J. Kerrey

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, 2 minutes.

Mr. KERREY. Yes. The Senator from Nebraska asked to have 1 minute to propose an amendment.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, this morning, myself, Senator Breaux, Senator Lieberman and Senator Nunn stood with an organization called the Progressive Policy Institute to embrace some recommendations, an outline of recommendations they made to reform both the Medicare Program--a $170 billion program that is funded with the combination of a 2.9-percent payroll tax and a health insurance premium paid for by 37 million beneficiaries over the age of 65 with $46 or so a month, that funds about 30 percent of the part B, the doctor's payment, as well as $80 billion program for Medicaid. These are the most rapidly growing items in the budget. They are not the most, but in terms of total dollars, this $250 billion collective program has gotten quite expensive. It has tormented a lot of Members who have been trying to figure out what to do to control the growth, in particular, of entitlements. Last year, Senator Danforth, a former Senator from Missouri, and I made some recommendations about what should be done to reform entitlements. The purpose of our recommendation was to say to Americans that we should agree that no more than a certain percentage of our budget would go to entitlements, plus net interest. Looking at the future, given the current trend lines particularly with the enormous demographic problem, mostly demographic not political problem, of 60 million baby boomers starting to retire in 2008, look at that problem and the cost of our entitlements not too long after the year 2008--all of our budget will be consumed by entitlement spending. When I say all, there are not very many things in Washington, DC, that have stayed constant over the years. One that has stayed constant, except for two periods in this century, World War II and for a period during the Vietnam war, the percent that has been withdrawn from the economy to fund Federal programs, approximately 19 percent, about how much we withdraw from the economy, a fifth of the U.S. economy is used to fund Federal programs. That really has not changed except for two wartime situations. It is likely that indicates that is about what Americans think we ought to be withdrawing from the U.S. economy for the Federal Government. There may be some that would argue we ought to do more, not very many; and maybe some would argue we should do dramatically less. Probably it means we will spend about 19 percent. If that is the constant, Mr. President, it is very alarming to see the growth of entitlements in net interest because as it grows it decreases the amount of money available to defend our country, to keep our cities safe, educate our children, to build our roads, our sewers, our water system, space exploration--all those sorts of things. This year's budget, 67 percent of our budget goes to entitlements and net interest, and in the year 2002 at the end of the 7-year budget resolution that we are operating under, it will be 75 percent--an 8 point increase in a span of 7 years. That is a lot of money, about $135 billion or $140 billion increase in entitlements, if you do it in a single year. As I said, Mr. President, that trend really rapidly accelerates when the baby boomers retire some 6 years later. The entitlement commission tried to say to Americans, ``Let's make changes in our programs sooner rather than later.'' The sooner we do them the bigger the future impact and the more time we can give beneficiaries or recipients, in the case of Medicaid, with time to plan. They can begin to adjust their own thinking about planning. If you have to adjust the eligibility age, which we recommended over a period of time; or if you have to phase in some change in premium payments, or whatever. Give people time to plan. It is more likely they can adjust. There are tough recommendations, Mr. President. Contained inside of the recommendations was another presumption which is that we are seeing the marketplace work. It is a relatively recent change in health care. When we debated health care 4 years ago, the facts as presented to the American people would cause you to believe that actually the Government was doing a better job of controlling costs than the private sector. Private sector costs exceeded the public side. Today not only is that reversed, but strikingly so. We are seeing in some parts of the country where a high percentage of managed care, even some declines in overall cost of health care, where the public sector continues to grow in double digits. That sort of frames a little bit, in a preliminary fashion, why I was pleased with the Progressive Policy Institute's proposal. It does propose to address the problem of growing entitlements, and it does propose to take advantage of the changes that are occurring in the marketplace, to restructure Medicare and Medicaid to take advantage of the changes that are occurring. Let me say, Mr. President, one of the things I do when I am at home and talking about the current debate about Medicare and Medicaid is to say I am pleased that Republicans are trying to preserve and protect the program. Many Republicans were not, as you know. Some Republicans were opposed to this over the years. Now what we have appears to be almost unanimous--Republicans saying not only do we think Medicare is a good idea, we want to preserve Medicare for our children and for our grandchildren. Mr. President, let me point out that underneath the program is a presumption, an assumption that we have to believe before the program itself can stand, before we can reach the conclusion that we want to preserve and protect it. That assumption is this: No matter what we do with the marketplace, no matter what happens with our economy, there is apt to be some Americans that will not be able to afford to buy health insurance, for whatever the reason. They may be disabled. In this case with Medicare it is the elderly. Say they are over 65 and likely [[Page S 14403]] not to be working. Their health costs have gone up. They are in a higher-risk population. It costs more. They are not working any longer. Thus, design a program to help them purchase insurance. I point that out, Mr. President, because it basically means Republicans and Democrats have agreed that there is a role for Government to help Americans who cannot purchase, who cannot afford to purchase health insurance. We have agreed on that. In this case a rather expensive Government role--$170 billion for Medicare and $80 billion for the Medicaid program. The proposal that the Progressive Policy Institute put forward this morning, and I am here this afternoon to talk about it at great length, does not view Medicare as a source of money to fund deficit reduction although I believe we have to look because of the cost of the program to Medicare for deficit reduction. It says, instead, that we need to transform the Medicare program from what is essentially a very maternalistic program into an instrument for empowering citizens to solve common problems. A rather simple but very important change in the policy. Medicare today is run by the Federal Government, does not take much advantage of what is going on out in the market, does not take much advantage of competitive forces. It is much more of a maternalistic--we will figure out what is good for you and tell you how the program is operated. Their proposal, which I like very, very much, says we should move in the direction of empowering Americans to make more of their own decisions about this problem of acquiring health care and making health care decisions. Second, those of us who have spent a great deal of time with entitlements and who have long ago reached the conclusion that Medicare is a good program that deserves our support, know health care entitlements are very archaic. They no longer fit inside the context of what we see going on in the private sector. They are governed by arbitrary political and budget goals. They are managed by command and control regulation. And, very often, they tend to reproduce inefficiencies in other sectors of the health care system. Third, and very important, if you buy into this idea the Republicans and Democrats now agree, since I believe most if not all Republicans now say we should preserve and protect Medicare--that is what I am hearing, at least, from Speaker Gingrich and others--if that is the case, underneath that is a presumption