Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, according to a report on murder-suicides released last month by the Violence Policy Center, a firearm is the weapon most frequently used to murder the victims, with the offenders then taking their own lives. The study notes that easy access to a gun was the decisive component for almost all of the murder-suicides. Of the 54 murder-suicides reviewed in this study, 52 were firearm-related. If these people had not had access to a firearm, some of these deaths may not have occurred. There is a piece of legislation in the Senate I believe would help prevent easy access to firearms by felons, those determined to be mentally ill by a court, those individuals with domestic violence misdemeanors and restraining orders, and others prohibited by law from owning a firearm. In April of last year, Senator Jack Reed introduced the Gun Show Background Check Act. The Reed bill, which is supported by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, extends the Brady bill background check requirement to all sellers of firearms at gun shows. I cosponsored that bill because I believe it is critical that we do all we can to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands. Mr. President, I believe this piece of legislation would be one of many things we can do to address the problem of easy access to guns.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing entitled ``The Role of the Board of Directors in Enron's Collapse.'' The subcommittee will call on past and present members of the Enron Board of Directors to obtain an insider's perspective on the board's oversight efforts, interactions with Enron management and Andersen, and failure to identify and respond adequately to warning signs of Enron's impending collapse. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, May 7, 2002, at 9:30 a.m., in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building. For further information, please contact Elise J. Bean of the subcommittee staff at 224-3721.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, for the Committee on Armed Services I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, in March 2002, the National Institute for Health Care Management announced that for yet another year, prescription drug prices rose more than ten percent. Often we see these rising costs attributed to the plethora of new drugs now available and to the resources needed to produce such innovative technologies. Yet, I find this argument difficult to accept when Fortune 500 reported this month that while most industries report dwindling earnings, pharmaceutical companies were showing impressive gains. Drug prices rising steadily in a year when the pharmaceutical industry trumped all other industries in profitability is a correlation that should come to nobody as a surprise. Pharmaceutical companies continue to insist that they are sinking under the heavy cost of research and development. But R&D costs are not causing high drug prices. Excessive profits are causing high drug prices, and excessive profits are keeping necessary drugs out of the financial reach of millions. It is time for Congress to challenge the practices of U.S. drug manufacturers. The Prescription Drug Price Parity for Americans Act exposes drug manufacturers to international price competition by allowing the reimportation of FDA-approved drugs from Canada, where prices are almost 35 percent lower. In the face of such competition, drug companies will be confronted with the fact that, all along, their prices have not only been exorbitant, but unwarranted. Over the past few years, I have brought to the Senate floor countless stories of Michigan residents who have crossed the border into Canada simply to get their hands on affordable prescription drugs. They continue to do so as we speak, and I do not blame them when just a few months ago I found that Prilosec, a commonly prescribed gastrointestinal drug, was fifty dollars less in a pharmacy in Windsor, Canada, than in a pharmacy in neighboring Detroit. U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to operate in a closed market. They are still able to get away with charging $50 more than their Canadian counterparts. Additionally, they are currently the only ones who are allowed to import drugs approved by the FDA. American pharmacists and distributors deserve this right, too. Pharmacists and distributors deserve not only the right to purchase lower costing FDA-approved drugs abroad, but to bring these critical drugs back to America where the savings can be passed on to our own citizens. The Prescription Drug Price Parity for Americans Act, which improves upon last year's enacted version, would make this access possible. High drug prices impact everyone--the young and the old, the insured and the uninsured--we all lose when prescription drugs are unaffordable. Much more needs to be done to expand access to lower priced prescription drugs sold abroad and the bill we are introducing today will help to offer that opportunity.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I yield myself 2 additional minutes.

Mr. LEVIN. One other issue. There are other amendments at the desk, including one in which I am interested.

Mr. LEVIN. This does not waive points of order on the amendments?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. LEVIN. I move to table the Carper amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, is it in order at this time to move to table the Carper amendment?

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I will be happy to accommodate my friend from Delaware. Madam President, let us be real clear. The Levin-Bond amendment had positive incentives. We need tax incentives, joint research and development money, Government purchasing, to a much larger extent than the administration proposed. They are in the Levin-Bond amendment. Also in the Levin-Bond amendment, which this would totally, in effect, abrogate, is a regulatory process: 15 months for the Department of Transportation to look at 12 different criteria in upping the CAFE standard. This does not wait. This prejudges the outcome of that process and says 1 million barrels a day. That is the mandate. This is not some objective, this is a mandatory amount specifically in this amendment, and it is not the way we should be legislating.

Mr. LEVIN. I yield 4 minutes to Senator Bond.

Mr. LEVIN. How much time remains, Madam President?

Mr. LEVIN. I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, how much time on both sides remains?

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. LEVIN. How much time remains on our side?

