Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, America has a major flaw in its defenses against bioterrorism. Recent hearings I chaired in the Government Affairs Committee on bioterrorism demonstrated that America has not made a national commitment to research and development of treatments and cures for those who might be exposed to or infected by a biological agent or chemical toxin. Correcting this critical gap is the purpose of legislation I am introducing today. Obviously, our first priority must be to attempt to prevent the use of these agents and toxins by terrorists, quickly assess when an attack has occurred, take appropriate public health steps to contain the exposure, stop the spread of contagion, and then detoxify the site. These are all critical functions, but in the end we must recognize that some individuals may be exposed or infected. Then the critical issue is whether we can treat and cure them and prevent death and disability. We need a diversified portfolio of medicines. In cases where we have ample advance warning of an attack and specific information about the agent or toxin, we may be able to vaccinate the vulnerable population in advance. In other cases, even if we have a vaccine, we might well prefer to use medicines that would quickly stop the progression of the disease or the toxic effects. We also need a powerful capacity quickly to develop new countermeasures where we face a new agent or toxin. Unfortunately, we are woefully short of vaccines and medicines to treat individuals who are exposed or infected. We have antibiotics that seem to work for most of those infected in the current anthrax attack, but these have not prevented five deaths. We have no effective vaccines or medicines for most other biological agents and chemical toxins we might confront. In some cases we have vaccines to prevent, but no medicines to treat, an agent. We have limited capacity to speed the development of vaccines and medicines to prevent or treat novel agents and toxins not currently known to us. We have provided, and should continue to provide, direct Federal funding for research and development of new medicines, however, this funding is unlikely to be sufficient. Even with ample Federal funding, many private companies will be reluctant to enter into agreements with government agencies to conduct this research. Other companies would be willing to conduct the research with their own capital and at their own risk but are not able to secure the funding from investors. The legislation I introduce today would provide incentives for private biotechnology companies to form capital to develop countermeasures, medicines, to prevent, treat and cure victims of bioterror attacks. This will enable this industry to become a vital part of the national defense infrastructure and do so for business reasons that make sense for their investors on the bottom line. Enactment of these incentives is necessary as most biotech companies have no approved products or revenue from product sales to fund research. They rely on investors and equity capital markets to fund the research. They must necessarily focus on research that will lead to product sales and revenue and, thus, to an end to their dependence on investor capital. There is no established or predictable market for countermeasures. Investors are justifiably reluctant to fund this research, which will present challenges similar in complexity to AIDS. Investors need assurances that research on countermeasures has the potential to provide a rate of return commensurate with the risk, complexity and cost of the research, a rate of return comparable to that which may arise from a treatment for cancer, MS, Cystic Fibrosis and other major diseases. It is in our national interest to enlist these companies in the development of countermeasures as biotech companies tend to be innovative and nimble and intently focused on the intractable diseases for which no effective medical treatments are available. The incentives I have proposed are innovative and some may be controversial. I invite everyone who has an interest and a stake in this research to enter into a dialogue about the issue and about the nature and terms of the appropriate incentives. I have attempted to anticipate the many complicated technical and policy issues that this legislation raises. The key focus of our debate should be how, not whether, we address this critical gap in our public health infrastructure and the role that the private sector should play. Millions of Americans will be at risk if we fail to enact legislation to meet this need. My proposal is complimentary to legislation on bioterrorism preparedness sponsored by Senators Frist and Kennedy. Their bill, the Bioweapons Preparedness Act of 2001, S. 1715, focuses on many needed improvements in our public health infrastructure. It builds on their proposal in the 106th Congress, S. 2731, and H.R. 4961, sponsored by Congressman Richard Burr. Among the provisions in these bills are initiatives on improving bioterrorism preparedness capacities, improving communication about bioterrorism, protection of children, protection of food safety, and global pathogen surveillance and response. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported legislation to appropriate the funds for the purposes authorized in the Frist-Kennedy proposal and that was incorporated in the stimulus package pending in the Senate before the Thanksgiving recess. Title IV of their bill includes provisions to expand research on biological agents and toxins, as well as new treatments and vaccines for such agents and toxins. Since the effectiveness of vaccines, drugs, and therapeutics for many biological agents and toxins often may not ethically be tested in humans, the bill ensures that the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, will finalize by a date certain its rule regarding the approval of new countermeasures on the basis of animal data. Priority countermeasures will also be given enhanced consideration for expedited review by the FDA. They rely on the authority, through an existing Executive Order, to ensure indemnification of sponsors who supply vaccines to the Government. And the bill provides a limited antitrust exemption to allow potential sponsors to discuss and agree upon how to develop, manufacture, and produce new countermeasures, including vaccines, and drugs. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice approval of such agreements is required to ensure such agreements are not anti- competitive. My legislation builds on these provisions by providing incentives to enable the biotechnology industry acting on its own initiative to fund and conduct research on countermeasures. It includes tax, procurement, intellectual property and liability incentives. Accordingly, my proposal raises issues falling within the jurisdiction of the HELP, Finance, and Judiciary Committees. The Frist-Kennedy bill and my bill are complimentary. We do need to conform the two bills to one another on some issues: the bills have different definitions of the term ``countermeasure,'' my bill gives the Director of Homeland Defense authority over the countermeasure list whereas the Secretary of Health and Human Services would have authority under Frist/Kennedy, and my bill establishes a ``purchase fund'' and Frist-Kennedy is a ``stockpile.'' The best, most comprehensive approach would be to meld the two bills together. The bottom line is that we need both bills, one focusing on public health and one focusing on medical research. Without medical research, public health workers will not have the single most important tool to use in an attack, medicine to prevent death and disability and medicine that will help us avoid public panic. We are fortunate that we have broad-spectrum antibiotics including Cipro to treat the type of anthrax to which so many have been exposed. This treatment seems to be effective before the anthrax symptoms become manifest, and effective to treat cutaneous anthrax, and we have been able to effectively treat some individuals who have inhalation anthrax. I am thankful that this drug exists to treat those who have been exposed, including my own Senate staff. Our offices are immediately above those of Senator Daschle. We have seen how reassuring it is that we have an effective treatment for this biological agent. We see long lines of Congressional staffers and postal workers awaiting their Cipro. Think what it would be like if we could only say, ``We have nothing to treat you and hope you don't contract the disease.'' Think of the public panic that we might see. I am grateful that this product exists and proud of the fact that the Bayer Company is based in Connecticut. The last thing we should be doing is criticizing this company for their research success. The company has dispensed millions of dollars worth of Cipro free of charge. Criticizing it for the price that it charges tells other research companies that the more valuable their products are in protecting the public health, the