually started out with significant commitments of emergency funds. There is no question about that. It is essential to get the troops in the field and get them what they need. Over time, in both the Korean war and the Vietnam war, which are probably the best examples to look to, the operation and funding of the war has been folded into the regular order where the authorizations have gone through the Defense Department, have gone through the Defense authorization committee and on to the Appropriations Committee, and there has been some significant congressional oversight. In the Korean war, 77 percent of the cost of that war was funded through the regular budget. In the Vietnam war, about 72 percent was funded through the regular budget. This war we are confronted with now is as big and as significant a threat as we have ever faced because of the fact that, regrettably, the people who wish to do us harm have shown their willingness to kill Americans. They have stated their purpose is to destroy our culture. They have said that if they can get their hands on a weapon that will kill thousands of people, they will use it against civilian populations, and they have shown their willingness to kill civilians, Americans on American soil. So this is a war that must be fought aggressively. I congratulate the President for the aggressiveness with which he has gone after terrorists around the globe and the fact that he has taken the fight to them. I have supported that effort. But I also remain concerned that we, as a Congress, have a role here, which we have to some degree abrogated, and that is the role of oversight as this effort goes forward--maybe not so much in the day-to-day operation of the war, which should be left to the generals and the people on the ground, the officers and men and women fighting this war, but to the issue of how the Defense Department structures its core purposes in the context of being in a war. In fact, for the first couple of years of this effort, when supplementals were coming up--and they came up at the rate of $50 billion, $60 billion--there appeared to be an almost physical disconnect between the dollars being used on the war-fighting effort and the dollars being used for the core purposes of national defense. One could ask the question: Was the core purpose of the Defense Department, which was costing in the vicinity of $300 billion to $400 billion at the time, 2 or 3 years ago-- was a large percentage of that being used to fight the war or was a large percentage being used to maintain traditional operations within the Defense Department? It appeared that the two were decoupled in many ways. What evolved is a process where, essentially, we have a core defense budget, on which we have overlaid an entirely separate appropriations process and budget, called emergency appropriations. We have now had 4 years of experience, and we are averaging about $90 billion a year of emergency appropriations that are outside of the basic budget process and which are being spent on the war-fighting effort. For the first 2 years of this effort, the Defense Department refused to send up any number at all relative to what this would cost. That didn't make a lot of sense because we knew we were going to have to pay something with soldiers in the field. At the urging of the Congress 2 years ago, we put into place a $50 billion--for lack of a better term--``holding'' number to try to cover and identify what that cost was going to be in the context of the entire budget. The Defense Department still at that time took the position that it had no number for that, so $50 billion didn't need to be put in. It turned out that they exceeded the $50 billion by about $40 billion. Last year, because we put in $50 billion before, the administration sent up the base defense budget of about $400 billion and put $50 billion in because, as it was represented by the Assistant Secretary of Defense before the Budget Committee, because he said the Congress had done it the year before, he could not estimate whether that would be the cost of the war. They put that in because Congress had already done that, so they were trying to track what Congress did. This didn't make a lot of budgetary sense again, so we put in the budget what had been the average for this supplemental effort to fight the war, which was $90 billion. The new Budget Director--and I give him great credit, and I appreciate the fact that he has convinced people at the Pentagon to go along with this--stated very openly that now the supplemental that they expect in the next budget cycle will be somewhere in the vicinity of $110 billion to $120 billion, which is at least a number we can work on, a number that has been put forward and appears to be realistic. I guess the point is this: Where do we stand with all these numbers floating around? Do we have any control over this? Is this a lot of operational activity that is being basically sloughed off on the emergency accounts so that we end up with the core budget of the Defense Department not being correctly reflected and authorized, and, of course, that account clearly isn't authorized relative to war fighting and is difficult to reflect. I tried to put this together. This chart reflects the situation as I see it and the Budget Committee sees it. I put these numbers out so people can get a sense of where we are going and what we are spending because this is becoming a fairly significant item of the Federal activity and is obviously critical to our capacity to fight this war and be successful. Since 2001, we have had this core budget of the Defense Department which, as you