that we have Americans out there who cannot afford to buy. What we ought to be trying to do is fashion the program so those who cannot afford have the means to make the purchase and those who can are required to make the purchase on their own. It seems to me Medicare and Medicaid, as they are currently constituted, are an obstacle. I emphasize this. They have become an obstacle to getting to the point where every single American, just because he or she is an American, knows with certainty that they are covered and they are going to be required to pay according to their capacity to pay. But they do not doubt, whether they are 65 or 25 or 55; they ought not doubt. We spend $400 billion a year, direct and indirect--either direct with tax expenditures or indirectly with tax subsidies--on health care at the Federal level every single year. That is plenty to get everybody covered. The way the current programs are designed, they are a structural barrier, a fiscal barrier, and need I say, it ought to be obvious from the current debate, a political barrier to getting ourselves to the point where all Americans know with certainty they are covered, know with certainty they have a responsibility to pay, have the information upon which they can make decisions about quality, about price. One of the most powerful bumper stickers we had in the health care debate is true, which was, ``If you think health care is expensive now, wait until health care is free.'' In short, Americans need to understand that there is a cost attached to demands. The current system, I believe, the way we have Medicare structured and the way Medicaid is structured and the way the VA is structured and the way our income tax system is structured, provides a barrier, really, as I said, a political, a structural, as well as a fiscal barrier to getting us where I think most of us want to go, which is every American knows with certainty they are covered, knows that they have responsibilities in the system, knows clearly what those responsibilities are, and knows not to ask for more than what is, in fact, reasonable. There are flaws in the Republican proposal. I will mention them briefly. I do not want to dwell too long on them here because I am really not trying this afternoon to attack the Republican proposal. More, I am trying to see if it is possible to reach some consensus with Republicans who indeed want to reform this system; to make sure, when we take action that might be politically difficult, that we have an exciting and constructive improvement in the system. I believe the proposal ignores the baby-boom generation. I have mentioned it before. This solution takes us out to 2002, maybe 2005. We have not seen anything yet when the demographics of the baby-boom generation becomes apparent to us. We are, I think, going to be very sorry we did not take action sooner rather than later. It, in many ways, continues the status quo. It does provide people with more choice in the private sector, but not in the kind of vigorous competitive environment that we need if we expect to see the forces of the marketplace work the kind of, really, miracles that we have seen in the private sector. In other words, it tends to privatize but does not provide a competitive environment. The proposal we presented this morning, over the next 5 years does four things that are very important. It does not get everything done over the next 5 years, but it does four things that are terribly important. No. 1, it privatizes insurance for Medicare beneficiaries. We say the Federal Government ought to do a much more limited number of things than they are doing today. It ought to make certain we have a market. It ought to make certain Medicare can use its tremendous purchasing power to get cost savings from the private sector. There are lots of things that Medicare can do, but it ought not try to micromanage the health care environment. So that is Medicare. We ought to privatize it and move it in the direction of becoming a privatized insurance for Medicare beneficiaries. In the area of Medicare, we need not only to cap the individual amount for acute care, but we also need to deregulate the States so they can continue to use the market at the State level, to continue to use the private sector to produce the kind of cost savings that the private sector has produced in the last 2, 3, 4 years. So capping the Medicaid entitlement, the individual entitlement is critical. But deregulating the States for that acute care is equally critical so they can begin to fashion programs. I believe it will be a mistake to block grant Medicaid at this point. Perhaps 6, 7, 8 years down the road, after we have really seen this thing move more aggressively in the private sector. We have a bit of a problem because of the Federal-State relationship. I think it would be far--not think, I very strongly believe it would be far sounder for us to cap the entitlement and deregulate so the States could use the market much more as a consequence. Long-term care is much more of a problem. As people who have looked at it know, the long-term piece, although it is a much smaller number of people covered, it is a very large part of the total Medicaid spending--the long-term piece. We are also, in my judgment, going to have to have some capitation of payment. But we are going to have to encourage States to develop private sector solutions. We simply cannot provide, through the Government, all the long-term care requirements that are out there. We have to basically take the Medicaid Program, as we were proposing to do with Medicare, move it as quickly as possible toward a private sector solution. The third thing that we are saying is, make health care subsidies fair. The most important thing we do there is to cap the income tax deduction. Some will say, ``You are increasing taxes on my health insurance.'' Our proposal caps it at a high enough level inside of the market that nobody is going to be [[Page S 14404]] able to say that they are paying taxes on normal health care. They are going to be paying taxes on that beyond what the market judges to be in the median range. It is very uncomfortable for upper-income people to have to consider that one of the things that is going on if they are in the 40-percent tax bracket, let us say, is that if they are buying a health insurance policy of $7,000 or $8,000 a year, they are receiving a $2,800 to $3,200 subsidy as a result of receiving that deduction, and very often receiving that subsidy from people who do not have health insurance. So this says, let us make it fair. Let us keep the deduction in place so you can encourage the individuals to purchase and encourage the employers to provide it, but let us cap it out so those subsidies end up being not only fair but consistent with our desire to make sure that we provide subsidies to people who need them but do not provide subsidies to people who do not. The fourth thing we are attempting to do--there are a whole series of things that need to be done, including the creation of a health care network and additional information provided to consumers--we are trying to create a universal health care marketplace. So the decisions and choices that are made by individuals about price and the decisions and choices made by individuals about quality will determine the nature of our delivery system, the nature of our payment system. Again, for emphasis, we want the negotiation for price to occur out there in the market. We do not want the negotiations for price to occur here in Washington, DC. That kind of top-down, paternalistic system I think is a recipe for either increased regulation or unsuccessful efforts to control costs. So the proposal in its early stages is relatively simple. It is not easy, but it is based upon a vision of a universal marketplace for all Americans where everybody knows they are covered, where everybody knows what their responsibilities are, and where everybody knows the costs attached to their demand. There are seven things I would like to emphasize inside trying to create this buyers' market for Medicare and Medicaid. Again, division for me is removing from a paternalistic federalized system into a system where everybody knows that they are covered but their decisions are shaping both the delivery and the payer system for the kinds of products that companies offer for sale. First, we use market mechanisms to determine proper levels of supply and demand. Let the market make that decision. If we try to make that decision