Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. To this Senator, it makes eminently good sense. We are talking about education and safety in education. Senator Lautenberg has an amendment on gun safety. That is what the Republicans do not want to vote on. Yet the Senator from New Hampshire said: Relevant amendments. I am looking at the list of amendments we have. They all deal with education in one form or another.

Mr. HARKIN. It is the Republican side that is running the floor that schedules the bills, not the Democrats. My friend from New Hampshire just said he would be willing to have seven amendments on either side.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. In consultation with the minority leader. Well, we have asked the majority leader. The minority leader has propounded this unanimous consent request in the past. We are not running the floor. The Republicans are running the floor, not the Democrats.

Mr. HARKIN. Well now, the Senator from New Hampshire said that he wanted a unanimous-consent request that we would go to ESEA, at a time to be determined by the majority leader----

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. HARKIN. He asked unanimous consent to set the amendment aside.

Mr. HARKIN. We have two recorded votes, one on McCain and one on Santorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I would like to take this opportunity to speak about S. 662, the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act of 1999. I urge the distinguished majority leader, Senator Lott, to act quickly to bring this bill to the floor. We have no excuse for delay in providing life-saving treatment to women who have been diagnosed with breast and cervical cancer. As many of you in this body know, this is an issue I take very seriously. My only two sisters both had breast cancer and died from the disease. Sadly, they contracted breast cancer at a time when regular mammograms and improved treatment methods were not widely used or available. Over the past several years, we have made a great deal of progress against breast cancer, but there is still a long way to go. In particular, we've been able to secure significant increases in funding of research to understand the causes and find treatments for breast cancer. Look how far we have come. Almost a decade ago, when I looked into the issue of breast cancer research, I discovered that barely $90 million was spent on breast cancer research. That is why in 1992, I offered an amendment to dedicate $210 million in the Defense Department budget for breast cancer research. This funding was in addition to the funding for breast cancer research conducted at the National Institutes of Health. My amendment passed and--overnight--it doubled federal funding for breast cancer research. Since then, funding for breast cancer research has been included in the Defense Department budget every year. Today, I am proud to say, between the DoD and NIH, over $600 million is being spent on finding a cure for this disease. Scientific researchers are making exciting discoveries about the causes of breast cancer and its prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and control. These insights are leading to real progress in our war against this devastating disease. We know better than ever before how a healthy cell can become cancerous, how breast cancer spreads, why some tumors are more aggressive than others, and why some women suffer more severely and are more likely to die of the disease. For example, discovery of the BRCA1 gene has led us to better identify women who are at risk of breast cancer, so the disease can be caught early and treated. And of course the development of cancer- fighting drugs like tamoxifen owes a great deal to our federal research investment. But our success in building our research enterprise will be pointless if breakthroughs in diagnosis, treatment, and cures are not available to the public. That is why, a decade ago, as chairman of the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, I worked to create a program, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to provide breast and cervical cancer screening for low- income, uninsured women. This program is run nationwide and is tremendously successful. In Iowa, almost 9,000 women have been screened. Nationally, more than one million low-income American women have been screened. Of these, more than 6,000 were diagnosed with breast cancer and 500 with cervical cancer. This program is a great success. But it is only the first step. Congress must now provide the next critical piece: funding for treatment services once a woman has been diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer. Too often, women diagnosed through this program are left to scramble to find treatment solutions. I recently heard about this terrible problem from one of my constituents. Her name is Barbara. Five years ago, Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer through the CDC's program. Uninsured, she struggled to find treatment. Several doctors refused to treat her because she lacked insurance. Eventually, through a hodgepodge of sources and some volunteer services in Iowa she was able to receive chemotherapy. But today, she owes over $70,000 in medical bills. She writes, ``My bills are so high I often wonder if I should quit treatment so I will not saddle myself and my family with so much debt.'' Barbara is one of the lucky ones. Many women who have been diagnosed through this program do not get treated at all. The Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act has 70 Senate cosponsors from both parties. Its companion bill, H.R. 4386, has passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 421-1. There is no excuse for any further delay in the Senate. We should get this legislation through, combine it with the House bill, and get it to the President for his signature as soon as possible. I note for the record, the original cosponsor of this bill was our now departed colleague, Senator John Chafee. He was the original sponsor. It has 70 cosponsors. Those who worked so long with John Chafee admired him so much. I think it would be a fitting tribute to him to get this bill through as soon as possible and get it to the President for his signature. This is S. 662, the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act of 1999. As I said, its companion bill passed the House 421-1. I think we should pass it as soon as possible. That is why I am taking this time to talk about it, to encourage our distinguished majority leader to bring it to the floor as soon as possible.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I respond by saying to my whip that we are trying to get a finite list of amendments together so we know how many we have. Hopefully, we can dispose of those in the next couple of days. We are definitely open for business. I want to start moving amendments. Hopefully, we will get an agreement shortly to offer amendments to be lined up to vote tomorrow.

