Kay Hutchison

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I had 2 minutes. I would be happy to follow the Senator from Alabama.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak against the bridge bill that was sent over by the House of Representatives. I hope the Senate can do what the Senate has been doing all year, and that is stop these reckless amendments that would tie the hands of our generals, that would dictate policy on the ground in Iraq from 6,000 miles away, from people who do not know what is going on on the ground, it seems. We have voted 40 times in the last year, since February, on amendments that would constrain the troops in the field doing what they are doing. Last week the Iraqi Government and U.S. commanders proclaimed that al- Qaida had been routed in every neighborhood in Baghdad, an 80-percent drop in the murder rate. The BBC reports that all across Baghdad streets are springing back to life, shops and restaurants which closed down are back in business. People are walking on the streets. Things have changed in Baghdad. Things have changed in Iraq. The only place it doesn't seem to change is in the Congress. We should not vote on anything that underfunds the troops, which is what this bridge bill does, and overregulates what our troops in the field are doing when we are not there every day, day in, day out, watching the progress. General Petraeus is succeeding in quelling the violence. Now we must work with the Iraqis to have stability in that country so we can leave. General Petraeus has already said he is bringing home a brigade from the surge. We are going in the right direction. Let's don't do something foolish in the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, for S. 2363, the report accompanying this bill is the Statement of Managers as printed in the conference report to accompany H.R. 3043 as Division B, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the bridge fund bill that passed the House of Representatives last night. I don't know why it has to be so hard to pass an emergency supplemental to assure that our troops in the field get the money they need to support them in the job we are asking them to do. The President has asked for almost $200 billion to get us through some point in January or possibly into the spring. But the bill that has come over is roughly in the $50 billion range and it has all kinds of constraints and strings and mandates from the Congress. Our military strategies should not be determined by events 6,000 miles from the theater where our young men and women have boots on the ground. This bridge fund bill is the latest attempt in a year-long effort to constrain the ability of our generals and our brave men and women in uniform to fight this war effectively. During the past year, the Senate has been forced to vote 40 times on bills limiting the generals' war strategy. None of those bills passed but one, and it was vetoed. Since this assembly line of bills started last February, the situation in Iraq has changed so much. General Petraeus has implemented a strategic readjustment that has produced encouraging progress. Last week, U.S. commanders and the Iraqi Government proclaimed that al-Qaida had been routed in every neighborhood in Baghdad, citing an 80-percent drop in the murder rate since its peak. The British Broadcasting Corporation reports: All across Baghdad . . . streets are springing back to life. Shops and restaurants which closed down are back in business. People walk in crowded streets in the evening, where just a few months ago they would have been huddled behind locked doors in their homes. This is from the BBC. Some 67,000 Iraqis have joined U.S.-organized citizens watch groups. Roadside bomb attacks have receded to a 3-year low, while finds of weapons caches have doubled in the last year. The progress has been so impressive that General Petraeus has recommended a drawdown of troops because conditions on the ground merit such action. In the last 10 months, so much has changed in Iraq, and yet on the floor of the Senate, nothing has changed at all. We are still voting on bills for premature withdrawal, not taking into consideration what is happening on the ground, even when victory is in sight. This is a new day in Iraq, and the Senate should recognize that fact by providing a vote of confidence in our generals instead of threatening to pull the rug out from under them. If there are Senators who believe the war is lost, they should vote to defund the war instead of threatening to tie the hands of our commanders which would needlessly endanger our troops. We know from our troops in the field that we must keep our commitment. This war has been costly for America in lives and dollars. The consequences of failure, after all we have spent in our treasure and our young men and women, would be catastrophic. If we abandon Iraq prematurely, it will become a sanctuary for terrorists, and they will launch attacks on the American people. There is also a real danger that Iraq could become a satellite of Iran. The Iranian Government has a long record of sponsoring terrorism and arming the insurgents who are killing our brave soldiers in Iraq. For all these reasons, we cannot abandon Iraq. We can leave when the generals say it is safe to leave because Iraq will be stable, that it will not be a terrorist training ground, and that is the only way we can leave Iraq, if we are to uphold the integrity of the United States of America. We must persevere and succeed in this war, just as generations before us have done when we fought and defeated fascism, communism, and nazism. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guard have sacrificed greatly to keep us safe and free, and we must support them in this mission. The mission of a stable Iraq rather than a breeding ground for terrorists must be accomplished. The bill is coming to the Senate from the House which passed it after a long, arduous debate last night. I urge my colleagues not to do something that would so damage the integrity of the United States of America and hurt our troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan by putting them in danger by underfunding them, by not giving them the vote of confidence they deserve. It would be unthinkable. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to discuss an issue that is important for our country. That is the appropriations bill for Veterans and Military Construction. The Senate and House Appropriations Committees worked together in a bipartisan way to craft a bill that fully funds the Veterans' Administration and Military Construction for the quality of life of our troops. However, we became bogged down last week because the Senate and House leadership decided they would put forward a combination of bills that have no relationship to each other. The Labor-Health and Human Services bill and the Veterans' Administration-Military Construction bill. Under normal circumstances, that might be fine. We have had omnibus appropriations bills before. But there was one problem. That is, the President had already said he would sign the Veterans bill, but he would veto the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. So the combination of these bills was destined to assure a veto. The Veterans and the Military Construction legislation should go forward on an expedited basis. I call on this Congress to do that. There is no reason--there is no substantive reason, no commonsense reason--we should delay a bill that has been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats and could easily pass the House and Senate and be sent to the President before the end of this week. Yesterday we had celebrations all over the country for veterans, saying how much we appreciate their sacrifices and what they have given to our country. Today we come back to work, and we still don't have a Veterans' Administration funding appropriations passed for this year. It is not that the veterans' needs are not going to be funded, because we are in a continuing resolution that assures the basic things will be done. But what isn't going to be done is the new priorities we put in this legislation on a bipartisan basis. We have added more funding for research into protheses, artificial arms and legs, because those are the kinds of injuries our troops are coming home with. They are becoming veterans because, of course, they can no longer serve in Active Duty. I will digress for one moment and say that when I visit Walter Reed or the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio where young men and women who have come home injured from Iraq and Afghanistan are being rehabilitated, they complain because they are being put out of Active- Duty military. That is the kind of spirit these young men and women have. They will be maimed. They will have lost arms or legs; they will be burned. Yet they will say: Senator, I want to go back. I want to be with my comrades. Of course, we are going to take care of those young men and women who have sacrificed so much through our Veterans' Administration. We have new priorities in these bills that will put more into research and rehabilitation for these brave men and women. We also have a new burn unit initiative to do more research on our burn victims. Many of our troops come back with mental health problems. We are establishing more research and centers of excellence for post-traumatic stress syndrome in the bill that has been agreed to. All I am asking this morning is, why not pass this bill right now? We have a formality of calling a new conference committee on the separate bill. That could be done today. We have agreement. There is no reason not to fund these new priorities. I call on the Senate and House leadership to make it happen. There is no excuse. We have new priorities. We have bipartisan agreement. My message to the leadership is: Let's trust our committee members. Let's trust the leadership on the committees. Democrats and Republicans came together. We increased the President's budget. We increased his request. He said: OK, because he knew how important it was that we fully fund the health care needs of our veterans. Let me tell you another priority in this bill. We have heard story after story of people leaving the Active Duty, usually because of injuries, going into the veterans system. But what happens? There is a long delay, sometimes months, before the veterans' benefits kick in. These are injured warriors. In our bill, we have funding so those applications can be processed more quickly. We are trying to streamline leaving the Active-Duty military and going into the veterans system. That is in the bill that is languishing this week in Congress. I call on our leadership to do the right thing. Let's put politics aside. We can take up the Labor-Health and Human Services bill in due course. But today we have a bill with bipartisan agreement that requires a mere formality of calling the conference committee, having the House pass it, the Senate pass it, and sending it to the President. We can celebrate a joint bipartisan victory with Congress and the President coming together. That is what the American people expect. That is what they are looking for in Washington. When we see the approval ratings of Congress and the President so low, why don't we try a new approach? Why don't we do something everyone can celebrate? That is, fund our veterans and military quality-of-life issues this week. It can be done. I call on the congressional leadership to do it. The President has said he will sign it. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the conference report. I am following my chairman of his subcommittee. I hope very much that we will be able to take up this bill, which is our subcommittee, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, separately, as everyone, I believe, knows in their heart is the right thing to do. This bill is a bill that has been agreed to. We have worked on a bipartisan basis. We very quickly came to a conclusion in the conference on the Military Construction and Veterans' Administration bill. In fact, the President said right out that he would sign the bill, even though it is almost $4 billion more than he had requested, because he understands the urgency of both bills--Veterans' Administration and the Military Construction--and he knows that it is important to do it right away. So he said right up front that he would sign our bill. But he also said right up front that he would not sign the Labor and Health and Human Services bill. So there would be no reason--no common sense or substantive reason--to combine these two bills. It is incomprehensible to me that the leadership in the House decided to do this. In fact, they also put the Defense appropriations bill as a part of the Labor and Health and Human Services bill, but the Democratic chairman of the Defense bill agreed with the Republican ranking member, and they were able to take the Defense bill out. For the very same reason, we should be taking the Veterans-Military Construction bill out from under the bill the President has said he will veto. The President will sign the Defense bill and the Military Construction-Veterans bill. Why not have this Congress come together and accomplish something? Two major parts of our Government--it happens that it is the two parts that fund our warriors who are in the field, in harm's way right now--those could be signed right away. Why not do it? I hope the Congress will come to its senses and move in a bipartisan way, swiftly, to do this very thing. Let me talk about the bills themselves. Military construction: With the impending return of troops resulting from the current overseas rebasing effort through BRAC and the global war on terror, our service men and women are in a time of great transformation. The military construction section of our bill provides $21 billion for construction projects to support these moves and bring our troops home. I cannot emphasize enough that we must stay on schedule. It is important that the military services receive the facilities they need to bring our troops home, where they have better training facilities, a better quality of life for themselves and their families. From operational building to many childcare centers, we have necessary facilities in the bill to do that. Servicemembers, families, and local communities across our country are counting on us. Now, Congress set a deadline of 2011 for BRAC to be implemented. Yet we see Congress is dragging its feet in the funding requirements to implement the BRAC. We have given the Department their mandate. We must follow through with the money needed. Many of us have visited bases in Europe, Korea, and throughout the world. We know there are training constraints in many of those bases; that our service men and women are not able to stay in training. Sometimes it is a constraint in airspace. Sometimes it is an environmental problem. Sometimes it is a constraint in ground space and artillery space, so that we can be fully trained when we go into harm's way. The reason the Department of Defense made the announcement after our Congress passed the overseas basing commission amendment to the Defense authorization bill--the reason the Department of Defense announced that 70,000 troops would be brought home from Germany and Korea is because they agreed that the training constraints would make it impossible for us to keep our troops fully trained for the combat into which they will be going. So it is important that we fund this, that we do it on a timely basis, and that we move swiftly on the military construction part of the bill. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the other part of this unit. I know there is a concern over total discretionary spending in all of the appropriations bills. But the President has said he will sign this bill. With the money appropriated, the Department of Veterans Affairs will be able to address the needs of over 7 million veterans who count on us to provide the funds necessary for medical care, medical facilities, research, extended care facilities, and even cemeteries. The appropriations increases in the bill are in areas I support. We will always do what is necessary to take care of our veterans and their health care needs. The research of the Veterans' Administration into prosthetics, severe trauma, and traumatic brain injury is cutting edge. Increasing resources in these programs is a good investment for our Nation's veterans and our Nation's future. We are asking the VA to expand research in several areas, including post-traumatic stress syndrome, gulf war illness, prosthetics, and geriatric care. These are the types of injuries the warriors of today are sustaining. These are the warriors in the war on terror. These are the injuries we should be looking for the very best ways to treat, and also the way to rehabilitate our injured warriors with better prostheses, better artificial arms and legs, so they can have a more normal life because they have given so much for our country. I think every Member of Congress shares the desire to fairly compensate, medically treat, and honor our veterans. The Veterans' Administration provides the health care to address the illnesses or disabilities, physical or mental, including those illnesses that might manifest themselves decades after military service, which is something we also see happening. We always have, and always will, take