Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield to my friend from Illinois.

Mr. HARKIN. I think that is called an individual mandate?

Mr. HARKIN. I thoroughly agree with my friend from Illinois. Governor Romney makes the statement. It is on a very popular well-viewed Sunday talk show, ``Meet The Press.'' So the average American says: Oh, Governor Romney, he is for keeping coverage for preexisting conditions. That is good. That is nice to know. They do not hear the clarification that came about later because that was not on ``Meet The Press.'' That was sort of under the radar, when they said they wanted to clarify what Governor Romney meant was he would prevent discrimination against individuals with preexisting conditions who maintain continuous coverage. As the Washington Post pointed out, there are 89 million Americans who would be disqualified because they had a plan, they lost it because they moved or something like that, and picked up another plan. There goes their coverage. Just think about that. You are a family. Let's say your spouse has a preexisting condition--it could be diabetes, it could be cancer, it could be anything--but you have been covered under a plan. President Obama, with the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, says beginning in 2014, just as we now cover children, no plan can discriminate against you because of a preexisting condition. What Romney is saying with his clarification is only if you have always had that plan. What if you are a family that moved from one State to another due to a job issue? You move and your spouse or maybe one of your children who is perhaps still on your policy and has a preexisting condition won't be covered. They will not cover them. Mr. Romney didn't say that on ``Meet the Press.''

Mr. HARKIN. I want to say one other thing about this idea of the individual mandate then-Governor Romney supported in Massachusetts. We all have it within us--I think especially as Americans--that we don't like to be told anything. We don't like to have a mandate put on us. Well, as the chair of the health committee, and someone who is very much involved in this process of getting the Affordable Care Act through, I want to make it very clear, you don't have to buy insurance. There is no individual mandate that says you have to buy insurance. I want to make that clear, and I want to keep making that point. I have been making that point for months now. You don't have to buy insurance. It just says if you don't buy it and you get real sick and want to get in line to get health insurance, you pay a penalty. They call it a free-rider penalty. Have we ever seen that before? How about Medicare? We have it in Medicare. When you turn 65, you don't have to get Part B. No one tells you that you have to do that. If you wait until you are 67, 68, 69, or 70, you pay more. You will pay a lot more than if you picked it up at 62 or 65 when you retired because it is a free-rider penalty. So we have to get rid of this idea that this is some kind of individual mandate that you are forced to do something. No, you are not forced to do it. But if you are a free rider, and you say I will only go when I get sick--like the car accident the Senator pointed out--yes, you pay a penalty. That is all. You don't have a mandate. You just have to pay a penalty. I think when we describe that, I would say that sounds fair. If you are not going to be in the insurance pool--it is as though I am not going to have car insurance, but if I have a wreck, I want to call the insurance company and they will insure me to the moment right before the wreck. That is nonsense. Of course, we don't do that. Well, as I said, I intend to take the floor today, tomorrow, and for the next several days to point out what the Ryan plan does overall but basically in health care. We mentioned Medicare. Let's talk about Medicaid. How about Medicaid? What does Medicaid do? Basically, as I have said many times, it is there to give a decent quality of health care and a quality of life to the hopeless, the helpless, and the hapless. It is for people who otherwise sort of fall through the cracks, people who need health care who cannot afford it or who, because of their life situation, have never been able to get any kind of health care coverage. Well, here is what he does. I will get into this more. The Medicaid funding, which the Senator from California mentioned, over 10 years takes over $810 billion--that is with a ``b,'' not million--out of Medicare. What does that mean? Who does that hurt? Well, 1 out of every 2 Americans with a disability uses Medicaid. That is who is hurt. Services in the Medicaid Program allow our citizens with disabilities to live with dignity and purpose in their homes and in their communities. Three million seniors and people with disabilities use the program to avoid having to go into a nursing home. How about Medicaid for middle-class families? We always think that Medicaid is just for people with disabilities or just for poor people. How about Americans in the middle class? How about American middle- class families? There are hundreds of thousands of American families who have children with lifelong disabilities such as Down's syndrome or autism. Medicaid gives them a lifeline or middle-class families would be paying out of their pockets for the health care costs of their children for their entire lifetimes. Yes, this is one of the entitlements they want to cut. Medicaid is an entitlement. Well, how about that tax plan? If you are a millionaire--that is all you have to be. All you have to do is have an income of over $1 million a year and you get huge tax benefits. How about that entitlement? No, they don't touch that one. At the center of the Ryan budget is his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, a commonsense health reform that led the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to have one of the lowest uninsurance rates in the country. ObamaCare--I know the Republicans have been using that as a pejorative. I say it proudly. I was with President Obama in Iowa a couple of weeks ago when he spoke to a huge group of students at my alma mater, Iowa State University. There was a big sign in the back that said ``ObamaCare.'' President Obama looked at it and said, yes, ObamaCare. Speaking of himself in the third person, he said: Yes, Obama does care. He said, I care about making sure everyone is covered who has a preexisting condition. I want to make sure that kids can stay on their parents' policy while they are in college. Yes, I want to make sure that the elderly have a good, affordable Medicare Program. Yes, I want to make sure that people have good preventive health care systems in America. Obama cares, that is what ObamaCare is. Obama cares, and he cares very deeply that we have a health care system for all and not just for a few. As was said by President Clinton in his speech, an American policy based upon ``we're all in this together is much better than the policy of tough luck, you're on your own,'' which is the Ryan budget philosophy. When we get past the political theater and look at what the Ryan budget actually means, it is not a very pretty picture. The Ryan budget would repeal the prescription drug doughnut hole closure we are doing. It would allow insurance companies to charge as much as $300 for preventive services. One of the key elements we put in ObamaCare: 86 million Americans received at least one free preventive service last year, and more this year. Almost 1 million Iowans received one free preventive service in 2011. That means they got preventive care so they don't get sicker and cost us more money. Again, the Ryan budget would allow people to deny you coverage or increase your premiums if you have a preexisting condition. This protection means a lot to this person right here. This is Eleanor Pierce from Cedar Falls, IA. I spoke about her before. She was denied health insurance when she lost her job because of her preexisting condition of high blood pressure. Without coverage she racked up $60,000 in medical debt. The Ryan budget would repeal ObamaCare. They would tell people like Eleanor Pierce: Tough luck, you are on your own. We are not all in this together. You mean you are not worth $1 million? Tough luck, you are on your own. Repeal will allow insurance companies to put limits on the coverage of more than 100 million Americans, stopping benefits right when they get sick. Repeal would kick more than 3 million young people off their parents' policy. This is Emily Schlichting who testified before the committee. She is an elegant young woman going to college in Omaha. She said young people are the future of this country and we are the most affected by reform. We are the generation that is most uninsured. We need the Affordable Care Act because it is literally an investment in the future of this country. She suffers from a rare autoimmune disorder that would totally make her uninsurable in the old days and under the Ryan budget, which brings back those old days. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, she can stay on her parents' policy until she is 26. By 2014, regardless of her preexisting condition, she will get affordable health insurance coverage. Repeal under the Ryan budget would allow insurance companies to spend America's premium dollars on CEO bonuses, marketing, and fancy buildings rather than actual health care. Under the health reform medical loss ratio requirement, policyholders nationwide will receive more than $1 billion in rebates from insurers this year. That is $1 billion in rebates this year that goes back to policyholders and families; otherwise, that $1 billion would be going into CEO bonuses, marketing, private jets, company planes, fancy buildings, and things such as that. These are just a few of the ways the Romney-Ryan budget would repeal ObamaCare and drag America back to the bad old days. Again, I will repeat that over the last few weeks Representative Ryan has been telling everyone how the President's health reform plan robs Medicare. That is totally fallacious. First, the nonpartisan economists have certified that ObamaCare strengthens the Medicare Program and extends its solvency by 8 years. What President Obama did--as the Senator from California previously pointed out--was make the program more efficient and save money on wasteful overpayments to private insurance companies and cracking down on fraud. What Mr. Ryan won't tell us is that the very reforms President Obama has in our Affordable Care Act are the same he has in his Ryan budget plan. What he doesn't tell us is that while President Obama takes those savings and puts them back into Medicare, Mr. Ryan takes those savings--yes, you guessed it--and puts them into more tax breaks for the wealthy. By repealing the Affordable Care Act, the Ryan plan would again put Americans at the mercy of insurance companies and deprive more than 30 million people of affordable coverage. I was just going to get the chart for my own State of Iowa. I had one here on Iowa I wanted to point out, because I am obviously very interested in my seniors in Iowa. This chart shows that the Ryan plan means almost 440,000 Iowa seniors would be forced onto vouchers when they retire. We have to get those vouchers, right? Sixty thousand Iowa seniors would be forced back into the prescription drug doughnut hole. The doughnut hole would open again. Four hundred thousand Iowa seniors would pay more for preventive services this year. I can tell my colleagues our seniors in Iowa are flocking to get their preventive health care services. They know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But before those preventive services cost money. Now they get them free. It is going to make their lives better and save us a lot of money. ObamaCare decreases the deficit by almost $110 billion over the first 10 years and more than $1 trillion in the next decade. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan won't tell us that, but it is true. It reduces the deficit. It insures more than 94 percent of all Americans. Over 94 percent of all Americans will have that coverage. The bottom line is very simple, and I will be talking about this in the days ahead. President Obama will protect Medicare, will protect health care not only for our seniors but for young people, for middle- class Americans and, yes, for those at the bottom rung of the ladder who need Medicaid to sustain them and to give them quality health care. The Ryan budget rolls back all of this. So, again, we are faced with this choice: the Ryan budget or what President Obama has come forward with in his budget and with his ObamaCare to make sure America remains a good middle-class country where people on the bottom, at the lowest rung of the ladder, can get into that middle class; where the middle class knows they can leave a job and go to another job and not lose their health care plan; where someone can start a small business and know they will have health care coverage for themselves and the one or two or three or four or five workers who work for them or small businesses now can become more competitive with the big businesses in America. I think it is safe to say that if only the American people will study the Ryan budget, the blueprint, they will find that this is where they want to take you and me and all of America--back to an America that our parents moved beyond; where our parents said, no, we are going to move forward; where we have buttressed ourselves in our own lifetimes, in moving America forward to a country where we truly are all in this together; where we are not just a lottery country in which if a person wins the lottery, they are OK, they have it made; if a person doesn't win, then tough luck, sucker, they are on their own. That is not the America our parents fought for in World War II or Korea or Vietnam; it is not the kind of America Martin Luther King, Jr., marched for and died for. It is not the kind of America we want to see for our kids and our grandkids. We have a choice. The choice is clear. Let's move forward. I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Courtney Zinter and Jessica Cullen be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to pay tribute to a truly exceptional public servant and fellow Iowan, Jack Kibbie. Jack is retiring this year after 32 years of public service in the Iowa State Legislature. A decorated war hero before his time in office, Jack was awarded the Bronze Star for his service as a tank commander during the Korean war. After serving 4 years each in the Iowa House of Representatives and the Iowa Senate, he left the Senate in 1968 but returned in 1988 and has served ever since. The longest serving Senate president in Iowa's history, Jack has dedicated his life to fighting for Iowans and all Americans and I am truly proud to have the opportunity to honor his life's work today. Jack has spent much of his time in public office supporting Iowa students. Known as the ``Father of Iowa's Community Colleges,'' he sponsored the 1965 bill that created Iowa's community college system. Later on, Jack served on the Iowa Lakes Community College Board for 17 years and was president for 10 of those years. What is most remarkable about all of this work is that Jack himself does not have a college degree, but he spent his life making sure his fellow Iowans had the opportunity to attain one. Over the years, we have seen the Iowa community college system grow and succeed. The statewide community college student body, which began with a modest enrollment of 9,000 students, has flourished into a system of 15 schools that now serve more than 155,000 college students and more than 254,000 noncredit students in every corner of the State. Together, these students represent nearly 22 percent of Iowa's working population. This will forever stand as Jack Kibbie's great legacy--a living legacy that will enrich and empower Iowans far into the future. By 2018, for instance, Iowa will add 101,000 jobs requiring postsecondary education, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. By this same year, nearly two out of every three jobs in Iowa will require postsecondary training beyond high school. At a time when community colleges are needed more than ever to help the United States regain its standing as the Nation with the highest proportion of college graduates in the world, Iowa's system--thanks to Jack Kibbie's life's work--is up to that task. Another legacy of Jack Kibbie--often overlooked--is his leadership in ensuring that the Iowa Public Employee Retirement System is rock-solid. Jack has fought to ensure Iowa has one of the best funded public pension funds in the United States because he believes strongly in providing workers with traditional pensions. I couldn't agree more. And I don't think there is anyone in Iowa who has been more persistent and determined--going back many years--in championing alternative fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, and wind energy. Today, Iowa is the No. 1 biofuels producer in the United States and that is in no small measure thanks to Jack Kibbie. Mr. President, Jack Kibbie's retirement is a tremendous loss for Iowans. For more than five decades Jack has fought for them and stood up for the values that make this country great. I wish him a long and happy retirement with his wife Kay and family.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first of all, let me commend the Senator from New Hampshire for her great leadership as a Governor and as a Senator in this whole area of health care for women especially. She is providing great leadership in this area, continues to provide that leadership. I want to join with the Senator from New Hampshire in saying we are not going to let these provisions that now are expanding coverage for so many women--47 million women in America--we are not going to let these roll back. We are not. Again, if the people of this country elect Mr. Romney to be President and they turn over the Senate to the Republicans, there it goes. It is gone. It is gone. I did not hear this this morning, but I understand the Republican leader said this morning--I stand to be corrected. As I understand, he said they wanted the first amendment that would be offered on the cyber security bill that I think is now before the Senate--he wanted the first amendment to be a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. What timing. What timing, I say to the Republican leader. On the eve of when we are expanding preventive health care services for 47 million women in America, the Republican leader gets up and says: We want to vote to repeal this tomorrow. Tomorrow. Repeal it tomorrow. Does that not kind of give you some idea of how they feel about the women of America and the health care of our mothers, our sisters, our daughters? That is what they want. We have already voted 33 times to repeal portions of the health care act. I think we voted twice in the Senate to repeal the whole thing. They want to have another vote. I think it is more than curious that the Republican leader wants to vote to repeal it on the very day when we are expanding health care coverage for the women of America. Interesting. Tomorrow is an important day for American women, thanks again to key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. I do want to commend Senator Mikulski for her great leadership in this area, Senator Dodd, Senator Bingaman. Senator Kennedy, when he became ill, asked us to take the leadership on different provisions of the Affordable Care Act on the HELP Committee and to get it through. We had wonderful support from our colleagues here on the floor of the Senate and our committee. These provisions that we put in to move us from a sick care system to a health care system--I have often said that in America we do not have a health care system, we have a sick care system. If you get sick, you will get care one way or the other, usually in the emergency room if you are poor, or maybe not at all if you do not make it to the emergency room. But there is very little in our country to keep you healthy in the first place. Yet we know, we have good data that shows preventive services upfront save you a lot of money and a lot of lives, a lot of pain and suffering later on. So in the Affordable Care Act we put in a big provision on preventive services. We said basically that what the Preventive Services Task Force of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention--what they listed as their A and B, those that had the, if I can use their term, ``best return on investment'' or the ``biggest impact,'' that those would be free, there would be no copays or deductibles. Senator Mikulski reminded us of what is obvious but not too often taken into consideration in legislation; that is, women are different from men. So we asked the Institute of Medicine to come up with provisions that applied to the preventive health care of women. That is what goes into effect tomorrow. Senator Boxer very eloquently talked about that and had the chart showing all of the different things that will start tomorrow--an all- new plan that would cover women in this country--again, to keep women healthy in the first place, preventive services to keep women healthy without copays and deductibles. Right on the eve of this wonderful expansion of health care coverage, of making sure women are not second-class citizens when it comes to prevention and wellness--on the very eve of saying to women that no longer can insurance companies sort of say, because you are a woman you have a preexisting condition--the Senate Republican leader gets up and says he wants to have the next vote on repealing the health care bill. Talk about a slap in the face to the women of this country. Well, I think women know what they are facing coming up this fall. I point out that tomorrow about 520,000 women in Iowa will have expanded health care coverage, preventive services. We fought very hard to put these into law, and we are not going to let them repeal it. We have the votes--let's face it--in the Senate to stop that. The Republican leader can bring it up again, and it can be voted on, but I think it is indicative of where they want to take this country. We can stop it now, but if Mr. Romney is elected President, he said on day one he wants to repeal it. When he is first sworn in he will send up legislation to repeal it, and if the Senate and the House are in Republican hands, we can kiss it goodbye. It is gone. We will not be able to stop it then. It is hard to believe, but prior to the Affordable Care Act essential services that were unique to women, such as maternity care, were not often included in health plans. Tomorrow, we include preventive care checkups, screening for gestational diabetes, and breast-feeding support and supplies. How many low-income women in this country would know that the best thing for their babies is breast milk? Breast feeding, we know, is the preferred method of starting off babies, but sometimes these supplies can be expensive, especially if women are working at a low-wage job and they may need these supplies, but they can't afford it, so, therefore, they turn to another method, to formula for the babies. I am not saying formula is bad, but as we know, and doctors will tell us--every pediatrician will tell us that breast feeding is the best. But women would be forced to choose the less best option if they didn't have these breast-feeding supports and supplies. Let me take head on, if I can, this idea of contraception. As the Senator from New Hampshire pointed out, this can be pretty expensive-- up to $600 a year or more. For one of us who is making $172,000 a year and have great health care coverage, that is not a big deal. But to a low-income woman with a couple of kids, working at a minimum wage job, trying to scrape enough just to get by, $600 a year is a lot of money. Let me point out another facet of this issue. Somehow people think, for example, birth control pills are only to prevent a pregnancy. There are many young women of childbearing age in this country who take birth control pills on the advice of their doctor not to avoid a pregnancy but because their monthly cycles are so painful that they can't even work. So what are we saying? A young woman who gets a prescription from the doctor and says it is not for birth control but is for other physical problems, she has to take that in and show it to her employer now or her insurance carrier? That makes women second-class citizens again. Nonsense. I respect religious freedom as much as anyone, but despite the Republican propaganda, this law doesn't mandate that any woman has to use contraception, and it doesn't force employers to provide it. It gives women affordable access to birth control for a variety of reasons should they and their doctor decide it is right for them or their families. As for religious organizations that object to contraception, the President has issued a very sensible compromise to accommodate their beliefs, while ensuring that women still have access to this critical service. I respect the views of all people on these often divisive issues, and I would oppose any measure that threatens the fundamental religious liberties of people or institutions. But the Republicans are not motivated by a genuine desire to protect religious liberty; rather, they are determined to undo these and other benefits for women in the Affordable Care Act. They have repeatedly introduced legislation, approved by the House Appropriations Committee, that allows anyone to opt out of providing services to which they have any religious or moral objection. Well, one might say that sounds reasonable on the face of it, but think about this. Any employer with any religious or moral objection could opt out of any coverage. They could say, well, they object not only to contraception but to mammograms, prenatal screening. They just have a moral objection to that based upon their religious beliefs. I respect Christian scientists--I always have--and their beliefs. Can they say, well, they are not going to cover insurance for an employee who goes to see a doctor for allopathic medical care, that is not their religious belief? We have to have reasonable compromise, and I believe the President has come up with that. So what the Republicans would do, according to their leader, is rob 47 million women of these new preventive services. They would rob 1 million young women of the insurance they have already gained through the Affordable Care Act, of an extension of dependent coverage. America's women will not be dragged backward. They are not going to allow health insurance companies to return to the policies and abuses that hurt them and their families prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Tomorrow marks another step forward in transforming our current sick care system into a true health care system, and many women will now experience this firsthand. We are going forward. The Republicans can bring it up time and time again. They have sent a very clear signal to the women of America that whatever they gain out of the Affordable Care Act--all these benefits--they are going to take them away from women if they put them in office. I think the women of America need to have some deep soul searching about who they want deciding their fate in the future, after this next election. