Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Michigan for her very eloquent and very timely statement on what just happened in the House. I guess it just transpired a little while ago. I think probably all of us were hoping that somehow the Members of the other body would come to realize this had broad support across the country-- the SCHIP bill--and the fact that the $35 billion we had in there over 5 years was something that is sorely needed. I think we were all hoping this would pass. So when I just heard the Senator from Michigan say it failed by only getting 273 votes--we need 290 in the House to override a veto--that is a shame because it is obvious that we here in the Senate have the votes to override a veto. So what can I say? Seventeen people prevented this from becoming law and from providing the health care our children need in this country-- children of working parents. Mostly these are people who are a working parent or parents, they are contributing to society, they are taxpaying individuals, but they simply don't have enough money to buy the kind of health insurance they need to cover their kids. So this really is a slap in the face to the middle class in America, the middle-class people who are struggling to make ends meet and trying to provide a good education for their kids, maybe trying to put something away for a rainy day or for retirement, and they just don't have the money for health insurance. The Senator from Michigan is so right. I don't mind if the President is opposed to this, but I think he has an obligation to speak truthfully to the American people. When he came out yesterday--I think it was just yesterday I heard this--he said: Well, it would cover kids with families earning up to $83,000 a year. Well, that is just simply not factually true. It would be if he signed it--I mean, it is up to the President to approve or not approve those. So is he saying that if the bill went through, he would approve it? That doesn't make sense. So that was disingenuous on his part. Also, as the Senator from Michigan pointed out, that somehow this would cover immigrant children, that is absolutely forbidden in the bill. So I thank the Senator from Michigan for her long efforts in this regard as a member of the Finance Committee, as well as the occupant of the chair, who I know is a member of the Finance Committee and who also has worked very hard to reach a compromise, a bipartisan agreement on this bill to send it to the President. All I can say is, when people ask me now what are we going to do, well, what we are going to do is we are going to try to do something to move this forward. We can't just sit back and say that because of 17 people we can't move ahead. So I think most of us who feel very strongly about the Children's Health Insurance Program are going to do everything we can between now and the time we adjourn to get this back up and try to get it to the President, and hopefully by then there will be enough momentum behind it that he will sign it. But I don't think we should just sit back and let it linger. So I thank the Senator from Michigan for all of her strong support for the SCHIP bill. Amendment No. 3362 Mr. President, turning back now to this bill in front of us, the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Byrd, had offered an amendment on MSHA, the Mine Safety Health Administration, to provide an additional $10 million for that. It was fully offset by a reduction of $10 million in travel expenses for the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that amendment. Our subcommittee held two hearings on MSHA this year. What we learned is they still don't have two-way communication and tracking technology that would operate after an accident in an underground coal mine. Other countries seem to do quite well in that--Poland, Australia--other countries seem to be able to do that, but we can't. MSHA has been dragging its feet on this for a long time. Our inspector force has been growing over the last couple of years, again thanks to Senator Byrd, who in the 2006 supplemental put in $25 million to train and to equip the inspectors. But even with that, MSHA still is not capable of conducting 100 percent of the inspections in our Nation's coal mines. That 100 percent is required. That is a requirement. Yet they still can't do it. This is something I think is sorely needed. I support it, and I hope the Senate will adopt the Byrd amendment to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Amendment No. 3368