more likely they are to be criticized and bullied. It is fortuitous that Cipro seems to be effective against anthrax. The product was not developed with this use in mind. My point with this legislation is we cannot rely on good fortune and chance in the development of countermeasures. We need to make sure that these countermeasures will be developed. We need more companies like Bayer, we need them focused specifically on developing medicines to deal with the new bioterror threat, and we need to tell them that there are good business reasons for this focus. We also are fortunate to have an FDA-licensed vaccine, made by BioPort Corporation, that is recommended by our country's medical experts at the DOD and CDC for pre-anthrax exposure vaccination of individuals in the military and some individuals in certain laboratory and other occupational settings where there is a high risk of exposure to anthrax. This vaccine is also recommended for use with Cipro after exposure to anthrax to give optimal and long-lasting protection. That vaccine is not now available for use. We must do everything necessary to make this and other vaccines available in adequate quantities to protect against future attacks. But the point of this legislation is that we need many more Cipro-like and antrax vaccine-like products. That we have these products is the good news; that we have so few others is the problem. One unfortunate truth in this debate is that we cannot rely upon international legal norms and treaties alone to protect our citizens from the threat of biological or chemical attack. The United States ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, BWC, on January 22, 1975. That Convention now counts 144 nations as parties. Twenty-two years later, on April 24, 1997, the United States Senate joined 74 other countries when it ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, CWC. While these Conventions serve important purposes, they do not in any way guarantee our safety in a world with rogue states and terrorist organizations. The effectiveness of both Conventions is constrained by the fact that many countries have failed to sign on to either of them. Furthermore, two signatories of the BWC, Iran and Iraq, are among the seven governments that the Secretary of State has designated as state sponsors of international terrorism, and we know for a fact that they have both pursued clandestine biological weapons programs. The BWC, unlike the CWC, has no teeth, it does not include any provisions for verification or enforcement. Since we clearly cannot assume that any country that signs on to the Convention does so in good faith, the Convention's protective value is limited. On November 1 of this year, the President announced his intent to strengthen the BWC as part of his comprehensive strategy for combating terrorism. A BWC review conference, held every 5 years to consider ways of improving the Convention's effectiveness, will convene in Geneva beginning November 19. In anticipation of that meeting, the President has urged that all parties to the Convention enact strict national criminal legislation to crack down on prohibited biological weapons activities, and he has called for an effective United Nations procedure for investigating suspicious outbreaks of disease or allegations of biological weapons use. These steps are welcomed, but they are small. Even sweeping reforms, like creating a more stringent verification and enforcement regime, would not guarantee our safety. The robust verification and enforcement mechanisms in the CWC, for instance, have proven to be imperfect, and scientists agree that it is much easier to conceal the production of biological agents than chemical weapons. The inescapable fact, therefore, is that we cannot count on international regimes to prevent those who wish us ill from acquiring biological and chemical weapons. We must be prepared for the reality that these weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists, and could be used against Americans on American soil. And we must be prepared to treat the victims of such an attack if it were ever to occur. On November 26, the Centers for Disease Control issued its interim working draft plan for responding to an outbreak of smallpox. The plan does not call for mass vaccination in advance of a smallpox outbreak because the risk of side effects from the vaccine outweighs the risks of someone actually being exposed to the smallpox virus. At the heart of the plan is a strategy sometimes called ``search and containment.'' This strategy involves identifying infected individual or individuals with confirmed smallpox, identifying and locating those people who come in contact with that person, and vaccinating those people in outward rings of contact. The goal is to produce a buffer of immune individuals and was shown to prevent smallpox and to ultimately eradicate the outbreak. Priorities would be set on who is vaccinated, perhaps focusing on the outward rings before those at the center of the outbreak. The plan assumes that the smallpox vaccination is effective for persons who have been exposed to the disease as long as the disease has not taken hold. In practice it may be necessary to set a wide perimeter for these areas because smallpox is highly contagious before it might be diagnosed. There may be many areas subject to search and containment because people in our society travel frequently and widely. Terrorists might trigger attacks in a wide range of locations to multiply the confusion and panic. The most common form of smallpox has a 30-percent mortality rate, but terrorists might be able to obtain supplies of ``flat-type'' smallpox with a mortality rate of 96 percent and hemorrhagic-type smallpox, which is almost always fatal. For these reasons, the CDC plan accepts the possibility that whole cities or other geographic areas could be cordoned off, letting no one in or out, a quarantine enforced by police or troops. The plan focuses on enforcement authority through police or National Guard, isolation and quarantine, mandatory medical examinations, and rationing of medicines. It includes a discussion of ``population-wide quarantine measures which restrict activities or limit movement of individuals [including] suspension of large public gatherings, closing of public places, restriction on travel [air, rail, water, motor vehicle, and pedestrian], and/or `cordon sanitaire' [literally a `sanitary cord' or line around a quarantined area guarded to prevent spread of disease by restricting passage into or out of the area].'' The CDC recommends that States update their laws to provide authority for ``enforcing quarantine measures'' and it recommends that States in ``pre-event planning'' identify ``personnel who can enforce these isolation and quarantine measures, if necessary.'' Guide C, Isolation and Quarantine, page 17. On October 23, 2001, the CDC published a ``Model State Emergency Health Powers Act.'' It was prepared by the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities, in conjunction with the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, National Association of City and County Health Officers, and National Association of Attorneys General. A copy of the model law is printed at www.publichealthlaw.net. The law would provide powers to enforce the ``compulsory physical separation, including the restriction of movement or confinement, of individuals and/or groups believed to have been exposed to or known to have been infected with a contagious disease from individuals who are believed not to have been exposed or infected, in order to prevent or limit the transmission of the disease to others.'' Federal law on this subject is very strong and the Administration can always rely on the President's Constitution authority as Commander in Chief. Let us try to imagine, however, what it would be like if a quarantine is imposed. Let us assume that there is not enough smallpox vaccine available for use in a large outbreak, that the priority is to vaccinate those in the outward rings of the containment area first, that the available vaccines cannot be quickly deployed inside the quarantined area, that it is not possible to quickly trace and identify all of the individuals who might have been exposed, and/or that public health workers themselves might be infected. We know that there is no medicine to treat those who do become infected. We know the mortality rates. It is not hard to imagine how much force might be necessary to enforce the quarantine. It would be quite unacceptable to permit individuals to leave the quarantined area no matter how much panic had taken hold. Think about how different this scenario would be if we had medicines that could effectively treat and cure those who become infected by smallpox. We still might implement the CDC plan but a major element of the strategy would be to persuade people to visit their local clinic or hospital to be dispensed their supply of medicine. We could trust that there would be a very high degree of voluntary