can see, rose from $297 billion in 2001, where the Defense Department had been radically cut back by the Clinton administration and was suffering underfunding. Ironically, I would call in the last year and a half of the Clinton Presidency--he acknowledged publicly that he disproportionately cut the Defense Department and was starting to retool it and refund it. The core budget has gone from $297 billion--which was a low number, below what they needed--up to $430 billion. That includes the appropriations for the Defense bill and for military construction. The supplementals in the postwar period, as we dealt with the Iraq situation and Afghanistan situation, are the red numbers. They have gone from $79 billion to $88 billion, to $79 billion, and last year--or the year we are presently in, it is estimated to be $125 billion. Now we are looking at 2007. This is a number that I think needs to be at least publicly stated so we know what is happening around here. We have the core budget of $430 billion. On top of that, we have a supplemental within this bill-- before the 2007 is even passed and the year has even begun, this is a supplemental within the bill of $42 billion to basically fight the war. Then $8 billion came out of money, which last year there was an across- the-board cut in spending generating about a $9 billion savings--more than that, but of that across-the-board cut, about $9 billion was not spent. That came down to about $8 billion being available. And it is now transferred over to this Defense bill. It could have gone to the Defense bill or the HHS bill, whatever bill came to the floor, or it could have been applied to deficit reduction. On top of that, last night there was a $13 billion add-on to this bill in emergency spending to basically refund the Army and the Marines, who are in desperate shape in the area of equipment due to the harsh climate of Iraq, and this money was critical. And then the President's representative, Mr. Portman--and I congratulate him--has said the full cost of this year's emergency supplementals will be about $110 billion. So we can presume that we are going to get at least another $60 billion in emergency supplemental as we head into 2007 and, regrettably, I suspect that will be conservative. It means we are going to essentially have a $553 billion budget in the defense area, even though you could argue that the stated budget is $430 billion in the defense area. These are just numbers and they are facts. I think it is important we understand what is happening. I guess the bottom line of all this is we have set up a two-track process of budgeting and spending around here. One is subject to the proper review process, which is the authorizing process followed by the appropriating process. That is the $430 billion. And the other part in here essentially has no controls and comes at us from the White House and the administration, where they unilaterally make the decision as to the dollars. I don't think that is healthy. There is no question that the Defense Department probably needs this money. But the purpose of the Congress should be in oversight of the use of the money. So I am hopeful, because it appears that this process of these large supplementals has become the modus operandi for both the administration and the Congress. We should take a hard look at this. We need to consider the fact that maybe there is a better way to do this, where Congress can intersect a little earlier on how we are going to spend this money, so that we put the same review into this money that we are putting into the base budget, so we can be sure that the money going to the emergencies of fighting the war--and it is critical that our soldiers have what they need in the field--is not being used actually for the purpose of replacing core defense opportunities or defense needs and, thus, being a way around congressional scrutiny of core defense obligations. There are a lot of weapons systems being purchased which have outyear procurement issues. I heard the second ranking member of the Defense Committee say that of the nine major systems--I think he said seven systems were in issue as to how much they were costing and whether they would be delivered on time. If you are going to properly oversight that, you want to make sure that those dollars are not suddenly flowing through the emergency process and thus not being subject to review. So we have a problem as a Congress, as to how we deal with the reality of having troops on the ground who have to get support from us--and no one here would not support them--but at the same time have a defense budget and an actual budget process that is fundamentally broken relative to our capacity to oversight these dollars as they are coming up and being requested. I don't have the answer, to be very honest with you. But I am trying to outline the issue so that people are aware of it. I honestly don't think there are probably five people in the Senate who understand this number. What we are dealing with is not a defense number of $430 billion, not a defense number of that plus the $42 billion supplemental in it or plus the $8 billion or plus the $13 billion. It is a defense number of somewhere around $553 billion and going up. It may be, and probably is, money we are going to have to spend. I suspect I will vote for all of it. But I would like to have more confidence than I have right now that we have not set up a two-track budget process, where we essentially focus on one set of numbers and allow another set of numbers to pass through here as if they are going through in the night on some shadowy boat.

Mr. GREGG. Yes.