care of our Nation's veterans. Every veteran should know we are committed to nothing less. Mr. President, this Congress has shown its resolve time and again to care for our men and women in uniform, as well as the more than 7 million veterans. We owe them our gratitude. We will do our part to take care of them. I ask that we work together to put our servicemembers and veterans first, to do what is best for them and our country. Mr. President, I will make the point of order at the appropriate time to separate these two distinct bills. The Veterans-Military Construction bill and the Labor-Health and Human Services bill are separate bills. We have separate committees, and we have dealt with the two committees separately. There is no reason to put them together, particularly when the President has said he will sign the Veterans- Military Construction bill, and he will veto the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. Why do we delay and put our military service men and women and their families and our veterans in a situation where they are in limbo? Why not pass the bill separately because the bill is ready to go? We have worked in a bipartisan way to assure that it is. There is no common sense nor substantive reason to put these bills together. So I will leave it up to others to determine why the leadership in the House would have lumped these bills together. I will also say that I respect the Defense Appropriations Committee chairman and ranking member for coming together on a bipartisan basis to take their bill out because that is exactly what should have happened. I hope we will do the same thing for our military veterans and our service men and women who rely on the construction projects and military construction to provide the housing, training facilities, childcare centers, and health care centers, which are necessary for them and their families to have the quality care they so richly deserve for what they are doing for our country right now. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to make the rule XXVIII point of order at this time and for Senator Harkin to make the motion to waive, but that all debate time under the previous order be preserved.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I raise a point of order under Senate rule XXVIII, paragraph 3, that the text of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and related agencies bill, H.R. 2642, which constitutes division B of the conference report for H.R. 3043, is new matter as it was not contained in either the House- or Senate-passed bills.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak against the waiver of the point of order--the waiver being the motion from the Senator from Iowa. I agree in part and disagree in part with the acting chairman of the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs Subcommittee. Mr. President, two bills were passed by the Senate--one for Labor- Health and Human Services and one for Military Construction-Veterans Affairs. They are two separate bills because they are very different in nature. They cover very different areas. There was nothing in the bills that was the same. They are separate subjects, and they should be passed in the regular order. I have heard criticism on the Senate floor and also in the conference committee of the President of the United States, as if he had told Congress not to combine these bills. The President never said any such thing. The President did exactly what I would expect a President to do in his relations with Congress and its understanding of the role of our two different branches of government--executive and legislative. The fact is, Congress chose to take two separate bills and put them together. All the President did was exactly what he should have done. He advised Congress that he was going to veto the Labor-Health and Human Services bill because it was nearly $12 billion over his budget request. When Congress said: OK, Mr. President, we are going to combine the bill that you have notified us you are going to veto with a bill that you have notified us you will sign, which is the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill, the President merely said: I have said I am going to veto the Labor-Health and Human Services bill, and I am putting Congress on notice. Congress can make the decision about how it wants to send the bills forward. The President can inform Congress of what he is going to do, which I think, frankly, is an advantage in that he has told us. The worst thing would be if he didn't tell us, if he just surprised us after we had worked in good faith on these bills. But he is not surprising us. He is telling us this is what he is going to do, and if we decide to play a game by putting two bills together, when he has told us he is going to veto one of them, the consequence will be that both bills are vetoed instead of just one. Let's not put the President in this debate. The President is doing exactly what he should do. The Congress should do what is right. Congress knows the funding for military construction and the veterans is crucial, that there are new things in this bill that are not currently able to be funded. And the sooner we get this bill to the President, the sooner he can sign it, and we can provide these new priorities. Where I agree with my distinguished acting chairman of the committee is that the bill is a good bill. We have come together in a very bipartisan way. We have worked out our differences, and we didn't have differences on the Senate side. We worked together on a very solid bill. We worked out our differences with the House on a bipartisan basis. The President agreed with us that it is a good bill. We all recognize that some of the best parts of the bill would be lost if there were another continuing resolution for Fiscal Year 