compliance. This would give us more time, give us options if the containment is not successful, give us options to treat those in the containment area who are infected, and enable us to quell the public panic. Because we have no medicine to treat those infected by smallpox, we have to be prepared to implement a plan like the one CDC has proposed. Theirs is the only option because our options are so limited. We need to expand our range of options. We should not be lulled by the apparent successes with Cipro and the strains of anthrax we have seen in the recent attacks. We have not been able to prevent death in some of the patients with late-stage inhalation anthrax and Robert Stevens, Thomas Morris Jr., Joseph Curseen, Kathy Nguyen, and Ottilie Lundgren have died. This legislation is named in honor of them. What we needed for them, and did not have, is a drug or vaccine that would treat late stage inhalation anthrax. As I have said, we need an effective treatment for those who become infected with smallpox. We have a vaccine that effectively prevents smallpox infection, and administering this vaccine within four days of first exposure has been shown to offer some protections against acquiring infection and significant protection against a fatal outcome. The problem is that administering the vaccine in this time frame to all those who might have been exposed may be exceedingly difficult. And once infection has occurred, we have no effective treatment options. In the last century 500 million people have died of smallpox, more than have from any other infectious diseases, as compared to 320 million deaths in all the wars of the twentieth century. Smallpox was one of the diseases that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population in this hemisphere. The last naturally acquired case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977 and the last case from laboratory exposure was in 1978. Smallpox is a nasty pathogen, carried in microscopic airborne droplets inhaled by its victims. The first signs are headache, fever, nausea and backache, sometimes convulsions and delirium. Soon, the skin turns scarlet. When the fever lets up, the telltale rash appears, flat red spots that turn into pimples, then big yellow pustules, then scabs. Smallpox also affects the throat and eyes, and inflames the heart, lungs, liver, intestines and other internal organs. Death often came from internal bleeding, or from the organs simply being overwhelmed by the virus. Survivors were left covered with pockmarks, if they were lucky. The unlucky ones were left blind, their eyes permanently clouded over. Nearly one in four victims died. The infection rate is estimated to be 25-40 percent for those who are unvaccinated and a single case can cause 20 or more additional infections. During the 16th Century, 3.5 million Aztecs, more than half the population, died of smallpox during a 2-year span after the Spanish army brought the disease to Mexico. Two centuries later, the virus ravaged George Washington's troops at Valley Forge. And it cut a deadly path through the Crow, Dakota, Sioux, Blackfoot, Apache, Comanche and other American Indian tribes, helping to clear the way for white settlers to lay claim to the western plains. The epidemics began to subside with one of medicine's most famous discoveries: the finding by British physician Edward Jenner in 1796 that English milkmaids who were exposed to cowpox, a mild second cousin to smallpox that afflicts cattle, seemed to be protected against the more deadly disease. Jenner's work led to the development of the first vaccine in Western medicine. While later vaccines used either a killed or inactivated form of the virus they were intended to combat, the smallpox vaccine worked in a different way. It relied on a separate, albeit related virus: first cowpox and the vaccinia, a virus of mysterious origins that is believed to be a cowpox derivative. The last American was vaccinated back in the 1970s and half of the U.S. population has never been vaccinated. It is not known how long these vaccines provide protection, but it is estimated that the term is 3-5 years. In an elaborate smallpox biowarfare scenario enacted in February 1999 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, it was projected that within 2 months 15,000 people had died, epidemics were out of control in fourteen countries, all supplies of smallpox vaccine were depleted, the global economy was on the verge of collapse, and military control and quarantines were in place. Within twelve months it was projected that eighty million people worldwide had died. A single case of smallpox today would become a global public health threat and it has been estimated that a single smallpox bioterror attack on a single American city would necessitate the vaccination of 30-40 million people. The U.S. Government is now in the process of purchasing substantial stocks of the smallpox vaccine. We then face a very difficult decision on deploying the vaccine. We know that some individuals will have an adverse reaction to this vaccine. No one in the United States has been vaccinated against smallpox in 25 years. Those that were vaccinated back then may not be protected against the disease today. If we had an effective treatment for those who might become infected by smallpox, we would face much less pressure regarding deploying the vaccine. If we face a smallpox epidemic from a bioterrorism attack, we will have no Cipro to reassure the public and we will be facing a highly contagious disease and epidemic. To be blunt, it will make the current anthrax attack look benign by comparison. Smallpox is not the only threat. We have seen other epidemics in this century. The 1918 influenza epidemic provides a sobering admonition about the need for research to develop medicines. In 2 years, a fifth of the world's population was infected. In the United States the 1918 epidemic killed more than 650,000 people in a short period of time and left 20 million seriously ill, one-fourth of the entire population. The average lifespan in the U.S. was depressed by ten years. In just 1 year, the epidemic killed 21 million human beings worldwide--well over twice the number of combat deaths in the whole of World War I. The flu was exceptionally virulent to begin with and it then underwent several sudden and dramatic mutations in its structure. Such mutations can turn flu into a killer because its victims' immune systems have no antibodies to fight off the altered virus. Fatal pneumonia can rapidly develop. Another deadly toxin, ricin toxin, was of interest to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. At an al-Qaeda safehouse in Saraq Panza, Kabul reporters found instructions for making ricin. The instructions make chilling reading. ``A certain amount, equal to a strong dose, will be able to kill an adult, and a dose equal to seven seeds will kill a child,'' one page reads. Another page says: ``Gloves and face mask are essential for the preparation of ricin. Period of death varies from 3-5 days minimum, 4-14 days maximum.'' The instructions listed the symptoms of ricin as vomiting, stomach cramps, extreme thirst, bloody diarrhoea, throat irritation, respiratory collapse and death. No specific treatment or vaccine for ricin toxin exists. Ricin is produced easily and inexpensively, highly toxic, and stable in aerosolized form. A large amount of ricin is necessary to infect whole populations, the amount of ricin necessary to cover a 100-km \2\ area and cause 50 percent lethality, assuming aerosol toxicity of 3 mcg/kg and optimum dispersal conditions, is approximately 4 metric tons, whereas only 1 kg of Bacillus anthracis is required. But it can be used to terrorize a large population with great effect because it is so lethal. Use of ricin as a terror weapon is not theoretical. In 1991 in Minnesota, 4 members of the Patriots Council, an extremist group that held antigovernment and antitax ideals and advocated the overthrow of the U.S. Government, were arrested for plotting to kill a U.S. marshal with ricin. The ricin was produced in a home laboratory. They planned to mix the ricin with the solvent dimethyl sulfoxide, DMSO, and then smear it on the door handles of the marshal's vehicle. The plan was discovered, and the 4 men were convicted. In 1995, a man entered Canada from Alaska on his way to North Carolina. Canadian custom officials stopped the man and found him in possession of several guns, $98,000, and a container of white powder, which was identified as ricin. In 1997, a man shot his stepson in the face. Investigators discovered a makeshift laboratory in his basement and found agents such as ricin and nicotine sulfate. And, ricin was used by the Bulgarian secret police when they killed Georgi Markov by stabbing him with a poison umbrella as he crossed Waterloo Bridge in 1978. Going beyond smallpox, influenza, and ricin, we do not have an effective vaccine or treatment for dozens of other deadly and disabling agents and toxins. Here is a partial list of some of the