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Oliver O'Connor and Kevin Burgess of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, 2 years ago, not long after I became chairman of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I made the decision to undertake an investigation of the for-profit sector of higher education. My reason for doing so was compelling: Congress had just finished making huge new investments in the Pell grant program; meanwhile, enrollment in for-profit colleges had increased 225 percent over the previous 10 years compared to 31 percent for the rest of higher education. So this is what we were looking at, as shown on this chart. The enrollment in the for-profit sector kept going up, and finally, in 2006, it took a huge increase--up from 765,000 in 2001 to 2.5 million, almost, in 2010. So while students at for-profit colleges made up between 10 and 13 percent of all the students, for-profit colleges now were receiving almost 25 percent of all student loans and Pell grants. Meanwhile, troubling reports began to surface: prospective students being lied to by aggressive recruiters; other recruiters showing up at wounded warrior facilities and homeless shelters; students saddled with a mountain of debt, unable to find jobs. Two years later, our investigation is complete. The committee has held 6 hearings, issued 30 document requests, compiled data from multiple agencies, interviewed many former students and employees, and compiled a fact-based authoritative public record. Earlier today, we announced the release of our final report called ``For-Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success.'' This report provides a detailed explanation of how Congress has failed to properly monitor student outcomes in this sector of higher education or to safeguard the enormous investment taxpayers are making. As this next chart shows, Pell grants going to the for-profit sector have grown from $2.5 billion to $8.8 billion, in just 5 years. Again, this is what we are looking at. Just think, that we had to do something; and look at this: $2.5 billion, up to $8.8 billion, in 5 years. These are Pell grants. As I said, about 10 percent of the students, 25 percent of all the Pell grants. This was twice as fast as anything else in higher education. As the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds Pell grants, we work very hard to make sure Pell grants keep up, that we increase them. So it was distressing and outrageous to learn that a disproportionate share of this Federal investment is going to schools that are raking in big profits but failing to educate our students. I will now put up another chart. You have to ask the question: Has the American taxpayer gotten an acceptable return on this huge investment in students attending school in the for-profit sector? The answer is a resounding no. More than half of the students who enrolled in 2008 and 2009 had withdrawn by 2010. At many of them, as the chart shows, the withdrawal rate was 67 percent, as shown here for Ashford University. What this means is, for students who signed up at one of these schools and got a loan, got a Pell grant, 1 year later 50 percent of them were not there. It was as high as 67 percent of students at Bridgepoint, Ashford University, who were not there. So you say: Well, what happened to the money? Guess what. Bridgepoint got the Pell grant. Bridgepoint got the Stafford loan. The student dropped out, and the student has the debt. The student has the debt, and the student has nothing to show for it: no appreciable skill, no diploma, nothing. In fact, they are worse off than when they started because now they have a huge debt hanging around their neck. I just want to say that in this report, what we will find is overwhelming documentation of exorbitant tuition, unsavory recruiting practices, abysmal student outcomes, taxpayer dollars spent excessively on marketing and pocketed as profits, and regulatory evasion--regulatory evasion and manipulation. I will have more to say about that later. Again, these practices are not the exception, they are the norm. They are systemic throughout the industry. There are, of course, individual exceptions. Again, there are real differences among the various for-profit colleges. That is why we took profiles of 30 different companies. We took 15 that were publicly owned, investor owned, and we took 15 that are more private. We took some from the biggest to the smallest so we would have a broad picture of what was happening in this industry. Now, again, compared to the industry overall, some for-profit colleges are doing a better job for their students. I would mention Strayer, Walden, National American University, and American Public University--all private, for-profit schools doing a much better job for their students. There are also for-profit colleges that have had serious shortcomings. But they are beginning to make some changes. They are now open to new thinking about how to improve student outcomes. I would include in this list Kaplan, DeVry, and Apollo, which is basically the University of Phoenix. The bottom line is that a large share of the $32 billion that taxpayers invested in these schools in 2010 was wasted. We cannot allow this to continue. Why? Because 73 percent of undergraduate students in this country are nontraditional students. For example, they are holding down jobs, they are older, perhaps they have family responsibilities, come from maybe low-income communities, and they may be the first in their family to attend college. Our Nation's existing network of public and not-for- profit colleges and community colleges cannot meet the demand for higher education or meet President Obama's goal of producing more college graduates without increasing the number of Americans who spend at least some time in higher education. We need for-profit schools to offer these students more than a path to enrollment. We need them to offer students a path to success and graduation. We uncovered two overall problems with the status quo in for-profit higher education. One, billions of taxpayer dollars are being diverted from the educational activities they were intended to finance; and, two, taxpayer dollars are being used to do real lasting harm to the students these colleges enroll. Again, think about it. In just the 1 year we examined, more than half a million students enrolled in for-profit colleges and then quit. Almost every one of those dropouts left school worse off than when they began, with no tangible economic benefit, but saddled with debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, far less able now to continue their higher education in the future because they will have defaulted on those loans. They will not be able to get Federal loans, and they will not get any more Pell grants. So we have to ask why is this happening? One of the reasons is that the tuition at for-profit colleges is grossly out of line with the cost of comparable programs at public and nonprofit institutions and fail to reflect the often dubious value of a degree from a for-profit. As this chart shows, this is average, from a public college in yellow, and the purple is for-profit colleges. For an average certificate program, public schools, $4,249--this is tuition. At a for-profit, $19,806; for an average associate degree, 2 years, $8,000 in public schools; that would be our community colleges and others, $34,988--almost $35,000 at a for-profit school. For a bachelor's degree, $52,000 in public schools; $62,000 in the for-profit schools. It costs 20 percent more for an online degree from Ashford University than a degree from the University of Michigan. Now, since these schools do not have bricks and mortar, they do not have to pay heating bills and cooling bills and upkeep of dorms and all of that kind of stuff, one would think they could offer these courses much cheaper than what they are doing. That is not the case. They are much more expensive. So why doesn't this lower overhead translate into lower tuition? We will put up the next chart. The answer is the efficiencies of online education are not passed on to students. Instead, those lower costs of delivery go straight to profits, marketing, and executive salaries. Tuition is set primarily based on maximizing revenue from Federal taxpayer dollars and on what executives think the market will bear. That is sort of what this chart shows. This red line is the average available Federal aid to a student. This would be Stafford loans and Pell grants. This is average, $13,205. When we examined all of the private schools--this is just a representative sample--they are all just above that line. In fact, we have internal documents from many of these schools, from their executives, saying they are going to set their tuition in order to make sure they can maximize access to those Federal dollars. Now, there are exceptions. I wanted to put one in there. American Public Institute, as I said earlier, they are way down here. They made a profit, they are profitable, and they provide a good service. They are not pegging their tuition costs at just what they can maximize. So there are examples out there, but the vast majority set it just at what the market will bear and how they can maximize their Federal dollars. How much are these Federal dollars? About 83 percent. So I think another feature of the for-profit schools is their almost total reliance on taxpayer money. They say they are for-profit, but it is not like a for-profit for a private business that is competing in selling cars or washing machines or refrigerators or maybe some other kind of a service where one can pick and choose. About 83 percent--this is military, 3.8 percent, and 79.3 percent is Federal student aid dollars; 83 percent comes directly from the taxpayers of this country. So if for-profit colleges charge exorbitant tuition and often provide an inferior education while experiencing sky-high dropout rates, how are they able to recruit a steady stream of new students? The answer is that for-profit colleges are what I would call a marketing machine. They spend 42.1 percent of their revenues on marketing, recruiting, and profit. Yet they only spend 17 percent of revenues on actual instruction. By comparison, the University of North Carolina System spends less than 2 percent of its budget on marketing--2 percent. What we see is 42 percent--42 percent on marketing and profits; 17 percent on student instruction. This is interesting: 40.7 percent all other spending. I would point out herein are executive salaries, executive compensation, bonuses paid to recruiters, and on and on and on. Only 17 percent for instruction. Most colleges, when they talk about marketing, it is down around 2 or 3 percent. I will bet the University of Virginia is probably down there. I do not know. We may have that documentation. I know the University of Iowa System is down around that 2- to 3-percent total for marketing. You have seen their ads, different things for public universities, nonprofit universities, but nothing close to 42 percent. This is what leads to what we call the ``churn.'' Students come in, they get recruited, they get their Pell grants, they get their loans, the school gets the money, a year later the student drops out, and so the marketers go out and bring in more students. So we get this tremendous churn in the student body at these for-profit schools. Perhaps most critical, these institutions fail to provide adequate student support services, as I said. This is a critical finding of our report. Despite knowingly enrolling some of the most at-risk students in our country, many of these schools do not provide these students with the services common sense tells us they need to succeed. How many times have we heard from the for-profit industry: Yes, we are different because we are enrolling students who do not go to our normal colleges, do not go to the University of Iowa, to the University of Virginia. These are nontraditional students. Many of them are poor. That is true, but that is who they are recruiting. Why are they recruiting them? To get the most Pell grants and the most Stafford student loans. That is what the college gets. Now, if they are doing that, then they need to provide mentoring, tutoring, some kind of alumni network, job partnerships, and genuine career counseling. Two of the largest for-profit companies provide no career counseling or placement to students whatsoever. Yet these are the very students who need the most help when they go to college. Students from upper income