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the first amendment will be my amendment, and I have not asked for the yeas and nays as yet, so I now ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Specter, and Senator Kennedy. We have seen, in the last 24 hours or so, horrific stories come out about this new bacteria that is invulnerable to our first line of antibiotics. It is a dangerous germ and it is spreading all over the country. There was a story in the paper this morning about cases nearby here. A teenager died recently in Bedford County, VA, because of methicillin- resistant staphylococcus, or MRSA. As of yesterday, Montgomery County schools had 14 cases, Anne Arundel County had 1 reported MRSA infection. They have received 57 reports from parents about other possible cases. Two cases have been confirmed at Wild Lake High School in Howard County. So something is going on. Some of these schools are trying to clean up. We have one here, where the Rappahannock County School System finished a comprehensive cleaning of its two campuses, and the cost was more than $10,000. That is one cost. The cost in human life and suffering is growing. We all are very concerned--and rightfully so--about the number of people losing their lives to the AIDS virus every year. But the fact is more people are dying because of this staphylococcus than they are of AIDS. MRSA was calculated with striking 31.8 out of 100,000 Americans, which translates into 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide a year. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans last year. So what is happening is that this microbe is spreading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have calculated about 19,000 deaths a year. So, again, it seems to me we need to pay some attention to this and we need to respond to it as rapidly as possible. This amendment basically says they shall spend a minimum of $5 million--take $5 million out now to focus on identifying and containing and trying to hold down the spread of this terrible bacteria. It is not a virus, it is a bacteria. So, again, Senator Specter, Kennedy, and I wanted to introduce this to let the public know we are trying to get on top of it. Hopefully, we will have hearings with the CDC soon to find out what they are doing. This amendment would increase activities in hospitals and other health care settings, aimed at preventing the spread of this deadly bacteria. So I will leave it there. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point an article that appeared today on Washingtonpost.com regarding this MRSA.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, for the knowledge of other Senators, we are trying to reach an agreement to get to a series of votes. We don't quite have it yet, but hopefully in the next few minutes we will agree to have a series of votes starting fairly soon. With that, I see my friend, the distinguished Senator from New Jersey on the floor. I yield the floor at this time.

Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry: Would the Chair state the question before the Senate right now?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we have not disposed of amendment No. 3340, if I am correct.