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield, I just saw the unanimous- consent request, I might say, and there is a part in there--I don't mind the time, but there is a clause that says ``with no second-degree amendments in order.'' I am checking to find out whether or not that is going to be standard fare for the remainder of this bill. I support the Senator's amendment, but if we have a unanimous consent where some don't get an opportunity to offer second degrees and others do--we ought to play under the same rules is what I am saying. I ask the minority whip whether or not we are going to do that.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, I am delighted to yield.

Mr. HARKIN. Archaic.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I thank the Senator for his kind words. I was thinking as he was talking on this specific project, the human genome project, it is true I happened to be chairman at that time and we started funding it because of what Dr. Watson was able to get across to us when he explained what this would mean down the road. I must say, when I turned over the gavel to Senator Specter in 1995, there was not even a bump in the road. We always worked together on this. When he took over as chairman, we continued our strong support for NIH and our strong support for the human genome project. As the Senator from Nevada said, it has truly been good bipartisan teamwork. I do not mean to say only the two of us. The members of the committee have been very much involved in this through the years. Looking back now and seeing what has happened gives me goose bumps because when we first started this I checked with some people to find out what it would mean to sequence the human genes. We knew we could map it, but to sequence the 3 billion base pairs of genes, of cold human genome, I asked them how long: Maybe 25 years; maybe we will get it done in 25 years, maybe longer. Even then they did not know if they could really get them all sequenced. So I would talk with Dr. Watson about it, and he would say: No, it may take us that long, but we should start on it; we should not put it off any longer; we should start on it. I thought when we first started this it was going to take literally 20 years, as an outside estimate. As I said in my remarks, there came a time when Dr. Watson and some of his team figured out a better way of sequencing these genes, and that collapsed the timeframe right there. It took money. The whole effort in the human genome project has been people and money. If one has the people and the money, one can get it done. It took people to do it, but it took money to buy the big computers. The faster the computers got, the better it was. And along came Craig Venter with a different concept on how to do this, and that again collapsed the timeframe. To think we started this project literally a decade ago, in 1990, and here we are 10 years later. Having the entire human genome sequenced is just mind boggling. It really is the Rosetta stone. Before that, they did not know how to read the Egyptian hieroglyphics. When they found the Rosetta stone, they could break the code. That is what this is. It is going to provide the best tool researchers all over the world have ever had. The beauty of it is that any scientist anywhere in the world can go on the Internet right now and get all the information they need. Every sequence is now in the public domain. It is not being held privately. Any researcher can get access to it. I say to my friend from Nevada, I cannot wait for the next 10 years to see what is going to happen. We are going to see an explosion of new findings researchers are going to come up with that are truly going to be mind boggling. In the next 10 years, mark my words--I probably will not be here; maybe the Senator from Nevada will be here--by gosh, we are going to look back and say the first decade of the 21st century was the decade when we truly understood disease and illness, the things the Senator from Nevada talked about--Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease. Not only will we understand it, we will know how to go right in there and fix it 10 years from now. Mark my words.