here in a political environment, it is very difficult for us to say no and very difficult for the majority of us, when appeal is made, to say no. It is not altogether likely that we are going to be honest and say to somebody, if we say yes, ``By the way, here is the cost, and we would like to have you pay for it.'' We typically try to spread the cost over somebody else's income. Second, we should protect the value of the subsidy while avoiding an unlimited subsidy. It is a very important thing for us to do. We need to protect the value of the subsidy so that it moves with inflation. But we cannot continue with a system that says the subsidy is unlimited, the sky is the limit, and whatever you need we will pay for it regardless of what contributions you have made, regardless of what your income is, and regardless of your wealth status. Third, we need to maintain the collective purchasing power of Medicare and Medicaid. That is extremely important. The Government can help drive down the cost if they use that purchasing power in a constructive fashion instead of sort of laying back and saying we will pay out whatever is submitted to us. The law currently does not allow HCFA to do that sort of thing. We are talking about not eliminating HCFA but moving HCFA in a direction where it does a different set of things than it is currently being asked by our laws to do. Fourth, we must enable beneficiaries--250 million to 260 million--to become more informed. At the end of the day we are the ones that create the demand. We are the ones, as a consequence of our own evaluation of health and what we are willing to do, who create the demand. We have to become better informed both about cost and about quality. Fifth, we have to align Medicare and Medicaid with trends towards cost-effective care in the private sector rather than again just engaging in a debate about, are we cutting too much, and are we cutting too little? We need to take advantage of what is going on in the private sector with the objective of getting every single American inside the system. Next, we have to create a privately run, decentralized system to deliver our health insurance as opposed to, again, a centralized system that tends to be more paternalistic and not terribly creative, not nearly as creative as what the market can do. Seventh, we should limit the Government role to the essential. This gets me back where I was at the beginning. Mr. President, it is terribly important to argue and decide what do we want the Federal Government to do. It appears to me that we have achieved consensus that there is a legitimate role for Government, at least for 37 million Americans who are over the age of 65. It seems to me that we have reached consensus. The principle ought to be that the reason we are helping people over 65 is they cannot buy. They are having trouble buying. Let us limit the role of Government to help those who cannot buy purchase it. But let us not subsidize--whether it is me or you, Mr. President, or anybody else--people that do not need to be subsidized. Let us not have the Federal Government commanding the system to do something that is going to cost the taxpayer more and perhaps end up delivering lower quality care. In closing, one of the most exciting areas of effort that is ongoing right now in the area of waste, fraud, and abuse is by Senator Graham of Florida and Senator Harkin of Iowa. A long time ago a rather clever fellow by the name of Willie Sutton said, ``The reason I rob banks is that's where the money is.'' At $250 billion, if Willie were around today, he would be apt to be looking at Medicare and Medicaid. People are getting ripped off by a substantial amount. They know how to game the system. They are well organized. I am not talking typically about individuals. I am talking about people who are in it for the money, for the dough. I think we have an obligation to do everything that we can to use competition, not only to get the price down as low as possible, but to make sure that we hold to a very high standard of accountability those people who find themselves being qualified as providers. Mr. President, again, I applaud what I see as essentially a Republican conversion that Medicare is a good program, that we ought to preserve and save it. I think that is an awfully good piece of news. The underlying principle that should enable us to make decisions, not just for the short term where in truth not much effort is needed to save Medicare in the short term over the next 7 to 10 years--not that much change is required--but to take advantage of the marketplace and to solve the problem that is created when the baby boomers retire. A good deal more than what I have seen thus far in the Republican proposal needs to be done. So I am hoping that this statement--and others that I will make on this issue of Medicare and Medicaid, if not this year in the budget deliberations, throughout the next year as we begin to do next year's budget deliberations--I am hoping that we can in fact build some bipartisan coalition around the need to control the rapidly rising cost of entitlements that is squeezing out our ability to make long-term investments in our future, and the increasing insecurity that all Americans feel as a consequence, I think, of very inefficiently run Federal programs. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I would like to ask the distinguished chairman for assistance in dealing with an issue that is very important to myself, Senator Exon and the people of the rural areas of Nebraska. As you are aware, there is currently a large differential in rents between rural and urban areas in our country. I am concerned that too large a variance would have a significant adverse effect on low income elderly populations. We must enable developers to continue to provide our rural areas with this valuable service. This is a problem not just in Nebraska but also in neighboring States that have large rural populations. I understand the need for the budgetary constraints that have been placed upon your committee. However, unrealistically low fair market rents will have a devastating impact on the numerous rural beneficiaries of assisted housing. As the fair market rent levels decline, the negative effects of excessive rent differentials between urban and nearby rural areas become more significant. I respectfully ask the chairman to do what he can to rectify this unfortunate situation in the conference.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I would like to ask the distinguished chairman for assistance in dealing with two matters that are very important to me and the people of Nebraska. The Distance Learning and Medical Link Program was designed to demonstrate the ability of rural communities to utilize existing or proposed telecommunications systems to achieve sustainable cost- effective distance learning or proposed medical link networks. In Nebraska, there is a distance learning partnership between the School at the Center Project, the Nebraska Math and Science Initiative, Project EduPort and the Nebraska Rural Development Commission that would provide access to advanced telecommunications services and computer networks and improve rural opportunities. Another program designed to provide much needed technology to rural communities is the Rural Community Advancement Program (RCAP). Included in RCAP is the Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program. The Nebraska Department of Economic Development operates a program for innovative information technology applications that assists small and rural Nebraska businesses in becoming more competitive through effective use of information technology and telecommunications. I feel that these are the types of projects contemplated under the Distance Learning and Medical Link Program and the Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program, and I would ask the chairman to join me in encouraging the Department to give consideration to funding both of these proposals.