other biological agents and chemical toxins for which we have no effective treatments: clostridium botulinum toxin, botulism; francisella tularensis, tularaemia; Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Marbug hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, Julin, Argentine hemorrhagic fever; Coxiella burnetti, Q fever; brucella species, brucellosis; burkholderia mallei, glanders; Venezuelan encephalomyelitis, eastern and western equine encephalomyelitis, epsilon toxin of clostridium perfringens, staphylococcus entretoxin B, salmonella species, shigella dysenteriae, escherichia coli O157:H7, vibrio cholerae, cryptosporidium parvum, nipah virus, hantaviruses, tickborne hemorrhagic fever viruses, tickborne encephalitis virus, yellow fever, nerve agents, tabun, sarin, soman, GF, and VX; blood agents, hydrogen cyanide and cyanogens chloride; blister agents, lewisite, nitrogenadn sulfur mustards, and phosgene oxime; heavy metals, arsenic, lead, and mercury; and volatile toxins, benzene, chloroform, trihalomethanes; pulmonary agents, Phosgene, chlorine, vinly chloride; and incapacitating agents, BZ. The naturally occurring forms of these agents and toxins are enough to cause concern, but we also know that during the 1980s and 1990s the Soviet Union conducted bioweapons research at 47 laboratories and testing sites, employed nearly 50,000 scientists in the work, and that they developed genetically modified versions of some of these agents and toxins. The goal was to develop an agent or toxin that was particularly virulent or not vulnerable to available antibiotics. The United States has publicly stated that five countries are developing biological weapons in violation of the Biological Weapons convention, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya, and stated that additional countries not yet named, possibly including Russia, China, Israel, Sudan and Egypt, are also doing so as well. What is so insidious about biological weapons is that in many cases the symptoms resulting from a biological weapons attack would likely take time to develop, so an act of bioterrorism may go undetected for days or weeks. Affected individuals would seek medical attention not from special emergency response teams but in a variety of civilian settings at scattered locations. This means we will need medicines that can treat a late stage of the disease, long after the infection has taken hold. We must recognize that the distinctive characteristic of biological weapons is that they are living micro-organisms and are thus the only weapons that can continue to proliferate without further assistance once released in a suitable environment. The lethality of these agents and toxins, and the panic they can cause, is quite frightening. The capacity for terror is nearly beyond comprehension. I do not believe it is necessary to describe the facts here. My point is simple: we need more than military intelligence, surveillance, and public health capacity. We also need effective medicines. We also need more powerful research tools that will enable us to quickly develop treatments for agents and toxins not on this or any other list. We need to do whatever it takes to be able to reassure the American people that hospitals and doctors have powerful medicines to treat them if they are exposed to biological agents or toxins, that we can contain an outbreak of an infectious agent, and that there is little to fear. To achieve this objective, we need to rely on the entrepreneurship of the biotechnology industry. There is already some direct funding of research by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, the National Institutes of Health, NIH, and the Centers for Disease Control, CDC. This research should go forward. DARPA, for instance, has been described as the Pentagon's ``venture capital fund,'' its mission to provide seed money for novel research projects that offer the potential for revolutionary findings. Last year, DARPA's Unconventional Pathogen Countermeasures program awarded contracts totalling $50 million to universities, foundations, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seeking new ways to fight biological agents and toxins. The Unconventional Pathogen Countermeasures program now funds 43 separate research efforts on anti-bacterials, anti-toxins, anti-virals, decontamination, external protection from pathogens, immunization and multi-purpose vaccines and treatments. A common thread among many of these undertakings is the goal of developing drugs that provide broad- spectrum protection against several different pathogens. This year, with a budget of $63 million, the program has received over 100 research proposals in the last two months alone. Some of this DARPA research is directed at developing revolutionary, broad-spectrum, medical countermeasures against significantly pathogenic microorganisms and/or their pathogenic products. The goal is to develop countermeasures that are versatile enough to eliminate biological threats, whether from natural sources or modified through bioengineering or other manipulation. The countermeasures would need the potential to provide protection both within the body and at the most common portals of entry, e.g., inhalation, ingestion, transcutaneous. The strategies might include defeating the pathogen's ability to enter the body, traverse the bloodstream or lymphatics, and enter target tissues; identifying novel pathogen vulnerabilities based on fundamental, critical molecular mechanisms of survival or pathogenesis, e.g., Type III secretion, cellular energetics, virulence modulation; constructing unique, robust vehicles for the delivery of countermeasures into or within the body; and modulating the advantageous and/or deleterious aspects of the immune response to significantly pathogenic microorganisms and/or the pathogenic products in the body While DAPRA's work is specifically aimed at protecting our military personnel, the National Institutes of Health also spent $49.7 million in the last fiscal year to find new therapies for those who contract smallpox and on systems for detecting the disease. In recent years, NIH's research programs have sought to create more rapid and accurate diagnostics, develop vaccines for those at risk of exposure to biological agents, and improve treatment for those infected. Moreover, in the last fiscal year, the Centers for Disease Control has allocated $18 million to continue research on an anthrax vaccine and $22.4 million on smallpox research. Some companies are willing to enter into a research relationships funded by DARPA and other agencies to develop countermeasures. Relationships between the Government and private industry can be very productive, but they can also involve complex issues reflecting the different cultures of government and industry. Some companies, including some of the most entrepreneurial, might prefer to take their own initiative to conduct this research. Relationships with government entities involve risks, issues, and bureaucracy that are not present in relationships among biotechnology companies and between them and non- governmental partners. The Defense Departments Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program, JVAP, illustrates the problems with a government led and managed program. A report in December 2000 by a panel of independent experts found that the current program ``is insufficient and will fail'' and recommended it adopt an approach more on the model of a private sector effort. It needs to adopt ``industry practices,'' ``capture industry interest,'' ``implement an organizational alignment that mirrors the vaccine industry's short chain of command and decision making,'' ``adopt an industry-based management philosophy,'' and ``develop a sound investment strategy.'' It bemoaned the ``extremely limited'' input from industry in the JVAP program. It is clear from this experience that we should not rely exclusively on government funding of countermeasures research. We should take advantage of the entrepreneurial fervor, and the independence, of our biotechnology industry entrepreneurs. It is not likely that the Government will be willing or able to provide sufficient funding for the development of the countermeasures we need. Some of the most innovative approaches to vaccines and medicines might not be funded with the limited funds available to the Government. We need to provide incentives that will encourage every biotech company to review its research priorities and technology portfolio for its relevance and potential for countermeasure research. Some of this research is early stage, basic research that is being developed and considered only for its value in treating an entirely different disease. We need to kindle the imagination of biotechnology companies and their tens of thousands of scientists regarding countermeasures research. My proposal would supplement direct Federal government funding of research with incentives that make it possible for private companies to form the capital to conduct this