families who go to good schools, they do not need that. English language learners, Latinos, African-American students, those we intuitively know need more education. Maybe they have lost a job and now they realize: I have to do something. I have to get a better education. These marketers go after them. This is what our report found. If you look at the enrollment in these schools, as I said, it has gone up. The enrollment has gone up. Look at the recruiters. From 2007 to 2010, we went from a little over 20,000 to 35,202 recruiters at 24 of these companies. Down here, the red line, these are the career services. These are the people who counsel and mentor and tutor and help with career guidance. It has not gone up a bit. Huge increase in students, big increase in recruiters, and almost no increase at all in career counselors. This is a failure, an abject failure. This report is the first comprehensive fact-based analysis of this industry. Earlier today I saw that the association for for-profit institutions called this a flawed process. As near as I can understand their critique, the process was flawed because it was about them, but that is what congressional oversight is about. This was not an overnight thing. This is what we produced: four huge volumes, data-driven documentation, documentation on what is happening in this industry. This is the summary. This holds most of what we found. These three will have all of the backup documentation that is needed to support the findings we have. We have before us a factual record that we have never had before. The Department of Education did not have it. No one has had it before. This can guide us as we move toward reauthorization of the Higher Education Act next year. Again, during the reauthorization we will also be looking at traditional higher education. We have already held two hearings on college affordability. There is no question that we need to find a way to improve outcomes not just at for-profit colleges but also at low-cost community colleges. That said, the fact is there are problems that are unique--unique to the for- profit sector that will require some unique solutions. We have seen some progress on this front, as I said. I have met with some of them. They have expressed a determination to reform and to do right by their students. In addition, the Department of Education took steps that are beginning to have real impacts. In April, President Obama issued an Executive order that will help to ensure our veterans are not the subject of deceptive and misleading recruiting, and that will help solders and veterans to make better decisions about where to use their GI bill dollars. Last month, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway led a 20-State attorney general settlement with QuinStreet, one of the companies engaged in some of the most egregiously misleading recruiting efforts targeted at veterans. But these are not enough. As I said, there is an important role for for-profit colleges in our increasingly knowledge- based economy. A solid record of student success is in the national interest. The challenge is to require the companies to be as focused on student success as they are on financial success. Now, there are four things we need to do. First, we need to know how every student enrolled in college is doing, not just first-time, full-time students. This is a flaw in our system. The Department of Education only tracks first-time, full-time students. Most of the students who go to our for-profit schools are not first-time, full-time students, they are part-time students. So what we need to do is that for any student who gets a Pell grant and/or Stafford loan, we need to know how that student is doing and how they do later on. Second, we need to be very clear that the Federal education money has to be spent on education, not advertising, recruiting, or lobbying. That is just common sense. I challenge anyone to stand up here and say: No, they should use taxpayer dollars to lobby, to advertise, or to pay a recruiter. No. We have to be very clear--they can spend it on education but not on advertising, recruiting or lobbying. Third, we need to make sure these schools are providing at least a basic level of student services that would give the at-risk students they enroll a fair shot at completing. If there is one thing that distinguishes good for-profit schools from the bad ones, this is it: a genuine commitment to providing a network of student support-- mentoring, tutoring, employer partnerships, genuine career counseling-- not just in the beginning but all the way through the program. The good schools that are doing that are turning out quality products. Fourth, we have to think seriously about outcome-based thresholds, particularly for colleges that get a very high proportion of their revenue from taxpayers. And we need to build on the gainful employment rule to ensure that students are not being loaded up with debt they cannot repay. I am confident the record we are laying out today will make some of these reforms inevitable as we move forward. I wish to also thank some of my colleagues and to note that work has already begun on legislation. Senator Hagan is sponsoring a bill to ban the use of Federal financial aid dollars for marketing. Senators Murray and Webb are sponsoring comprehensive legislation to better protect servicemembers and veterans using the post-9/11 GI bill. Senator Lautenberg is sponsoring a bill to provide every veteran who receives education aid from the Department of Veterans Affairs with counseling to help make the right choices and to create a system to track veterans' complaints of waste, fraud, and abuse by these for- profit schools. Senators Carper and Durbin are sponsoring bills to address the absurdity of not counting all Federal money in the restriction on how much money these schools can receive. One of the things we picked up on as we started this investigation was the tremendous focus these for-profits were now making on veterans, especially Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and Active-Duty personnel. The reason for that is because we have a 90-10 rule that says for- profit schools can only get 90 percent of their money from the Federal Government. The other 10 percent has to come from someplace else-- private sources. But that doesn't count military. If a for-profit school bumps up on the 90-10 level, it cannot go out and recruit any more people, but if it recruits one military person, it can get nine more nonmilitary. So that pays for them to go after the military. Well, Senators Carper and Durbin have a bill in to stop that. Senator Durbin is also a leader on the issue of private student loans and bankruptcy, as well as a great partner in helping to draw attention to the experiences of students who have attended these schools. I also thank other members of the HELP Committee who have been active participants at hearings, including Senators Franken, Merkley, and Blumenthal. I have also received a great deal of support and encouragement along the way from organizations dedicated to ensuring that students have a genuine path to success in higher education. In particular, I thank the Council for Opportunity in Education, the Education Trust, the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, the Institute for College Access and Success, Campus Progress, and the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. All of them have been involved in helping us over the last couple of years to get the data we needed. On behalf of servicemembers and veterans, we have had tremendous assistance from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Military Officers Association of America, Blue Star Families, the Vietnam Veterans Association, Student Veterans of America, the American Legion, VetJobs, VetsFirst, Paralyzed Veterans of America, the National Association for Black Veterans, the National Guard Association, the Air Force Sergeants Association, the Association of the United States Navy, Wounded Warriors, and Veterans for Common Sense. All of them have been involved. We have gone to them, and they have been so forthcoming and helpful, helping our staff and me to understand what is happening. I also thank the witnesses at our hearings, several of whom have been subjected to unwarranted and undeserved criticism. In particular, I thank Steve Eisman, who provided the committee with unique expertise and insights about the industry in a way that helped policymakers understand that these companies were much more than just colleges. As everyone in this body knows, people with a financial stake in an industry testify before Congress every day and, like Mr. Eisman, provide some of the most insightful and accurate information we receive. I also thank former Westwood employee Joshua Pruyn, who provided a real-world view of working as a for-profit recruiter. He was willing to come forward for the sole purpose of shedding light on this industry, and the criticism he has sustained speaks poorly of those who claim to believe in the valuable role whistleblowers play. I thank my staff, who have pursued this investigation tirelessly and tenaciously. I thank my oversight team and my HELP Committee, who spearheaded the investigation, analyzed the numbers, calculated all of the outcomes, interviewed students and employees, reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and prepared this final report. That oversight team was led by Beth Stein. She was assisted throughout six hearings, three previous reports, many spreadsheets, charts, and megabytes of documents by Elizabeth Baylor and Ryan McCord. More recently, they were joined by Kia Hamadanchy and Bryan Boroughs, who have dedicated many long hours to the research, writing, and publication of this report. I also owe a tremendous thanks to several staffers who are no longer with the committee but played a critical role in this investigation: Beth Little, Luke Swarthout, and Robin Juliano. I also thank my former and current HELP Committee staff directors, Dan Smith and Pam Smith, who have ably guided this sometimes challenging effort. Our communications staffers have patiently explained the 90-10 rule, the cohort default rate, and the fact that we don't actually know how veterans attending for-profit schools are doing to hundreds of reporters throughout the country. I thank Justine Sessions, Kate Frischmann, and Liz Donovan. I also thank my education policy staffers who joined this effort more recently but who will be carrying us forward in our legislative reform efforts: Mildred Otero, Spiros Protopsaltis, and Libby Masiuk, as well as Carrie Wofford, who has played a tremendous role in outreach to groups across the country and has been a particular advocate on behalf of veterans impacted by the practices of the for-profit colleges. I also thank our tremendous group of law clerks, who dedicated many hours to the less glamorous tasks of getting this put together: Abre Connor, Joel Murray, Lauren Scott, David Krem, Ashley Waddell, Lindsey Daughtry, Zach Mason, Sophie Kasimow, and Brittany Clement. A special thank-you goes to the law clerks who helped write and prepare the report: Lucy Stein, Nicholas Wunder, Shauna Agean, Keagan Buchanan, and Douglas Dorando, and also Andrea Jarcho, who has juggled multiple roles and worn multiple hats. For their assistance along the way, I also thank Paul Edenfield, Madeline Daniels, Alyssa Davis, and also Dan Goldberg for his always- sound analysis and advice. Finally, I thank Denise Lowrey and Carolyn Bolden, on the committee staff, who spent many hours making the report as error-free as humanly possible. Today we bring the HELP Committee investigation of for-profit colleges to a close, but the record we have laid out leaves much to be done, and I look forward to continuing to work with my Senate colleagues to help for-profit colleges realize their potential as a genuinely transformative force in higher education. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following fellow and interns be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day: Bryan Boroughs, Lucy Stein, Shauna Agan, Douglas Dorando, Keagan Buchanan, and Andrea Jarcho.