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, this is a fairly straightforward amendment. I must say I offer it with some reluctance. The distinguished Senator from Mississippi and the distinguished ranking member from Arkansas have done an excellent job with the agriculture appropriations bill and in staying open to suggestions and staying open to preferences of individual Members. However, this $41 million appropriation for cotton really does put us on a slippery slope, Mr. President. Last year, when we set in motion the enhanced crop insurance program, the promise was that crop insurance was to be to replace ad hoc disaster programs. That was the promise. If we begin today, less than a year later from putting that program into place, saying, well, here is a case we can make, there is no question--and I do not argue with the distinguished Senator from Mississippi that the disaster and tragedy affecting cotton producers is meritorious. However, we said that instead of [[Page S 13715]] ad hoc disaster, we were going to do crop insurance. It seems to me, Mr. President, that if we begin with cotton, there will be amendments offered to do soybeans or corn or rice, or all sorts of things. We will get appeals, one after another. And those of us who have heard those appeals thus far have been able to say, no, I would like to go to the floor and offer an amendment on your behalf, I understand the disaster is serious; however, we are using crop insurance. We need to improve that program. It is not perfect. We nonetheless need to work with that program, rather than, at least for people like me, breaking a promise to taxpayers that we would not have both an ad hoc disaster payment and crop insurance. The details of the reallocation, Mr. President, are as follows: $35 million of the $41 million would go into a rural community advancement program, which includes grants and loans for water and sewer improvements, rental housing, and other important rural development programs. The Senator from Arkansas and the Senator from Mississippi have both spoken eloquently on the rather severe cuts we have in rural development in this bill. It is unavoidable. We can avoid a piece of that by enacting this amendment. Second, $4.5 million goes into the rural development loan fund intermediary lending program--an extremely successful program, one that has bipartisan support, Mr. President--that promotes rural economic development by making investment capital available, via a locally based nonprofit intermediary, to rural businesses that typically cannot obtain financing from conventional sources. Lastly, $1.5 million goes into rural technology and cooperative development grant programs, which provide funding to public bodies and nonprofit organizations to establish rural technology and cooperative developing networks nationwide to help improve economic conditions in rural America. Again, the amendment rests upon a belief that we should either do crop insurance or ad hoc disaster. Again, I do not challenge the meritorious nature of the cotton disaster. But I do believe, Mr. President, that it would be a terrible mistake for us to move away from crop insurance, back into this sort of dual thing where we say, well, if crop insurance does not work, we will do ad hoc disaster on top of that, and the next thing you know, taxpayers are paying for both. Next will be blueberries and potatoes and everything else that comes in. They will say, ``I see that in 1995 you took care of cotton; can you take care of us as well?" I hope colleagues understand that I do not offer this amendment as a consequence of radical disagreement or objection to what the chairman and ranking member are doing. They have done an exceptional job of putting this bill together. I offer it as a consequence of believing very strongly that our policy ought to continue with crop insurance. If it is demonstrable that crop insurance does not work--and there are many problems still with that--and it is demonstrable that it does not work, we should abandon the crop insurance program and go back to year in and year out politically deciding in Congress how it is that we are going to allocate resources for the disaster program. Mr. President, that concludes my stirring remarks on this particular amendment. I told the Senator from Mississippi I was going to take 10 or 15 minutes. I have not done that.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I say to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, there are others who have told me they want to speak. I just arrived here. I am not sure how many others have actually come to speak in favor of this amendment. I personally can get by easily with 10 or 15 minutes. I wonder if the Senator would mind making it 30 minutes, and I will be prepared to yield it back if nobody else shows up. It may be necessary at this point, since some Members have been waiting and know what time the vote was going to be scheduled, to give them time to get here. As far as the amount of time I require personally to speak on this amendment, 10 or 15 minutes would be all I would need.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I will test the patience of the Senator from Mississippi by talking on a subject that is very much related to this and that is the proposal that was made last Friday on Medicare by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. I read over the weekend the details that were available--not all details were available. I make the comments because I know on our side in the Senate Finance Committee they are deliberating, as well, trying to discover how to come up with $270 billion. Allow me to say two things about this. One, there are many on this side, many Democrats on this side, that would rush immediately to embrace a proposal to eliminate the deficit by the year 2002 if we could eliminate the enthusiasm for a tax cut that still is on the table. I understand that enthusiasm is there. I did not hear an awful lot of people in the Senate, at least when they were campaigning for reelection, campaign on a promise to put those portions of the Contract With America in our budget reconciliation. The choice is not between bigger Government and smaller Government. We would still have a balanced budget by the year 2002, all with cuts in spending. We would still have a proposal that would not have any tax increases in it. I think we could take an awful lot and we could get a bipartisan agreement and still have a very tough budget reconciliation if that were acceptable to my colleagues on the Republican side. Much more difficult, and it gets difficult on this side, is that we have in place, Mr. President, with our entitlement programs, growth in those programs that continue to erode our entire budget. Imagine a business out there that has $1,000 or $100,000 or $1 million or $10 million or $100 million worth of sales with 67 percent of their sales being eaten up in costs related to mandated spending. That is, noncontrollable spending. In this case, most of the retirement and health care. Imagine, 67 percent. Their capacity to invest in equipment, their capacity to invest in employees, their capacity to invest in things that maintain their base of sales is substantially reduced as a result. The same is true with the Federal Government. It would be bad enough, Mr. President, if we had 67 percent and it stayed there. Under both the President's proposal and the Republican budget resolution that percentage continues to grow so that in the year 2000 it is 75 percent, not 67 percent. Mr. President, that is 8 percentage points, approximately, additional growth in entitlements. On this year's spending that is nearly $140 billion of additional money of our budget that is going to entitlement spending. I know the Senator from Mississippi understands this. If we had $400 billion which is what 25 percent would be, if we had 25 percent of our budget allocated this year for defense and nondefense appropriations, we would have $400 billion, Mr. President. Our most dovish liberal member would probably spend $250 billion on defense, leaving $150 billion for nondefense spending. Mr. President, as I look at the Republican Medicare Preservation Act--whatever they call it; something to that effect--of 1995, they say the proposal preserves Medicare in the future. It does not. All it does is it picks as the problem the year 2002 but it does not alert Americans to the enormous demographic problem of baby boomers that come online and begin to retire in the year 2008. Mr. President, unless we take a longer view, we do not see the appropriated accounts begin to dip even lower than 25 percent, eventually becoming zero, unless we take action. There are two things that put pressure on the appropriations accounts that requires us to cut back in agriculture this year, as well as all other of our 13 appropriations bills. One is a tax cut that is insisted upon by the Republican majority. I do not believe--I am not sure even the majority is that