Mr. HARKIN. We have looked at 3340. I don't know that it needs an up- or-down vote. We can accept it. I understand Senator Specter will accept it, also, so it is accepted on both sides.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we have in our bill a provision for a Howard Baker Center at the University of Tennessee. I haven't heard the Senator from South Carolina want to go strike the Howard Baker Center. That is in this bill. A couple years ago, we had the provision for the Dole Center at the University of Kansas. I don't remember the Senator objecting to that. This is nothing unusual. This happens all the time. It is up to the university to decide whether they want to name them; it is not up to us.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I believe we are ready for the Dole amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I would like to respond to some of the points made by the Senator from Alabama. First of all, I want to make it clear that I do not know of any Senator on either side of the aisle who is not in favor of going after either fraud, waste and abuse, or any kind of criminal activities--whether it is done in the business community, by corporations, or whether it is done in labor unions. Really, the question is, how do you do it? What is the best way of doing it? Are we getting a good return on the dollar, so to speak, for what we are investing in? I thought we might take a look and see what has been happening in this whole area in the Department of Labor over the past few years, where their focus has been and where it has not been, and what the priorities are. You can tell a lot about someone's priorities by how they spend their money. The bill before us provides some modest increase in work protections agencies--OSHA, MSHA, Wage and Hour Division. We also provide for the OLMS--that is the office the Senator from Alabama has been talking about, Office of Labor Management Standards--$45.7 million. That is not chicken feed. I will talk more about that in a bit. But I want to point to some charts to show where we are, to put it in better perspective. Right now at the Department of Labor, for OSHA-- that is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These are the people who go out and make sure your workplaces are safe, that you are not exposed to toxic chemicals, things that cause cancer, or unsafe workplaces where you wind up losing a limb, an arm, a hand, or where you are exposed to different things that may injure your lungs, whether it is asbestos inhalation or any kind of toxic chemicals that may have long-term profound effects. This is OSHA. What does the administration spend on OSHA? They spend $26 per workplace. The Wage and Hour Division is the people who go out and make sure you are actually being paid what you say you should be paid, that you are getting overtime pay, that the company is abiding by the wage and hour provisions of the contract, for example, that the union may have signed. So in Wage and Hour, they are spending $26 per workplace. Under Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Labor is spending about $26 per workplace--about the same. What are they spending at the Office of Labor Management Standards? It is $2,707 per union; $26 per workplace for OSHA, 100 times more for OLMS than they are spending on OSHA investigating where people get injured, damaged, maimed for life due to unsafe working conditions. There it is, 100 times more for OLMS. Yet they say it is not enough money. They need more. Let's see what that means. OLMS--more staff. More staff and fewer results. I was listening to the Senator from Alabama. It would be one thing if, over these years they were spending more money and hiring more staff, they actually got more convictions and that stuff. That is not so. In 2003, there were 297 people working for OLMS. In 2006, that had increased to 384, almost a 40-percent increase, maybe, or 50-percent increase? Anyway, almost 100 people more, 297 to 384. What happened to the number of indictments? The number of indictments in 2003 was 132; the number in 2006 was 118. They have 100 more people, but the number of indictments goes down. Look at the convictions. We saw the chart. In 2003, we had 152 convictions; in 2006, 129. So we have a lot more people working there. We are spending more money on personnel, and we are getting fewer indictments and fewer convictions. The budget, at that same time, went from $34.3 million to $45.7 million, which is where we are. They put on more people, but they got fewer indictments and fewer convictions. Now with the Sessions amendment, they want to go to $50.7 million--I guess to hire more people so we can get fewer indictments and fewer convictions. This really tells the story. What is happening is, they are loading up OLMS with featherbedding. That is classic. They put more and more people on, and they are doing less and less work. When I see a trendline like that, I say: You don't chase bad money with good. We put all that money in there, and it looks as though what we are doing is hiring a bunch of people who are sitting around, not doing very much. Let's look at labor staffing. I mentioned before--this is the same figure you saw in the previous chart, OLMS went from 297 to 384, a 29- percent increase. How about OSHA? What happened to Occupational Safety and Health? It went from 1,683 down to 1,542. They got rid of people to do inspections. And MSHA, coal mine safety, went down from 2,299 to 2,136. So while OLMS went up, OSHA and MSHA, Mine Safety Health Administration, actually cut personnel. What does that mean? This next chart shows what it means. Unlike OLMS, where more staff means fewer results, the cutbacks of OSHA and MSHA means less work gets done. This chart demonstrates what has happened over the last several years in President Bush's budget. OSHA inspections, right here, from 2003 to 2006, dropped from 39,884 to 38,589, so we get fewer OSHA inspections and fewer workers are being protected as a result. Then, the number of employees benefiting from OSHA inspections fell from 1.6 million to 1.2 million. I don't have that number on this chart. Look at mine safety. Right now, MSHA is unable to do all the inspections that they are required to do by law. What has happened here? Under mine safety, the staff went from 2,299 to 2,136. The number of inspections they were able to complete went from 98.8 percent to 95.1 percent, which is where we are today. They cannot even inspect all of the mines. Need I remind anyone here of the recent mine disaster in Utah, the mine disasters in West Virginia and Virginia, Pennsylvania. Miners continue to lose their lives every year in coal mines and other mine disasters, and yet in MSHA, we do not even have enough people there to do the inspections. I think these charts show you what is happening over there. I think that $45.7 million is more than enough for them to do their job. There it is. It went from 297 to 384 people. Yet the number of indictments and convictions went