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, July 26, 1990--22 years ago today was a great day in our Nation's history. When President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, we could see the future before us, full of possibility and opportunity for people with disabilities. It was one of the proudest days of my legislative career. The Americans with Disabilities Act is one of the landmark civil rights laws of the 20th century--a long-overdue emancipation proclamation for Americans with disabilities. The ADA has played a huge role in making our country more accessible, in raising the expectations of people with disabilities about what they can hope to achieve at work and in life, and in inspiring the world to view disability issues through the lens of equality and opportunity. In these times, it is valuable to remember that passage of the original Americans with Disabilities Act was a robustly bipartisan effort. As chief sponsor of the ADA in the Senate, I worked very closely with Senator Bob Dole and others on both sides of the aisle. We received invaluable support from President George Herbert Walker Bush and key members of his administration, including White House Counsel Boyden Gray, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, and Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner. Other Members of Congress also played critical roles in passing the ADA first and foremost, Senator Ted Kennedy; but also Senator Orrin Hatch, and Representatives Tony Coelho, Steny Hoyer, Major Owens, and Steve Bartlett. Before the ADA, life was very different for folks with disabilities in Iowa and across the country. Being an American with a disability meant not being able to ride on a bus because there was no lift, not being able to attend a concert or ball game because there was no accessible seating, and not being able to cross the street in a wheelchair because there were no curb cuts. In short, it meant not being able to work or participate in community life. Discrimination was both commonplace and accepted. Since then, we have seen amazing progress. The ADA literally transformed the American landscape by requiring that architectural and communications barriers be removed and replaced with accessible features such as ramps, lifts, curb cuts, widening doorways, and closed captioning. More importantly, the ADA gave millions of Americans the opportunity to participate in their communities. We have made substantial progress in advancing the four goals of the ADA--equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. But despite this progress, we still have more work to do. Last month marked the 13th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which held that the ADA requires that people with significant disabilities be given a meaningful opportunity to live and remain in their communities, with the appropriate supports and services, rather than having to live in an institution or nursing home in order to receive the services they need. Yet too many people with significant disabilities still do not have access to these home and community-based long-term services and supports--and we must do more. Last month, following a hearing I chaired to assess the progress we have made on this issue in the various States, I sent a letter to the Governor of each State with information about the variety of new tools available through the Medicaid Program to make it easier to provide community-based services, including the Community First Choice Option and the Money Follows the Person Program. I asked each Governor to let me know by September 7 what they are doing within their State to ensure that the promise of the ADA and Olmstead is being met. We have made significant progress in the last 22 years in making sure that public transportation options, such as buses, are fully accessible to people with disabilities. But we have not made similar progress on the accessibility of taxicabs. During the past year, there have been major advances in New York City on this issue, and I commend Governor Cuomo and the disability advocates. However, we still have a lot of work to do here in Washington, DC, and in other major metropolitan areas of this country. When I was in London last year, every taxicab was accessible to people with disabilities, through universal design. There is no reason that we cannot work toward this same goal here in the United States. Yet the most critical challenge we still need to address is the persistently low employment rates among Americans with disabilities. More than two-thirds of working-age adults with disabilities are not part of the labor force. This is shameful, and we need to do better. Sometimes a picture is more powerful than any words, so I ask you to look at the chart that I have here. This chart compares the labor force participation rates of working-age Americans in the general population, with the participation rates among women, African Americans, Latinos, and people with disabilities between 1990 and 2011. Less than 35 percent of American adults with disabilities were in the workforce when we passed the ADA in 1990, and less than 20 percent of this population was in the workforce in 2011. Although our country continues to have employment gaps for women, African Americans, and Latinos, the gap for workers with disabilities is many times the gap for these other groups. The other noteworthy trend this chart shows is that workers with disabilities often don't benefit even when our economy is doing well. Between 1994 and 2000 and between 2005 and 2007 you can see that while labor participation rates went up for other groups, they were either flat or declining for workers with disabilities. Since the passage of the ADA we have not made a lot of progress on increasing the employment rate of people with disabilities. This was partly due to the confusion about the requirements of the ADA's employment provisions caused by the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the Sutton trilogy in 1999 and the Toyota case in 2002. But in 2008, we passed the ADA Amendments Act which once and for all clarified the definition of ``disability'' and started the clock anew on our efforts to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities. But I believe our country is on the verge of major progress on the issue of disability employment. I released a report last week calling on the country to finally make this issue a national priority, because I believe in my heart that we can make substantial progress in the next 3 years. A copy of that report, entitled ``Unfinished Business: Making Employment of People with Disabilities a National Priority,'' is available on the HELP Committee Web site. I think we are on the cusp of making real progress on this issue for a number of reasons. First, we have a new generation of young adults with disabilities who grew up since the passage of the ADA, sometimes referred to as the ``ADA Generation.'' These young people have high expectations for themselves. This generation sees disability as a natural part of human experience and does not carry the fears, myths, and stereotypes that lowered expectations for individuals with disabilities in earlier generations. Along with the ADA generation, we have hundreds of thousands of returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan who do not want their visible and invisible war injuries to prevent them from having a career and supporting their families. These veterans are demonstrating their leadership in our civilian workforce just as they did in service to our country. In part, to seize on these demographic advantages, I worked with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to set a goal last year that we increase the size of the disability labor force by over 20 percent by 2015. With the leadership of people with disabilities, the Chamber of Commerce, along with elected officials and businesses like Walgreens and Lowes who have also made this a priority, I think we are at a real tipping point. In particular, Walgreens has been a leader in employing people with disabilities. I attended a CEO Summit on disability employment at Walgreens' distribution center in Windsor, CT, last month, and saw firsthand how Walgreens built a distribution center designed for a diverse workforce, a distribution center with about half of its employees being people with disabilities, a distribution center that is just as productive as the other Walgreens distribution centers, and is in fact outperforming all of Walgreens' other distribution centers on key indicators like time away from work, turnover, and workplace safety. Today I hosted a roundtable with many different stakeholders, including Members of the House and Senate on a bipartisan basis, Federal and State government officials, people with disabilities, business leaders, and foundations--all committed to increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities in competitive employment. If all of us--Members of Congress, business leaders, employers, and people with disabilities--work together, I believe that we can meet the goal of 1 million new workers with disabilities--and ensure that all individuals with disabilities have real opportunities for employment that meet their goals, interests, and high expectations. So as we celebrate the anniversary of this great civil rights law, we take time to remember the remarkable progress that we have made in the past 22 years, as well as the progress that we will continue to make-- including today. Today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee marked up the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD, and approved the treaty on a bipartisan vote of 13 to 6. This brings us one step closer to bringing the convention before the full Senate. I would like to thank my colleague, Chairman Kerry, for considering this convention in such a timely manner, and also Senator McCain for his commitment to this issue. I am proud to support the convention's goal to ensure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. Americans with disabilities already enjoy these rights at home. However, U.S. citizens with disabilities, including our veterans, frequently face barriers when they travel, conduct business, study, or reside overseas. Ratification of the convention would underscore the enduring U.S. commitment to disability rights and enhance the ability of the United States to promote these rights overseas. American ratification of the convention would not require us to change any U.S. laws, and the amendments adopted today in committee make this abundantly, explicitly clear. The ADA and disability rights issues have always enjoyed bipartisan support, and passage of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities should as well. I am pleased to note the convention is supported by former Senator Dole, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 21 veterans groups and countless disability rights advocates. On July 26, 1990, when he signed ADA into law, President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke with great eloquence. And I will never forget his final words before taking up his pen. He said, ``Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.'' Mr. President, today, that wall is indeed falling. And we must join together, on a bipartisan basis, to continue this progress.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, which opened on July 4, 2003, is the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the world's oldest and most respected framework for democratic government: the Constitution of the United States. Located on historic Independence Mall, the center is many things: an interactive museum, a national town hall, and a civic hub for millions of visitors from around the world. It inspires active citizenship by shining a spotlight on our great constitutional principles, ideals, and freedoms. This Saturday, the center's main exhibition, which is called ``The Story of We the People,'' is inaugurating an important new addition: the wheelchair used by disability-rights advocate Justin Dart, Jr., when he was present alongside President George H.W. Bush at the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. Mr. Dart used that wheelchair on countless other occasions as he advocated for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and to secure for people with disabilities the civil rights that all Americans hold sacred. This wonderful new addition to the National Constitution Center will serve as a symbol of freedom for all Americans. The wheelchair will remind visitors of the visionary leadership and inspired advocacy of Justin Dart, Jr., and the courageous struggle of all those in the disability rights movement who fought to pass the ADA, one of the great civil rights laws of the 20th century, often referred to as the Emancipation Proclamation for people with disabilities. Twenty-two years ago today, as President Bush signed the ADA into law, he said: ``Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.'' I was present at that White House ceremony, and I vividly remember the joy and pride on Justin Dart's face as he sat aside the President. As of this Saturday, visitors to the National Constitution Center, when they view Justin Dart's wheelchair and accompanying photos, will be able to relive that great moment and milestone in our Nation's history.