Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am proud to be an original cosponsor of S. 1693, the Wired for Healthcare Quality Act. The goal of achieving high quality health care is not reachable without use of information technology. For instance, the 21 quality measures that hospitals now report for Medicare must usually be manually extracted from paper charts. The Government Accountability Office reports that hospitals are near the limit of the number of quality measures that they can report by these antiquated techniques. Implementation of information technology is critical because with it there is no practical limit on the ability to measure quality. Dr. Brent James, a national quality expert from Intermountain Healthcare of Salt Lake City, UT, tells me that a health care provider who wishes to improve performance starts by defining detailed measures of quality health care and then builds information technology around the measures so that routine, automatic reporting of compliance with the measures becomes part of the health information technology platform. The Wired for Healthcare Quality Act does not just impose standards for interoperability of information technology it creates a mechanism by which quality measures are embedded in those standards. The legislation encourages the development of standards by codifying the office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology who coordinates the health information technology policies of Federal agencies. It creates a public-private partnership, the Partnership for Health Care Improvement to advise the Secretary on technical aspects of interoperability, on standards, on implementation, and on certification of compliance with those standards. The bill establishes the American Health Information Community as a body providing recommendations to the Secretary regarding the broad policy issues of implementation of technical standards created by the partnership. For instance, it will advise the Secretary on issues of patient privacy, information security, and appropriate uses of health information. The bill directs the Secretary to provide for the development and use of quality measures in the health information technology platform by an arrangement with a private entity that establishes standards for measurement development and coordinates and harmonizes measures so that providers are able to use the same set of measures, if not the same measures, for all their patients. The legislation requires that all Federal information technology purchases conform to the standards recommended by the Partnership and adopted by the President within 1 year and that all Federal agencies comply within 3 years. Adoption of these standards is voluntary for private entities except for functions they contract with the Federal Government. The legislation encourages the adoption of qualified health information technology by providing grants for the purchase of health information technology systems to providers demonstrating financial needs, by providing low interest loans to states to help providers acquire health information technology systems, and by providing grants to facilitate the implementation of regional or local health information exchanges. The legislation provides for the development of national reports of health care quality based on Federal health care data and private data that is publicly available. Reports are to be contracted to quality reporting organizations. The legislation assures strong privacy protections for electronic health information by forbidding funding under the bill to any information technology system that lacks strong privacy and security protections, by requiring recipients of funding to notify patients if their medical information is wrongfully disclosed and by requiring that the national strategy on health information technology include strong privacy protections. Before I close, I must raise a concern with the bill. Building a national, interoperable health care information technology platform is like building two houses with a common driveway. Federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are one house. Private health plans are the other. They both must share common standards for health information technology so that systems all talk with one another. They both must implement from a common pool of quality standards otherwise providers will be impossibly confused. The two houses will not look alike but they must share a common driveway and common building standards. I use this analogy to emphasize that the rules for the quality measures used by the Medicare Program are the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee on which I serve as a senior member. The rules for quality measures in a national health information technology standard, and private health insurance plans, are under the jurisdiction of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. We must be certain that these distinctions are made with clarity to avoid confusing ourselves and the medical community. I look forward to working with Senators Enzi, Kennedy, and Clinton, and my colleagues Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Minority Member Chuck Grassley on the Finance Committee to ensure that these important distinctions are made. If we do not accomplish the task of integrating quality and health information technology standards between public and private programs, providers will be placed in the impossible position of having one set of quality and information technology standards for publicly insured patients and other requirements for privately insured patients. If such a Tower of Babel is allowed to develop, providers will simply not be able to implement the improvements in care that we all want to see through the use of health information technology. We cannot miss this chance.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the proponents of this measure have tried to make the case that unions are good and that they deliver higher wages, benefits and overall prosperity for their members. Whether that is true or not is not the issue we are debating here today. In fact, I am struck by the irony of the proponents' argument. If unions are so valuable to working Americans, unions should not have any difficulty winning an NLRB-supervised representation election. What do good unions have to fear from secret ballot elections? Whether unions are good for workers is beside the point. This debate is about the method by which workers are allowed to choose a union. If workers want to have a union in their workplace, they should be able to freely vote for one. But, workers cannot make this decision freely with either the employer or the union looking over their shoulders. Card check is a recipe for legalized harassment and intimidation. The Senate should not allow this measure to pass. Mr. President, I want to speak against cloture on the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, because it promotes neither freedom nor choice for employees when it comes to union representation. Rather, the card-check certification, the binding interest arbitration, and the penalty sanctions of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act would deprive employees of their freedom and choice in union representation that the National Labor Relations Act guarantees them and that the National Labor Relations Board secures for them. The supporters of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act claim that the current system is broken and that the so-called Employee Free Choice Act will correct the deficiencies of the current system. However, they are misguided, because there is no free choice when an employee is bound by signatures on union authorization cards instead of votes in a secret ballot election made after an employee can learn about the advantages and disadvantages of union representation. There is no free choice when a Government-appointed arbitrator decides the terms of a union contract that is binding for at least two years and employees are denied the right to vote on whether to accept the union contract. In other words, it's mandatory arbitration on both the employees and the company. Contrary to the claims of the supporters of H.R. 800, the National Labor Relations Act is effective in providing for and protecting the free choice of employees in union representation. In fact, current statistics from the National Labor Relations Board demonstrate that the system does work. In a recently released study of statistics for 2006, the win rate of unions in secret ballot elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board has increased for the tenth consecutive year. That is correct--unions have a rising in secret ballot elections over the span of the last 10 years. For example, in 2006, the union win rate was 61.5 percent of all representation elections, which was up from 61.4 percent in 2005. Since 1996, unions have won more than 50 percent of all NLRB-supervised elections in each year. Thus, secret ballot elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board are effective and time-honored avenues for employees to express their free choice on union representation. More significantly, unions are winning well over 50 percent of these secret ballot elections. Yet the supporters of this bill, H.R. 800, now want to cast aside this effective system and give unions the ability to increase membership and dues by a forced card check system and a guarantee of a Government-imposed initial union contract. Additional proof that the National Labor Relations Board is conducting union representation elections in an efficient and timely manner is found in reports from the Board itself. For 2006, the median time between the filing of a union's election petition and the election was just 39 days. In addition, 94.2 percent of all initial union representation elections were held within 56 days from the time the union filed its election petition. In short, the system is not broken. Rather, the system works, and it works in favor of unions in over 50 percent of these secret ballot elections. If there is a breakdown as unions claim, then it may be that it is with unions and their appeal and message to the working men and women of this country. The reason unions are fighting for passage of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is that they are fighting to maintain their political relevance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, unions' membership of the private sector workforce in this country is only 7.4 percent today. This is down from 7.8 percent in 2005. It is a continuation of the decline in union membership from 20.1 percent in 1983. Thus, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is not as important and imperative as organized labor has claimed because it does not protect the free choice of employees in union representation. It has nothing to do with leveling the playing field in a globally competitive market. Rather, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is a quintessential political power play. It is about changing the law by turning your back on one of the hallmarks of a democratic society--a secret ballot election--and by supplanting the collective bargaining process with a federally mandated union contract. With these changes in the law, it will be easier for unions to increase membership by forced card check and to increase their financial dues to sprinkle around so that unions can maintain their political influence which is disproportionate to their shrinking membership. I encourage my colleagues to stand up for working men and women by opposing this ill-advised legislation. Mr. President, I think it is time that somebody stood up to defend the hard-working career employees of the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, who are under attack from organized labor and who are being demeaned by this legislation, this so-called Employee Free Choice Act. As I said, in 1978, during the labor law reform debate, the NLRB is one of the finest and most efficient organizations in the Federal Government, and its lawyers serve the public interest by representing the Nation's employees--not unions or employers but employees. They are among the best lawyers in Government or, for that matter, anywhere in the private sector, anywhere in private practice law firms, and their representation of employees is free of charge. Although I certainly do not always agree with the NLRB or its decisions, I have consistently defended the agency over the 31 years I have been in the Senate. NLRB lawyers in Washington and throughout the country in regional and subregional offices are among the most dedicated protectors of employee rights--apparently even more so than unions if one considers the unions' position on H.R. 800 denying secret ballot rights of employees and depriving employees of a vote on wages and terms and employment conditions resulting from a federally imposed union contract. If H.R. 800 were to pass, NLRB lawyers would have to become, in effect, handwriting analysts, making sure employee signatures on union- solicited authorization cards are not forged or fraudulent. The proud record of the agency and its lawyers in conducting secret ballot elections for union representation and in protecting the rights of employees in the election process would be history. The voting booth, the ballot box, the American flag, the NLRB agent standing guard to make sure the election is conducted without intimidation or coercion by unions or employers--all that would be thrown out and replaced with one role: simply counting union authorization cards submitted by union organizers. With that, of course, would potentially come the loss of career NLRB jobs, since how many handwriting experts does the NLRB have or need? They deserve better treatment from organized labor, as do the employees the NLRB seeks to protect. Lost also under H.R. 800 would be the significance for employees of walking into the voting booth to cast a private vote for or against a union. After all, under the card check system in H.R. 800, employees do not get to vote against union representation even though they will be bound by principles of majority rule and exclusive representation. Let's get that clear. If 50 percent of the employees plus one sign cards, the other 49.9 percent are disenfranchised. If they don't want a union, that is tough; they are automatically unionized. That is not right. Under the card check system in H.R. 800, employees do not get to vote against union representation even though they will be bound by principles of majority rule and exclusive representation. Their vote, if one can call it that, is not signing a card, assuming they are even asked to sign a card, which is far different from having the opportunity of saying no. Under the current NLRB secret ballot election process, all employees designated as an appropriate unit get to vote, even though some may not exercise that right. Under the card check system in H.R. 800, apparently all a union organizer has to do is define a unit of employees appropriate for collective bargaining--for example, a group of employees who share a community of interest--and then solicit authorization cards from a majority of employees in that unit. Once the organizers reach signatures from 50 percent plus one, all they do is then take the signed cards to the NLRB for certification, regardless of what the other 50 percent of the employees really feel about the process. As under current law, of course, the NLRB may make a determination that the unit is an appropriate unit for bargaining, although not necessarily the appropriate unit. However, under the card check process of H.R. 800, the other 49 percent of the employees may not even know until after the fact that they were part of a petitioned-for-bargaining unit since they would never have been given an opportunity to vote or even asked to sign union authorization cards. At least under the current system, they are notified that they are part of a petitioned- for-bargaining unit and given the opportunity to vote for or against the union in a secret ballot election. There are many victims of H.R. 800--employees, employers, the NLRB and its career employees and, most importantly, sound national labor public policy. The only winners under H.R. 800 would be the union leaders and those who slavishly do their bidding in exchange for political support. Of course, I believe those who vote against cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 800 will be the true political winners since we will have joined the majority of Americans for protecting the rights of employees through a secret ballot election and against fear, coercion, and intimidation by union organizers to have employees sign union authorization cards. We will have stood by employees and not the union bosses. By defeating cloture on this radical legislation, we will have prevented the economic catastrophe of having federally appointed arbitrators impose wages, benefits, and terms of employment. Ultimately, the employees will be the winners by stopping this antiemployee legislation. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Bond be given the floor immediately after my remarks and I be granted up to 5 minutes.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I listened very carefully to my friend from North Dakota. He is a friend and very fine man and good Senator, but I have been a little bit amazed at some of the things he said. First, I have only been here 31 years, but I was one of those who did a lot to help Lech Walesa. My dearest friend in the labor movement happened to be the international vice president of the AFL-CIO, Irving Brown. Irving Brown headed our tripartite representation at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He was probably the most respected labor leader in the world. He took on the Soviets and their phony trade union organization that was trying to take over the French docks and he beat them. He risked his life every day of his life for free trade unionism, internationally. When he died I was, as far as I could see, the only Republican invited to his memorial service. He went into Paris at the end of the Second World War--before the end of the Second World War--through the underground, and stayed there and helped topple the Nazis and then stayed there and defeated the Communists who tried to take over the French docks. If they had been able to do that, they would have had a worldwide trade union that would have been anything but in the best interests of the workers. He was the one who came up with the idea for the National Endowment for Democracy, and I worked very hard to get that enacted here and also was one of the first members of the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy. I think he would have been horrified with what this bill does, taking away the right of workers to have a secret ballot election and replacing it with the ability of 50 percent of the workers plus one, who sign cards, mandating a union for every other employee. The fact of the matter is, doing away with secret ballot elections is anything but Democratic. I have to say I am amazed they are trying to sell this to the American public. I don't think they can. They can't sell it to the union members out there, roughly 70 percent of whom are against doing away with secret ballot elections--and for good reason. Once they start down that road, then you can have Government interference and a whole bunch of other interferences that will take away people's freedoms and rights. This bill is a disgrace. Even worse is the mandatory arbitration this bill imposes on employers and employees for up to 2 years if they do not agree within 90 days of collective bargaining, which usually always takes longer, and 30 days of mediation. Then the Federal Government can step in and determine the wages, terms, and conditions of employment. That is a ridiculous approach. That is even more dangerous than the card-check part of this. I can tell you this, as one who helped Lech Walesa, who met with him in Gdansk, who had dinner with him over in Gdansk, and also with Father Jankowski, who was the Catholic priest who held mass on the docks with guns trained upon his back, all I can say is I do not think their belief in free trade unionism consisted of having a card check system. A system that would bind 100 percent of employees to a union when only 50 percent plus 1 decided to unionize through a coerced and nontransparent signing of a card. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce S. 1685, the Fairness in Drug Sentencing Act of 2007. I am joined in this effort by my colleagues, Senators Kennedy, Feinstein, and Specter. This bipartisan, balanced effort will adjust the existing statutory ratio for cocaine sentencing to craft a more rational and effective sentencing policy. I must underscore that this bill continues to offer significant penalties for drug dealers and ensures that those who continue to peddle dangerous substances in our communities will endure harsh consequences for their destructive choices; at the same time, though, S. 1685 rectifies a longstanding disparity in cocaine sentencing that should have been fixed two decades ago. Some background might be appropriate for my colleagues at this point. In 1986, Congress enacted the anti-drug abuse law to address the growing problem of drug use in our country. This legislation created the basic framework of statutory mandatory minimum penalties which are currently applicable to Federal drug trafficking offenses. The law differentiated between powder and crack cocaine by establishing significantly higher penalties for crack cocaine offenses. It is likely this was done based on assumptions that crack cocaine was considered more dangerous and had increased levels of violence associated with its usage. Based on these assumptions, the law provided for quantity-based penalties which differed dramatically between the two forms of cocaine. Under that law, the current law, it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the same 5- and 10-year mandatory minimum sentences. This penalty structure is referred to as the ``100 to 1 drug ratio.'' Over the last decade, public officials, lawmakers, interest groups, criminal justice practitioners, and judges have all criticized and questioned the fairness and practicality of the Federal sentencing policy for cocaine offenses created by the 1986 law. This 100-to-1 ratio is widely viewed as an unjustifiable disparity. Crack and powder cocaine are pharmacologically the same drug, and although the level of violence associated with crack is higher, it does not warrant such an extreme sentencing disparity. It should also be noted that during the negotiations in 1986 that produced the 100-to-1 ratio law, a bill was introduced at the request of President Reagan which represented the Reagan administration's views on drug policy. This bill was described as the ``culmination'' of President Reagan's efforts in his commitment to fight drug abuse. The Reagan legislation utilized the same quantity of crack cocaine necessary to trigger a 5-year mandatory minimum as what is called for in the legislation we are introducing today, reducing the sentencing disparity to a 20-to-1 ratio. While many individuals can disagree on what the appropriate ratio should be, I am completely comfortable recommending the same amount previously requested by President Reagan. I supported his proposed 20- to-1 ratio in 1986, and I support this same ratio today. Many organizations share our concern, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission has advocated that Congress reduce the sentencing disparity on four different occasions between 1995 and 2007. The Commission has conducted a voluminous amount of research on this topic. This research has led to many conclusions by the Commission, including that the current penalties exaggerate the relative harmfulness of crack, sweep too broadly and apply most often to lower level offenders, and fail to provide adequate proportionality. The Fairness in Drug Sentencing Act continues to recognize that crack and powder cocaine are not coequal in their destructive effects. On the contrary, the five-fold reduction in the crack-powder ratio corrects the unjustifiable disparity, while appropriately reflecting the greater harm to our citizens and communities posed by crack cocaine. This legislation also seeks to emphasize the defendant's role in the crime and will require the U.S. Sentencing Commission to examine sentencing enhancements for all Federal drug violations, including methamphetamine. The Commission's examination should include appropriate sentencing enhancements for offenders who brandished a weapon, sold to minors or pregnant women, sold drugs near schools, were involved in the importation of the illegal drugs into our country, or have previous felony drug trafficking convictions. Finding ways to reduce drug crime is not and should not be a partisan issue. All individuals involved in this process have tried to design a blueprint to curb the spread of drug trafficking and abuse. An easy, straightforward blueprint has unfortunately proven to be elusive. Since the 1970s, Congress has been working to improve Federal sentencing policy and has routinely made necessary changes to make our sentencing structure more just and effective. The bill we introduce today seeks to remedy mistakes of the past and will provide a rational and just sentencing schedule while continuing to reflect the fundamental and befitting goals of the criminal justice system.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce S. 1685, the Fairness in Drug Sentencing Act of 2007. I am joined in this effort by my colleagues, Senators Kennedy, Feinstein, and Specter. This bipartisan, balanced effort will adjust the existing statutory ratio for cocaine sentencing to craft a more rational and effective sentencing policy. I must underscore that this bill continues to offer significant penalties for drug dealers and ensures that those who continue to peddle dangerous substances in our communities will endure harsh consequences for their destructive choices; at the same time, though, S. 1685 rectifies a longstanding disparity in cocaine sentencing that should have been fixed two decades ago. Some background might be appropriate for my colleagues at this point. In 1986, Congress enacted the anti-drug abuse law to address the growing problem of drug use in our country. This legislation created the basic framework of statutory mandatory minimum penalties which are currently applicable to Federal drug trafficking offenses. The law differentiated between powder and crack cocaine by establishing significantly higher penalties for crack cocaine offenses. It is likely this was done based on assumptions that crack cocaine was considered more dangerous and had increased levels of violence associated with its usage. Based on these assumptions, the law provided for quantity-based penalties which differed dramatically between the two forms of cocaine. Under that law, the current law, it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the same 5- and 10-year mandatory minimum sentences. This penalty structure is referred to as the ``100 to 1 drug ratio.'' Over the last decade, public officials, lawmakers, interest groups, criminal justice practitioners, and judges have all criticized and questioned the fairness and practicality of the Federal sentencing policy for cocaine offenses created by the 1986 law. This 100-to-1 ratio is widely viewed as an unjustifiable disparity. Crack and powder cocaine are pharmacologically the same drug, and although the level of violence associated with crack is higher, it does not warrant such an extreme sentencing disparity. It should also be noted that during the negotiations in 1986 that produced the 100-to-1 ratio law, a bill was introduced at the request of President Reagan which represented the Reagan administration's views on drug policy. This bill was described as the ``culmination'' of President Reagan's efforts in his commitment to fight drug abuse. The Reagan legislation utilized the same quantity of crack cocaine necessary to trigger a 5-year mandatory minimum as what is called for in the legislation we are introducing today, reducing the sentencing disparity to a 20-to-1 ratio. While many individuals can disagree on what the appropriate ratio should be, I am completely comfortable recommending the same amount previously requested by President Reagan. I supported his proposed 20- to-1 ratio in 1986, and I support this same ratio today. Many organizations share our concern, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission has advocated that Congress reduce the sentencing disparity on four different occasions between 1995 and 2007. The Commission has conducted a voluminous amount of research on this topic. This research has led to many conclusions by the Commission, including that the current penalties exaggerate the relative harmfulness of crack, sweep too broadly and apply most often to lower level offenders, and fail to provide adequate proportionality. The Fairness in Drug Sentencing Act continues to recognize that crack and powder cocaine are not coequal in their destructive effects. On the contrary, the five-fold reduction in the crack-powder ratio corrects the unjustifiable disparity, while appropriately reflecting the greater harm to our citizens and communities posed by crack cocaine. This legislation also seeks to emphasize the defendant's role in the crime and will require the U.S. Sentencing Commission to examine sentencing enhancements for all Federal drug violations, including methamphetamine. The Commission's examination should include appropriate sentencing enhancements for offenders who brandished a weapon, sold to minors or pregnant women, sold drugs near schools, were involved in the importation of the illegal drugs into our country, or have previous felony drug trafficking convictions. Finding ways to reduce drug crime is not and should not be a partisan issue. All individuals involved in this process have tried to design a blueprint to curb the spread of drug trafficking and abuse. An easy, straightforward blueprint has unfortunately proven to be elusive. Since the 1970s, Congress has been working to improve Federal sentencing policy and has routinely made necessary changes to make our sentencing structure more just and effective. The bill we introduce today seeks to remedy mistakes of the past and will provide a rational and just sentencing schedule while continuing to reflect the fundamental and befitting goals of the criminal justice system.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I ask unanimous consent that I be given enough time to make this speech, as long as I finish before 2 o'clock.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in fierce opposition to the horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. When I first came to the Senate, I thought the 1977-1978 labor law reform bill we turned back was bad public policy. The bill we are considering moving to the floor, H.R. 800, is far worse. Where is the free choice for employees in this horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act? In all my years in the Senate, I have to say that the title of this bill is the most misleading of any I can recall. This bill doesn't give rights to employees; it takes away the rights of employees and replaces them with the rights of union bosses. Back in 1977 and 1978, when we fought the labor law reform bill, there were 62 Democrats in the Senate and only 38 Republicans. But we were able to defeat that bill by one vote. Thank goodness we did because this would be a far different country today. This bill would more aptly be named the Union Bosses Free Ride Act because it would allow union organizers to skip the efforts of having to convince employees to vote for union representation in secret ballot elections to gain certification as the exclusive bargaining representative. Then it would allow union negotiators to skip the efforts of bargaining for a first contract. Instead, unions need only make a pretense of collective bargaining for an initial union contract before turning to the Federal Government, which can for 2 years impose the wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment binding on employees, without employees' ratification or approval-- binding on the employer as well, without the employer's ratification or approval. Is this what my colleagues want to support--eliminating secret ballot elections and mandating Government certification of a union based on union-solicited authorization cards? Is this what my colleagues want to support--the Federal Government writing the binding contract terms for private sector wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment? That is what this bill does. Apparently, it is not what the American public want us to support. According to a January 2007 poll by McLaughlin and Associates, 79 percent of the public opposes this bill, including 80 percent of union households, 80 percent of Republicans, and 78 percent of Democrats. When asked: ``Would you be more or less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supported this bill?'' the response was 70 percent less likely. Recent polls also suggest that 87 percent of voters, almost 9 out of 10, agree that every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised, private-ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union. The same survey found that 79 percent, that is 4 out of 5 voters, oppose efforts replace the current private-ballot system with one that would simply require a majority of workers to sign a card to authorize organizing a union. There was virtually no variation in reply among Republicans, Democrats, or Independents in this survey; this sentiment rings true across the board. Likewise, in a 2004 Zogby International survey of union workers, it was found that the majority of union members agree that the fairest way to decide on a union is for the government to hold a private-ballot election and keep the workers' decisions private. In the same survey, 71 percent of union members agreed that the current private-ballot process is fair. The survey also found that 84 percent of union workers stated that workers should have the right to vote on whether or not they wish to belong to a union. It is hard to believe that we are seriously considering a bill to deny workers a secret ballot vote so soon after the national elections, and our own elections, given our Nation's history in promoting secret ballot elections for the disenfranchised members of society through the suffragette and civil rights movements. This is especially true since we are fighting for the opportunity of individuals around the world to have the democratic right to a secret ballot election. Apparently, even congressional cosponsors of the bill acknowledge that it would be bad policy to take away secret ballot union representation elections, at least for workers in Mexico. In a 2001 letter to Mexican Government officials, the House sponsor of H.R. 800, 16 Members of the House of Representatives including one then-member who now serves in this body, wrote: We understand that the private ballot is allowed for, but not required by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the private ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they may not otherwise choose. If private ballot elections are absolutely necessary for workers in Mexico, why aren't they necessary here? That is what you have to ask. The answer is simple. Union bosses are more successful under card check. Recently, according to official NLRB statistics, unions have won over 60 percent of NLRB-supervised secret ballot union representation elections. In other words, they are winning the vast majority of elections on secret ballot. They want to win all of them, and that is why they support this card-check approach. At least by political election standards, that 60 percent is a high mark. But not for union bosses. Statistics show that under a card check, unions win approximately 80 percent of the time, and an even higher percentage when the employer remains neutral and does not communicate with workers, as employers are permitted to do under the section 8(c) free speech provision of the National Labor Relations Act. In effect, forced employer neutrality would be the result of card check under H.R. 800, since union organizers would control the timing of the election by quietly securing a majority of signatures--50 percent plus 1--among a group of employees, large or small, determined by the union organizer, and then springing the demand for certification upon the employer and the NLRB. The result would, in effect, silence the employer and thus deny employees the right to be fully informed about the particular union seeking their support. Under this bill, the role of the NLRB, which has such a proud history of conducting secret ballot union representation elections, would be reduced to that of handwriting analysts checking to make sure that employees' signatures were not forged, and determining whether the group of employees designated by the union constitutes an appropriate unit. Remember, under NLRB law, the unit petitioned for does not have to be the appropriate unit, or the most appropriate unit, but only an appropriate unit for bargaining where the employees share a community of interest. Thus, in effect, the union organizer can select a group of employees that are most easily organized by means of card check, force NLRB certification by designating ``an'' appropriate unit, and then force a government-imposed first contract, the terms of which could incorporate employer obligations affecting the employer's entire operations, such as contract provisions barring subcontracting of work. In effect, H. R. 800 is push-button unionism. Under this bill, to force union representation, union organizers only have to get employees to sign union authorization cards, which the Supreme Court has an ``inherently unreliable'' indicator of true employee support due to peer pressures, intimidation and coercion. Would the unions like the employers to have the same right, to be able to go privately and intimidate employees as the union organizers will do and get 50 percent plus 1 to throw the union out? Not on your life. In fact, as one court stated with regard to card check authorization, ``It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a card check unless it were an employer's request for an open show of hands. The one is no more reliable than the other.'' NLRB v. Logan Packing Co., Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Some supporters of the bill have asserted that the bill does not eliminate secret ballot elections. But if they simply read the bill, it provides just the opposite. Just so we are clear, quoting from the bill: Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the board shall investigate the petition. If the board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection. How can one say with a straight face that card check for union representation is any more protective than a private ballot election where employees may be solicited, intimidated, and coerced, subtly or not so subtly, to sign union authorization cards by fellow