enthusiastic on the Republican side. Bigger than that, Mr. President, by my calculation, is a factor of four--four times larger than that problem--is the problem of growth of entitlements. We Democrats will have to say to Republicans--indeed the proposal put out last Friday instead of saying it does too much, the biggest deficiency that I find with the proposal, Mr. President, is it does not do enough. My criticism of it, it is not big enough. It does not really fix the problem. I stand here as one Democrat who is concerned about what we are doing to these appropriated accounts. I see many areas where Republicans and Democrats, whether it is rural development or transportation or education, could agree that we are not spending enough, that we are decreasing our productive capacity in the future and denying ourself higher standards of living and more economic growth. As a result, where we have agreement we are simply unable to come up with [[Page S 13716]] the resources, first, because of a tax cut that is still in here; but a far larger looming problem is the growth of entitlements. I see that the cosponsor of this bill, Senator Kohl, of Wisconsin, is on the floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Reserving the right to object, I want to make sure, since we notified Members earlier that it was 6:30. I do not want to have somebody get tied up in traffic. It is pretty lousy traffic out there. I would hate to notify everybody that it will be at 6:30, and then to yield 10 minutes. It seems like that may be a problem.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, unless there is some personal information that somebody is going to have trouble getting here, I am not prepared to object.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I have two arguments in response to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi. One, if we authorize the Secretary of Agriculture to provide disaster assistance for cotton, any Members who vote no on this amendment are going to find themselves at some point faced with another crop with a comparable disaster, saying, ``Can you do what you did for cotton last year?'' That is what is going to happen. There is no question in my mind. It has already happened to me. People have come to me. Just like the Senator said, people misunderstood what the catastrophic program was. They have come to me and said, ``We thought this thing covered more. We did not look at the fine print. They told us it was something different, and now I have a disaster. Can you provide ad hoc disaster relief on top of the crop insurance we expected to be there?'' My answer has been, ``No, we have to work with crop insurance or let us get rid of it. If you do not like the crop insurance program and you want to go to Congress year in and year out when there are disasters and try to get money appropriated, let us do that. Let us just assume the program will not work.'' I think it can work, if the administration will appoint a corporate board of directors. Second, as to this catastrophic coverage, part of the problem here is that there are Government employees who attempted--in our judgment, too quickly--to assume responsibility that they knew what this bill was about and could inform people. The law is very clear. It is not like this thing is ambiguous. For former ASCS employees, who were describing what this program was, to misunderstand this one, it requires a pretty substantial stretch of the imagination to figure out how they did. Because it says right in the bill that catastrophic coverage is only going to cover 50 percent loss in yield on an individual yield or area yield basis, indemnified at 60 percent of the expected market price. So the coverage was never intended to provide full coverage against disasters. It was always intended as a floor and that the individual who was out there trying to make a judgment should have to buy up. We have subsidized insurance available. They could pay more and buy up and get more coverage. The misunderstanding is in part a consequence of our wanting to maintain a system where the Government itself is operating the insurance program. So I hope, for reasons cited, Members will look very carefully at this. It is a difficult amendment because the distinguished Senator from Mississippi is very persuasive and very well liked and has put together an awfully good piece of legislation. But I promise Members they will find, if they vote no on this amendment, that they will have a difficult time voting no in the future.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk, I hope for the Presiding Officer's sake, briefly about the proposal--the general outline of the proposal--made yesterday by the Republican leadership called the Medicare Preservation Act of 1995. The details are not yet available. It is a general outline. Mr. President, I must say had I given this speech 7 or 8 hours ago, I probably would have been a lot hotter than I am right now. I have cooled down since I watched the video replay of Speaker Gingrich's rather remarkable--and I would argue and observe, distasteful-- representation of the Democratic view of Medicare. At one point he said that Democrats are morally bankrupt. That is as if saying we ought to approach the American people about the truth, with the facts, with the courage and with trust, that they have the capacity to take the truth. I agree with that. I believe, in fact, if we are going to have the debate about Medicare that leads to constructive reform, that saves the system--and, by the way, as importantly, slows and fixes the percent of growth of all entitlements as a percentage of our budget--then we are going to have to come together present facts, tell the truth, and have the courage to do so. I do not disagree with Speaker Gingrich's observation in that regard. But, as I said, I was somewhat provoked when he said that Democrats are morally bankrupt, and that all we are trying to do is frighten 85- year-olds who are concerned about this program. Well, Mr. President, 85-year-olds are quite nervous and concerned about what politicians are going to do with their Medicare Program, and I think understandably so. But it is not Democrats that are causing them to be fearful. They are fearful, I would argue, principally because they know something needs to be done, and they are not in the main sufficiently well funded personally to be able to cover the costs of nursing home care or, for that matter, most of the cost of modern health care. And they are nervous. They are fearful. They are no longer able to produce and enjoy income, and, as a consequence, they are extremely vulnerable to all kinds of statements. So, again, I do not disagree with Speaker Gingrich and other Republican leaders that were talking yesterday about the need to present facts, the need to present the truth, the need to have courage, and the need to trust the American people that they can handle the truth and the facts presented by politicians. But, Mr. President--I want to be clear on this--my criticism of the Republican proposal is not that it does too much; I am critical of the Republican proposal because it does not do enough. Let me emphasis that, Mr. President. I believe that the proposal, the general outline of the proposal, because it sees the problem through a 7-year budget deficit plan--and that is what it is--it sees this Medicare problem through the view of the next 7 years. There is a need to produce a sufficient amount of savings over the next 7 years, and in order to meet the balanced budget targets in the budget resolution, the law now requires that be done. There are instructions for the Finance Committee to produce legislation that will get that done. There is a recommendation that will probably, all in all, in the end, be considered in reconciliation, unfortunately. But when you look at the problem for the next 7 years, you do not see the full size of the problem. Indeed, the Medicare Preservation Act of 1995 says that it will preserve the system for current beneficiaries, protect it for future beneficiaries, and strengthen it through reforms that have worked in the private sector. It may preserve it for current beneficiaries; it may strengthen it through reforms that have worked in the private sector. Both of those appear to be in the general outline. But by no measurement, unless you consider that the future only includes the next 7 years, does this proposal protect it for future beneficiaries. It does not do that. It sees this as a 