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor many times over the past couple of years to talk about the decline of the American Dream. The American Dream is supposed to be about building a better life. If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to support your family, join the middle class, and provide a brighter future for your children. Unfortunately, this dream is nothing more than an illusion for millions of hardworking people who are trying to get by working in low-wage jobs. They are working hard and playing by the rules, but they face declining wages, declining opportunities, and declining economic security. Even working full-time, all year round, they can't make ends meet, much less join the middle class. That is not what America is supposed to be about. That is why today I am introducing legislation that has one of the simplest and most effective policy solutions for shoring up the wages and financial security of our nation's low-wage workers. My bill, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012, will raise the minimum wage. I would like to recognize my colleague in the House of Representatives, Ranking Member on the Education and Workforce Committee, George Miller, who is joining me in this effort. My bill will do three things: First, it will raise the minimum wage to $9.80 per hour in three steps over the course of 2 years. Second, it will link the minimum wage in the future to increases in the cost of living, through the Consumer Price Index, so that low-wage workers no longer fall further and further behind. Third, for the first time in more than 20 years, it will raise the minimum wage lags for tipped workers, from a paltry $2.13 per hour to a level that is 70 percent of the full minimum wage, or around $6.85 per hour. This will be a gradual change, accomplished over 5 years, that will give businesses time to adjust while providing more fairness for hardworking people who work in tipped industries. This bill and these raises are long overdue. We all know that working Americans' paychecks have been stagnant for decades. But the situation is even worse for minimum wage workers. Today the minimum wage lags far behind its historic levels. It hasn't kept up with any other indicator in our economy, not with costs, or average wages, or our still rapid growth in productivity. At its peak value in 1968, the minimum wage was worth more than $10.50 in today's dollars. That means that the minimum wage has lost 31 percent of its buying power since the late 1960s. How can we possibly allow this to be? Costs have been rising in real terms, on everything from food and rent to big-ticket items like health care and a college education. But Congress has let the minimum wage languish. The lowest wage workers in our society simply cannot afford this. Even if we measured the minimum wage against other indicators in our economy, it has not kept up. The minimum wage used to be more than half of average wages; now it is barely a third. In the 1960s and 1970s, the minimum wage kept a family of three above the poverty line, 20 percent above it in 1968. But today, the minimum wage lags behind the poverty line by 16 percent. And let's not forget that the poverty line is a woefully inadequate measure of what families really need by any realistic measure. Who in this chamber could support two children on $18,000 per year, which is the official poverty line? Yet the minimum wage only pays $15,000 a year to someone working full-time who never takes a single day off all year. My bill will raise the minimum wage to about $20,000 per year, and it will maintain the wage at a level that keeps up with rising costs. While workers are working longer and harder than ever, their paychecks don't reflect that contribution. If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity growth since 1968, it would be nearly $22 an hour this year; even if it had kept up with just one-quarter of productivity growth, it would be $12.25 per hour. So while companies have reaped the benefits of all this productivity growth, the people who actually do the work have seen none of its value. It has all gone to executive management and shareholders. It has gone to profits, not the people who do the work. There will be tens of millions of people in this country who will benefit from this legislation. Twenty-eight million workers will get a raise, either directly by the legislation, or indirectly through the ``trickle up'' effects of a higher wage floor--that is more than a fifth of our workforce that will be impacted. Among them, more than half are women, and more than four in ten are people of color--both of these groups are overrepresented in low-wage work. They are the ones who care for our children and elders, who clean our offices and factories, who serve us food, who keep our economic engine running. These are some of the hardest jobs and hardest workers, and yet their pay is simply paltry. We will never have fair wages for women or greater racial equality if the minimum wage is not a just and fair minimum wage. The families of these 28 million workers will also benefit. More than 21 million children have parents who will get a raise. This will be so meaningful to these families. After all, children represent more than a third of poor Americans. Nearly half of children, 44 percent, are poor or low-income, and even among families with parents working full-time year-round, nearly three in ten children are poor or low-income. This is largely because wages are much too low to support a family. Yet wages aren't low because our economy can't afford them. No. Our economic growth is going to profits, not to workers. Inequality is at the highest level we've seen since the eve of the Great Depression. CEOs are raking in millions--even if their companies are not performing well--while low-wage workers are barely able to put food on the table, and even then it is often with the help of food stamps. Last year, the average CEO earned nearly $13 million. That was after a 23 percent raise in 2010 and a 14 percent raise in 2011. Minimum wage workers had no raises in those years. But CEOs are getting $13 million a year. That is more than $6,200 an hour. A CEO earns more before lunch on his first day of work than a minimum wage worker earns in an entire year. Some people will criticize this measure, saying it will force businesses to lay off workers, and that workers will actually be hurt by getting a raise. History proves that these assertions are simply wrong. We know from decades of rigorous research that minimum wage raises along the lines of what I am proposing do not have negative jobs effects--and if there are any effects on jobs, they are small, but positive effects. This goes for teenagers, too; study after study confirms minimum wage raises do not cause teenage unemployment. Indeed, businesses are helped when their workers get a raise because raising the minimum wage acts like a stimulus. Businesses will reap more in sales when their customers have more money in their pockets, and they will save money through increased productivity and morale and reduced turnover. My bill will put an extra $40 billion in the hands of low-wage workers and their families. We know that these workers don't have much if any room for savings--they will go out and spend it, and this will benefit the local businesses in their communities. Indeed, this extra spending power will boost GDP by more than $25 billion and add 100,000 jobs, as increased economic activity ripples through the economy. Businesses will also save from reduced turnover cost, since turnover rates fall when workers earn more money. It can cost thousands of dollars to recruit, hire, and train new employees, even for low-skill jobs. Of course all businesses would have the same minimum wage, meaning no business would be any worse off than a competitor. A raise in the minimum wage would also reduce competitive disadvantage faced by businesses that already pay a higher wage. These businesses should be rewarded, not punished for paying fair wages. We must also look at what is happening in our economy. We are becoming a low-wage economy. Low-wage jobs are growing faster than middle- or high-wage jobs. Over the next decade, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 7 of the 10 occupations with the largest job growth will be low-wage jobs. With so much of our economy moving to the low end of the wage scale, we must ensure that those wages are adequate. It is long past time to establish a fair minimum wage in our country. It is good for families, good for business and good for our economy. Most importantly, it is the right thing to do. People who work hard for a living should not have to live in poverty. I am proud to introduce this bill today, to raise the minimum wage, and to help tens of millions of workers and their families. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, July 26, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room SD-430 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``CCDBG Reauthorization: Helping to Meet the Child Care Needs of American Families.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Jessica McNiece of the committee staff at (202) 224-9243.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, July 19, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Making College Affordability a Priority: Promising Practices and Strategies.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Spiros Protopsaltis of the committee staff on (202) 224-5501.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, 2 weeks ago the Supreme Court did the right thing and settled once and for all the question of whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. As I said on the floor 2 weeks ago, the fight is over; the law is constitutional, and it will stand. Some have been saying this is a great win for the President or for Democrats. I don't see it that way. I believe this is a great victory for the American people, for small businesses, and for our economy. Now is the time to move past the political distractions and focus on the task before us: implementing the law to bring quality, affordable health coverage to every American. Unfortunately, tomorrow the House of Representatives will take a step in exactly the opposite direction. They have cracked open their old, tired playbook and will vote once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This is the second time the House has taken this vote to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, and they have failed every time to pass it in the Senate. The House has voted 30 times to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act. Again, they have not been successful on any one of those in the Senate, in this Chamber. If you say there hasn't been a vote--yes, in this Chamber, the Senate, last year every Member of the Republican caucus voted to repeal health reform. That failed as well. This is just cynical politics. My Republican friends don't expect their bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act to actually become law; they just want to put on grand political theater. Their strategy, dreamed up by the same old cast of characters, such as Karl Rove, is to gin up the rumor mill, scare people with lies and distortions while offering no ideas of their own. They don't offer any new ideas because they don't have any. Neither the House nor Senate Republicans agree on any plan that controls costs, brings down premiums, or covers as many people as the Affordable Care Act. In fact, a Republican Senator was recently asked to describe his plan for the health care system if the Affordable Care Act were repealed. Here is his answer: ``What we need to do is have a lot of hearings.'' That is their plan? I don't think that qualifies as a plan. That won't help the millions of people who would lose access to affordable health insurance coverage. Republicans in Congress are pandering to the extreme rightwing--those who want to tear down everything this President has accomplished, regardless of the cost. Their strategy only makes sense if you are absolutely obsessed with two things: tearing down health reform and tearing down this President. What would repeal mean for average Americans? Well, I have looked at this a different way. People used to think of the Republicans as being against the Affordable Care Act, but I want to delineate what the Republicans would be for if they were to succeed in repealing the Affordable Care Act. If you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, here is what you are for: You are for putting dollar limits on insurance coverage of more than 100 million Americans, which would allow insurance companies to stop paying benefits right when you get really sick. They will stop paying benefits. That is what you are for if you are for repealing the Affordable Care Act. If you are for repealing the Affordable Care Act, you are for kicking more than 3 million young people off of their parents' insurance policy right now. If you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you are for allowing insurance companies to cancel people's coverage when they are sickest-- just cancel the policy. You would be for allowing insurance companies to spend Americans' premium dollars on CEO buildings, marketing, or fancy buildings rather than health care. In the Affordable Care Act, we have a medical loss ratio requirement, and because of that, policyholders nationwide, this year, by August 1, will receive more than $1 billion in rebates from insurers. What that means in the future is that insurers will have to spend 80 to 85 percent of the premiums they get on health care--not advertising, corporate jets, or big CEO salaries--on health care. If you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you will vote to just let them go back to their old ways, and they can spend 50 cents of every premium dollar on health care, and the rest they can spend on high salaries and fancy buildings and conventions in the Cayman Islands and places like that. If you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you are for allowing insurance companies to deny people coverage or to increase their premiums if they have a preexisting condition. Nearly half of all Americans have some form of a preexisting condition. So I guess that is what you would be for if you vote to repeal the