employees during nonwork hours and nonwork areas at the workplace, or by outside union organizers at the employees' homes or at the union hall or simply on the street or at the plant gates. How is card check more of a free choice than the long-established and hard-won employee protections of a private ballot election, which is supervised, monitored, and shielded by Government officials of the National Labor Relations Board, who are present at the voting booth to prevent improper electioneering and misconduct by representatives of either labor or management? The compulsory, first contract, interest arbitration is even a greater departure from sound national labor policy because it destroys free collective bargaining. Under this bill, to force an initial union contract, union negotiators only have to make a pretense of bargaining for 90 days before calling on federal mediation for 30 days. If not resolved, the contract then must go to a federally appointed arbitrator who will write the employment terms binding on the employees and the employer for 2 years. That is long enough to sour employees on the federally imposed terms of employment, and long enough to bankrupt an employer or make it so noncompetitive that it decides to close operations and do business elsewhere--perhaps and probably overseas. How can one say with a straight face that it is an employee's free choice to have the Federal Government write the terms of employment through compulsory interest arbitration by a federally appointed arbitrator? Under this bill, the arbitrator has unfettered authority to impose the wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment of an initial union contract, which is then binding on employees and their employers for two years, without the employees even being able to approve or ratify those terms as they can under current law? How is that employee free choice? How is that open collective bargaining? And how is it an employee's free choice then, by operation of the current contract bar doctrine, to prevent those employees from challenging the union's continuing majority support by an NLRB supervised secret ballot election? This bill is not about employee free choice. It is about union leaders calling in their political chits in order to increase membership, and being able to deny workers the protections of an NLRB- supervised secret ballot election. It is about union leaders then being able to get the Federal Government to impose wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment and deny workers the right to ratify or approve the first union contract that will govern their employment for 2 years. This is a huge and radical change in national labor policy, which the bill's sponsors are trying to foist on American workers and employers without even the benefit of a committee mark-up. Imagine, with only one day of committee hearings, completely rewriting and reversing over 70 years of national labor policy by injecting the Government into private sector collective bargaining through compulsory arbitration. The Federal Government steps in, not where the parties voluntarily agree to such intervention, but by congressional mandate, by operation of law, whether the parties agree or not. That is not the way national labor policy is designed to work. This is not how it worked when the original Wagner Act was enacted in 1935, and in all subsequent amendments including the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Consistent with the decisions of every NLRB in Democratic as well as Republican administrations--and enforced by every federal court including the Supreme Court, it has been bedrock national labor policy that the Federal Government must not set the terms of the private employment contract. The role of the Federal Government through the NLRB and the courts has been to establish the rules for good faith bargaining. And the law does not require agreement, nor does it require a contract, so long as the parties bargain in good faith. Those sound national labor policies are destroyed under H.R. 800, which ignores whether the parties are bargaining in good faith and mandates a first contract binding on both sides. This bill does not require a finding by the NLRB or the courts that the parties have failed to engage in good faith bargaining. Although misguided and bad policy, at least the 1977-1978 labor law reform bill addressed union complaints about the difficulty of reaching agreement on first contracts by first requiring a finding by the NLRB that the employer was guilty of bad faith bargaining. Then, the so-called make whole remedy proposed was to pay wages equivalent to a BLS index of average hourly manufacturing wages for the period of the employer's refusal to bargain. That, in my opinion, is not something Congress should endorse. But to show you how truly extreme the current bill is, under H.R. 800 there is no requirement of a finding that the employer had violated the National Labor Relations Act by failing to bargain in good faith on an initial contract. The employer may have negotiated completely in good faith, and the parties need not have even reached an impasse in negotiations, to trigger the supreme sanction of having the Government step in and write the contract. The only trigger is when the parties have been unable to agree on a contract after 90 days of negotiations and 30 days of federal mediation. In effect, we are legislating that it is an unfair labor practice for an employer not to reach agreement on a first contract within 90 days of bargaining and 30 days of mediation, and that unless you agree to the union's terms the penalty is that the Federal Government will appoint an outside, third party to impose a contract on you for 2 years. Now that is not American. Think of the effect of all this on the Nation's small business community. Informed of union certification because of card check, suddenly dragged to the bargaining table within 10 days of the union's demand, and most likely never having engaged in collective bargaining before, the small business owner will be confronted with professional union negotiators insisting on wages, benefits, terms, and conditions perhaps beyond the small business owner's ability to accept and remain competitive. But unless the small business owner agrees, the Federal Government, through a federally appointed arbitrator, will step in and write the contract. Do we want the Federal Government writing private sector contracts? I don't think so. I cannot stress enough my concern about the bill's provision for first contract compulsory interest arbitration, especially as it would affect small business. That is even worse than the card check scheme to begin with, but without the card check scheme, you can't get to this. It is close to socialism to mandate that the Federal Government, through federally appointed arbitrators, should dictate private sector wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment. These are not simply my words and my concerns. Let me quote from the Nation's leading basic textbook on arbitration, Elkouri & Elkouri, ``How Arbitration Works,'' the sixth edition, 2003, which is published by the American Bar Association's section of labor and employment law with editors representing labor and management. The Elkouri text states: Compulsory arbitration is the antithesis of free collective bargaining. The text then lists several reasons against compulsory arbitration. Broadly stated, that: First, it is incompatible with free collective bargaining; second, it will not produce satisfactory solutions to disputes; third, it may involve great enforcement problems; and fourth, it will have damaging effects on economic structure. The text continues. Compulsory arbitration is a dictatorial and imitative process rather than a democratic and creative one. Summarizing the arguments against compulsory arbitration, the text concludes: Compulsory arbitration means governmental--politically influenced--determination of wages and will inevitably lead to governmental regulation of prices, production, and profits; it threatens not only free collective bargaining, but also the free market and enterprise system.'' Can you imagine being a small business owner, especially the owner of a family business, confronted with the choice of capitulating to a skilled union negotiator's unreasonable demands after 90 days of bargaining? Imagine the business being, in effect, turned over to a Federal arbitrator to impose whatever wages, benefits, terms, and conditions of employment the arbitrator chose to impose, as Elkouri states, ``affected by the arbitrator's own economic or social theories, often without the benefit or understanding of practical, competitive economic forces''? Is that what we want to do to our small business community, much less to larger businesses, whose issues for bargaining are even more complex? Since there are no limits on what an arbitrator may impose through interest arbitration, it is conceivable that the terms could include participation in an industry's underfunded multiemployer pension plan, for example, something which could eventually force an employer into insolvency. Lost in what little debate we have had on this bill is the unfairness of its provisions for anti-employer punitive sanctions. Once again, these provisions in the bill are a radical departure from the balance of traditional national labor policy which for over 70 years has confined the act to ``make whole'' remedies, and, at least since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, has tried to maintain a balance of the remedies for union unfair labor practices and employer unfair labor practices. H.R. 800 provides, for the first time, punitive rather than remedial sanctions under the National Labor Relations Act and contains only anti-employer sanctions. That is, H.R. 800 contains revolutionary punitive sanctions only against employers. Regardless of how corrupt the union may be, there are no sanctions possible against the union. It provides for increased damages against employers in the form of back pay and liquidated damages equal to two times that amount for anti-union discrimination from the initiation of a union organizing campaign and until the first collective bargaining. These increased damages are clearly punitive, not remedial and not designed to make whole an employee for anti-union discrimination. Nowhere in H.R. 800 does the law provide for such punitive sanctions against union unfair labor practices. In addition to back pay, the bill provides civil penalties against employers of $20,000 for each violation. Since each unfair labor practice charge filed against employers or unions often contains allegations of multiple violations, the $20,000 civil penalty could multiply several times for a single charge. Of course, under the bill, the $20,000 simple penalty applies only against employers. How fair is that? Nowhere does H.R. 800 provide civil monetary damages against unions where they commit unfair labor practices against employees. Finally, the bill provides for a mandatory injunction against employers' alleged acts of anti-union discrimination, including--and I am reading from H.R. 800--allegations that the employer: (1) discharged or otherwise discriminated against an employee; (2) threatened to discharge or to otherwise discriminate against an employee; or (3) engaged in any other unfair labor practice that significantly interferes with, restrains, or coerces employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed in section 7. This is, in other words, the right to organize, bargain collectively, and engage in concerted activities such as strikes. Supporters of the bill argue this provision mirrors the act's section 10(I) injunction against unions which is mandatory when unions engage in secondary boycotts affecting neutral parties. Of course, therein lies the reason for the injunction. By current definition a section 10(I) injunction applies only where a neutral third party is involved and the injunction is designed to prevent harm to the public where labor disputes are expanded to those employers not directly involved in such disputes. That is not the type of unfair labor practice against an employee during the course of a union organizing campaign, where a make-whole remedy of reinstatement with full back pay is available. Mandatory injunctions are extraordinary penalties, especially involving small businesses, since they involve expensive Federal court litigation. As such, the threat of a mandatory injunction--which, for example, would mandate the employer reinstate the employee during the investigation and prosecution of the injunction--could operate to silence the employer from communicating its views regarding unionization. This is the employer's right under section 8(c) of the National Labor Relations Act. There has been much said recently by supporters of H.R. 800 about employer misconduct during union organizing campaigns and collective bargaining for a first contract. This has been used to justify the radical provisions of H.R. 800 denying workers of private ballot union elections, increasing anti-employer sanctions, as well as compelling interest arbitration of first contracts. Unfortunately, much of what has been said is simply untrue or exaggerated and based on flawed information and studies of dubious quality. I cite as an example one fatally flawed study conducted by Cornell Law School Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner. It is frequently cited regarding the firing of union organizers in over one-quarter of union organizing campaigns. The study is based on a survey of union organizers for their opinion as to how often organizers are fired during a union organizing campaign. That hardly constitutes an objective, unbiased sample, and such anecdotal opinions hardly constitute the type of factual, statistical information we have the right to expect before radically changing over 70 years of national labor policy. Also, supporters of H.R. 800 claim from an NLRB report that over 31,000 employees received back pay annually and thus presumably were fired during union organizing campaigns, which represent one worker fired every 17 minutes. That figure grossly misapplies the report and its basis. In fact, that number includes a very high percentage of workers who were already represented by unions, some for many years, who were being paid back pay because their employer took some unilateral action, such as contracting out work, without consulting their union. Therefore, a high percentage of such back pay had absolutely nothing to do with union organizing campaigns, and supporters of H.R. 800, who must know better, are simply using this statistic to exaggerate their claims. Also, supporters of H.R. 800 ignore the more accurate number that according to the NLRB's most recent annual statistics only 2,000 employees were ordered reinstated by the Board. As we debate over whether or not to deny private ballots to workers deciding whether or not to unionize, it is my hope that we will be able to at least hold fast and true to the facts. And there should be full debate on these facts, not simply a cursory one-day hearing, bypassed markup and we move straight to the floor. We must not rely on slogans, anecdotal stories, and questionable secretly-commissioned and selective statistics about alleged unfair labor practices. In conclusion, those on the other side of this debate have advanced-- with fervor--several misleading arguments about the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. I look forward to a debate on the facts of this legislation. We should debate. Let each side be passionate. And of course we will disagree; but let us be respectful. Most importantly, let's make sure that this is an honest debate. As we enter this debate we should not be fooled by the misinformation from supporters of the bill: They claim that employers coerce employees to vote no on unionization. The truth is that in less than 2 percent of cases is it found that an employer has inappropriately interfered in a union organizing election. They claim that under the current system unions are not able to win. The truth is that unions won 62 percent of the National Labor Relations Board elections in 2005--the last year where a complete set of statistics exists. They claim that the use of a card-check system is the best, most reliable and fair way of judging employees' true intentions of unionizing. The truth is that the use of a card-check system is an inherently unreliable indicator of an employee's true sentiments which lead me to a few other truths on their misleading reliability claim. The truth is that the card acquisition process is unregulated, meaning there is no check on potential undue influence when gathering cards; the truth is that we have found that intimidation, coercion, and pressure tactics can be--and usually are--used to obtain signatures; the truth is that often, bounties and financial incentives are paid to union organizers to obtain signatures on cards; the truth is that intentional deception and misrepresentation are often used by unions when obtaining cards; and the truth is that employees are often induced to sign cards by promises of higher pay, better benefits, and waivers of fees--of course the same employees are not made aware of the potential risks and costs of unionization. And finally, they claim that American workers want to form unions using a card check system. The truth is that according to a recent poll 79 percent of Americans oppose the elimination of private ballots when voting in union organizing elections. Senators should be aware this is not a free vote! The bill is not passed this year, or is passed but vetoed, it will put those of us who voted for it on record as supporting a radical change in national labor law and labor policy. It will put us in support of a system which denies workers a secret ballot election, which has been the bedrock underpinning of national labor policy--the crown jewel of the National Labor Relations Board. A vote for this bill, or for cloture, will put us on record as against free collective bargaining on first contracts and in support of a political, government-dictated system of compulsory interest arbitration where a federally-appointed arbitrator will dictate the wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment binding on employees without their even having a vote to approve those terms. And it will put us on record as supporting an unbalanced system of remedies where employers are subject to punitive sanctions, rather than remedial make whole remedies while ignoring sanctions for union unfair labor practices. In the end, H.R. 800 will hurt workers and will take away rights they currently have under federal labor law. In the end, it will hurt employers, leading some to look elsewhere to do business and foreign investment to turn elsewhere rather than the United States. We will be on record, and we will be reminded of our vote today in future congresses. We must vote no on cloture, just as we should vote no on the bill. Mr. President, I hope my statement reflects why this is such a horribly misnamed and bad bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to pay humble tribute to TSgt Ryan A Balmer, who died of injuries sustained after the denotation of an improvised explosive device in Kirkuk, Iraq. A native of Mishawaka, IN, Sergeant Balmer was a member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and assigned to Hill Air Force Base, UT. Sergeant Balmer was truly a special man. He was an individual deeply loved by all who knew him for his kindness, his positive outlook on life, and his infectious smile. Friends close to Special Agent Balmer say he was someone you always wanted to be around. They remembered a man who possessed the unique gift of being able to bring out the best in everyone and at 6 feet 2 inches tall he commanded respect wherever he went. I understand that Sergeant Balmer was scheduled to come home only days after his passing. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my most heartfelt condolences to his wife Danielle and to his three children. I want to reiterate what they already know, that he saved lives and by his sacrifice that we, as a Nation, enjoy the great blessings of freedom so often take for granted. TSgt Ryan A. Balmer is an American hero in every sense of the word. The sergeant and his family will be in my prayers forever. Sergeant Jesse A. Blamires Mr. President, today I rise to pay tribute to one Nation's fallen sons, SGT Jesse A. Blamires. Sergeant Blamires was a native of Sandy, UT, and a member of the 82nd Airborne Division. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Sergeant Blamires had a lifelong connection to our Nation's military. His father Craig Blamires, with whom the sergeant enjoyed camping, also served his country in the Army. Eager to pursue his dreams of service, Sergeant Blamires followed his father's footsteps and joined the U.S. Army. The sergeant was known as a man dedicated to reaching his goals. This was reflected by his recent promotion to crew chief. One day he hoped to become a helicopter pilot, a goal I am certain he would have accomplished. His service in Afghanistan was not the first time Sergeant Blamires had been in harm's way. In 2005, he served a tour in Iraq. Well- respected by his commanders and fellow soldiers, Sergeant Blamires was known for his ability to make others laugh and his willingness to help others in need. However, undoubtedly, his most important life's work was as a family man. In addition to two caring parents and five supportive brothers and sisters, Sergeant Blamires is survived by his wife, Kim and their two young daughters. Sergeant Blamires was a man who truly lived an abundant life. Although his calls to service often required him to be away from the family he loved, there was nothing Sergeant Blamires desired more than to be with his family. Fellow serviceman, SSG Ronald Walton recalls that Sergeant Blamires, ``dreamt of being a better husband and father to his two girls and he talked of it often.'' What a fine man. What an extraordinary life. We will always remember his dedicated service to our Nation, and it is my fervent hope that he and his family remain in our prayers. staff sergeant virgil c. martinez Mr. President, I stand here today to pay tribute to a hero, SSG Virgil C. ``Chance'' Martinez. Sergeant Martinez was a member of the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment and recently gave his life while serving his country in Iraq. From the time Sergeant Martinez was a 5-year-old boy, he felt a duty- bound responsibility to follow in the footsteps of his stepfather and answer his country's call to service. His sister Kim Austin-Oliver said of her brother ``We knew at a very young age that he was going to be a soldier. It is who he has always been.'' As a teenager, Sergeant Martinez enjoyed playing on his high school ski and football teams. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1992, he would achieve his life long ambition and join the U.S. Army. I understand that Sergeant Martinez was a man deeply devoted not only to his country but also to his family. When speaking of his lost stepson, Daniel Oliver noted, ``Chance would do anything and everything for his children and for his mother . . . he was like the Disneyland father--wanted to show his children everything.'' Sergeant Martinez was the husband to wife Mandy and father of five beautiful children. I would like to close my remarks by highlighting an observation made by Sergeant Martinez's sister. Kim Austin-Oliver commented that Sergeant Martinez died doing what he had always wanted to do, and that is, serve his country. I can think of no truer definition of a hero. Sergeant Martinez and the family he has left behind will forever remain in my memory and in my prayers for his selfless service to our Nation. corporal michael a. pursel Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to one of Utah's fallen sons, CPL Michael A. Pursel. Corporal Pursel, a member of the 2nd Infantry Division, recently lost his life in Baqubah, Iraq. He was 19 years old. Corporal Pursel is actually a two-time volunteer. His service began when he joined the Army and he then volunteered to replace other soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division. In fact, Corporal Pursel not only answered that call, but was one of the first to offer his service. I have been informed that Corporal Pursel belonged to a family of great patriots, many of whom have served in the military themselves. This includes both of Corporal Pursel's parents. His mother Terry Dutcher, who is a Captain in the Air Force Reserve, said of her son, ``Michael was doing what he always wanted to do . . . he died living his dream.'' In memory of the life of this great soldier would submit to you that the dream of serving one's country--the dream that CPL Michael A. Pursel achieved--is a dream that more Americans must embrace. Although young in years, Corporal Pursel understood the premise that to serve one's country extends far beyond the notion of being active in one's military duty. To serve one's country enables the rest of us to enjoy our Nation's greatest gift: freedom. This was at the very core of his service and how Corporal Pursel lived his life, the life of a hero, the life of one who will forever be remembered in my prayers. This country owes CPL Michael A. Pursel a great debt of gratitude. He shall forever be remembered and honored for his service to our Nation.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, later today a great injustice is going to be hoisted upon the American people, and a great shame about this injustice is that a great many Americans won't even hear about it. If our friends on the other side--if their plans hold, later today they will call up H.R. 800, the horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would deny workers all over this great country their right to cast a private ballot when choosing whether to join a union. I find it pathetic that at a time when our Nation is at war, every day additional illegal immigrants enter our borders, and energy prices are at their peak, our friends on the other side are turning away from the important business the American people sent us here to do and are instead insisting on spending the next couple of days paying back their union cronies. If I am not mistaken, I recall reading that the energy package is the ``second highest legislative priority'' for our friends on the other side in the Senate. I guess that means that because we are interrupting that ``high'' priority, paying back the unions must be their very first priority. Much has already been said about the denial of a National Labor Relations Board-supervised and protected secret ballot election, a private vote on whether employees want to be represented by a union. It seems to me that the Democrats' and the unions' real objection to private ballot elections is not the form of vote, a secret ballot versus card check; their real objection is ever since the 1947 Taft- Hartley amendments, the law allows employers to communicate with their employees about union organization. What unions really want is to silence the employer during a union organizing campaign through a card check process. Then the union would be able to persuade or even intimidate the employees so the union can be certified based on a card check as soon as the union gets to a majority, no matter how ephemeral that support really is. What that means is that if the union gets 50 percent plus one talking to the employees, then that company automatically becomes unionized without a secret ballot election. But it is even worse than that. The way they have drafted this bill, it will lead to mandatory arbitration, which will result in the Government setting the terms and conditions of employment, even pension plans. That is even worse than the card check aspect, which is about as bad as it gets. The real key for the unions is that the process be within the union's control and before the employer has an opportunity to communicate with the employees. In effect, the unions want to force employer neutrality based on the employer's inability to respond to a union organizing campaign. How quick must the quick certification process be to satisfy unions? NLRB statistics reveal that in 2006, 94.2 percent of all initial representation elections were conducted within 56 days of the filing of the petition with the NLRB and that the median time was 39 days. Apparently for union organizers, a little over a month is too long for them to maintain majority support, although it is important to note that under the current secret ballot election procedures, unions still win about 60 percent of all elections. That is fine as long as there is a balance in these programs, as long as both sides are treated fairly. Also union authorization cards make it virtually impossible for employees to change their minds, which can happen in the privacy of the voting booth. Revoking a signed union authorization card is virtually impossible today, when cards are used to trigger NLRB-supervised elections. You can imagine how hard it would be for an employee to revoke a signed card under a card check process. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that union authorization cards are ``inherently unreliable'' indicators of employee support. Even unions themselves have stated that union authorization cards are less reliable than NLRB-protected private ballot elections. But the real reason unions seek card check is not because it is more reliable but because it can be controlled entirely by the union before the employer can address the union campaign propaganda. What that really means is that employees will be denied an informed choice. Under current law, to convince employees to vote for a union, the union may use the pressures of the employee polls and interrogation. Unions may make predictions. They may promise benefits, whether achievable or not, and they may make false statements about the employer. It may well be that the labor leaders have never been able to negotiate the wages and benefits they promise will result from the formation of a new union. It may be that the union, in fact, has negotiated contracts with other employers in the same industry and geographic area that are less generous than the employees currently receive at the location being organized. The union's claims about the employer's safety record, its compliance with employment laws, its business practices, its executive compensation, its future business plans, and so forth are grossly exaggerated. If we silence employers, who is going to inform the employees of these facts? Certainly not the union. Of course, employees may know well that in general their employer would prefer not deal with a union, but if, as a result of card check, employers are prevented from responding to a union's campaign misstatements, who will? That is not a license for an employer to threaten, intimidate, or coerce employees during an organizing campaign. Under current law, employers are not permitted to threaten, coerce, or promise new benefits or threaten withdrawal of existing benefits. But under current law, the employer can respond factually to the campaign-puffing of the union so that the choice made by the employees is an informed choice. Through a quickie card check process, that ability will effectively be denied. So let's be clear: When down the road the union lobby offers to compromise by preserving secret ballot elections supported by a majority, even a supermajority, of signed union authorization cards but only where such secret ballot elections are conducted by the NLRB in a week or two from the date the union files an election petition, it will be no compromise. There are still a few of us around who remember the quickie election provision of the so-called labor law reform bill in 1977 and 1978. The unions then, just as today, were seeking to in effect silence employers during union organizing campaigns. Today, they are seeking that result by denying workers secret ballot elections. If they thought they could get away with it, unions would have Congress repeal employer free speech rights entirely. Denial of employee secret ballot elections and denial of free speech vital to ensure an informed choice doesn't sound very much like employee free choice to me. It sure doesn't sound very democratic with a small ``d'' or even a large ``D.'' That is only part of it. If you get into the mandatory arbitration that will inevitably occur because they won't be able to negotiate, in fairness, union contracts, you are going to have the wonderful people here in the Federal Government telling not only the unions but especially the businesses what they can and cannot do. They will set the terms and conditions of employment by mandatory arbitration and, in the end, they will also basically determine things such as pension plans. This isn't right. We believe in secret ballot elections in this country. We believe in fair processes. As I have said, the process works pretty well because unions win 60 percent of these elections. When they win fairly, that is the right thing. That may be a good thing. The fact is, under this bill, it stacks the whole labor process in favor of one side--the unions--and takes away the rights of employers to be able to inform their employees of the truth if there are misrepresentations by the union and, even if there aren't, to inform their employees how much better off they may be without a union so that they can make truly an informed choice. There are decent provisions in the labor laws that permit a reasonable, decent, honorable process. What really interests me is that the trade union movement is demanding a secret ballot election process in other countries. Why would they demand it in other countries and yet deny it here for both employers and employees in these very important decisions that have to be made by employees under our current very fair laws? Right now, the balance is a little bit in favor of unions. That is maybe as it should be. But at least it is a balance. Both sides have basically an equal chance of keeping unions, accepting unions, or denying unions. Frankly, one of the reasons my friends in the trade union movement want this type of an unfair process is because they have been losing members. It is easy to see why. We are on an energy bill right now that may be the death knell of our automobile industry if we don't handle it exactly right. The fact is, we could lose the American automobile industry, run by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, if we don't handle it properly. We will go to foreign-made cars. That would be disastrous, in my opinion. But part of the reason is the unions have negotiated contracts that are so expensive that a lot of the companies just can't produce the high-quality cars at reasonable prices that they used to be able to do. There are good reasons for unionization. I am one of the few people here who actually held an AFL-CIO union card. I came up through the trade union movement, learned a trade through a formal apprenticeship, became a journeyman, a skilled tradesman. I believe in unions. I believe in a fair collective bargaining process. But it ought to be fair. One of the ways you make it fair is by having secret ballot elections. In this particular case, this hoax which is going to be brought up on the floor and done in a very quickie way is not the way to go. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Fuel Reduction using Electrons to End Our Dependence on the Mideast Act of 2007, or the FREEDOM Act. Senators Maria Cantwell, Barack Obama, and I have been working closely together since the beginning of the year to author this very important legislation. We believe the FREEDOM Act will begin a dramatic shift in the transportation sector away from liquid fuels and toward the greater use of electrons. For years I worked hard to pass a strong tax incentive package for alternative fuel and hybrid electric vehicles in the form of the CLEAR Act, which was passed into law as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. When I first introduced the CLEAR Act, more than 7 years ago, there were only two hybrid vehicles available commercially. Today there are dozens of models of hybrids from which consumers can choose. Already, the move toward hybrid-electric vehicles has helped to reduce the demand for liquid fuel in this country. It has also set the stage for the next technological step, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. This vehicle would have an extra battery pack, recharged from the electricity grid, giving the vehicle all the benefits of a plug-in battery electric vehicle but also the freedom and fuel efficiency of a hybrid electric vehicle once the battery has used up its charge. With today's advanced plug-in electric and the coming plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, most commuters will be able to make the round trip from home to work and back using very little or no fuel, relying instead on cheap, clean, and abundant electricity. As you and many of our colleagues know, per mile, electricity can be much cheaper and cleaner than petroleum, and electrons are generated domestically and independent of the global oil market. It is difficult to overstate the potential the change to plug-in electric vehicles could make in terms of our energy dependence on liquid fuels. R. James Woolsey, who is a member of the National Commission on Energy Policy, testified before the Finance Committee this spring. In his testimony, he cited a Department of Energy study that estimated that adopting plug-in vehicles would not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84 percent of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. In other words, we already have the power we need to fuel the vast majority of the cars in this country right now, and it exists in the excess capacity of our existing powerplants. Because plug-in vehicles could mostly be charged at night, during the off-peak hours for electric utilities, this technology represents an elegant solution. In terms of technology and industry focus, the United States is positioned to lead the world into the future with plug-in electric drive motor vehicles. The FREEDOM Act would help our Nation to take up that position by helping to develop the market, the technology, and the domestic production capacity needed to fulfill this role. The FREEDOM Act's goals would be achieved through four strong tax incentives: First, a tax credit for consumers who purchase plug-in electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; second, for a limited time, a tax credit for consumers who convert their hybrid vehicles to high quality plug-in hybrid vehicles; third, a strong tax incentive for the U.S. manufacture of plug-in vehicles and of major components of plug-in vehicles, such as batteries, electric motors, and electronic controllers; and finally, a tax credit for electric utilities that provide rebates to customers who purchase plug-in electric drive vehicles. Freedom plug-in credits would cover the consumer purchase of vehicles that use batteries and that plug into the electric grid for at least part of their power. This would include plug-in electrics, plug-in hybrids, and others. The amount of the credit would be based on the kilowatt hours of the vehicle's battery pack, with a cap of $7,500 for passenger vehicles. The same is true for heavier duty vehicles, except that the caps are scaled up for each vehicle weight class. Freedom conversion credits would go to hybrid-electric vehicle owners who choose to convert their existing hybrid vehicle to a high quality plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. These credits would also be scaled to the kilowatt-hours of the new battery installed in their vehicle. Only high quality conversion kits, which are certified to meet all highway safety and emissions standards would qualify for a freedom conversion credit, and the credits would be available until the market transitions to commercially available plug-in hybrid vehicles. The FREEDOM Act also offers first-year expensing for companies setting up production capacity in the United States for plug-in electric drive vehicles and for major components of those vehicles. Finally, in the case that an electric utility in the U.S. chooses to offer rebates to customers who purchase plug-in electric drive vehicles, the FREEDOM Act would reimburse the utility for part of that rebate in the form of a freedom utility credit. The amount of the Government reimbursement would be based on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions for each utility. I want to emphasize that like the tax credits available under current law for hybrid electric vehicles, the tax incentives in the FREEDOM Act are temporary. They are needed in order to help get these products over the initial stage of production, when they are quite a bit more expensive than older technology vehicles, to the mass production stage, where economies of scale will drive costs down and the credits will no longer be necessary. Consumer acceptance of this exciting new technology is vital, and these credits will make it easier and more economical for consumers to choose vehicles that will move us away from dependence on less clean and more expensive transportation fuel produced by other nations. The consumer acceptance of the hybrid electric vehicle has already proven a benefit to our Nation's energy security, and the plug-in hybrid will lead to an even more dramatic reduction in fuel use in this country. Years ago, I argued that the technologies developed to make hybrids possible would eventually lead us to a commercially available hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. I stand by that argument, and I believe that by the time plug-in hybrid electric vehicles become mass produced in this country, we will be ready to use hydrogen fuel cells to disconnect these vehicles from the grid and begin a new age in transportation with much greater freedom of movement and freedom from dependence of foreign oil. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to throw their full support for the FREEDOM Act.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Fuel Reduction using Electrons to End Our Dependence on the Mideast Act of 2007, or the FREEDOM Act. Senators Maria Cantwell, Barack Obama, and I have been working closely together since the beginning of the year to author this very important legislation. We believe the FREEDOM Act will begin a dramatic shift in the transportation sector away from liquid fuels and toward the greater use of electrons. For years I worked hard to pass a strong tax incentive package for alternative fuel and hybrid electric vehicles in the form of the CLEAR Act, which was passed into law as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. When I first introduced the CLEAR Act, more than 7 years ago, there were only two hybrid vehicles available commercially. Today there are dozens of models of hybrids from which consumers can choose. Already, the move toward hybrid-electric vehicles has helped to reduce the demand for liquid fuel in this country. It has also set the stage for the next technological step, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. This vehicle would have an extra battery pack, recharged from the electricity grid, giving the vehicle all the benefits of a plug-in battery electric vehicle but also the freedom and fuel efficiency of a hybrid electric vehicle once the battery has used up its charge. With today's advanced plug-in electric and the coming plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, most commuters will be able to make the round trip from home to work and back using very little or no fuel, relying instead on cheap, clean, and abundant electricity. As you and many of our colleagues know, per mile, electricity can be much cheaper and cleaner than petroleum, and electrons are generated domestically and independent of the global oil market. It is difficult to overstate the potential the change to plug-in electric vehicles could make in terms of our energy dependence on liquid fuels. R. James Woolsey, who is a member of the National Commission on Energy Policy, testified before the Finance Committee this spring. In his testimony, he cited a Department of Energy study that estimated that adopting plug-in vehicles would not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84 percent of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. In other words, we already have the power we need to fuel the vast majority of the cars in this country right now, and it exists in the excess capacity of our existing powerplants. Because plug-in vehicles could mostly be charged at night, during the off-peak hours for electric utilities, this technology represents an elegant solution. In terms of technology and industry focus, the United States is positioned to lead the world into the future with plug-in electric drive motor vehicles. The FREEDOM Act would help our Nation to take up that position by helping to develop the market, the technology, and the domestic production capacity needed to fulfill this role. The FREEDOM Act's goals would be achieved through four strong tax incentives: First, a tax credit for consumers who purchase plug-in electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; second, for a limited time, a tax credit for consumers who convert their hybrid vehicles to high quality plug-in hybrid vehicles; third, a strong tax incentive for the U.S. manufacture of plug-in vehicles and of major components of plug-in vehicles, such as batteries, electric motors, and electronic controllers; and finally, a tax credit for electric utilities that provide rebates to customers who purchase plug-in electric drive vehicles. Freedom plug-in credits would cover the consumer purchase of vehicles that use batteries and that plug into the electric grid for at least part of their power. This would include plug-in electrics, plug-in hybrids, and others. The amount of the credit would be based on the kilowatt hours of the vehicle's battery pack, with a cap of $7,500 for passenger vehicles. The same is true for heavier duty vehicles, except that the caps are scaled up for each vehicle weight class. Freedom conversion credits would go to hybrid-electric vehicle owners who choose to convert their existing hybrid vehicle to a high quality plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. These credits would also be scaled to the kilowatt-hours of the new battery installed in their vehicle. Only high quality conversion kits, which are certified to meet all highway safety and emissions standards would qualify for a freedom conversion credit, and the credits would be available until the market transitions to commercially available plug-in hybrid vehicles. The FREEDOM Act also offers first-year expensing for companies setting up production capacity in the United States for plug-in electric drive vehicles and for major components of those vehicles. Finally, in the case that an electric utility in the U.S. chooses to offer rebates to customers who purchase plug-in electric drive vehicles, the FREEDOM Act would reimburse the utility for part of that rebate in the form of a freedom utility credit. The amount of the Government reimbursement would be based on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions for each utility. I want to emphasize that like the tax credits available under current law for hybrid electric vehicles, the tax incentives in the FREEDOM Act are temporary. They are needed in order to help get these products over the initial stage of production, when they are quite a bit more expensive than older technology vehicles, to the mass production stage, where economies of scale will drive costs down and the credits will no longer be necessary. Consumer acceptance of this exciting new technology is vital, and these credits will make it easier and more economical for consumers to choose vehicles that will move us away from dependence on less clean and more expensive transportation fuel produced by other nations. The consumer acceptance of the hybrid electric vehicle has already proven a benefit to our Nation's energy security, and the plug-in hybrid will lead to an even more dramatic reduction in fuel use in this country. Years ago, I argued that the technologies developed to make hybrids possible would eventually lead us to a commercially available hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. I stand by that argument, and I believe that by the time plug-in hybrid electric vehicles become mass produced in this country, we will be ready to use hydrogen fuel cells to disconnect these vehicles from the grid and begin a new age in transportation with much greater freedom of movement and freedom from dependence of foreign oil. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to throw their full support for the FREEDOM Act.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today I rise to reintroduce my legislation, the Refinery Investment Tax Assistance Act, aimed at increasing refining capacity in this Nation. No one doubts that U.S. consumers and businesses will face another long hot summer of too high gas prices. There is general consensus among experts that a major bottleneck in U.S. refining capacity is a big part of the reason prices are so high. My bill will help resolve that problem. As my colleagues know, the Government does not explore for, extract, transport, or refine oil in this country. Our Nation relies wholly on private industry to feed a very large domestic energy appetite. Unfortunately, the Government often stands in the way of industry in these activities. While many refiners would like to expand their capacity to refine oil, they face extraordinary costs from bureaucratic regulations that limit the available funding for such expansion. Because of this and other unfriendly economic factors, not a single new refinery has been built in the United States since 1976. In fact, we have lost nearly 200 refineries over that time period and now we badly need that refining capacity. I authored a key provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which is currently providing some incentives for new refining capacity. However, due to budgetary constraints, the tax incentives in my proposal were cut in half during the conference between the House and the Senate. I am confident that if we had known 2 years ago just how much of a bottleneck the refinery shortage would present in today's market, the full measure of my incentive would have been enacted. The Refinery Investment Tax Assistance Act would restore those provisions I originally introduced, but which were later removed for budget reasons. First, it would increase the short-term incentive for the industry to build new refineries or to expand existing ones. As with the 2005 bill, S. 1591 would provide immediate expensing of 100 percent of the cost of new or expanded refineries in certain circumstances. As I said earlier, cost constraints forced us to limit this incentive in 2005 to 50 percent of expensing for refiners that were able to commit to installing new refining equipment before 2008. Under this bill, any added capacity would have to be placed in service by 2012 in order to qualify to write off the full cost of the expanded capacity in the first year. The second part of S. 1591 would address the 10-year depreciation schedule for refining assets under our current tax law. This 10-year schedule is longer than the write-off period for much of the equipment used in other manufacturing industries, including the petrochemical industry. My bill would eliminate this disparity by shortening the depreciation schedule for refining assets from 10 years to 5. This unfair and unwarranted treatment of our refining industry acts as a long-term obstacle to new investment in increased capacity. I call on my colleagues to help me level the playing field on depreciation for this critically important sector of our energy industry. I should also point out that this legislation would allow refineries to change only the timing of the depreciation of their equipment, but not the amount. Meanwhile, it would increase the size of our tax base by encouraging industry to build new refineries and increase capacity. Testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2005, Mr. Bob Slaughter of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said that an important solution to the energy crisis would be to ``expand the refining tax incentive provision in the Energy Act [and] reduce the depreciation period for refining investments from 10 to . . . five years in order to remove a current disincentive for refining investment.'' These changes are incorporated in the legislation I am introducing today. Mr. Slaughter gave this testimony in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Every American has felt the effects of the storms on our energy sector. Refineries have been pummeled and, at one point, an unprecedented 25 percent of our Nation's refining capacity was taken offline. The rising gas prices hurt families' budgets, businesses that pay high travel expenses, and even school districts that must fuel buses to transport students. Once again, forecasters are predicting a terrible storm season this summer with hurricanes comparable to those of 2005. We have learned that when it comes to our Nation's energy security, refining is where we are the most vulnerable. This legislation will help us deal with the energy crisis and make our Nation more secure from the attacks of Mother Nature and terrorists. I hope my colleagues will join me in pursuing the secure and independent refining program that this country truly needs. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today I rise to reintroduce my legislation, the Refinery Investment Tax Assistance Act, aimed at increasing refining capacity in this Nation. No one doubts that U.S. consumers and businesses will face another long hot summer of too high gas prices. There is general consensus among experts that a major bottleneck in U.S. refining capacity is a big part of the reason prices are so high. My bill will help resolve that problem. As my colleagues know, the Government does not explore for, extract, transport, or refine oil in this country. Our Nation relies wholly on private industry to feed a very large domestic energy appetite. Unfortunately, the Government often stands in the way of industry in these activities. While many refiners would like to expand their capacity to refine oil, they face extraordinary costs from bureaucratic regulations that limit the available funding for such expansion. Because of this and other unfriendly economic factors, not a single new refinery has been built in the United States since 1976. In fact, we have lost nearly 200 refineries over that time period and now we badly need that refining capacity. I authored a key provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which is currently providing some incentives for new refining capacity. However, due to budgetary constraints, the tax incentives in my proposal were cut in half during the conference between the House and the Senate. I am confident that if we had known 2 years ago just how much of a bottleneck the refinery shortage would present in today's market, the full measure of my incentive would have been enacted. The Refinery Investment Tax Assistance Act would restore those provisions I originally introduced, but which were later removed for budget reasons. First, it would increase the short-term incentive for the industry to build new refineries or to expand existing ones. As with the 2005 bill, S. 1591 would provide immediate expensing of 100 percent of the cost of new or expanded refineries in certain circumstances. As I said earlier, cost constraints forced us to limit this incentive in 2005 to 50 percent of expensing for refiners that were able to commit to installing new refining equipment before 2008. Under this bill, any added capacity would have to be placed in service by 2012 in order to qualify to write off the full cost of the expanded capacity in the first year. The second part of S. 1591 would address the 10-year depreciation schedule for refining assets under our current tax law. This 10-year schedule is longer than the write-off period for much of the equipment used in other manufacturing industries, including the petrochemical industry. My bill would eliminate this disparity by shortening the depreciation schedule for refining assets from 10 years to 5. This unfair and unwarranted treatment of our refining industry acts as a long-term obstacle to new investment in increased capacity. I call on my colleagues to help me level the playing field on depreciation for this critically important sector of our energy industry. I should also point out that this legislation would allow refineries to change only the timing of the depreciation of their equipment, but not the amount. Meanwhile, it would increase the size of our tax base by encouraging industry to build new refineries and increase capacity. Testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2005, Mr. Bob Slaughter of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said that an important solution to the energy crisis would be to ``expand the refining tax incentive provision in the Energy Act [and] reduce the depreciation period for refining investments from 10 to . . . five years in order to remove a current disincentive for refining investment.'' These changes are incorporated in the legislation I am introducing today. Mr. Slaughter gave this testimony in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Every American has felt the effects of the storms on our energy sector. Refineries have been pummeled and, at one point, an unprecedented 25 percent of our Nation's refining capacity was taken offline. The rising gas prices hurt families' budgets, businesses that pay high travel expenses, and even school districts that must fuel buses to transport students. Once again, forecasters are predicting a terrible storm season this summer with hurricanes comparable to those of 2005. We have learned that when it comes to our Nation's energy security, refining is where we are the most vulnerable. This legislation will help us deal with the energy crisis and make our Nation more secure from the attacks of Mother Nature and terrorists. I hope my colleagues will join me in pursuing the secure and independent refining program that this country truly needs. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, this afternoon the Senate will decide whether to end debate on proceeding to Senate Joint Resolution 14, which expresses the sense of the Senate that the Attorney General no longer holds the confidence of the Senate or the American people. I rise to oppose this so-called no confidence resolution on both procedural and substantive grounds and will urge my colleagues to vote against ending debate. To paraphrase Shakespeare, whether or not this joint resolution amounts to sound and fury, it signifies nothing. It is nothing more than a bit of political theater which should be rejected out of hand. Let me make two points about its form and two points about its substance before offering a few comments about the controversy from which it arose. The first point I want to make about its form is that this measure would express the sense or opinion of the Senate through a joint resolution. As opposed to regular Senate resolutions that require only Senate passage, joint resolutions are legislative vehicles requiring passage by both houses and signature by the President. We use joint resolutions to propose constitutional amendments and some other legislative business, but this legislative vehicle is simply the wrong way to conduct non-legislative business such as expressing the opinion of one house. In a report dated today, the Congressional Research Service concludes that the form of this measure as a joint resolution is inappropriate for what it purports to do. I think this is significant and the reason for this conclusion is obvious. If this joint resolution should somehow pass the Senate--which I certainly expect it will not--it will be sent to the House. How on Earth can the House vote on the sense of the Senate? What could a House vote about the Senate's opinion on this matter possibly mean? By a negative vote, would the House be saying that what the Senate has expressed as its own opinion is really not the Senate's opinion? This makes no sense whatsoever. In fact, the House already has its own resolution regarding the Attorney General's service, and it is a regular House resolution. The sponsors of S.J. Res 14 either do not understand or have disregarded how the legislative process is supposed to work. I suspect it is the latter, using this political ploy to force the President's involvement. Either way, this body should reject it out of hand. The Senate has not used a joint resolution in the past on the rare occasion when it has sought to criticize executive branch officials. Resolutions in the 109th Congress to censure the President or condemn remarks by a former Cabinet Secretary were Senate resolutions. The resolution to censure the President introduced in the 106th Congress, offered by one of the cosponsors of today's joint resolution, was a Senate resolution. Resolutions in the 81st and 82nd Congresses demanding the resignation of Secretary of State Dean Acheson were Senate resolutions. The resolution to censure and condemn President James Buchanan in 1862 was a Senate resolution. Our only attempt to censure the Attorney General, back in 1886, was through Senate resolutions. This unprecedented use of a joint resolution would distort our legislative procedure, and I urge my colleagues to reject it. The second point about the form of this measure is that it purports to be a no confidence resolution. Parliaments take no-confidence votes for an obvious reason. In a parliamentary system of government, the legislative body's confidence or support is necessary for the head of government and cabinet ministers to serve. For an equally obvious reason, the so-called no-confidence resolution before us should be rejected. This is not a parliament. In our Presidential system of government, the separation of powers means that the chief executive is elected separately from the legislature, and cabinet officials such as the Attorney General serve at the pleasure of the President. Under the Constitution, the Senate's consent was required for the Attorney General's appointment, but our confidence is not required for the Attorney General's continued service. The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the President, not at the confidence of the Senate. The separation of powers has been a casualty throughout the controversy concerning the removal of U.S. Attorneys that gave rise to this misguided resolution. As with the Attorney General--and with very few exceptions--U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. The U.S. attorney statute says that they are subject to removal by the President. Neither the Constitution nor this statute say anything about the confidence of the Senate for the continued service of officials the President has authority to appoint. The separation of powers, a principle fundamental to our constitutional system itself, is becoming a casualty of partisan politics. The brand new Congressional Research Service report I mentioned earlier could not identify a single resolution like this one even being offered in the past and this should not be the first. No matter what its substance, a joint resolution is inappropriate for expressing the sense of the Senate about his issue. No matter what its form, a resolution expressing a lack of confidence in an executive branch official is inappropriate in our system of government. Let me now address two points regarding the substance of this inappropriate joint resolution. The first point is about the real purpose behind its words. Even though expressing a lack of confidence in an executive branch official is irrelevant in our system of government, we all know that the real purpose behind this resolution is to pressure the Attorney General to resign. On the one hand, if its sponsors want to call for the Attorney General's resignation, they should be honest and do so. On the other hand, Senators certainly do not need a resolution--especially one as fundamentally flawed and inappropriate as this one--to call for the Attorney General's resignation. As a number of this resolution's sponsors have already done, with the rapt attention and constant repetition of a compliant media, Senators can demand the Attorney General's resignation any time they choose. My second point about the substance of this misguided joint resolution concerns its actual content, the words themselves. This joint resolution does not condemn or criticize the Attorney General for anything he has done or said. It does not call for his censure. And, just to repeat, this joint resolution does not call for the Attorney General's resignation. In the past, the Senate has considered resolutions doing each of these, albeit through regular Senate resolutions properly suited to the task. But this joint resolution before us does not even contain a single ``whereas,'' clause offering any indication of the basis or any reason for what it says. Rather, this joint resolution speaks vaguely of ``holding confidence,'' as if this were an all-or-nothing proposition, as if this were some kind of a pass-fail test. Even when parliaments take no-confidence votes, those votes are at least limited to the confidence of parliament itself. This joint resolution purports to speak about all the confidence of all the American people. But what could a ``yes'' or ``roll vote on such a resolution possibly mean? Would a ``no'' vote mean that no American has any confidence in the Attorney General about anything? Would a ``yes'' vote mean that every American has complete confidence in the Attorney General about everything? Because neither one of those can possibly be true, a resolution worded this way is either seriously misguided or nothing but a publicity stunt. It is not focused on his job performance, or his leadership of the Justice Department, but is focused on the Attorney General himself. A resolution asking for a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on something as vague and misdirected as confidence in a person attempts to reduce the multifaceted and complex to the unilateral and simplistic. In doing so, this misleading joint resolution turns a bit of political theater into a theater of the absurd. The Senate should not even consider such a resolution evoking the image of Caesar listening for the chants of the crowd before giving a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Rather than purporting to speak for the American people, I think we should let the American people speak for themselves. I found 16 opinion polls by nationally recognized polling outfits during March and April asking Americans whether the Attorney General should resign. These polls did not ask a vague, squishy question such as: Do you have confidence in the Attorney General? No these polls asked the real question behind the joint resolution before us today: Do you think the Attorney General should resign? An average of 39 percent of Americans said ``yes.'' Only one poll showed bare majority responding in the affirmative and, considering its margin of error, even that one might not show majority support for this result at all. Frankly, I am a little surprised that the percentage of Americans who say the Attorney General should resign is not higher. My Democratic colleagues and many of their media allies, after all, have been working very hard week after week after week to persuade our fellow citizens that the Attorney General should go. Daily front-page news coverage, Senate and House hearings, protests and lobbying by activists, blogs, columns, editorials--the Attorney General's critics have been pulling out all the stops for 6 months now. And while the joint resolution before us suggests that this aggressive, coordinated effort has deprived the Attorney General of everyone's confidence about everything, only a little over a third of Americans think he should resign. The Pew Research Center examined news coverage during the week in March when the Attorney General gave a much- criticized press conference. They found that the story about dismissed U.S. attorneys was the most reported story in the national media, with coverage jumping eight fold from the previous week. In spite of that Herculean media effort, however, only about 8 percent of Americans said this is the story they followed most closely. These national polls are far better suited to measure what the American people think than the joint resolution before us, and my Democratic colleagues might want to consider another nugget of public opinion. A USA Today/Gallup poll showed that while 38 percent of Americans believe that the Attorney General should resign, 40 percent of Americans believe that Democrats in Congress are spending too much time on this issue. Let me repeat that. More Americans say Democrats spend too much time on this issue than believe the Attorney General should resign. One reason might be that there is so little to show for the effort. Just a few weeks ago, one of my distinguished Democratic colleagues said during a press conference that Democrats just know that U.S. attorneys were fired last year for improper reasons. How do Democrats know this? Because they have any evidence for that conclusion? No. My Democratic colleague had to admit that ``we don't have a smoking gun.'' That is Washington political code for ``just take our word for it because we can't prove it.'' Just a couple of weeks before that, another distinguished Democratic colleague told a gaggle of reporters after a Judiciary Committee hearing that he ``just knows'' someone in the White House ordered that those U.S. attorneys be removed. Now, how does he know this? Because he has any evidence for this conclusion? No. He too had to admit that ``of course we don't know that'' It is truly ironic that this controversy involves prosecutors. Prosecutors must have some evidence to bring charges. Prosecutors must have some evidence for a conviction. I just wish that some of my Senate colleagues felt such an obligation either to prove their allegations or move on to more important matters. We have been investigating and probing the removal of those U.S. attorneys for 6 months. Dozens of staff in the Senate, the House, and the Justice Department have done little else since the 110th Congress began. We have seen hearing after hearing, interview after interview, thousands of pages of documents, and even hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to hire outside law firms as reinforcements. Democrats continue to authorize subpoenas not only for people who have not refused to testify, but for people who have agreed to testify, and even for people who have already testified. And after all that, my Democratic colleagues have to admit that they have no smoking gun, they cannot prove the accusations they continue to repeat. There are plenty of innuendos, caricatures, and characterizations. But repeating talking points, sound bites and cliches is no substitute for evidence. This summer, Americans will see sequels of several movies in the theaters. Here in the Senate's political theater, we have already seen several sequels of the same movie. Last week's Judiciary Committee hearing, for example, was part five on the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys. Every one of those same sequels has the same ending. It is no wonder more Americans believe that enough is enough than believe the Attorney General should resign. Before I close, let me say a few words about the controversy that was the impetus for this misguided joint resolution. As I said earlier, U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. With very few exceptions, he may remove them for whatever reason he chooses. The President has the authority to remove a U.S. attorney to allow someone else to serve in that position or because that U.S. attorney's performance is, in some general or specific way, inadequate. Each of the U.S. attorneys removed last year had served his or her 4-year term and had no right to serve longer if the President didn't want them to. That means the real issue is whether these U.S. attorneys were removed for genuinely improper reasons, such as interfering with an ongoing case. After all this time, all this effort, and all this taxpayer money, there is no evidence for that conclusion. I must candidly say, at the same time, that the process by which this administration set out to evaluate U.S. attorneys and replace some of them was bungled from the start. Proper respect for the office of the Federal prosecutor and for the individuals who occupy it would, it seems to me, require a more rigorous, disciplined, organized process than apparently was used here. The Attorney General has said as much and said he should have been more involved. I also think the individuals who were asked to resign deserve better, more respectful treatment. But there is a high burden of proof for those who say that a badly executed and explained process, even a poorly conceived and mismanaged process, was instead a nefarious, partisan, political scheme to subvert the justice system. Continuing to make such claims without coming close to meeting that burden appears to many designed, instead, to serve partisan political goals. As I close, I ask my colleagues to consider one more set of polls. During the same 2 months, March and April, as they were asking about the Attorney General's resignation, national polling outfits also asked Americans if they approve of the way Congress is doing its job. While an average of 39 percent of Americans believe the Attorney General should resign, an average of 56 percent of Americans disapprove of how we are doing our job. Should we all resign? I think there are some people who probably would say yes. Far more Americans disapprove of Congress than believe the Attorney General should resign. I wonder whether spending so much time on fishing expeditions that yield no fish and wasting time on inappropriate, misleading resolutions such as the one before us today only add to Americans' disapproval of our job performance. In a statement last Friday, the main sponsor of this joint resolution said the vote on this resolution is about loyalty. I suppose he meant loyalty to the President, as if that were the only reason to oppose using the wrong vehicle for a misleading statement that has no relevance to our system of government. In a way, I agree this is about loyalty, but I think it is about loyalty to the Constitution, to the integrity of the legislative process, to this body as an institution, and to a fair and honest debate about these issues. If my colleagues are loyal to those, they will see that this bit of absurd political theater serves no real purpose and will only add to most Americans' already negative view of how we are doing our job. So I urge my colleagues to reject this cloture motion. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute and bid farewell to my colleague and friend, my neighbor from the great State of Wyoming, Senator Craig Thomas. Craig brought a quiet dignity to this august Chamber. He was a Senator with the heart of a cowboy. We all knew that he would rather have been on horseback in the Wyoming prairie than in Washington, DC, but this was where the people of Wyoming needed him to be. Indeed, all citizens of America benefitted greatly from his presence in Washington, DC. Craig was the champion of rural America. He quietly but tirelessly fought for the hard-working people of rural America, the people who provide us with food and energy, the wool-growers, the cattlemen, and the farmers. If ever there were a question on agriculture, Craig was the man to see. During his tenure in the U.S. Senate, we all relied heavily on Senator Thomas's expertise and leadership on agriculture, rural development, and many other important topics debated by this body. We served together on the Senate Finance Committee where he would often entertain us with his stories and experiences. I truly enjoyed listening to him and hearing about his great State of Wyoming. Craig had a way of dealing with the complex issues facing the Finance Committee that was very direct and meaningful. He had a way of distilling the complex tax, trade, and health care issues down to their core and ensuring that real people, with real concerns were addressed by the policies created in the Finance Committee. I have had the distinct privilege of sitting next to Craig in committee meetings, in briefings, in lunches, on the floor, and in several other settings, and I can tell you he was always a gentlemen. He was always a caring legislator, and he was always a true and loyal friend. Craig earned great stature and prestige in the time he spent as a leader in the U.S. Marine Corps, the Wyoming Farm Bureau, the Wyoming State Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate. I am honored to have served beside him for so many years in the Senate, and I will miss my friend dearly. I join with my colleagues in offering my condolences to Senator Thomas's family, especially his widow, Susan. My thoughts and prayers are with them on this day as we mourn the loss of a great Senator but celebrate the life of our great and dear man. The people of Wyoming will certainly thank Susan and the rest of the Thomas family for sharing their beloved Craig with them, and I believe the entire Nation would join with me in thanking Susan for sharing her great husband with us. He represented the good people of Wyoming in such a capable and dignified manner, and I know they are going to miss him. In fact, the entire Nation is going to miss him. In this instance, I believe it is appropriate to quote the beloved cowboy song and say to Craig, ``Happy trails to you, till we meet again.''