2008. Delaying base-closing commission implementation: As a Congress, we have required the Department of Defense to complete the implementation of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission report by 2011. Every day, every week, every month that we delay the BRAC funding is going to delay that implementation process. It is very important that we give our troops who are going to be coming back from bases in Germany and Korea the housing, the health care facilities, and the childcare centers that will provide a quality of life for our military personnel and their families. We owe them that, Mr. President. We could send this bill to the President before the end of the week and make sure they have that funding. It is our responsibility to do it. It is our responsibility to do it in the regular order, when the regular order will give us a Presidential signature. It will also provide new research, new treatments, and added facilities for our veterans. We know our veterans are suffering from different kinds of injuries than in previous wars. We know we are saving more lives, but a higher percentage of our wounded veterans are returning home with burns, loss of limbs, traumatic brain injuries, and mental health problems. We know that. So we provide for that in this bill. We have done it in a bipartisan way. We have provided more treatment, more facilities, more emphasis, and more research on post-traumatic stress syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, better prosthetics, artificial legs and arms that are lost by the bombs being used by the insurgents. All of that is in this bill, which could go through on its own in the regular order and be signed by the President. One of the things we have heard from our veterans month after month after month is how long it is taking them to get through the system from when they leave military service to begin receiving their benefits and even to enter into the VA health care system. It is ridiculous for them to wait months and months when we should have a seamless transition. What our bill provides is more employees to cut that backlog and give these new veterans who are coming into the system the opportunity to have a seamless transition. That is in the bill. If we pass a CR, this year's priorities would not be in it. The bill contains funds to implement the recommendations of the Dole-Shalala Commission. The Dole-Shalala Commission is the Commission that was appointed by the President to look at the best way to improve the care and service we provide to Active Duty Military and veterans who have returned from battle. They made recommendations. They did a thorough study. These are two great Americans: Donna Shalala and Robert Dole. They came up with recommendations, and we begin to fund them in this bill. Mr. President, why wouldn't we pass this bill as a stand-alone measure when we know it is going to be vetoed if it is combined with the Labor-Health and Human Services bill? It does not pass the smell test to combine these bills when there is no reason to. In the original House action, they combined Health and Human Services with Defense and Military Construction and Veterans. The Defense bill was separated out because the chairman and the ranking member agreed that it had no business under Labor-Health and Human Services. That bill, by agreement, was separated out. We didn't get that agreement on Military Construction. So now we are faced with having a point of order, under the newly passed rule by the Democratic majority, that says you cannot put something in a conference report that has not passed either House in that bill. So the point of order is going to succeed. We all know it is going to succeed. Why do we play this game? It is a game that is going to affect veterans and military personnel and their quality of life. There is no reason, there is no substantive reason, and there is no logical reason. I urge my colleagues, let's vote unanimously to separate these bills, send the MILCON and Veterans bill to the House and ask them to quickly appoint conferees. The bill is agreed to. We have hashed out the differences. We can still get this bill to the President before Veterans Day. What a great accomplishment for this Congress, what a great way to say the President and the Congress are in agreement on something. I think the American people are looking for that. We see that the ratings of Congress and the President are at an all-time low. Why not give the American people some confidence that we can accomplish something together for the good of the people? It is very easy, very clear that this is a bill the President says he will sign. Let's send it to him. There can be no logical reason not to. I urge my colleagues to come together on a bipartisan basis and stop the game playing, especially with our veterans and our military families who are depending upon the new initiatives in this bill to be done, and we have the power to do it. Let's do our jobs. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I rise to speak in support of the SCHIP bill, but also to say we should not be voting on this legislation right now. This is a time and an issue on which our bipartisan Congress, with a bipartisan consensus, can sit down with the President and his staff and come to a conclusion that will continue a program that has been very effective. However, that is not what we are faced with today. Today we are faced with voting on the exact same bill--not the exact same bill, almost the exact same bill--that we voted on and the President vetoed only 2 weeks ago. Now, I voted for the first bill. I think it was a good bill. It had many good features. But I expected, when the President's veto was sustained in the House, the House leadership would take a step back, meet with the President's staff, work something out, and go forward with something new--a new try. That is not what we have in this bill before us. That is why I voted against the motion to proceed. I believe we needed more time to craft a bill that would be more acceptable to the President and could have the bipartisan consensus to pass and go to the President for signature. That is not what happened. Instead, the House turned around and very shortly passed almost the same bill. Eighteen Republicans voted for virtually this bill. We also signed a letter saying to our Senate and House leadership: Please work with the President to come up with a compromise. The President has said he would like a compromise. He has said he would like to move forward. I think there is a very strong middle ground because the bill that is before us is a vast step beyond the program as it has been in place, and I think we could still do a lot more coverage. We could cover more children; we could cover more families with a bill that is not quite as far reaching as the one that is before us today. Even though I support the one that is before us today--and I will continue to do so--I do want a good-faith effort to come to a compromise that everyone can support. The bill does continue the program we have started. It provides, today, insurance for over 300,000 children in Texas. It also includes an important provision that protects Texas's ability to cover more children with health insurance. During the SCHIP debate, I worked with members of the Senate Finance Committee to ensure the legislative changes did not harm Texas's ability to fund the program, and we were successful. That language was in the original bill, and it is in the bill that is before us today. However, I do think it is important we move forward in a way that will achieve success. I want to make sure a fast-growing State such as Texas does not lose the money it does not use in any 1 year in the next year and the following year. That was my concern because many of the fast-growing States do not use their money this year, but they will need it next year or the year after because there is a stronger effort to sign up the children who are eligible. That was accomplished in this bill. That is one of the key reasons I support it because I do think it is an efficient use of our taxpayer dollars to cover children so they are not going to be more seriously ill because they have not had the preventive medicine that coverage in Medicaid or SCHIP--which is the next step above Medicaid--can provide. That is a worthy goal for our Congress. I am going to vote for the bill today. But I do hope this signal is heard; that is, we would ask the leadership in the House and the leadership in the Senate to sit down with the President's staff to work out an agreement where we can all support this bill that will continue the very important mission of SCHIP to give a safety net to children who are above the Medicaid level but still 200 percent or 300 percent at most above poverty and give them an opportunity. I think some of what has been talked about as compromise is quite good, quite sound, quite creative, such as you go to 250 percent above the poverty level, but between 250 percent and 350 percent you give tax credits for families to cover themselves with private insurance. You help them. You subsidize their ability to stay in the private market. We do not want a big government program. We do want to cover SCHIP and Medicaid through government auspices, but we want to not supplant the private insurance that many people in the 250 percent to 350 percent above poverty level already have access to. But if those people who do have access to health care because they work in a company that provides this opportunity choose not to take it because they are going to get a free government program, that does not do anyone any good. It is not going to increase the number of children who are covered by insurance because they would have given up health insurance in order to go on a government program. That is not what we are after. We are after increasing the number of children covered. We are after, also, keeping the basis of our private health insurance healthy in our country. So, Madam President, I thank you for allowing this debate to go forward. I thought we should have negotiated a little longer, but we are not. So we are now going to have cloture on the bill itself. I will support that cloture, and I will support the bill. But I do not want the same bill to come back a third time. I expect sincerity on the part of Congress and the President to come forward with something new that would be closer to a bipartisan agreement where we can all declare success, and the beneficiaries of this success will be the poorer children of our country. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey for giving me this time and for being a longtime advocate of Amtrak but not only the eastern corridor Amtrak. The Senator from New Jersey has worked diligently for a national system. The reason we have a need for a national system is because it is national. The national system connects other routes to each other. If we had funded Amtrak in the same way we funded and helped other modes of transportation, we would have a bigger ridership because we would have better on-time delivery. The bad on-time delivery has caused a drop-off in ridership. This does not mean we should abandon the national system. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this bill. Senator Lott has been another longtime champion of a national system. There are 41 cosponsors of this bill. We have worked together to make sure we don't only subsidize the eastern corridor. I have said all along, it is national or nothing for me. I believe in a national passenger rail system, one that connects our country from coast to coast. My vision is that we have a track going across the northern part of the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the southern part from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and then from the top to the bottom of our country, from the northernmost point down to the tip of Florida and the tip of California. That is a national system. It would have a track that also splits the middle of the country from Chicago down to Texas. From there, we have the capability to have State systems that would emanate from that skeleton. It is important that we stay together. It would be easy to say: Well, the northeastern corridor does own its own tracks, and therefore it is more efficient, and why don't we just cut off the rest of the country and subsidize that? That is not a national system. I could not in good conscience support only a northeastern line. My constituents would be robbed of the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited lines, and there are other States that have legitimate needs as well. If we actually had done better by Amtrak all these years, we would require fewer subsidies. I am pleased to support the bill, but I do not support the Sununu amendment. It isn't that I don't think his heart is in the right place. He is trying to save money because Amtrak is subsidized. We don't deny needed highways in the rural parts of our States. All of our Federal highway money is divided. It goes into rural areas. Why would we deny Amtrak service to other parts of the country that don't have the ridership mainly because of the on-time service not being dependable? In 2003, a public opinion poll showed an overwhelming 85 percent of participants supported Amtrak, $2 billion worth of funding for Amtrak. We need a better system. We are working for a better system. The bill before us is a well-debated, well-adjusted bill that isn't everything the Senator from New Jersey wants. It is not everything the Senator from Mississippi wants. It is not everything this Senator from Texas wants. But I know that if we have a national system, it is an important alternative mode of transportation for our country. We need highways. That is the bread-and-butter transportation system for the country. We need air transportation, and we do provide an air traffic control system to support that. A national rail passenger train is another mode that, in the event of an emergency, is a very helpful mode of transportation. After 9/11, when our air traffic system was shut down, people went to Amtrak. We needed that for the emergency. I believe we would be able to have much more in Amtrak if we funded it at a level where it would have better service and if we could get freight rail to work with us to actually help us alleviate some of the congestion they cause on their freight lines. We could work this out if we had rail support for Amtrak. It is important that we do that. In 2005, SAFETEA-LU authorized more than $40 billion on our highways for fiscal year 2009. The Senate will take up an FAA bill later this year that will invest $17 billion in aviation annually. We just sent the President a water resources bill authorizing $23 billion over the next 2 years. There is always a different standard for Amtrak. Amtrak is asking for, in this bill, $2.1 billion a year. I don't know why Amtrak is a stepchild. If we have the resources necessary to make it a system that serves the whole country, it would be an environmentally effective, efficient system that would operate to not only provide transportation needs in rural parts of the country, where you can have buses that go into very small communities and feed into an Amtrak station, but the service would improve. The on-time delivery would improve. For the kinds of subsidies we need, that we are authorizing in this bill, it should be a national system, not a northeastern corridor system. That is what is fair for the country. It is right for the country. Always in the Senate since I have been here, our Amtrak supporters have been national-or-nothing Amtrak supporters. I have supported the northeastern corridor. My friends on the northeastern corridor have supported a national system. Even in the hardest times, we have kept the system together. If we do that, we will see that the States will step in and do more, as California and some of the Western States have done, to their credit. We will have more private lines, more mass- transit lines, such as we have coming into Dallas, feeding into the Amtrak station, making it more used. In Texas, 250,000 passengers used the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited last year. It is a very important mode of transportation. The more we can do to make it efficient and effective, the better off we will be. The Sununu amendment would wreck the national system. I hope we will reject that, even though I respect my colleague from New Hampshire. I know his heart is in the right place. I want to work with him to make Amtrak more efficient, but dropping national lines is not going to make it more efficient. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I was so pleased the Senator from New Jersey talked about the Sunset Limited because the Sunset Limited, which is the first line that would be eliminated under the Sununu amendment, connects California all the way through the southern part of the country, all the way through Texas. It goes through San Antonio and Houston, then over to New Orleans, through Mississippi, Alabama, and it ends in Florida. In Florida, you connect to go all the way up the northeastern corridor. If you take out the Sunset Limited--that is our intercontinental rail line all the way across the country on the southern side--you are taking out a major part of the connection to our national system. I hope the Senator from New Jersey is correct that we will not have a national system, if you take out the whole intercontinental southern half of it. I applaud him for bringing that out. Does he think if we took out that whole southern system, the Sunset Limited, that it would enhance Amtrak? Would it enhance the eastern seaboard? Would it enhance all the investment California has made all the way up to California and into the States of Oregon and Washington? Would that be something that would help the system?