research on their own initiative, utilizing their own capital, and at their own risk, all for good business reasons going to their bottom line. The U.S. biotechnology industry, approximately 1,300 companies, spent $13.8 billion on research last year. Only 350 of these companies have managed to go public. The industry employs 124,000, Ernest & Young data, people. The top five companies spent an average of $89,000 per employee on research, making it the most research-intensive industry in the world. The industry has 350 products in human clinical trials targeting more than 200 diseases. Losses for the industry were $5.8 billion in 2001, $5.6 billion in 2000, $4.4 billion in 1999, $4.1 billion in 1998, $4.5 billion in 1997, $4.6 billion in 1996, and similar amounts before that. In 2000 fully 38 percent of the public biotech companies had less than 2 years of funding for their research. Only one-quarter of the biotech companies in the United States are publicly traded and they tend to be the best funded. There is a broad range of research that could be undertaken under this legislation. Vaccines could be developed to prevent infection or treat an infection from a bioterror attack. Broad-spectrum antibiotics are needed. Also, promising research has been undertaken on antitoxins that could neutralize the toxins that are released, for example, by anthrax. With anthrax it is the toxins, not the bacteria itself, that cause death. An antitoxin could act like a decoy, attaching itself to sites on cells where active anthrax toxin binds and then combining with normal active forms of the toxin and inactivating them. An antitoxin could block the production of the toxin. We can rely on the innovativeness of the biotech industry, working in collaboration with academic medical centers, to explore a broad range of innovative approaches. This mobilizes the entire biotechnology industry as a vital component of our national defense against bioterror weapons. The legislation takes a comprehensive approach to the challenges the biotechnology industry faces in forming capital to conduct research on countermeasures. It includes capital formation tax incentives, guaranteed purchase funds, patent protections, and liability protections. I believe we will have to include each of these types of incentives to ensure that we mobilize the biotechnology industry for this urgent national defense research. I am aware that all three of the tax incentives I have proposed, and both of the two patent incentives I have proposed, may be controversial. In my view, we can debate tax or patent policy as long as you want, but let's not lose track of the issue here, development of countermeasures to treat people infected or exposed to lethal and disabling bioterror weapons. We know that incentives can spur research. In 1983 we enacted the Orphan Drug Act to provide incentives for companies to develop treatments for rare diseases with small potential markets deemed to be unprofitable by the industry. In the decade before this legislation was enacted, fewer than 10 drugs for orphan diseases were developed and these were mostly chance discoveries. Since the Act became law, 218 orphan drugs have been approved and 800 more are in the pipeline. The Act provides 7 years of market exclusivity and a tax credit covering some research costs. The effectiveness of the incentives we have enacted for orphan disease research show us how much we can accomplish when we set a national priority for certain types of research. The incentives I have proposed differ from those set by the Orphan Drug Act. We need to maintain the effectiveness of the Orphan Drug Act and not undermine it by adding many other disease research targets. In addition, the tax credits for research for orphan drug research have no value for most biotechnology companies because few of them have tax liability with respect to which to claim the credit. This explains why I have not proposed to utilize tax credits to spur countermeasures research. It is also clear that the market for countermeasures is even more speculative than the market for orphan drugs and we need to enact a broader and deeper package of incentives. The Government determines which research is covered by the legislation. The legislation confers on the Director of the Office of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Health and Human Services, authority to set the list of agents and toxins with respect to which the legislation applies. The Director determines which agents and toxins present a threat and on whether the countermeasures are more likely to be developed with the application of the incentives of the legislation. The Director may determine that an agent or toxin does not present a threat or that countermeasures are not more likely to be developed with the incentives. The legislation includes an illustrative list of agents and toxins that might be selected by the Director. The decisions of the Director are final and cannot be subject to judicial review. Once the list of agents and toxins is set, companies may register with the Food and Drug Administration their intent to undertake research and development of a countermeasure to prevent or treat the agent or toxin. This registration is required only for companies that seek to be eligible for the tax, purchase, patent, and liability provisions of the legislation. The registration does not apply to non- profit entities or to companies that do not seek such eligibility. The registration requirement gives the FDA vital information about the research effort and the personnel involved with the research. The Director of the Office of Homeland Security then may certify that the company is eligible for the tax, purchase, patent, and liability incentives in the legislation. Eligibility for the purchase fund, patent and liability incentives is contingent on successful development of a countermeasure according to the standards set in the legislation. The legislation contemplates that a company might well register and seek certification with respect to more than one research project and become eligible for the tax, purchase, patent, and liability incentives for each. There is no policy rationale for limiting a company to one registration and one certification. This process is similar to the current registration process for research on orphan, rare, diseases. In that case, companies that are certified by the FDA become eligible for both tax and market exclusivity incentives. This process gives the Government complete control on the number of registrations and certifications. This gives the Government control over the cost and impact of the legislation on private sector research. The legislation includes three tax incentives to enable biotechnology companies to form capital to fund research and development of countermeasures. Companies must irrevocably elect only one of the incentives with regard to the research. These tax incentives are available only to biotechnology companies with less than $750,000,000 in paid-in capital. The paid-in capital of a corporation is quite distinct from the market capitalization of the firm. The paid-in capital is the aggregate amount paid by investors into the corporation when this stock was issued, the price at issue multiplied by the number of shares sold. The market capitalization is the value of this stock in the stock market as it is traded among investors. I have focused on the paid-in capital as this is the amount of capital actually available to the corporation to fund its research. The legislation includes three different tax incentives to give companies flexibility in forming capital to fund the research. Each of the options comes with advantages and limitations that may make it appropriate or inappropriate for a given company or research project. We do not now know fully how investors and capital markets will respond to the different options, but we assume that companies will consult with the investor community about which option will work best for a given research project. Capital markets are diverse and investors have different needs and expectations. Over time these markets and investor expectations evolve. If companies register for more than one research project, they may well utilize different tax incentives for the different projects. Companies are permitted to undertake a series of discrete and separate research projects and make this election with respect to each project. They may only utilize one of the options with respect to each of these research projects. The company is eligible to establish an R&D Limited Partnership to conduct the research. The partnership passes through all business deductions and credits to the partners. For example, under this arrangement, the research and development tax credits and depreciation deductions for the company may be passed by the corporation through to its partners to be used to offset their individual tax liability. These deductions and credits are then lost to the corporation. The company is eligible to issue a special