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to commend our colleagues, Senators Gregg, Burr, and Coburn, for their introduction today of the Affordable Biologics for Consumers Act, S. 1505. As my colleagues are aware, I am the original author with Representative Henry Waxman of the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, a law which gave rise to today's generic drug industry. And so, I have a long-standing interest in making certain that consumers have access to affordable medications and that we provide the appropriate incentives for development of the new products that are eventually to be copied. We must rectify the fact that there is no clear pathway for follow-on copies of biological products, such as human growth hormone or insulin, to take two easy examples. And it must be rectified on a priority basis. That the Hatch-Waxman law did not cover these biologic products was not a simple omission. Indeed, the market for biologicals really did not develop until after enactment of Waxman-Hatch in 1984. For many years, I have worked toward development of a pathway for these ``follow-on'' products, but it was not until recently that I believe we have developed a public consensus that there is the scientific and regulatory underpinning necessary to write a good law. Comes now the Gregg-Burr-Coburn bill, which must be seen as an important contribution to the necessary dialog on follow-on biologics. The Gregg-Burr-Coburn proposal addresses elements which I believe are key to any law we enact. First, there must be sufficient incentive for the development of biologic products. That incentive is tied inherently to an appropriate protection of the innovator's intellectual property. And the protection must be for a sufficient length of time to allow inventors of the molecule and others who have a financial stake in its development to recoup the substantial time and investment necessary to invent a biologic. Such protections are key for biotechnology companies, large and small, but also for universities that conduct much of the research on new molecules and the other investors who support that promising research. Second, we should not create unnecessary barriers to marketing of lower-cost, successor biologic products. While the law must contemplate that the follow-on products be subjected to a rigorous scientific review to ensure they are safe, pure and potent, that review, however, should be flexible enough to make certain there are not unnecessary barriers to market entry for the lower-cost alternatives. Third, past history should inform our decision-making when it can, but any law we write must reflect the emerging realities of today's pharmaceutical market. And, finally, the law must reflect a careful balance. We all want consumers to have access to more affordable medications, and surely there is a need to allow patients to buy less expensive biological products. At the same time, we want to make certain that the abbreviated pathway for these follow-on biologics contemplates review of products which are truly follow-ons to the innovators' products, and not new biologics. This is tied inherently to the standard which is developed for ``similarity'' of the follow-on to the innovator. As many are aware, Senators Kennedy, Enzi, Clinton and I have been meeting for some time to discuss the elements that must be included in any follow-on biologics legislation. While I have been working on draft legislation for some time, I have not introduced a proposal pending a successful conclusion to those discussions. It has been our hope, and it remains our hope, that our meetings will lead to development of a consensus document that will provide the basis for the expected HELP Committee markup on June 13th. There is no doubt in my mind that the Gregg-Burr-Coburn proposal will help inform the discussions of we four Senators, and indeed the HELP Committee's deliberations on this issue. Senators Gregg, Burr and Coburn have a proven record in contributing greatly to the body of law we call the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Their bill is a thoughtful and serious contribution and it is a significant work that this body should recognize.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to commend our colleagues, Senators Gregg, Burr, and Coburn, for their introduction today of the Affordable Biologics for Consumers Act, S. 1505. As my colleagues are aware, I am the original author with Representative Henry Waxman of the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, a law which gave rise to today's generic drug industry. And so, I have a long-standing interest in making certain that consumers have access to affordable medications and that we provide the appropriate incentives for development of the new products that are eventually to be copied. We must rectify the fact that there is no clear pathway for follow-on copies of biological products, such as human growth hormone or insulin, to take two easy examples. And it must be rectified on a priority basis. That the Hatch-Waxman law did not cover these biologic products was not a simple omission. Indeed, the market for biologicals really did not develop until after enactment of Waxman-Hatch in 1984. For many years, I have worked toward development of a pathway for these ``follow-on'' products, but it was not until recently that I believe we have developed a public consensus that there is the scientific and regulatory underpinning necessary to write a good law. Comes now the Gregg-Burr-Coburn bill, which must be seen as an important contribution to the necessary dialog on follow-on biologics. The Gregg-Burr-Coburn proposal addresses elements which I believe are key to any law we enact. First, there must be sufficient incentive for the development of biologic products. That incentive is tied inherently to an appropriate protection of the innovator's intellectual property. And the protection must be for a sufficient length of time to allow inventors of the molecule and others who have a financial stake in its development to recoup the substantial time and investment necessary to invent a biologic. Such protections are key for biotechnology companies, large and small, but also for universities that conduct much of the research on new molecules and the other investors who support that promising research. Second, we should not create unnecessary barriers to marketing of lower-cost, successor biologic products. While the law must contemplate that the follow-on products be subjected to a rigorous scientific review to ensure they are safe, pure and potent, that review, however, should be flexible enough to make certain there are not unnecessary barriers to market entry for the lower-cost alternatives. Third, past history should inform our decision-making when it can, but any law we write must reflect the emerging realities of today's pharmaceutical market. And, finally, the law must reflect a careful balance. We all want consumers to have access to more affordable medications, and surely there is a need to allow patients to buy less expensive biological products. At the same time, we want to make certain that the abbreviated pathway for these follow-on biologics contemplates review of products which are truly follow-ons to the innovators' products, and not new biologics. This is tied inherently to the standard which is developed for ``similarity'' of the follow-on to the innovator. As many are aware, Senators Kennedy, Enzi, Clinton and I have been meeting for some time to discuss the elements that must be included in any follow-on biologics legislation. While I have been working on draft legislation for some time, I have not introduced a proposal pending a successful conclusion to those discussions. It has been our hope, and it remains our hope, that our meetings will lead to development of a consensus document that will provide the basis for the expected HELP Committee markup on June 13th. There is no doubt in my mind that the Gregg-Burr-Coburn proposal will help inform the discussions of we four Senators, and indeed the HELP Committee's deliberations on this issue. Senators Gregg, Burr and Coburn have a proven record in contributing greatly to the body of law we call the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Their bill is a thoughtful and serious contribution and it is a significant work that this body should recognize.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I want to say a few words about Reverend Jerry Falwell, who passed away last week. Reverend Falwell loved God, loved people, and loved his country. He not only spoke about what he believed, he acted on what he believed and worked to help people and to make this country better. Jerry Falwell led a remarkable and inspiring life. He was born in Lynchburg, VA, the son of a nonreligious bootlegger and the grandson of a staunch atheist. This family background makes all the more real, some might say dramatic, his conversion to Christianity and his lifelong unwavering commitment to Christ. In 1956, he founded Thomas Road Baptist Church. Just 35 people attended its first meeting in the local elementary school. Although Reverend Falwell became known to most for his national political efforts, he was in his heart a local church pastor and he led that congregation for more than 50 years, seeing it grow to more than 24,000 members. Reverend Falwell knew that faith cannot be segregated from life and that Christ calls us to be doers, rather than simply hearers, of the Word. Reverend Falwell founded the Elim Home in 1959 as a residential program providing spiritual restoration and help for those battling alcohol and drug addiction. The home still operates today, just north of Lynchburg. Proverbs 22:6 says to train up a child in the way he should go and so, in 1967, Reverend Falwell founded Lynchburg Christian Academy for children from kindergarten through high school. Four years later, he founded Lynchburg Bible College with just 154 students and 4 full-time faculty. Today, Liberty University is the largest evangelical college in the world, fully accredited with more than 20,000 students from around the world. In recent years, Reverend Falwell returned to this mission of Christian education and he was at work in his office when he passed away. His vision there continues to unfold. Liberty University Law School, which achieved provisional ABA accreditation in just 18 months, graduated its first class this year and a medical school is on the drawing board. When it came to issues such as the sanctity of human life, Reverend Falwell once again put action to his words. He founded the Liberty Godparent Foundation in 1982, opening a home for unwed mothers while other evangelicals were content simply to protest abortion. I certainly agree that abortion is wrong because of what abortion is and does, but Reverend Falwell demonstrated that there is more to being pro-life than simply being opposed to death. He set an inspiring example, and today there are more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics in America. Reverend Falwell is perhaps best known for what launched him onto the national stage, founding the Moral Majority organization in 1979. This effort brought millions of Americans into the political process and made them more informed, more active citizens. In 1995, he launched a monthly magazine, the National Liberty Journal, which reaches hundreds of thousands of pastors and Christian citizens. The author of more than a dozen books over nearly 30 years, Reverend Falwell continued to write his own e-mail newsletter and columns distributed widely through the world. Reverend Falwell certainly gained his share of notoriety for positions on certain issues or particularly controversial statements. That happens to people who speak out, especially those who speak against the drift of the prevailing culture. Reverend Falwell chose to adopt a national profile and received a good amount of criticism for taking public stances on difficult issues. But he accepted consequences and was not above admitting and apologizing for his mistakes or, after more thought and reflection, adjusting some views and adapting to change. Reverend Falwell was not nearly as easily labeled as some might think. For all the opposition he received from those on the left, some on the right criticized him for appearing to move away from the fundamentalist and toward the evangelical camp. Others attacked him for his friendship with leaders of the charismatic movement, speaking at conferences hosted by groups or leaders from different Christian traditions, or working closely with Roman Catholic leaders. His Liberty Baptist College has hosted speakers from Reverend Billy Graham to, yes, Senator Edward Kennedy. Through it all, Reverend Falwell stayed true to his own convictions while working with others on issues of common purpose to help people and to make our country better. One of the most telling tributes about Reverend Jerry Falwell comes from a most unexpected source. After losing a libel suit to Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt in the Supreme Court back in 1988, Reverend Falwell befriended Flynt and the two appeared together in numerous media venues, visited each other, and even exchanged Christmas cards. In a column published just a few days ago in the Los Angeles Times, Flynt declared that while he disagreed with everything Reverend Falwell preached, he found that they actually had a lot in common. He wrote: ``The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself.'' The ultimate result of their relationiship was, as Flynt put it, ``just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.'' Jerry Falwell leaves behind Macel, his wife of nearly 50 years, his three children and eight grandchildren. His son Jerry has taken up the mantle as Chancellor of Liberty University and his son Jonathan had already been named Executive Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Reverend Falwell's example, his legacy, is so much more than the controversial remarks, views, or positions that some want to emphasize. Reverend Jerry Falwell lived what he believed, he put action to his faith, he inspired and educated, he led and equipped. He was a pastor, a teacher, and a leader. He helped change countless lives and helped make our country better. For all those reasons and so many more, he will be missed.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I wish to express my deep disappointment in the budget resolution conference report. It is a deceptive and defective declaration of flawed priorities that ignores this country's biggest challenges. If we follow this budget through to its natural conclusion, it will lead us from our current path of economic growth and prosperity onto a treacherous road to tax increases, economic recession, and needless pain for millions. While there are many things to lament about this budget, I will concentrate my remarks on just three aspects of it--three features that I believe will hurt the families of my home State of Utah. First, this budget opens the door to large increases in spending in both discretionary and in mandatory programs. On the discretionary side--these are the funds that must be appropriated each year--the budget resolution calls for an increase of $205 billion over what the President has requested over the next 5 years. And keep in mind, the President's budget represents an increase over spending in the current year. In fact, President Bush requested a 2-percent increase in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2008, but resolution before us represents an increase of 8 percent. This type of large spending increase hurts Utahns for years to come. Mr. President, the national debt of the United States of America now exceeds $8,500 billion. Each U.S. citizen's share of this debt exceeds $29,000. Every cent that the U.S. Government borrows and adds to this debt is money stolen from future generations of Americans and from important programs, including Social Security and Medicare on which our senior citizens depend for their retirement security. Large increases in discretionary spending only add to this growing multigenerational problem and I am disappointed to see such a large increase in this budget. Second, the budget resolution before us is woefully inadequate in the area of dealing with the tax problems facing America. Of most immediate concern, the alternative minimum tax, AMT, hangs over middle-income earners like a giant sword. Unless we, at the very least, continue to temporarily increase the AMT thresholds, we will see about a five-fold increase in the number of taxpayers subjected this unfair and complex tax. However, the budget resolution, as it does with almost every problem, punts this issue into the future instead of making the tough decision to fix this problem. It is common speculation that the only way Congress can deal with this problem is to waive the pay-as-you-go rules that also feature so prominently in this budget. The speculation that Congress will easily waive pay-as-you-go rules is a joke, and we all know it. But millions of American taxpayers will not be laughing when this budget kicks in and leaves them paying the enormous price associated with the AMT tax, I am afraid. This budget resolution also falls far short when it comes to dealing with the tax cuts that are due to expire over the next few years, including the so-called ``extenders'' that come to an end this December. The proponents of this resolution glibly state that the budget provides for the tax cuts to be extended. But it does so only if they are paid for with revenue from another source. I cannot understand why some in this body do not see that the surges in revenue we have enjoyed over the past few years have come as a direct result of the tax cuts we passed in the early part of this decade. These have also kept the economy and job growth humming along. Does it not make sense to my colleagues that if we reverse these policies, this economic growth and job growth and revenue growth will all come to a screeching halt? This budget actually contains the Cliff Notes version of Democratic economic policy--tax, spend, deny reality, and repeat. When the economy tanks, blame the Republicans and tax some more. The third and ultimately fatal flaw of the budget resolution before us is also its most serious flaw. It totally ignores the entitlement crisis we have waiting for us just around the corner. Practically all Members of this body know and regularly acknowledge the profound challenges presented to this Nation as a result of the retiring baby boom generation, along with the corresponding growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We regularly reference it here on the Senate Chamber, as well in outside speeches and in letters to our constituents. We all know it is a colossal problem that is not going to go away by itself. Yet, instead of even the slightest recognition of this problem or even the tiniest movement toward a solution, both of which would be a start, this budget completely ignores it. This is a travesty. I hear regularly from my Utahns that they want us to deal with these problems, and right away. Utahns are a thrifty and careful people who like to face problems head-on and solve them, rather than pawning them off on the next generation. I believe that it is simply inexcusable that Congress would shun this opportunity to deal with entitlement challenges at this time and I know my fellow Utahns agree. Do my colleagues think that it is going to be easier in the future to begin to resolve our Social Security or health care system problems? We all know the answer to that. We all know that we should have started solving these problems already and that it would have been far less painful to deal with them a few years ago than it would be now. We also know that this pain will be greatly compounded as we wait to deal with these issues in the future. When President Bush tried to get Congress to work on Social Security 2 years ago, my friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle, pretty much to a person, decided that they would rather turn it into a partisan political issue than join hands in trying to find a solution. I recognize that not everyone liked the concepts the President put forth. I didn't like all of them myself. But, instead of meeting him even a tenth of the way, the other side saw a huge potential advantage by shunning his overtures. Some say it paid off for them, but at what price the next generation of Americans will have to pay because of this decision. Yes, we can keep passing budgets like this every year and keep burying our heads in the sand about the need to confront our impending entitlement problems. But we are rapidly approaching the time when we can no longer solve these challenges without a huge amount of pain and suffering and perhaps without losing our preeminent place on the world economic scale. Mr. President, there are many more things I could say about the shortcomings of this resolution, but I will withhold and simply urge my colleagues to defeat this resolution. We deserve better, and our children and grandchildren certainly deserve better.