Mr. HARKIN. I did not have the capacity to understand it.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, this morning I was invited to the White House for a truly historic announcement. Through the collaboration of government and private sector efforts, scientists have completed the first rough map of the human gene. I believe history will prove this the most significant scientific development of our generation. Its implications for improving the health and well-being of people are truly astounding. Today's announcement was especially fulfilling for me. In 1989, when I served as chair of the subcommittee responsible for this bill, I began the funding for the Human Genome Center at NIH, and the race to map the genome began in earnest. At that time, many criticized the move, saying it was a waste of time and money and couldn't be done in our lifetimes. I listened very carefully to Dr. James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner who first discovered the double helix of our DNA, and he was the first director of the genome center. He talked to us at great length about the possibilities of not only mapping the human genome but sequencing the entire human genomic code. At that time a lot of us were captivated by this concept, that we could actually have the blueprint of life that hitherto has been known to no human being, but only to the Almighty. By breaking down this human genetic code, sequencing every one of the 3 billion pairs that every human has, it would, as Dr. Watson said, provide more than a blueprint, but it would provide the source of research that could very rapidly bring to a close our search for an end to some of the more debilitating diseases that have afflicted mankind for thousands of years. Knowing the genetic code, researchers will now be able to more precisely determine the genetic markers that people have that predispose them to one disease or another. It was Dr. James Watson who really got the policymakers here in the Congress excited about and interested in this human genome project. I happened at that time to be the chair of the subcommittee. As Dr. Watson explained to us what this would do, I had probably just enough engineering background and mathematics background to get a feel for what this could possibly mean. As a result, we began to fund the human genome project and center. Today's announcement also demonstrates the importance of our drive to double funding for medical research. Senator Specter and I are committed to this effort. The bill provides the third installment of a $2.7 billion increase, the largest ever of a 5-year plan, to double funding for NIH. The completion of mapping the human genome will yield tremendous advances in the search for medical breakthroughs in heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's. We are on the way to learning more than we ever thought possible to cure human diseases. The reward will be reflected in the faces of MS, multiple sclerosis, patients who may live longer and better lives because research isolated the gene that causes their dread disease. We will see it in the faces of Parkinson's patients who will experience an improved quality of life from a drug targeted to their individual genome type. And we will see it in the faces of cancer patients whose lives may one day be saved by gene therapy. Yet as we celebrate this great milestone, we must be looking to the challenges ahead. I, of course, look forward to the day when genetic discrimination will be illegal, both at the workplace and in insurance. Genomic technologies have the potential to lead to better diagnosis and treatment and ultimately to the prevention and cure of many diseases and disabilities. But without antidiscrimination protections, Americans will forego early diagnosis and treatment for fear of discrimination in health insurance and employment. So we cannot let discrimination or the fear of discrimination threaten our ability to conduct the very research we need to understand, treat, and prevent genetic diseases. That is why Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy, Senator Dodd, and I have introduced the Genetic Nondiscrimination in Health Insurance and Employment Act. Our legislation would provide greatly needed protections against genetic discrimination in both employment and insurance and prohibit inappropriate disclosure of that information. I urge all my colleagues to join in passing anti-genetic-discrimination legislation to allow the research of the human genome project to reach its full potential. In conclusion, I offer my heartiest congratulations and appreciation to every individual who worked on this project. There is no higher calling than this work, saving human lives. These outstanding scientists and researchers made this historic day possible. Not only did they meet their timetable, they beat it, and that is what I call real success. In that vein I want to pay special tribute to Dr. James Watson whose pioneering efforts made today's breakthrough possible and who, at one critical point in this human genome project several years ago, made the decision with the new types of supercomputers we had to ratchet up the number of base pairs that they would be investigating and sequencing, to a much higher level than was ever done before. Because of that, we were able to complete the