7-year problem. It does not see it as a problem beyond that 7 years. The problem that we have with entitlements--if anybody doubts that a Democrat is willing to propose something that solves this problem, former Senator Danforth and I last year, after the conclusion of the entitlement commission recommendation, made proposals that would have fixed this problem long term, that would have fixed not only the Medicare trust funds but would have fixed it so that we do not see health care entitlements as well as other entitlements continuing to grow and erode our entire Federal budget. Mr. President, that is the most important problem. I think we are closer to consensus on many more things around here than would sometimes meet the eye given the intensity of the political rhetoric. One of the things I believe that Democrats and Republicans now share, at least in a general sense as to what our policies ought to be, is that our policies ought to promote economic growth. We now understand that unless we have gains in productivity, unless we have economic growth, it is rather difficult for us to do anything. We see it in a recession. If you are in a recession, the revenues are down; you have to cut your budget; you do not have money for roads; you do not have money for schools; you do not have money for health care; you do not have money for retirement. The source of our revenue, whether it is for retirement or health care or any other program that we fund, is the goods and services that are manufactured and produced by the American people, 117 million people in our economy. If they are productive and they are selling and our economy is growing, that is the source of our revenue. It is the source of Medicare revenue. The distinguished occupant of the chair knows, not only a gifted surgeon but designated as a lead Senator I believe for the Republicans in coming up with some recommendations, understands that the entire source of revenue for part A comes from a payroll tax. We have a tax on payroll. We also have income taxes that provide currently about 69 percent I believe of the total revenue of part B, the physician services. In both of those cases, we have to have income. People are out there working in the workplace. We tax their wages to generate the money for part A, to pay hospital bills, and we tax their income to pay about 60 percent, or almost 70 percent--it was 75-- [[Page S 13675]] about 70 percent of the physician payments come from taxes on people's income. I make this point because it is that income that people produce in the private sector which is our source to pay the doctor bills, to pay the hospital bills. If we were in a recession, if we were not enjoying a recovery right now, if rates of productivity were not up, we would not have nearly as much money as we have to pay those entitlement obligations for hospitalization and for physician services. A very important beginning observation, Mr. President, very important, because what is happening in the Federal budget--and, again, there is consensus, I believe, amongst Republicans and Democrats. Although we may disagree at the margin on some programs as to whether or not they are useful or necessary, I think there is general agreement that some expenditures on the part of the Federal Government, some collecting of revenue that we do of taxpayer revenue and spending that we do increases our productive capacity. I am 52 years of age and started in business in 1973 officially. I made a lot of money as a consequence of my parents having built the interstate highway system with cash. It lowered my cost of doing business. It enabled me to get products that I otherwise would not have been able to get. My customers could get to me easier than others. It increased my business. That was an investment. That was a collective investment made with revenue we collected at the Federal level. We made it at the local level. It is not the only one. Many of us believe that investments in education, in infrastructure, in sewer, in water, in research, many of us believe that there are other investments that we can make, expenditures in people for their work out there--we collect the money and we spend it--that some of these expenditures do in fact produce increases in productivity and growth in our economy, thus providing us with the revenue to fund entitlements. The year that the current chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Hatfield, arrived in the U.S. Senate--and he is one of the best Senators that I have had the privilege to meet and to get to know--the year that he arrived in the Senate, as you look at the Federal budget, 70 percent of the budget was voted on and appropriated and 30 percent was entitlement and net interest. This year, it is 67 percent entitlements and net interest and 33 percent appropriated, voted on and authorized. At the end of this budget resolution, at the end of the 7-year period, we will be down to 25 percent for appropriated accounts and 75 percent for entitlements and net interest, and when the baby boomers start to retire some 6 years after this budget resolution, it drives clear off the charts. In approximately 15 years, we will have converted the Federal Government into an ATM machine. All we will be doing is transferring money. All we will be doing is paying doctors or paying hospitals or writing checks to retirees. That is all we will be doing. There will be no money left for defense, no money left for the courts, no money left for law enforcement. Mr. President, it is an unsustainable trend. It is an unsustainable trend. And we have to interrupt it, as the Speaker said, with courage and with honesty, although I saw some evidence of his unwillingness, I think, to hold to a very important standard in this entire debate. The Republican proposal solves a 7-year problem, a budget problem for the next 7 years. It is going to be very interesting to see what the trustees say as far as how many years' additional slack we get as a consequence of these changes. Is it going to push the default date or the bankruptcy date, or whatever name you want to put on it, from 2002 back to 2005 or 2006? I guarantee it will not go much beyond 2008. Mr. President, as I said, worst of all, the proposal does not say to the American people that we have to fix the cost of all entitlements-- and health care is the biggest and most rapidly growing of all of them--we have to fix the cost of these entitlement programs so we have the resources to be able to do--God willing, if Congress gets the courage--the equivalent of the GI bill, the equivalent of the interstate highway system, if we are willing to truly make those kinds of investments that produce long-term benefits to future generations. Today we could not afford to do it, and in the future we are going to be able to afford even less. Mr. President, this proposal does not go far enough. And I emphasize that. I do not want any American--I watched the news today and the sound bites, Speaker Gingrich and leader Dole, and then leader Daschle and leader Gephardt, and Haley Barbour, on where are the Democrats and where are the Republicans. The general perception is being created early in the debate that Republicans have a proposal and the Democrats are opposed to it. Mr. President, I am not opposed to changing Medicare at all. There is an urgent need to do so. But I feel very strongly on this issue that this proposal does not go as far as we ought to. I will not resist it because it cuts too much; I am going to resist it because the focus is too narrow of a timeframe. Mr. President, we do not have time on our side. The earlier we make adjustments on this, the easier it will be to fix the overall costs of entitlements and the more likely we will give beneficiaries a time to plan. I will give you an example. If we can reach agreement that we ought to fix the overall cost of entitlements, if we are going to say that to the American people, let us say we are going to fix it at 70 percent. That is still three points more than it currently is. Let us presume that the Democrats and Republicans and Congress can get together and say entitlements and net interest should not be more than 70 percent of our total interest. That is approximately where Senator Danforth and I ended up with our proposal. When you get into that, you are talking about the need to phase in a change in the eligibility age from 65 to 70, perhaps providing an earlier eligibility, as we did to 62, requiring a larger payment for it, and allowing people