health care bill. If you want to repeal the bill, you are for taking affordable coverage away from more than 30 million people, and you are for making insured Americans pay for tens of billions of dollars of uncompensated care when uninsured people show up in the emergency room. This has been estimated to cost American families an average of $1,100 in extra premiums annually. If you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you are for charging as much as $300 in copays for lifesaving, preventive services that Americans now get for free, services such as mammograms, colonoscopies, and other cancer screenings. More than 85 million people have already used these free services so they can stay healthy, get in charge of their illnesses, or catch something early on when it costs less. If you are for repealing the Affordable Care Act, you are for increasing prescription drug costs on seniors by an average of $600 a year. That is because in the Affordable Care Act we close this doughnut hole. More than 5.2 million seniors and people with disabilities, I might add, have saved a total of $3 billion already on prescription drug spending in the doughnut hole since we enacted the law. If you are for repealing this law, you are for making seniors pay more money for prescription drugs, pure and simple. If you vote to repeal this law, you are voting to deprive States and localities of vital funding to combat chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and to ensure that our kids have access to lifesaving vaccines. Why do I say that? Because in the health reform bill, there is a prevention and public health fund that is already saving lives, getting money out to communities for these very services, and cutting health care costs. So if you vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you are saying that we are not going to combat chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes and heart disease. All of these protections I have enumerated have been enjoyed by a certain select group of Americans for decades. What select group of Americans do you suppose I am talking about who have had these protections for decades? I suggest that every Member of Congress, the Senate and House, look in the mirror. We have enjoyed these for a long time. How many times have we heard in the past when we were debating and having hearings on the Affordable Care Act before we voted on it-- how many times have we heard from our constituents that ``we need the same kind of health care coverage you guys have in Congress.'' That is what we did. We didn't have higher premiums because of preexisting conditions; there is no exclusion because of that. We have had no lifetime or annual limit on benefits, no cancellation of coverage when we got sick, and no copays for preventive services. In health reform, we basically gave the American people the same services we in Congress have enjoyed for a long time. When a Member of Congress votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he or she is saying that these consumer protections are great for us--we will keep them--but they are too good for you, the rest of the American people. That is the kind of cynicism that takes your breath away. Finally, let me point this out on the mandate that has gotten so much publicity lately. Quite frankly, the issue of this mandate--or, as I call it, a free rider penalty--has a long, bipartisan history. Seven current Republican Senators have previously endorsed a mandate. Many more Republican Senators had endorsed it, and they are no longer here because they either retired or were defeated. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney included a similar free rider penalty as the centerpiece of RomneyCare in Massachusetts. In fact, he said this: ``No, no, I like mandates. Mandates work.'' So we ought to stop these silly political games. The Republicans' obsession with repealing health reform is based strictly on ideology. They oppose the law's crackdown on abuses by health insurance companies and any serious effort by the Federal Government to secure health insurance coverage for tens of millions of Americans who currently have no coverage. It is really about giving control back to their good friends--the wealthy, powerful insurance companies--so they can raise your rates and hold on to your money by denying you benefits and making egregious profits. We all remember William Buckley's famous admonition to conservatives. He said that the role of conservatives is ``to stand athwart history, yelling stop.'' William F. Buckley. Again, he said: The role of conservatives is to stand athwart history, yelling stop. Well, in 1935, President Roosevelt and the Congress passed Social Security, providing basic retirement security for every American. Republicans yelled stop. They fought it bitterly. Seventy-five years later they are still trying to undo Social Security. In 1965 President Johnson and the Congress passed Medicare, ensuring seniors had access to decent health care coverage. Republicans yelled stop. They fought it bitterly. Forty-five years later, they are still trying to undo Medicare. Well, here they go again. Here they go again, trying to undo the Affordable Care Act. As I have said before, they are on the wrong side of history. I think we should listen to the American people and leave our ideological obsessions behind and work together to make the law even better. The choice is to go forward or to be dragged backward. It is time to come together as a united American people to create a reformed health care system that works not just for the healthy and the wealthy but for all Americans. Mr. President, I think it is important also to put a human face on this matter. Let's just put a human face on what this bill does. I have shown some of these people before. Let's talk about Emily Schlichting. She testified before our committee. She suffers from a rare autoimmune disorder that would have made her uninsurable in the old days. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, as a student, she is able to stay on her parents' policy until she is 26. Here is what she said at our hearing last year. She said: Young people are the future of this country and we are the most affected by reform--we're the generation that is most uninsured. We need the Affordable Care Act because it is literally an investment in the future of this country. --Emily Schlichting, a student in Omaha. Then there is Sarah Posekany of Cedar Falls, IA. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was 15. During her first year in college she ran into complications from Crohn's disease and was forced to drop her classes in order to heal after multiple surgeries. Because she was no longer a full-time student, her parents' private health insurance company terminated her coverage. They stopped it. Four years later, after many health care interventions, she found herself $180,000 in debt and forced to file for bankruptcy. She was able to complete one semester at Hawkeye Community College but could not afford to continue. Because of her earlier bankruptcy--because of her earlier bankruptcy due to her health--every bank she applied to for student loans turned her down. But now, thanks to the new law, people like Sarah will be able to stay on their parents' health insurance plan until they are age 26. Again, are we just going to say to people like Sarah and Emily: Tough. You got a bad break. Tough luck. Are we going to say that just to make some political point because of some ideological obsession? The Affordable Care Act protects children with preexisting conditions now. That protection will be expanded to all adults in 2014--in just a couple of years. Well, actually, now that I think about it, in about a year and a half, every adult American will have that coverage and be able to get affordable coverage even though they have a preexisting condition. That could mean a lot to Eleanor Pierce. She is from Cedar Falls, IA. Here is Eleanor Pierce. When her job with a local company was eliminated, she lost her health insurance. She could purchase the COBRA insurance, but it was completely unaffordable to her. So she searched for coverage on the private individual market but was denied access because of her preexisting condition of high blood pressure. The only plans that would cover her came with premiums she could never hope to afford without any income. So here is Eleanor, age 62, suffering from high blood pressure, and she had no choice but to go without insurance and hope for the best. But, Mr. President, hoping for the best is not a substitute for regular medical care. One year later, Eleanor Pierce suffered a massive heart attack. When all was said and done, she had racked up $60,000 in medical debt. So, again, are we going to leave people like Eleanor without coverage, with mounting debt and declining health just to make some political point? These are real people the Affordable Care Act is now helping. Well, as I have said before, the Affordable Care Act is for every American. But many of the benefits that are in place now, Republicans would take away by voting to repeal it. Many like Eleanor, who will be helped when it is fully implemented in 2014, will be denied the ability, the wherewithal to have affordable health care coverage so they can have good preventive health care measures, so they can get in to see a doctor and get medical care before they have to go to the emergency room. I am told that tomorrow the House of Representatives will once again vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But once again they are on the wrong side of history. It is time to come together. Let's work together now to implement the law. It is constitutional, it is the law, let's get it implemented, and let's make sure we don't go down the road of political theater--political theater--due to ideological obsessions. I know it is a campaign year. I have been in a lot of campaigns myself. They are tough, I know that. But there comes a point when we have to put politics aside for what is good for the American people. Now is the time to put aside the politics on the Affordable Care Act. Let's get to the business of implementing it. As I said, Governor Romney is the nominee of the Republican Party for President. I am sure they will do everything they can to elect him. I understand that, and that is fine. That is the American way. I wouldn't have it any other way. But just keep in mind, when he was Governor, he put in a health care system in Massachusetts that is very much like the Affordable Care Act, which included a mandate. Governor Romney himself said: No, no, I like mandates. Mandates work. Well, it is time to move ahead. Let's implement the bill, and let's get over this political theater the House is going to embark on tomorrow. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Alex Shaner, Kelsey Smithart, and Ryan Brennan of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 10:30 a.m. in 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Beyond Seclusion and Restraint: Creating Positive Learning Environments for All Students.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Michael Gamel-McCormick of the committee staff on (202) 224-5501.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate--the committee that drafted large portions of the Affordable Care Act--in looking back at all of the hearings we had, the long markup sessions, working across the aisle with Republicans, working with the administration, finally getting it passed and signed into law, this is a great day. There has been a cloud hanging over this because of those who didn't want to reform the health care system. They wanted to keep insurance companies in charge. Well, we said, no, we are going to change this; we are going to reform the system and make it work for people, not just for insurance companies. There are those out there who didn't want to change, who didn't want to reform the system, and so they brought cases to court. And as we know, this issue has wound its way through the courts--some deciding yes and some deciding no--and then went to the Supreme Court. I remember being in the Court this spring for the arguments on this law, and we have been waiting since for the Supreme Court to make its decision. Well, this morning, the Supreme Court gave a resounding confirmation that the Affordable Care Act is indeed constitutional. Some have been saying President Obama wins this or the Democrats win or the Republicans lose--that kind of thing. I don't see it that way. What I see is that this is a great victory for the American people, for the businesses of America, and for our economy. That is what this is all about. It moves us forward so that every American--every single American--will have quality, affordable health care coverage--something we have never done in this country. That is why this is such a landmark bill and such a landmark decision by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision allows us to move ahead and replaces what I have often called a sick-care system--a system that will maybe get to you, if you are lucky, in the emergency room if you are sick, but not one that gets to you before that to keep you healthy. That is what the Affordable Care Act is moving toward--a system of more preventive health care, more