sequencing of the human gene now rather than 10 or 15 years from now. I also commend Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the human genome project at NIH. His brilliant and charismatic leadership of the project has been the engine driving this effort. I might say Dr. Collins headed not only the effort here in the United States, but this has been a multinational effort, and this morning, at the White House, we had Prime Minister Blair on closed circuit television. He was in London. He had his scientists around him. They had provided great support for our project, as had the French and the Germans, the Swiss, the Chinese, the Japanese, and a number of others. They had all provided help and support for sequencing this human gene. Dr. Francis Collins led this international effort. Finally, I also pay tribute to Dr. Craig Venter, a former NIH scientist now the head of a private entity called Celera Genomics. It is the private sector firm that has been central to today's breakthrough. Dr. Venter, again, at a critical point, came up with a new way of discovering and sequencing more base pairs in a shorter period of time than had ever been done before. Again, because of his insight and his leadership and efforts, and his own private enterprise, he was able to help us reach this day a lot sooner. I think that also points out the benefit of the tremendous relationship we have had in this country between public-sector-funded basic research and private-sector-funded research. Most--I would not say all--of the basic research done in this country is funded publicly by our taxpayers through the money that we appropriate here in the Congress. There is some basic research done by the drug companies, that is true. But in most of the research done in the private sector they take the basic research that is funded publicly and determine whether or not there is something there that can be made into a drug or therapeutic or intervention or diagnostic tool that can be used in the private sector, in the real world, to help either to stop the onset of a certain illness, to cure it once it has onset, or to make the illness less invasive and less detrimental to the normal life of a person. With this marriage, we have in the United States cultivated a very unique body of health research. Today's announcement, with the public and private sector together, illustrated that. Again, my congratulations to Dr. Venter for his leadership in the private sector.

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Ryan Howell from my staff be accorded floor privileges during consideration of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this side has no objection to the amendment. In fact, we wholeheartedly support the amendment. I compliment the Senator from Missouri for his leadership, and I also compliment Senator Hollings on this issue. Community health centers are really the last sort of backstop for so many people in this country who don't have health insurance--44 million people in America don't have health insurance. Mainly, these are the ones who, right now, for their health needs really need the community health centers. We have about seven in our State of Iowa. We are opening another one this summer. About 66,000 people are served per year in the State of Iowa by our community health centers. The really good thing--and the Senator from Missouri knows it--about community health centers is they are engaged in preventive health care, keeping people healthy in the first place, not just coming in when they are sick. They do a lot of outreach work with low-income people. They help with their diets, lifestyles, and with the medicines they need to keep them healthy. That is one of the great services they provide. We increased the funding for community health centers over last year by $100 million. This would add another $50 million on to it. The need is actually even more than that, but as the Senator from Missouri knows, we have all these things we need to balance in the bill. This is a welcome addition to our community health centers. Again, I compliment the Senator from Missouri for his leadership. We happily accept the amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will soon suggest the absence of a quorum. I want Senators to know that we are open for business and for taking amendments. Senator Specter and I are willing to sit here and take amendments this morning. If Senators have amendments and they are around, please come. As you can see, the floor is wide open. You won't have a waiting line and you can speak for as long as you want. This is the time to come and offer amendments on this bill. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, it has been more than a year since the Columbine tragedy, but still this Republican Congress refuses to act on sensible gun legislation. Since Columbine, thousands of Americans have been killed by gunfire. Until we act, Democrats in the Senate will read some of the names of those who lost their lives to gun violence in the past year, and we will continue to do so every day that the Senate is in session. In the name of those who died, we will continue this fight. Following are the names of some of the people who were killed by gunfire one year ago today. June 23, 1999: Abdalla Al-Khadra, 23, Salt Lake City, UT; Khari Bartigan, 18, Boston, MA; Joseph Coats, 26, Chicago, IL; Wendell Gray, 22, Chicago, IL; Derwin K. Harding, 21, Oklahoma City, OK; Hosey Hemingway, 27, Miami-Dade County, FL; Teresa Hemingway, 30, Miami-Dade County, FL; Steven Henderson, 17, Baltimore, MD; Jim Johnson, 31, Dallas, TX; Monique Trotty, 22, Detroit, MI; Nichole Vargas, 18, Chicago, IL; Unidentified male, San Francisco, CA. These names come from a report prepared by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The report includes data from 100 U.S. cities between April 20, 1999, and March 20, 2000. The 100 cities covered range in size from Chicago, IL, which has a population of more than 2.7 million, to Bedford Heights, OH, with a population of about 11,800. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am here as the ranking member on the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which is pending this morning. We had hoped Senators would come over and offer amendments. We had a good amendment earlier by Senator Bond from Missouri. I thought we could move ahead on that, but it looks as though we have diverged to other issues. As long as that is the case, I feel constrained also to talk about the problems we have with high gasoline prices in the Midwest. I was listening to my colleague from Alaska speak. Quite frankly, I got to thinking about what is happening in the Midwest and upper Midwest with high gasoline prices. It occurred to me there are all kinds of rumors going around about why this is happening: There is a broken pipeline; there is a shortage of crude oil; reformulated gasoline, with ethanol is the problem--there is all this talk swirling around out there, everybody blaming everybody else. No one knows the answers. That is why yesterday I wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources asking him to hold emergency public hearings to subpoena the heads of the major oil companies, bring them to Washington and put them under oath, and then start asking them the tough questions. Then I believe we might get to the bottom of it. I say to the chairman of the Energy Committee, use the powers of subpoena. Bring the heads of the oil companies to Washington. Maybe they do have an answer. Maybe there are logical reasons why the price of gasoline is so high. I doubt it, but let them have their say. I say put them under oath, just as we did with the tobacco company executives a few years ago. Let's put them under oath and ask them the tough questions. Let Senators from both sides ask them the questions about why we have these high and divergent gasoline prices in the upper Midwest. Maybe we can get somewhere and find answers. I also asked the head of the Federal Trade Commission to do the same thing: subpoena records and subpoena the oil company executives to come to Washington in an open, public hearing so that the public can hear for themselves the answers to these questions. I want to talk for a moment about all of the claims and assertions going around that reformulated gasoline and ethanol are the cause of the increase in prices in the upper Midwest. I just heard the Senator from Alaska allude to reformulated gasoline being part of the problem. If reformulated gasoline is the problem, then why is it that we have reports that of instances where reformulated gasoline, including where ethanol is used, is actually below the price of conventional gasoline. That has happened in Louisville, KY, and St. Louis, MO, where they have an RFG requirement, according to EPA. EPA has said that RFG with ethanol would not be more than a penny a gallon higher than RFG without ethanol. Even that may be high. Yesterday, in Chicago, the price of conventional gasoline at wholesale was $1.24 a gallon. The price of reformulated gasoline with ethanol was $1.24 a gallon. It was the same price at the wholesale level. And said, in some markets, we found that reformulated gas is at a lower price than conventional gasoline. That makes sense because ethanol is now actually cheaper than gasoline. The Senator from Alaska talked about an energy policy. One of the energy policies of this administration has been to promote the use of ethanol and renewable fuels. I know the Presiding Officer is a big supporter of ethanol, too. So is this Senator. But every time we try to promote ethanol, we are stymied by the oil companies. They have some reason why they cannot use ethanol. I will tell my colleagues why they do not want to use ethanol: Because they cannot control it, and if we continue to produce more ethanol in this country, it is going to provide an alternative to gasoline which will keep the price of gasoline down. That is purely and simply why the oil companies do not want ethanol. We have been through this battle going clear back to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and earlier. Years ago, the oil companies put lead in their gasoline. We found out lead was causing all kinds of problems, physiological problems in kids and adults. So we had to force them to take the lead out. In order to keep the octane up, then they said: We are going to use these aromatic and toxic compounds, such as toluene, benzene, and xylene. They put that witch's brew together in the gasoline to keep the octane up. Then we found out many of these compounds were air polluting, toxic, and carcinogenic. About that time, around 1990, we