class of stock for the entity to conduct the research. The investors would be entitled to a zero capital gains tax rate on any gains realized on the stock held for at least 3 years. This is a modification of the current Section 1202 where only 50 percent of the gains are not taxed. This provision is adapted from legislation I have introduced, S. 1134, and introduced in the House by Representatives Dunn and Matsui, H.R. 2383. A similar bill has been introduced by Senator Collins, S. 455. The company is eligible to receive refunds for Net Operating Losses, NOLs, to fund the research. Under current law, net operating losses can only be used to offset a company's tax liability. If a company has no profits and therefore no tax liability, it cannot use its net operating losses. It can carry them forward, but the losses have no current value. This option would allow the company to receive a refund of its NOLs at a rate of 75 percent of their value. Once the company becomes profitable, and incurs tax liability, it must repay all of the refunds it has received. The provision in my legislation is adapted from bills introduced by Senator Torricelli, S. 1049, and Congressman Robert Matsui, H.R. 2153. A company that elects to utilize one of these incentives is not eligible to receive benefits of the Orphan Drug Tax Credit. Companies that can utilize tax credits, companies with taxable income and tax liability, might find the Orphan Credit more valuable. The legislation includes an amendment to the Orphan Credit to correct a defect in the current credit. The amendment has been introduced in the Senate as S. 1341 by Senators Hatch, Kennedy and Jeffords. The amendment simply states that the Credit is available starting the day an application for orphan drug status is filed, not the date the FDA finally acts on it. The amendment was one of many initiatives championed by Lisa J. Raines, who died on September 11 in the plane that hit the Pentagon, and the amendment is named in her honor. As we go forward in the legislative process, I hope we will have an opportunity to speak in more detail about the service of Ms. Raines on behalf of medical research, particularly on rare diseases. My legislation does not include an enhanced tax credit for this research. Very few biotechnology companies can utilize a tax credit as they have no taxable revenue and tax liability with respect to which to claim a credit. Instead, they can carry the credit forward and utilize it when they do have tax liability. But that may be many years from now. That is why I have focused on other incentives to assist the biotechnology industry to form capital to fund this countermeasures research. The guaranteed purchase fund, and the patent bonus and liability provisions described below provide an additional incentive for investors to fund the research. Without capital from investors these biotechnology companies do not have the capacity, irrespective of their interest, to conduct the research. The market for countermeasures is speculative and small. This means that if a company successfully develops a countermeasure, it may not receive sufficient revenue on sales to justify the risk and expense of the research. This is why the legislation establishes a countermeasures purchase fund that will define the market for the products with some specificity before the research begins. The fund managers will set standards for which countermeasures it will purchase and define the financial terms of the purchase commitment. This will enable companies to evaluate the market potential of its research before it launches into the project. The specifications will need to be set with sufficient specificity so that the company, and its investors, can evaluate the market and with enough flexibility so that it does not inhibit the innovativeness of the researchers. This approach is akin to setting a performance standard for a new military aircraft. The legislation provides that the purchase fund is not obligated to purchase more than one product per class. This seeks to avoid a situation where the Government must purchase more than one product when it only intends to use one. But it might make more sense, as an incentive, for the Government to commit to purchasing more than one product so that many more than one company conducts the research. A winner-take-all system may well intimidate some companies and we may end up without a countermeasure to be purchased. It is also possible that we will find that we need more than one countermeasure because different products are useful for different patients. We may also find that the first product developed is not the most effective. Given the urgency of the research, we would like to have the problem of seeing more than one effective countermeasure developed. How we reconcile these competing considerations is a key issue we need to resolve. My legislation provides that the countermeasure must be approved by the FDA. The standards that the FDA should apply in reviewing these types of products is an issue have been discussed in some detail and we need to fashion the most effective provision on this subject. We need to recognize that the requirement for FDA approval might, in some cases, not be needed, appropriate or possible. The purchase commitment for countermeasures is available to any company irrespective of its paid-in capital. Intellectual property protection of research is essential to biotechnology companies for one simple reason: they need to know that if they successfully develop a medical product another company cannot expropriate it. It's a simple matter of incentives. The patent system has its basis in the U.S. Constitution where the Federal Government is given the mandate to ``promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts by securing for a limited time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.'' In exchange for full disclosure of the terms of their inventions, inventors are granted the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling their inventions for a limited period of time. This quid pro quo provides investors with the incentive to invent. In the absence of the patent law, discoverable inventions would be freely available to anyone who wanted to use them and inventors would not be able to capture the value of their inventions or secure a return on their investments. The patent system strikes a balance. Companies receive limited protection of their inventions if they are willing to publish the terms of their invention for all to see. At the end of the term of the patent, anyone can practice the invention without any threat of an infringement action. During the term of the patent, competitors can learn from the published description of the invention and may well find a new and distinct patentable invention. The legislation provides two types of intellectual property protection. One simply provides that the term of the patent on the countermeasure will be the term of the patent granted by the Patent and Trademark Office without any erosion due to delays in approval of the product by the Food and Drug Administration. The second provides that a company that successfully develops a countermeasure will receive a bonus of 2 years on the term of any patent held by that company. Companies must elect one of these two protections and only small biotechnology companies may elect the second protection. Large, profitable pharmaceutical companies may elect only the first of the two options. The first protection against erosion of the term of the patent is an issue that is partially addressed in current law, the Hatch-Waxman Patent Term Restoration Act. That act provides partial protection against erosion of the term, length of a patent when there are delays at the FDA in approving a product. The erosion occurs when the PTO issues a patent before the product is approved by the FDA. In these cases, the term of the patent is running but the company cannot market the product. The Hatch-Waxman Act provides some protections against erosion of the term of the patent, but the protections are incomplete. As a result, many companies end up with a patent with a reduced term, sometimes substantially reduced. The issue of patent term erosion has become more serious due to changes at the PTO in the patent system. The term of a patent used to be fixed at 17 years from the date the patent was granted by the PTO. It made no difference how long it took for the PTO to process the patent application and sometimes the processing took years, even decades. Under this system, there were cases where the patent would issue before final action at the FDA, but there were other cases where the FDA acted to approve a product before the patent was issued. Erosion was an issue, but it did not occur in many cases. Since 1995 the term of a patent has been set at 20 years from the date of application for the patent. This means that the processing time by the PTO of the application all came while the term of the patent is running. This gives companies a profound