to get insured, not making them wait until they are 70 to be eligible, but for full program benefits, if you want to solve this long-term problem before the baby boomers start to go out. God help us if we wait. I mean, we do not have the productive capacity to generate the payroll tax revenue nor the income tax revenue to get that done. When the baby-boom generation starts to retire, the people working per retiree is going to drop again. It is almost a 25- percent increase in the number of retirees in a single decade in Nebraska while the population in general grows less than 2 percent. We have got a tremendous new class of retirees in my--and I do not know how old the occupant of the chair is. The occupant of the chair is sort of on the other edge of the baby-boom generation. When we retire, the people supporting us will say, ``Oh, my gosh, you guys are expensive. I didn't realize you cost so darn much.'' We are going to say, ``Well, we have a COLA on our retirements, health care is more expensive now, even in the managed care environment.'' I heard on C-SPAN today the distinguished occupant of the chair was fiddling, I guess, not long ago with a member of the press and had a pacemaker that he had invented and was trying to come up with a device that was small enough to get into a baby's heart, because that is the kind of surgery he does. Even in a managed environment, that is going to be expensive. I hope you are successful in being able to discover a way to make that smaller for those babies that need pacemakers. No matter what you do, if you want high quality care, and I believe most Americans want high quality health care, even in a managed environment, it is likely to be expensive. Mr. President, we are going to need people in the work force producing higher wages, producing higher output to have the revenue that we need to pay for all of that. I daresay, if we do not do more than what is in this Medicare Preservation Act of 1995, we are going to wish we had. I am here on the floor, Mr. President, to say here is one Democrat that does not look at the proposal and say you have done too much. This is one Democrat that comes to the floor to say we have not done enough. I have looked at the general outline and see there are no changes in what the beneficiaries have to pay, other [[Page S 13676]] than I suspect 7, 10, 12--there is going to be a higher part B premium in this thing and a means test that drops down to $75,000 a year. I hope this does not degenerate to a situation where we are attacking that kind of proposal and try to score points. It seems to me we have to come to the American people and say, ``All right, you made a good faith effort to fix this thing inside the budget resolution, but for those of us who have looked at this problem for a bit longer period of time and a longer period of time out in the future, it behooves us to come and say, ``I want to join this battle but not on the outside only having to make a criticism.'' I hope that the Republican majority will try to enlist people like myself rather than trying to score this as a Republican victory saying the Republicans alone are doing it. I hope you reach out to us. I hope leader Dole is either listening or staff is listening to this. Speaker Gingrich, I forgive you for your intemperate remarks yesterday. I am not going to stand on the floor of the Senate and say I am permanently angry, will not sit down and meet with Speaker Gingrich because he said I and other Democrats are morally bankrupt. We have a problem to solve. Deal us in and bring those of us--and there are others on this floor. I know Senator Nunn feels this way, Senator Robb feels this way, Senator Lieberman feels this way. There are many others. I am by no means an all-inclusive list. We know we have a problem and we know the problem is much more than a 7-year budget problem. We are able to look at the numbers. Let us present the American people with the truth. Let us give them the facts as the Speaker said we should. Let us have the courage to give them all the facts. Otherwise, Mr. President, in very short order, we will not have Pell grants at all, we will not have student loans at all, we will not have chapter 1, we will not have Head Start--all the sorts of things this year we are anguishing because we do not have enough money to provide young people with, money they need to go to college--by the way, a cost that has gone up even faster than health care. We have families in Nebraska taking out second mortgages on their homes so they can go to college. We are cutting all that while we are funding larger and larger increases for retirement and health care. Mr. President, we cannot continue it. I am standing here as a Democrat saying I am willing to join with Republicans if you go further. Let us not retreat from this proposal. Let us take it further to solve this long-term problem, not only so that Medicare is preserved for the long term, but so that we preserve our capacity to invest in these young people who watch this occasionally who ask us what we are going to do for their future. Let us make certain at the Federal level we have the capacity when we reach agreement, and very often we do, that education gets a job done; that there are ways for us to increase productivity; that when we reach agreement on what ought to be done, that we have the fiscal capacity to do it. Unless we take this proposal and make it larger, I fear that all we are going to do is spend the next 60 days scoring perhaps some terrific and effective political points on who is doing what to whom on Medicare, but we will not have done what I consider to be an urgent task, and that is fixing this entitlement problem once and for all. I thank the distinguished occupant of the chair for his patience. Again, I appreciate very much his personal work in health care and his political work now in health care. I hope, in fact, that the leadership will open the doors a bit so those of us who do care deeply about this thing, who are willing to present facts, who are willing to tell the truth, who are willing to suck up and use a little bit of our political capital and courage are given an opportunity to do so. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I yield back my time.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, under the Dole bill, we are fundamentally changing the covenants of welfare. It seems to me and other supporters of this amendment that we should be fundamentally changing the way we design our formulas. Instead, under the Dole bill, we continue to use a formula that is based upon an older system. Instead, what the Graham-Bumpers amendment does is provides a formula that is based on fairness and guided by three principles: First, that the block grant should be based on need; second, the funding level should respond to changes in the poverty level; and third, the States should not be permanently disadvantaged based upon their policy choices and circumstances made in 1994. Mr. President, the Graham-Bumpers children's fair share proposal meets the test that I have just described by allocating funding based upon the number of poor children in each State, a formula just for changes in the population of children in poverty, so it does not lock States into an outdated funding level. I point out to my colleagues something I suspect they already know, and that is, child poverty has enormous economic costs. It has huge human costs as well. Low-income children are twice as likely to suffer from stunted growth, twice as likely as other children to die from birth defects, and three times more likely to die from all causes combined. It has been estimated that there are $36 to $177 billion in lower productivity coming from the American economy as a consequence of child poverty. It has enormous future costs as well. There is a University of Michigan study that those children under age 5 who experience at least 1 year of poverty have significantly lower IQ scores. If we are going to change our welfare system to a block grant, we need to change our funding formula to address child poverty. I cannot imagine--except for States that lose money, and some will under this formula. Unless your States lose money, I do not know how you can do anything other than to support this amendment.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was rejected.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, can I ask the Senator from Oklahoma, is he intending to do that and go into recess at that point?