promoting of wellness and keeping people healthy in the first place by giving them the coverage they can use to access affordable wellness and preventive health care. The Supreme Court has made it clear what we have known all along, that those who want to block this law and who are now clamoring to repeal it are on the wrong side of this issue. They are on the wrong side of history. We can go all the way back to those who didn't want to have a Social Security System. They were on the wrong side of history. There were those who didn't want to have a Medicare system. They were on the wrong side of history. And those who want to repeal this law can stand with them. They can stand with them in history. But I think history has shown that every time we expand the rights of people to certain basic needs in people's lives, we become a stronger country, a more unified country, a better country, with more opportunity for all. For those of us who believe that quality, affordable health care is a right and not a privilege, this is a great victory. I see that some in the House have scheduled a vote to repeal it after we get back from the Fourth of July break. They have already voted to repeal it; I guess they are going to vote to repeal it again. They are on the wrong side of history. I call upon my Republican friends in the House and the Senate: It is over. This is constitutional. Now let's work together to make it so that it is implemented and that it works for everyone. I say to my Republican friends that I have never said the Affordable Care Act is like the Ten Commandments, chiseled in stone for all eternity. I have often likened it to a starter home to which we could make some additions and some improvements as we go along. But at least that starter home has put a roof over our heads--a roof that will give quality affordable health care insurance to every American. So I say to my Republican friends, bring your toolkits if you want to make it better and improve it. Bring your toolkits, don't bring a sledgehammer. Don't bring a sledgehammer to break it down and try to repeal it. So let's work together, put politics behind us, and make this bill work for everyone, make it work for every American. The Justices have spoken. Now it is time for us to get back to work to build a reformed health care system that works not just for the healthy and the wealthy but for all Americans. This is a victory. It is not a victory for President Obama. It is not a victory for my committee or anyone else around here. This is a victory to make sure that no one--no one in the future is ever denied health care coverage because he or she got cancer, to make sure that no one in the future will be denied quality affordable health care coverage because they have diabetes. It is a victory for families who have had a child who needed intensive, very expensive health care coverage to make sure that child would live and grow and be able to take full part in our society, although sometimes those costs are extremely high. In the past, there have been annual limits, and if you went above that, you had to pay out of pocket. There were lifetime caps. How many women have I met in the past who have had breast cancer and had to have intensive treatments for a period of time but they bumped up against a lifetime cap. They had to pay out of their pocket. So this is a victory for them. It is a victory for families so that they don't face lifetime caps and annual caps. It is a victory for every family in America to ensure that their child can stay on their family's policy until age 26. That is who wins here--ordinary hard-working families in America. It is a victory for hard-working families to make sure that insurance companies have to provide--have to provide--cost-effective, lifesaving preventive care at no cost to get to people early on to keep them healthy in the first place. It is a victory for working families so no longer do they have to choose between paying for health insurance or other critical family needs such as food, shelter, transportation, education. That is what this is about. That is what this victory is all about. It is a victory for American families. I say to those who now want to repeal it, who are going to start to make a political issue out of this, you are on the wrong side of history. The American people will now begin to take a look at this bill in a new light: that it is constitutional, it will be implemented, and what is in it for us? And I just went through what is in it for every American family. The American people will not want to go back. They will not want to repeal this law. There may be improvements we can make as we go along. That is fine. But I say woe to those who vote to repeal this bill. The American people will hold you accountable for being on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of progress, the wrong side of ensuring that every American family has quality affordable health care in America. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Chris Ledoux, a detailee on Senator Johnson's Banking Committee staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, we are about to move to a vote on the FDA reauthorization bill, a bill which I have said earlier we spent more than 1 year working on in committee. It has had a lot of input from Senators on all sides, including industry stakeholders and consumer groups. This is the result of a wide collaboration on all these issues. I wish to respond to a couple things my friend from North Carolina-- and he is my friend--said earlier about the amendment he was concerned about on the track-and-trace amendment. The Senator from North Carolina talked about speed. He said we were rushing this through. The vote in the Senate was 96 to 1. The House vote was unanimous. That doesn't happen if a bill is being rushed through. Anybody who tries to rush a bill is not going to get 96 votes in the Senate or a unanimous vote in the House. Again, my friend questioned how hard we tried to get the track-and- trace provision included in the conference report. I might turn the question around and question how hard the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Colorado worked to get this included. We have been working on this bill for over 1 year. My friend, a good member of the committee, and his staff has been very much involved in many aspects of this bill. So I wonder why the amendment was dropped on our staff 1 day before filing the bill at the midnight hour. I might also point out that on September 14, 2011, our committee had a hearing on the supply chain issue. The record will show that I, the chairman, was the only one to raise the issue of track and trace at that hearing. Two weeks before markup, Senator Burr and Senator Coburn introduced an FDA bill. Senator Enzi's staff and my staff worked for 2 weeks to incorporate elements of this bill into the reauthorization. These are elements of the bill that were introduced 2 weeks before by the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, and Senator Coburn. So our staff spent 2 weeks trying to incorporate elements into the bill, and they did. We did incorporate a lot of elements. I would point out there was nothing that mentioned track or trace that was in that bill that was introduced 2 weeks before. Again, I just say, if this was so important, why wasn't it in their bill? If it was so important, why did they wait until Sunday evening at 6:20 p.m., the day before filing, to get the language? Again, who is trying to rush what? We did not try to rush anything, but when we get something dropped in our lap at 6:20 p.m. the night before the filing, it is hard to build a consensus, and that is what this bill is. We did go to conference on this, but this issue involves a lot of different players, and we could not get that consensus. So I say to my friend from North Carolina, we are still working on this. We will work on it in good faith, but we have the State of California, we have the pharmaceutical manufacturers, we have drugstores, we have consumers, we have a lot of people out there who have something to say about this, and we have to build that coalition in order to get a good track-and-trace bill through. We are now about to vote on the critical FDA bill reauthorizing user fees, modernizing FDA's authority in several meaningful and targeted ways, addressing the drug shortage problem, streamlining the device approval process, enhancing our global drug supply chain authority and all the while maintaining and improving patient safety. Because this bill will directly benefit patients and the U.S. biomedical industry, it is critically important to the agency, industry, and most important to patients that we get this done. I urge my colleagues to vote for final passage and pass this bill. It is the same bill the House passed unanimously. Once it is done here, we can send it to the President and get it signed and move ahead with a good reauthorization of the Federal Food and Drug Administration.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again, we are on the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012. As the chair just said, we have 6 hours 15 minutes of debate time. I am hopeful we don't utilize it all and that we can vote on this sometime later this afternoon. We just considered this bill in the Senate a few weeks ago and passed it 96 to 1. Following the conference with the House, the House passed the bill unanimously last week. Today I trust that we will finish the job. I am genuinely proud of this legislation. It will ensure that the FDA has the resources to speed market access to drugs and devices while continuing to ensure patient safety. For the first time, it will make new resources available to allow the FDA to clear its backlog of applications for generic drugs, which will help ensure that patients have access to less expensive medications. It will make sure the FDA has the funds to prevent there ever being a backlog in applications for biosimilars. These resources are vital to FDA's ability to do its job, to the medical products industry's ability to make these products and, most importantly, to patients who need both access to drugs and devices, and assurances that they are indeed safe. This legislation has benefited from input from a diverse range of interested parties, Senators on both sides of the aisle, our colleagues in the House, industry stakeholders, consumer groups, and patient groups. Over 1 year ago the parties started bringing policy ideas to the table. We worked together in bipartisan working groups to reach consensus on these policy measures. Where we could not achieve consensus, we didn't allow those differences to distract us from the critically important goal of producing a bill that could be broadly supported. As a result of this bipartisan process, we have a bill that advances our shared goals of patient safety, patient access, a well- functioning FDA, and strong and viable American businesses. We streamlined the device approval process while also enhancing patient protections. We modernized FDA's authority to ensure that drugs and drug ingredients coming to the United States from overseas are safe and to ensure that our domestic companies compete on a level field with foreign ones. We addressed the critical problem of drug shortages. We helped spur innovation and incentivized drug development for life- threatening conditions. We reauthorized and improved the incentives for studying drugs in children. Finally, we increased accountability and transparency at FDA. So the bill strikes a balance. It will help keep our regulatory system in pace to adapt to technological and scientific advances. It will create the conditions to foster innovative advances in medical technologies. Again, it will do all of this without losing sight of the most important function of the FDA--ensuring patient safety. So it has been a long road leading up to this moment. We have been working on this bill for well over 1 year and 3 or 4 months with the help of Senators on and off the committee. Again, I thank my colleague, the ranking member of the Health Committee, Senator Enzi, for all of his diligent and hard work and that of his staff for helping to bring all the different parties together and making sure we had a consensus bill that responded to all of those inputs. So we have had a great collaboration. I think we have an excellent bill. Again, I am hopeful we can have our comments and discussions this afternoon, but I urge all my colleagues to vote today to pass the FDA Safety and Innovation Act. It is critically important to the agency, the industry, and to the patients we get this done. This will be the final step. As I said, the House passed it unanimously. If we pass it today, it can go to the President for his signature as soon as we pass it this afternoon. Mr. President, I yield such time as he may consume to my good friend and colleague and ranking member, Senator Enzi.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Burr have the time until 4:40 p.m.; that I be recognized for up to 5 minutes, following the remarks of Senator Burr; further, that after my remarks, all remaining time be yielded back, the motion to concur with an amendment be withdrawn, and the Senate proceed to vote on adoption of the motion to concur in the House amendment to 3187.