incentive to rush the patent through the PTO. Under the old system, companies had the opposite incentive. With patents being issued earlier by the PTO, the issue of erosion of patent term due to delays at the FDA is becoming more serious and more common. The provision in my legislation simply states that in the case of bioterrorism countermeasures, no erosion in the term of the patent will occur. The term of the patent at the date of FDA approval will be the same as the term of the patent when it was issued by the PTO. There is no extension of the patent, simply protections against erosion. Under the new 20-year term, patents might be more or less than 17 years depending on the processing time at the PTO, and all this legislation says is that whatever term is set by the PTO will govern irrespective of the delays at the FDA. This option is available to any company that successfully develops a countermeasure eligible to be purchased by the fund. The second option, the bonus patent term, is only available to small biotechnology companies. It provides that a company that successfully develops a countermeasure is entitled to a 2-year extension of any patent in its portfolio. This does not apply to any patent of another company bought or transferred in to the countermeasure research company. I am well aware that this bonus patent term provision will be controversial with some. A company would tend to utilize this option if it owned the patent on a product that still had, or might have, market value at the end of the term of the patent. Because this option is only available to small biotechnology companies, most of whom have no product on the market, in most cases they would be speculating about the value of a product at the end of its patent. The company might apply this provision to a patent that otherwise would be eroded due to FDA delays or it might apply it to a patent that was not eroded. The result might be a patent term that is no longer than the patent term issued by the PTO. It all depends on which companies elect this option and which patent they select. In some cases, the effect of this provision might be to delay the entry onto the market of lower priced generics. This would tend to shift some of the cost of the incentive to develop a countermeasure to insurance companies and patients with an unrelated disease. My rationale for including the patent bonus in the legislation is simple: I want this legislation to say emphatically that we mean business, we are serious, and we want biotechnology companies to reconfigure their research portfolios to focus in part on development of countermeasures. The other provisions in the legislation are powerful, but they may not be sufficient. This proposal protects companies willing to take the risks of producing anti-terrorism products for the American public from potential losses incurred from lawsuits alleging adverse reactions to these products. It also preserves the right for plaintiffs to seek recourse for alleged adverse reactions in Federal District Court, with procedural and monetary limitations. Under the plan, the Secretary of HHS is authorized, and in the case of contractors with HHS, is required, to indemnify and defend persons engaged in research, development and other activities related to biological defense products through execution of ``indemnification and defense agreements.'' An exclusive means of resolving civil cases that fall within the scope of the indemnification and defense agreements is provided with litigation rights for injured parties. Non-economic damages are limited to $250,000 per plaintiff and no punitive or exemplary damages may be awarded. Some have tried to apply the existing Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, VICP, to this national effort. That is inappropriate because that program will be extremely difficult to use, both administratively and scientifically. For example, it would take several years to develop the appropriate ``table'' that identifies a compensable injury. Companies will be liable during this process. Note that when VICP was created, there had been studies of what adverse reactions to mandated childhood vaccines had occurred and the table was based largely on this experience. Even so, it has taken years of effort, ultimately resulting in wholesale revisions to the table by regulation, to get the current table in place. For anti-bioterrorism products currently being developed, it will simply be impossible to construct a meaningful Vaccine Injury Table, there will be no experience with the product. The Frist-Kennedy bill relies on the President's Executive Order regarding liability protections, so there is a basis for an agreement regarding this issue as applied to bioterrorism countermeasures. The provisions that I have proposed are superior to those in the Executive Order because the order provides protection only on a contract basis. So, it doesn't provide protection based on the product being developed, only if that product is being developed under a specific government contract. Therefore, it's negotiated case by case by HHS and a company. Your proposal provides assurance to companies, especially small and medium sized companies, that they will be protected. This will allow them to go forward with their development plans. Their lawyers may be leery of trying to negotiate their own deal with HHS. So, the EO may be effective for a large company when it negotiates making additional smallpox vaccine, but it provides little assurance to a small company that wants to start development. Also, the administration says the EO will be used to protect companies, however, the next administration could interpret it differently. That's why a statutory provision will provide greater assurance to companies. The legislation focuses intently on development of vaccines and medicines, but it is possible that we will face biological agents and chemical agents we've never seen before. As I've mentioned, the Soviet Union bioterror research focused in part on use of genetic modification technology to develop agents and toxins that currently-available antibiotics can not treat. Australian researchers accidentally created a modified mousepox virus, which does not affect humans, but it was 100 percent lethal to the mice. Their research focused on trying to make a mouse contraceptive vaccine for pest control. The surprise was that it totally suppressed the ``cell-mediated response,'' the arm of the immune system that combats viral infection. To make matters worse, the engineered virus also appears unnaturally resistant to attempts to vaccinate the mice. A vaccine that would normally protect mouse strains that are susceptible to the virus only worked in half the mice exposed to the killer version. If bioterrorists created a human version of the virus, vaccination programs would be of limited use. This highlights the drawback of working on vaccines against bioweapons rather than treatments. With the advances in gene sequencing, genomics, we will know the exact genetic structure of a biological agent. This information in the wrong hands could easily be manipulated to design and possibly grow a lethal new bacterial and viral strains not found in nature. A scientist might be able to mix and match traits from different microorganisms, called recombinant technology, to take a gene that makes a deadly toxin from one strain of bacteria and introduce it into other bacterial strains. Dangerous pathogens or infectious agents could be made more deadly, and relatively benign agents could be designed as major public health problems. Bacteria that cause diseases such as anthrax could be altered in such a way that would make current vaccines or antibiotics against them ineffective. It is even possible that a scientist could develop an organism that develops resistance to antibiotics at an accelerated rate. This means we need to develop technology, research tools, that will enable us to quickly develop a tailor-made, specific countermeasure to a previously unknown organism or agent. These research tools will enable us to develop a tailor-made vaccine or drug to deploy as a countermeasure against a new threat. The legislation authorizes companies to register and receive a certification making them eligible for the tax incentives in the bill for this research. Perhaps the greatest strength of our biomedical research establishment in the United States is the synergy between our superb basic research institutions and private companies. The Bayh-Dole Act and Stevenson-Wydler Act form the legal framework for mutually beneficially partnerships between academia and industry. My legislation strengthens this synergy and these relationships with two provisions, one to upgrades in the basic research infrastructure available to conduct research on countermeasures and the other to increase cooperation between the National Institutes of Health and private companies. Research on countermeasures necessitates the use of special facilities where biological agents can be handled safely