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time is left on the other side?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I was really trying to have an opportunity to ask Senator Durbin a question and have a colloquy. I don't want to take from your time on that. I ask if I could have a colloquy with Senator Durbin on his time?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I appreciate what the Senator from Illinois has said because I do believe there is a compromise approach to the DREAM Act that could have bipartisan support. As has been mentioned on the floor, there is no opportunity that has been laid out for a substitute to be considered. But the Senator from Illinois has given me his word. I have been working on something that I think would take us on the right path. This is such an important piece of legislation, and I do think this is isolated from the entire immigration issue because there----

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute on both sides.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, there are young people who have been brought to this country as minors, not of their own doing, who have gone to American high schools, graduated, and who want to go to American colleges. They are in a limbo situation. I believe we should deal with this issue. We should do it in a way that helps assimilate these young people with a college education into our country. They have lived here most of their lives. If we sent them home, they wouldn't know what home is. There is a compassionate reason for us to try to work this out. But I will say, if we cannot work on a bipartisan amendment, we will have another vote, as has been promised. I will vote against the Durbin bill. But if we can work on a bipartisan solution, we should try.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I join Senator Bond in his recognition of the challenges that Labor-HHS appropriations presents, and I sincerely appreciate the continued efforts of my colleagues to emphasize the importance of increased funding for CHGME. I support an increase in funding for CHGME to $307 million, and I thank the chairman and ranking member for their support in trying to increase funding in conference. The number of children throughout our country is rapidly increasing, and we must provide the necessary funding to train pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists at a pace that reflects the child population growth. For example, from 2000 to 2006, the number of children in my home State of Texas increased by an astounding 501,800, and the projected increase of children in Texas from 2006 to 2010 is over 346,000. CHGME funding helps provide access to pediatric medical services and ensures the needs of children are addressed with specialized health care. CHGME is essential to ensuring that pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists in cardiology, emergency care, gastroenterology and other fields receive the necessary medical training to provide the best level of care to our children. In Texas, 60 percent of pediatric residents and 84 percent of pediatric subspecialists are trained at children's hospitals, and CHGME funding supports children's hospitals. Without this funding, we risk facing a national decline and ultimate shortage in the number of physicians that have received the specialized training to treat our smallest and youngest patients. I support an increase in funding because CHGME strengthens each State's ability to retain pediatricians after completion of the residency program. Of the residents and fellows trained by CHGME hospitals, nearly 60 percent remain to practice in the State in which they completed their pediatric residency. In some States, this percentage is even higher. Texas and the Nation depend heavily on children's hospitals to care for critically and seriously ill children, as well as the low-income children in their communities. Increasing CHGME funding is an investment in children's health. For these reasons, I proudly join my colleagues in emphasizing the importance of this issue, and I hope we can increase the funding for CHGME when we conference with the House of Representatives.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President and colleagues, I hope very much we will not adopt this amendment. We are already looking at a 5-year gap between 2010 when the shuttle goes out of existence and 2015 when the crew-returned vehicle comes online. That is a security risk for the United States. If we adopt this amendment, we are going to lengthen the time that America cannot put anyone in space. Russia can, China will probably be able to, India may be able to, but not America. That is a security risk I am not ready to take, and I hope my colleagues will defeat this amendment.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I commend Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby for the work they have done on the amendment that just passed. This is a major step in the right direction to assure that America stays in the forefront of space technology, of the research, of the quality of life that we have gained from being the first in space. I commend Senator Mikulski--I have so enjoyed working with her--and Senator Shelby for working with us in support of the amendment that was just added to the bill. Amendment No. 3233, as Modified