passed the Clean Air Act. We in the Senate mandated an oxygenate requirement of 3.1 percent for gasoline to clean up the air and to meet clean air standards. That is what the Senate adopted. It went to conference. I thought we had it settled that we were going to have 3.1 percent. The oil companies weighed in. They got that knocked down to 2.0 percent. We may not have appreciated what they were up to. Two percent oxygen is better than nothing so we went with 2 percent. But the oil companies had something called methyl tertiary butyl ether, which they could use as an oxygenate and also that would help meet the clean air standards, at the 2-percent level. MTBE would not have been so heavily used at the 3.1 percent level because MTBE has a much lower oxygen content than ethanol. Ethanol could do it at the 3-percent level but not MTBE. So the oil companies got back in, knocked it down to 2 percent, and guess what happened. The market was flooded with MTBE, and because the oil companies have control over it, it has kept the production of ethanol down for the last decade. Then what did we find out? First of all, we had the lead that the oil companies pushed off on us. Then we had the aromatics and toxics which they pushed off on us. Now we have MTBE which they pushed off on us, and it is polluting water supplies all over the country. State after State is beginning to ban MTBE, such as California and other States. I assume that presently, or very shortly, we are going to have a ban on all MTBE in the United States. They fooled us once, they fooled us twice, and they fooled us three times. Are we going to let them fool us again? Now they say they can come up with something else. Now they have something else they are going to try to put in the gasoline to meet the Clean Air Act. They want to get rid of the oxygenate requirement in fuel totally and do it their way. Then ethanol does not have a role. That is the oil companies for you. They stymied everything we have ever tried to do to provide for alternative source fuel, especially ethanol. It costs basically the same amount of money to take oil out of the ground today as it did a year ago or a year and a half ago. It does not cost any more. Yet we see the price going up. The International Energy Agency has pointed out we have a greater supply, than demand of oil by about 3 million barrels a day. I have always thought, if supply exceeds demand, the price goes down. The oil companies have stood that on its head. We have an excess of supply over demand by 3 million barrels a day and the price is way up. The Senator from Alaska said that over the next--I don't know what timeframe he was using--that the oil companies would need $1.5 trillion for new infrastructure, $1.5 trillion for new pipelines, new refineries, new infrastructure for oil and gas. Yet we try to get a few million dollars to help ethanol production, to help biomass fuels which are renewable. We need to get a few million dollars in for the use of hydrogen in fuel cells and for fuel cell research, which would be a tremendous alternative to burning gasoline in our cars--where you could take solar energy, in the form of direct solar energy or biomass, or hydroelectric, use that power to separate hydrogen from oxygen, take the two atoms of hydrogen off of the water, separate the hydrogen off, use that hydrogen--you can compress it, you can store it, you can pipe it--you can even liquefy it; that is a little expensive--and then you can put that through a fuel cell. As it goes through a fuel cell, it combines again with oxygen, and it makes electricity. And you use that electricity to power lights, to drive a car, to drive a bus. That is being done today. We have buses running in Vancouver, British Columbia powered only by fuel cells. We have the technology. It is a little expensive right now, I grant that. But the more we mass-produce it, the cheaper it is going to become. The future for energy production and energy use is not bleak; it is very bright. It is clean, it is renewable, and it is plentiful. If we can get out from underneath the grip that the oil companies have on America, if we can move ahead, instead of $1.5 trillion for new infrastructure for oil and gas, if we just take a fraction of that amount of money and put it into fuel cell production, put it into biomass fuels and solar energy and the production of ethanol, we could have a blend of fuels in this country that would offset the increases we would need over the next 20 to 50 years. But this Congress will not invest in it. This Congress--will not invest nor have other Congresses invested--in what is needed for clean, renewable energy in the form of hydrogen extraction for fuel cells. As I said, we have two paths to go. We can go down that same path we have been going down with the whole carbon cycle, using more and more oil, refining it, trying to clean up the air, trying to clean up oil spills, or we can go for clean, renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel, and hydrogen for use in fuel cells which are much more efficient, too, by the way. So, no, we do not have to continue to pay obeisance to the oil companies. I think maybe now, with what is happening in the upper Midwest, what we see happening around the country, maybe now Congress can start to move and make some changes in our energy