down. The budget went from $34 to $45 million. Now they want to go to $50 million. Well, something is not right here. Something is not right. It sounds as if they are hiring more and more people, but I do not know what they are doing. There is one other thing I want to respond to that Senator Sessions brought up. I think if I remember it right--I will have to check the Record, but I thought he said something about 26 percent of the reports were not standard, were not acceptable, did not meet standards of acceptability. Well, you can go right to the White House, online, go to the Office of Labor Management Standards. It has got program performance measures. It says here: Measure. Increasing union transparency. Increase the percentage of union reports meeting standards of acceptability for public disclosure. Here is what it says: Explanation. The principle objective of this performance goal is to increase the percentage of union reports meeting standards of acceptability for public disclosure. Prior to implementation of electronic reporting formats, only 73 percent of union reports filed met standards of the acceptability. Expanded use of electronic report formats is significantly improving the sufficiency of reports for public disclosure. Here it is. In 2003, 73 percent, that is what I mentioned. I think that is where Senator Sessions got the 26 percent that were not acceptable. Well, that was 2003. In 2004, it went to 94 percent. It is now at 93 percent, 93, 94 percent. So there are only about 6 to 7 percent that are not meeting the standards; again, not 26 percent. It is more like about--well, it is either 6 or 7 percent right now. The goal is 97 percent. Obviously they are getting there with this new electronic reporting. Now the other thing has to do with financial integrity. I talked about fraud, and I saw the picture of somebody getting money and all of that kind of stuff. Well, again, on the same Web site--you can look it up yourself--the measure: increasing union financial integrity. The percentage of unions with fraud will decrease. That is the outcome. Right here it says that: OLMS conducts audits to monitor compliance, uncover embezzlement, and other criminal and civil violations of the law, using streamlined investigative audit procedures. In fiscal year 2004, OLMS conducted a union audit study that identified fraud in 9 percent of the unions. That was in 2004. The last reporting period was 2006. It went down to 8 percent. What is the goal? Seven and one-half percent. So it is only half a percent of what the goal is as stated by OLMS. Again, the indicators are there that the electronic reporting and other things are having their effect. So you wonder, why do they need so many personnel if, in fact, they have gone to electronic reporting and they are getting better results and better transparency from that? This sounds to me like a classic case of featherbedding, padding it with people and spending more money for not getting much for results; in fact, getting less results than we have gotten in the past with less money. Again, I think we have met our obligation with $45.7 million for OLMS. By the way, that should be more than enough for them to do their audits and to do their indictments and convictions. I think this shows that more personnel and more money have not translated into more convictions and more indictments. There is a balance that has got to be held here. I think our committee did a good job of balancing OLMS, which has a job to do. They should do it. They should investigate, they should audit, they should indict, and they should convict people who are absconding with union money. Absolutely. No one denies that. They should. The question is, how do we balance that with making sure we have more inspections of workplace safety, or mine safety, the other things that the Department of Labor is supposed to be doing to protect our workers? That is the balance we have struck here in the bill. I think it is a good balance, something that was worked out in a bipartisan fashion with Senator Specter, myself, and other Republicans and Democrats on the committee. As I pointed out, this passed the committee 26 to 3. This was not even an issue. I think everyone figured there was a pretty good balance for what we set up. I hope we can maintain that balance. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, among the amendments that are pending, one is 3349. I ask unanimous consent to have it called up and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, this was the amendment offered by Senator Brown earlier. It had to do with Upward Bound evaluations. It was cleared on both sides of the aisle. We are ready to vote on it.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I say to Senators, we are working our way through the amendments. It is now 5:15. I know people do not want to work late tonight, but we are going to be in very late tonight unless Senators who have amendments pending come over and offer their amendments. As people can tell, there is nothing happening here right now. We hope to get a couple more votes here very shortly. Right now, there is not an amendment pending for which we can have a vote except the Sessions amendment. We had a pretty good debate on that yesterday and just now. I think pretty much all of the debate regarding the amendment offered by Senator Sessions is over. We are prepared to vote on that, but we will hold off until we can get clearance on the other side to have a vote. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I have an amendment I offer on behalf of Senator Reid. I send it to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. I ask the Senator's attention to this request so we get it right. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set this pending amendment aside, then to turn to an amendment to be offered by the Senator from Louisiana, at which time we will have a time agreement of 10 minutes for Senator Vitter and 10 minutes for Senator Boxer on the Vitter amendment, at the end of which time the Senate will proceed to a vote on or in relation to, first, the Reid amendment; upon disposal of the Reid amendment, the Senate will then proceed to vote on or in relation to the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana; at the conclusion of that vote, that the Senate then proceed to a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions; and that no other amendments or intervening matter occur prior to these votes.

Mr. HARKIN. I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining two votes in the sequence be limited to 10 minutes each.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Just briefly. The Senator has called up an amendment. I wish to get a consent for Senator Allard and for Senator Landrieu. How much time is the Senator intending to take?

Mr. HARKIN. Does the Senator from New Jersey also have an amendment?

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

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