Mr. KERREY. I wonder if the Senator will entertain a unanimous- consent that I speak for 10 minutes after the Senator from Arkansas and at that point we go into recess?

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, this amendment unfortunately will probably be defeated along party lines. I say unfortunately because there is a significant amount of enthusiasm in this body to respond to the people's concern about our welfare system and to try to change it. The Democratic Party, as people have observed and understand, have very often had difficulty coming together around change. That is not the case with welfare reform. [[Page S 12782]] We have spent a great deal of time on this side of the aisle--not defending the status quo--coming up with a proposal that radically alters the status quo with an attempt to pass legislation that will respond to taxpayers who say they do not like the current tax. They think we are spending money with no results, and perhaps worse, spending money and making the problem more serious than it currently is to the recipients who do not like the system, since many do not go onto welfare by choice but are there as a consequence of divorce or separation and find it difficult to get off once they are on. Mr. President, even providers today increasingly are saying they do not like the current system. The Work First proposal is a serious attempt to respond to these concerns, an attempt not to reduce the budget deficit, but to reduce the rates of poverty and increase the self-sufficiency of Americans who are struggling to get out of the ranks of poverty. That is the effort that we have before us. It changes our system so that we first will have an emphasis on finding and keeping a job; second, by providing the support necessary to find and keep that job; and third, by providing the States with more flexibility. Mr. President, I urge citizens to understand that the Daschle amendment abolishes AFDC. It replaces it with an entitlement that is conditional upon an individual who is able bodied being willing to work. Those recipients must sign a parent empowerment contract that outlines their plan to move themselves into the work force, similar to what many States have already done, including my own, the State of Nebraska. It provides a stimulus to develop the work ethic by moving from an income maintenance program to an employment assistance program. Mr. President, beyond that, this bill recognizes that in order to keep that job, individuals, parents, need to have other things. In particular, it makes certain that every single person that is moving into the ranks of the employed has high-quality, affordable child care. Otherwise, they will not be able to get it done. Now, there is a tremendous differential, Mr. President, between the relative cost of child care for somebody who is in the ranks of the poor and that of the people who are not poor. Above poverty, American families spend about 9 percent of their income for child care. Below poverty, it is almost 25 percent of their income. This proposal, moreover, says that many Americans are still struggling to try to be able to afford the cost of health care. This extends the 1-year Medicaid to 2 years and provides a sliding scale. So again, there is a requirement of effort for health care. Mr. President, this legislation responds to States saying that they want more flexibility. It allows States to design their own program and encourages States to redesign their infrastructure, to streamline the processes. It provides incentive for States if the States exceed the required job participation rate. It does not freeze the funds in an inflexible block grant, but it does say the States are required to maintain some effort. Mr. President, this legislation by itself will not solve all the problems. I still believe that we need to raise the minimum wage. I still believe that we need to hold on to the progress that was made with the expansion of the earned-income tax credit. Perhaps one of the most damaging things that is done in the current budget resolution is to reduce the earned-income tax credit. This welfare reform proposal by itself will not solve all the problems. Indeed, ideally for me, would be to pass the Daschle amendment and then include thereafter title 7 and title 8 of the Dole proposal, which is essentially the Kassebaum Work Force Development Act that consolidates and provides an awful lot more flexibility to States to make job training programs work. It is a very good piece of legislation. It could give the States the kind of flexibility and the power that they need to help people acquire the skills necessary to be self-sufficient. I have no doubt that, if we were to pass this amendment--and I hope my own skepticism about this current division between Republicans and Democrats will not be warranted, I hope there will be Republicans who will vote for the Daschle proposal--if it is passed, taxpayers will like it because they will be getting their money's worth, for a program that provides incentives for people to work. The recipients will like it because it strengthens child support enforcement, it provides a contract that lets them know precisely what they are supposed to do, and it offers an alternative approach to the cycle of poverty and the cycle of welfare dependency that many are trying to break. The people of the State of Nebraska, in my recent campaign, indicated strongly they want our welfare rules to be written so work is given greater priority than welfare, so it is more attractive than being on welfare. This legislation responds precisely to that concern. They want the opportunity at the State level and at the local level to be able to design their own programs, and this legislation responds to that concern. It is not being driven solely by the need to reduce the deficit. There is not an ideological bent to it that says it has to be one way or the other. It is driven by a desire to be able to stand at the end of the day and say this thing is working better; that, from the taxpayers' standpoint, from the beneficiaries' standpoint, and from the providers' standpoint, we have made our welfare system operate in a more efficient, effective and, hopefully, humanitarian fashion as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Debra Wirth, a fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the welfare debate.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield just to make a unanimous consent request for staff on the floor?

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. The procedure that my colleague has outlined is acceptable and I thank him for his courtesy in this matter. doe's retrofit program

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I would like to ask the distinguished chairman for assistance in dealing with an issue that is very important to me and to the Indian people in my State of Nebraska. The Indian Health Service has determined that there is a need for an inpatient health facility to serve the Indian people in eastern Nebraska. The existing facility at the Winnebago Reservation is old, dilapidated, and needs to be replaced. The tribes in the area have worked with the IHS for 8 years to reach the point where we are now. The 103d Congress appropriated funds for planning and design of the new hospital and that process is fully underway. A site has been selected for the new facility with the agreement of the tribes and the IHS has begun the design phase. Unfortunately, the Omaha Tribe broke off negotiations with the Winnebago Tribe on matters related to the future construction and management of the hospital; the reasons for this action are not entirely clear. While this division occurred early in July, efforts are underway to bring closure to whatever differences remain. In the meantime, unfortunately, language was included in the report on H.R. 1977 that would direct the reprogramming by IHS of the current year funds for the hospital, about $1.6 million. I believe this action is premature and respectfully ask the chairman to consider eliminating the reprogramming in conference with the House.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to respond to a speech made yesterday by the senior Senator from Texas.