policy. The bottom line: Get the oil company executives here. Put them under oath. Ask them the tough questions. Then we will begin to get to the bottom of this. I did not mean to really talk on energy, but I heard the Senator from Alaska talking about it and thought I should respond because I believe there is another side to this story other than just going down the pathway of promoting oil and more oil use in this country and around the world. But as I said in the beginning, we are here because of the Labor-HHS bill and the impact it has on our society in all of its forms: education, health, job training, medical research. I believe one of the crucial aspects of our bill that we fund here every year on Health and Human Services is the need--the great need--we have in this country to ensure that our elderly citizens have access to quality health care. That is why the administrative costs of medicare and the running of the program fall under our jurisdiction. The actual levels of Medicare and Social Security fall under the Finance Committee. But we are charged with the responsibility of making sure it runs and that the elderly get the kind of quality health care accessibility that they need. One of the items impacting the elderly the most in that regard today is the extremely high price of prescription drugs. Last night, we had a crucial vote in the Senate on that issue. We had the first real vote this Congress on whether our seniors should get help with the high cost of prescription drugs. That is what the vote was about. Unfortunately, all but two of our colleagues on the Republican side joined together to defeat Senator Robb's motion and to deny seniors the help they desperately need with high prescription drug costs. It is too bad it fell along partisan lines. This is not a partisan issue. I have had town meetings with seniors in my State. I don't ask them whether they are Republicans or Democrats. They all come to the meetings. It tears my heart out to hear their stories of $4,000, $5,000, as much as $6,000 a year that they are paying out of pocket every year for prescription drugs with no help. It should not be a partisan issue. It is too bad that all of our colleagues on the Republican side joined together to defeat it except two. I hope it is only a temporary setback. I challenge our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join us, to join our seniors, to join the overwhelming majority of Americans who support a Medicare drug benefit. Our seniors need real help. They don't need the kind of sugar pill that is being prescribed by the House Republican leadership. The House Ways and Means Committee this week passed a prescription drug benefit. Quite frankly, it does not answer the problem. It is an insurance program that reimburses insurance companies, not our seniors. It is not affordable. It is not an option for seniors in all regions of the country. It is not universal. There is no guaranteed access to needed drugs and local pharmacies. There are no protections against high drug costs. Who benefits from what the House did? The drug companies and the insurance companies. The House basically said that if you are a single person and you make over $12,500, there is no assistance to you. They are saying to the seniors of this country, if you make over $12,500 a year, tough luck. You have to pay for it all out of pocket. A lot of the people who have incomes under $12,500 qualify for Medicaid anyway; they get help with their drug costs. What the Republicans in the House did only answers a need for a very narrow band of seniors--the very poor. What about the elderly who are making $15,000 a year? They are left out in the cold. Seniors making $20,000 a year who may still have payments on a house, maybe they have their property taxes to pay, they have heating bills, food bills, they have clothing bills. We would like to have them enjoy a little bit of their retirement years, maybe take a little vacation once in a while. They can't do that. They won't be able to do that under the House- passed bill because they will have to have an income of less than $12,500 a year. If it is over that, even with that, the benefits go to the drug companies and insurance companies and not to the seniors. I think our seniors have waited long enough. They have been in the waiting room long enough for this. When our seniors see the vote that was taken last night, they are going to be mad, and they have every right to be. That is the first time we voted on this. We will continue to try. We will reach across the aisle and hope to make this a bipartisan effort. Senators will have another chance to vote again on the issue of prescription drug benefits for our elderly. Hopefully, the next time we do it, we will have a different result. We can provide meaningful help for our seniors to pay the extremely high cost of drugs they are having to pay today. So many of our seniors are being forced to choose between food, heat in the wintertime, maybe even air conditioning in the summertime, a choice between that and paying for prescription drugs. It is a choice they should not have to face. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Would the Senator tell us under which Secretary of Labor and how long ago this proposed ergonomics rule was promulgated? How many years of study have we put in on it?