Mr. LEVIN. When the Senator from Delaware says it doesn't change Levin-Bond, I am afraid he is mistaken. He fundamentally changes the Levin-Bond amendment, which we adopted a month ago. The change he makes is that he says, forget the consideration of all those other factors. You have to reduce it by 1 million barrels a day regardless of the impact on safety, regardless of the effect on long-term investments by these short-term investments for near-term advances, forget economic practical ability, forget cost, forget all the other factors that we directed the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to consider. Even though he leaves them--he does not strike them technically; he doesn't go out and cancel them; the words still remain--the heart of the matter is gone because the heart of the regulatory matter in Levin-Bond is that we say to the Department of Transportation, you have 15 months. You adopt standards increasing fuel economy. If you don't do it in 15 months, we are going to have an expedited procedure in the Senate and in the House to consider different proposals. If you do adopt standards, they, of course, would be subject to legislative review under a generic statute. Either way, we will have an expedited process to look at the recommended number of the Department of Transportation after they go through a regulatory process, not before. This amendment prejudges the outcome of the very regulatory process which Levin-Bond put into law, if this law is ever signed. I hope we will defeat this amendment for all those reasons. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I yield myself 5 minutes. Madam President, in March, the Levin-Bond amendment regarding increased fuel standards for cars and trucks was adopted by the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote of 62 to 38. The purpose of the Levin- Bond amendment was explicit. No. 1, we said we want to increase fuel economy. It was specified that way. As a matter of fact, we directed the Department of Transportation, in its rulemaking, to increase fuel economy. It is very explicit. The other provisions of the bill that we adopted were aimed at protecting the environment, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but to do this in a way which would not harm the domestic manufacturing industry. We believe, those 62 of us who voted for it, you could accomplish all of these goals: You could reduce our dependence on foreign oil, you could reduce the amount of oil we use, you could increase fuel economy, you could protect the environment, and you could do that without undermining our economy. That was the purpose of the amendment, and that is the way we explicitly stated it. The way we accomplish those goals becomes vitally important. That is what gets to the heart of the debate this afternoon. The amendment we adopted did it in two essential ways: First, we included some positive incentives. We provided that there would be joint research and development to a greater extent among Government, industry, and academia than there had been previously or than was proposed by the administration. And we provided for Government purchases of hybrids, requiring those purchases. Just the way we had previously done for the Defense Department in the Defense authorization bill, we did for the general Government in the Levin-Bond amendment. We also indicated an interest in trying to provide greater tax incentives. And there will be an effort later on this afternoon to do exactly that: To increase the tax incentives that would be available to lead us to the advanced technologies, the advanced hybrids, and the fuel cells. But then we also did it in a second way. We said there also should be increased CAFE requirements but--and this was central to the Levin-Bond amendment--those requirements should be set after an analysis by the Department of Transportation of all of the factors which should go into that decision--not just what is theoretically, technologically capable regardless of cost, but what are the technological capabilities, what are the costs, what are the impacts on safety, because we had the National Academy of Sciences say there is an impact on safety, that you lose lives when you reduce the weight of the vehicle. We had additional factors. If I could just read through some of these factors: Economic practicability, the need of the United States to conserve energy, the desirability to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil, the effects of average fuel economy on other standards, such as relative to passenger safety and air quality. These are all interrelated criteria. And then: What are the adverse effects on the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers? What are the effects on the level of employment in the United States, the costs and lead time? What is the potential of advanced technologies, such as hybrids and fuel cells, to contribute to the achievement of significant reductions in fuel consumption? And a very important one, No. 12: The extent to which the necessity for vehicle manufacturers to incur near-term costs to comply with average fuel economy standards adversely affects the availability of resources for the development of advanced technology in the future, for leap-ahead technologies. We listed 12 factors that we said should be considered by the Department of Transportation prior to concluding what the new standard should be. We said: You have to increase it, but we want you to look at 12 factors. What the Carper amendment does is it wipes out, it eliminates all of those factors. It sets a mandatory amount. You must reduce by 1 million barrels per day above what is the predicted use of gasoline for those years--by another agency, by the way--and that is what it does. It cuts the heart out of the Levin-Bond amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I do not know that it has been cleared on the other side.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to call to the attention of my Senate colleagues, Mr. Hasani Tyus, a junior at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, MI. He has been drawing for years and has won several Motor City Comic Book Convention art awards. Hasani, along with his father, have been honored in a book of outstanding African-Americans for their artwork. Hasani is also a member of several academic societies, is a straight A student and recently earned his black belt in karate. More importantly, Hasani has done what so many young people across the Nation have done in the years following the Columbine tragedy. He has put his talents to use. He did so by urging us to ``Draw the Line on Gun Violence.'' Hasani is 1 of 13 national poster contest winners selected from more than 1,000 entries by the Alliance for Justice's Co/Motion Program, a national program that helps community organizations teach youth leaders to become advocates for a cause in their community. Co/motion partners with youth organizations, national service and service learning programs, schools and other community-based organizations to provide training to young adults in advocacy and organizing skills. Further, it empowers young people to take action to effect social change. Co/ motion's Drawing the line on Gun Violence Poster Contest, the first of its kind, provided young people the opportunity to express their feelings about the issue of gun violence in a rewarding and artistic way. Hasani's award-winning poster is currently posted on my website (http://levin.senate.gov). I had the pleasure of meeting Hasani earlier this week and I commended him on his hard work and honest depiction of the results of gun violence. I am sure that I speak for many of my Senate colleagues in congratulating Hasani Tyus on a job well done.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the amendment before us would fundamentally change the Levin-Bond amendment. What it does is, in effect, prejudge the outcome of the very process that we put in place, a process that we want to use to consider all of the factors that are involved, including safety factors, including the availability of alternative fuels. All of those factors ought to be considered in the regulatory process, not prejudged with an artificial mandate that we have to save 1 million barrels per day. I hope this will be tabled and that we will then go back to the regulatory process in the Levin-Bond amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Missouri.

Mr. LEVIN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. broadband tax credit legislation