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to a special man who died in the line of duty in Utah--Uintah County Sheriff's Detective Kevin Orr. His wife Holley and their four children, Tyler, Kaylee, Jessica, and Ashlee, were in Washington, DC this week to participate in a ceremony where Detective Orr's name was added to the National Peace Officers Memorial. The Orr family had the opportunity to join with other survivors of law enforcement officers to commemorate their loved ones' lives and sacrifices. I had the pleasure of meeting with the Orr family as they were paying respects to him through his addition to the National Peace Officers Memorial. Many from his extended family visited with me in my office, including Kevin's parents, Eugene and Claudia Orr, and Holley's parents, Glen and Dixie Hartle. Extended family members who were also visiting included Eric Hartle, Lisa Howe, Julie Luceor, Jolynn Orr, Jeffrey Orr, Larry Orr, Damon Orr, and Jason Pazour. Their loss is tragic, but their unity as a family is unbreakable. Detective Orr sustained fatal injuries in November 2006 when he joined in a search for a missing 25-year-old woman. The helicopter he was riding in hit an unmarked power line hanging across the Green River and plummeted to the ground. Sadly, Detective Orr lost his life early the next morning as a result of the injuries he sustained in the accident. At the time of his death, Detective Orr had worked for the Uintah Sheriff's Department for 11 years and was known for his dedication and commitment to law enforcement and the people he served. In 1999 he was named Uintah County Deputy of the Year for the example he set and the work he performed. He spent several years working with people in the Drug Court, making a difference in the lives of many who passed through the program. One young woman who had been a participant in Drug Court stated that she owed her life to Kevin. He believed in people and wanted to see them succeed and become happier, more productive citizens. I was touched by what retired Vernal police officer Robert Roth said about Kevin. He stated: ``He was the caliber of person that lived his life as an example to all of us . . . We traditionally think of gun battles or car chases, but it's about service. Some of us are willing to die for that cause and some of us have.'' When I met with Kevin's family this week, I was touched by their humble, courageous spirits and their commitment to the legacy he left behind as a valiant law enforcement officer. It reminded me of a quote I have always appreciated by an unknown source that says: ``You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.'' Mr. President, Officer Orr was willing to give it all to help others. He truly epitomized the ideals of sacrifice and service. I know that his family misses him and grieves for their loss, but I also know that they can find great peace and comfort from the example he left behind. He was a valiant, dedicated public servant and his influence will be felt by many generations.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Conrad and Roberts in introducing the Medicare Durable Medical Equipment Access Act of 2007. Some background on why this bill is necessary might be useful. Among the provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act, MMA, was a provision that instituted a bidding process for durable medical equipment. It was a good concept--we have all seen the advantages to Medicare beneficiaries and to the Federal Government of competitive bidding in Medicare Part D. The government and beneficiaries are paying lower prices for prescription drugs as a result of fair competition. At the time of the passage of the MMA, it was known that Medicare was overpaying substantially for certain durable medical equipment. The MMA instituted a bidding process for durable medical equipment in order to bring market discipline to the purchasing process. It also directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services, HHS, to establish badly needed quality standards for Medicare's suppliers of durable medical equipment and related services. The purpose of S. 1428, the Medicare Durable Equipment Access Act, is to correct problems arising from provisions in the MMA that apply to rural areas and urban areas of low population density. The bill seeks to protect the access of Medicare beneficiaries in these areas to homecare equipment and services. It also will allow small businesses to participate in the program, but only if they meet the quality standards established in this legislation and can meet the competitively bid price. The bill protects Medicare beneficiaries in three ways. First, the MMA permits the HHS Secretary to exempt from the bidding process rural areas and areas with low population density that are not competitive unless there is a significant national market through mail order for a particular item or service. The law also permits suppliers in rural areas to be exempted from the program's quality standards. Medicare patients must be assured that they are dealing with qualified suppliers and our bill assures them that they will be. Second, the MMA allows the Secretary of HHS to exempt rural areas and sparsely populated urban areas from the bidding process if they lack health care infrastructure, a vague and subjective judgment. This bill defines areas eligible for exemption as metropolitan service areas with fewer than 500,000 people. Finally, the MMA established a Program Advisory and Oversight Committee to advise the Secretary on implementation of the program. The MMA exempted the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee from The Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA. FACA was enacted by Congress in 1972. Its purpose is to ensure that committees that advise the executive branch be accessible to the public and objective in their judgments. This bill places this program under FACA. This legislation also provides important protection to small businesses. The MMA provides that there shall be no administrative or judicial review for businesses participating in competitive bidding. Our bill provides for judicial appeal rights, giving legal recourse to businesses that participate in the competitive bidding process. The MMA also directs the HHS Secretary to take appropriate steps to ensure that small suppliers have an opportunity to participate. Our bill specifies that such appropriate steps shall include permitting suppliers that are classified as small businesses under the Small Business Act to continue to participate at the single payment amount, so long as they submit bids at less than the fee schedule amount. In addition, the MMA permits the HHS Secretary to use competitive acquisition bid rates from one region to determine payment rates in another noncompetitive acquisition area. Our bill requires the HHS Secretary to complete a comparability analysis to ensure that payments in non-competitive areas are fair. It requires the Secretary to publish the analysis in the Federal Register. Finally, the purpose of the competitive bidding process is to save the Medicare program and its beneficiaries' money from the purchase of durable medical equipment, but a new bureaucracy must be created to implement the program. Our bill requires the HHS Secretary to exempt from competitive acquisition requirements any items and services not likely to result in savings of at least 10 percent. Twenty-five small suppliers of durable medical equipment in Utah have banded together to support this legislation and I believe they speak for hundreds of small suppliers around the United States. They support the establishment of quality standards for all suppliers of durable medical equipment to Medicare. They are willing to price their products competitively. They are used to providing personal services to their customers in small Utah towns. Their customers are also their neighbors. They all fear that their businesses, which are built on personal service, may be sacrificed to large suppliers from distant cities who cannot educate Medicare beneficiaries. A flyer in the mail may not be enough to teach a disabled diabetic how to use a walker. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation which permits the potential savings from competitive bidding, mandates quality standards for all of Medicare's durable medical equipment suppliers, and protects small businesses and Medicare beneficiaries in rural areas and in low density urban areas.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Conrad and Roberts in introducing the Medicare Durable Medical Equipment Access Act of 2007. Some background on why this bill is necessary might be useful. Among the provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act, MMA, was a provision that instituted a bidding process for durable medical equipment. It was a good concept--we have all seen the advantages to Medicare beneficiaries and to the Federal Government of competitive bidding in Medicare Part D. The government and beneficiaries are paying lower prices for prescription drugs as a result of fair competition. At the time of the passage of the MMA, it was known that Medicare was overpaying substantially for certain durable medical equipment. The MMA instituted a bidding process for durable medical equipment in order to bring market discipline to the purchasing process. It also directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services, HHS, to establish badly needed quality standards for Medicare's suppliers of durable medical equipment and related services. The purpose of S. 1428, the Medicare Durable Equipment Access Act, is to correct problems arising from provisions in the MMA that apply to rural areas and urban areas of low population density. The bill seeks to protect the access of Medicare beneficiaries in these areas to homecare equipment and services. It also will allow small businesses to participate in the program, but only if they meet the quality standards established in this legislation and can meet the competitively bid price. The bill protects Medicare beneficiaries in three ways. First, the MMA permits the HHS Secretary to exempt from the bidding process rural areas and areas with low population density that are not competitive unless there is a significant national market through mail order for a particular item or service. The law also permits suppliers in rural areas to be exempted from the program's quality standards. Medicare patients must be assured that they are dealing with qualified suppliers and our bill assures them that they will be. Second, the MMA allows the Secretary of HHS to exempt rural areas and sparsely populated urban areas from the bidding process if they lack health care infrastructure, a vague and subjective judgment. This bill defines areas eligible for exemption as metropolitan service areas with fewer than 500,000 people. Finally, the MMA established a Program Advisory and Oversight Committee to advise the Secretary on implementation of the program. The MMA exempted the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee from The Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA. FACA was enacted by Congress in 1972. Its purpose is to ensure that committees that advise the executive branch be accessible to the public and objective in their judgments. This bill places this program under FACA. This legislation also provides important protection to small businesses. The MMA provides that there shall be no administrative or judicial review for businesses participating in competitive bidding. Our bill provides for judicial appeal rights, giving legal recourse to businesses that participate in the competitive bidding process. The MMA also directs the HHS Secretary to take appropriate steps to ensure that small suppliers have an opportunity to participate. Our bill specifies that such appropriate steps shall include permitting suppliers that are classified as small businesses under the Small Business Act to continue to participate at the single payment amount, so long as they submit bids at less than the fee schedule amount. In addition, the MMA permits the HHS Secretary to use competitive acquisition bid rates from one region to determine payment rates in another noncompetitive acquisition area. Our bill requires the HHS Secretary to complete a comparability analysis to ensure that payments in non-competitive areas are fair. It requires the Secretary to publish the analysis in the Federal Register. Finally, the purpose of the competitive bidding process is to save the Medicare program and its beneficiaries' money from the purchase of durable medical equipment, but a new bureaucracy must be created to implement the program. Our bill requires the HHS Secretary to exempt from competitive acquisition requirements any items and services not likely to result in savings of at least 10 percent. Twenty-five small suppliers of durable medical equipment in Utah have banded together to support this legislation and I believe they speak for hundreds of small suppliers around the United States. They support the establishment of quality standards for all suppliers of durable medical equipment to Medicare. They are willing to price their products competitively. They are used to providing personal services to their customers in small Utah towns. Their customers are also their neighbors. They all fear that their businesses, which are built on personal service, may be sacrificed to large suppliers from distant cities who cannot educate Medicare beneficiaries. A flyer in the mail may not be enough to teach a disabled diabetic how to use a walker. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation which permits the potential savings from competitive bidding, mandates quality standards for all of Medicare's durable medical equipment suppliers, and protects small businesses and Medicare beneficiaries in rural areas and in low density urban areas.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to speak today in remembrance of former Senator Robert Stafford, who passed away this past December and for whom we will be having a memorial service this evening. I personally remember Bob as a moderate voice in the Senate, never putting partisan politics above his principled ideals. He and I served together on the Senate Committee of Labor and Human Resources in the early 1980s, beginning when I was a relatively young first-term Senator chairing the committee and Bob was beginning his third decade of congressional service. I often found Bob's advice and counsel to be helpful in handling many of the issues which came before the committee. I, personally, remember what a profound influence Bob had on the Labor and Human Resources Committee while I was chairman. As a young chairman and a relatively new Member of the Senate, I was sometimes frustrated with the way Bob and Senator Lowell Weicker often voted with the Democrats on almost every issue. This disparity of views within my committee forced me to work even harder to forge worthwhile and well-thought-out bipartisan compromises in order to move important legislation. This proved to be an enormous challenge but one that shaped my career and made me a better legislator. There is no question that challenges and beliefs of Bob and Lowell made me the legislator I am today. Bob was born in 1913 in Rutland, VT. As a product of the Rutland public schools, he attended Middlebury College and received his first degree in 1935. He graduated from Boston University Law School in 1938 and immediately began what would be a long and distinguished career in public service. Immediately after graduating from law school, Bob served as a Rutland County prosecuting attorney. In 1942, he left the prosecutor's office to serve our country in World War II. Enlisting in the Navy as a lieutenant commander, he served in active duty for the duration of the war. Bob returned home to Rutland, VT, in 1947 and became a Vermont state's attorney. He served in that capacity for 4 years before volunteering to serve in our Nation's military in another foreign conflict, this time in Korea. Bob once again served honorably in the Navy from 1951 to 1953. Returning home again in 1953, Robert began his career in Vermont State politics. I think both Senators Leahy and Sanders would agree that Bob was iconic figure in Vermont's political history. Bob worked in the Vermont Attorney General's Office from 1953 to 1957, serving those last 2 years as Vermont's attorney general. In 1957, he was elected Lieutenant Governor, and in 1959, he was elected to be the State's Governor. After rising quickly to the top of Vermont state politics, he was elected to Vermont's only seat in the House of Representatives in 1960 and, after being elected to five successive terms, he resigned his seat in 1971 to accept appointment to the Senate, temporarily filling the vacancy left by the death of Senator Winston L. Prouty. Though he began his Senate tenure as a temporary replacement, Bob would, in many ways, become a permanent part of this institution. He won a special election in 1972 to serve out the remainder of Senator Prouty's term, and he would remain Vermont's Senator for 17 more years, retiring on his own terms in 1989. As an educated man himself, he was always a champion of higher education. In fact, our Nation's most prominent student loan program was renamed after Bob during his last term in office. He also played an important role in modernizing Federal disaster relief. In 1988, President Reagan signed into law the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, which created the system in place today by which a Presidential disaster declaration of an emergency triggers financial and physical assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. Obviously, Bob was instrumental in passing this landmark legislation. During his time in Congress, Bob and I worked together to reform parts of the Federal entitlement system and to trim the fat from costly Federal programs. Although he and I would often disagree, I always enjoyed hearing his persuasive arguments to articulate his commitment. Even if you didn't agree with Bob's politics, you had to respect the thoughtful and genuine effort he put in to formulating his opinions and arguing his positions. I appreciated Bob very much for his convictions and his passion. Mr. President, in Bob, our Nation has lost an elder statesman and a principled leader. His leadership and tireless public service are examples for all of us who have aspired to serve this great Nation. I am grateful for this evening's opportunity to remember his service and to reflect on his example.