without exposing researchers and the public to danger. Very few academic institutions or private companies can justify or capitalize the construction of these special facilities. The Federal Government can facilitate research and development of countermeasures by financing the construction of these facilities for use on a fee-for-service basis. The legislation authorizes appropriations for grants to non-profit and for-profit institutions to construct, maintain, and manage up to ten Biosafety Level 3-4 facilities, or their equivalent, in different regions of the country for use in research to develop countermeasures. BSL 3-4 facilities are ones used for research on indigenous, exotic or dangerous agents with potential for aerosol transmission of disease that may have serious or lethal consequences or where the agents pose high risk of life-threatening disease, aerosol-transmitted lab infections, or related agents with unknown risk of transmission. The Director of the Office and NIH shall issue regulations regarding the qualifications of the researchers who may utilize the facilities. Companies that have registered with and been certified by the Director, to develop countermeasures under Section 5(d) of the legislation, shall be given priority in the use of the facilities. The legislation also reauthorizes a very successful NIH-industry partnership program launched in FY 2000 in Public Law 106-113. The funding is for partnership challenge grants to promote joint ventures between NIH and its grantees and for-profit biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device industries with regard to the development of countermeasures, as defined in Section 3 of the bill, and research tools, as defined in Section 4(d)(3) of the bill. Such grants shall be awarded on a one-for- one matching basis. So far the matching grants have focused on development of medicines to treat malaria, tuberculosis, emerging and resistant infections, and therapeutics for emerging threats. My proposal should be matched by reauthorization of the challenge grant program for these deadly diseases. My legislation is carefully calibrated to provide incentives only where they are needed. This accounts for the choices in the legislation about which provisions are available to small biotechnology companies and large pharmaceutical companies. Most biotechnology companies rely on infusions of investor capital to fund research, so the capital formation tax incentives only apply to them. Large pharmaceutical companies have ample revenues from product sales, and access to debt capital, so they do not need these incentives for capital formation. The guaranteed purchase fund applies to any company that successfully develops a countermeasure. There is no reason to make any distinction between small and large companies. They all need to know the terms and dimensions of the potential market for the products they seek to develop. With countermeasures the market may well be uncertain or small, necessitating the creation of the purchase fund. The patent protection provisions are also well calibrated. Both small and large companies face the patent term erosion problem due to delays at the FDA. There is no reason why companies that successfully develop a countermeasure should end up with a patent with an eroded term. With regard to the patent bonus provision, this is included to supplement the capital formation tax incentives for small biotechnology companies. It provides a dramatic statement to investors that this research makes good business sense. As capital formation is not a challenge for a large pharmaceutical company, this patent bonus provision is not available to them. Finally, with regard to the liability provisions, there is no reason to make any distinction between small and large companies. The legislation makes choices. It sets the priorities. It provides a dose of incentives and seeks a response in the private sector. We are attempting here to do something that has not been done before. This is uncharted territory. And it's also an urgent mission. There may be cases where a countermeasure developed to treat a biological toxin or chemical agent will have applications beyond this use. A broad-spectrum antibiotic capable of treating many different biological agents may well have the capacity to treat naturally occurring diseases. This same issue arises with the Orphan Drug Act, which provides both tax and FDA approval incentives for companies that develop medicines to treat rare diseases. In some cases these treatments can also be used for larger disease populations. There are few who object to this situation. We have come to the judgment that the urgency of this research is worth the possible additional benefits that might accrue to a company. In the context of research to develop countermeasures, I do not consider it a problem that a company might find a broader commercial market for a countermeasure. Indeed, it may well be the combination of the incentives in this legislation and these broader markets that drives the successful development of a countermeasure. If our intense focus on developing countermeasures, and research tools, provides benefits for mankind going well beyond terror weapons, we should rejoice. If this research helps us to develop an effective vaccine or treatment for AIDS, we should give the company the Nobel Prize for Medicine. If we do not develop a vaccine or treatment for AIDS, we may see 100 million people die of AIDS. We also have 400 million people infected with malaria and more than a million annual deaths. Millions of children die of diarrhea, cholera and other deadly and disabling diseases. Countermeasures research may deepen our understanding of the immune system and speed development of treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases. That is not the central purpose of this legislation, but it is an additional rationale for it. The issue raised by my legislation is very simple: do we want the Federal Government to fund and supervise much of the research to develop countermeasures or should we also provide incentives that make it possible for the private sector, at its own expense, and at its own risk, to undertake this research for good business reasons. The Frist- Kennedy legislation focuses effectively on direct Federal funding and coordination issues, but it does not include sufficient incentives for the private sector to undertake this research on its own initiative. Their proposal and mine are perfectly complimentary. We need to enact both to ensure that we are prepared for bioterror attacks. I ask unanimous consent that an outline of my legislation appear at this point in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I also contest a characterization of support for this proposal. Contrary to what has been said, it is clear that the American labor movement is not universally enthusiastic about this bill. In fact, the well of union support is drying up. Many unions, including the largest union in America, SEIU, and the United Steelworkers of America, see more jobs in investing in the technologies of the future. Why are the union members lining up in opposition to the drilling plan? The fact is a broad range of union members and leaders understand that a strategic long-term energy strategy is a much more effective way to help spur the production not only of energy but of permanent jobs in a wide range of economic sectors. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge represents a distraction from the real needs of our economy and the real needs of the working people of America. The other alternatives I cite: investments in efficiency, conservation, and alternative energy sources, are realistic, strategic, and ready to go. It is disappointing to me that in this era of dramatic technological progress in so many areas of human activity, we readily celebrate the advances, including in the fields of oil exploration, but fail to see the promise of this next age of alternative efficient energy technologies. According to a recent study by the Tellis Institute, investments in new energy technologies could result in a net annual increase in jobs in America of over 700,000 by 2010, rising to approximately 1.3 million jobs in 2020. Those are the technologies of the future, providing high- paying, permanent jobs to America's workers. There is also another proposal for the North Slope of Alaska that will bring more jobs and more economic stimulus than drilling for oil in the refuge. That is the building of a natural gas pipeline to bring that energy source to the lower 48 States. According to estimates from the oil industry and from the State of Alaska, this project would bring hundreds of thousands of jobs to American workers and is far preferable to the proposed oil drilling in the refuge. In one sense, this is perhaps the first plan I have seen that is myopic and hyperopic. It may need bifocals. It fails to take the long-term interests of our economy and environment into consideration and simultaneously fails to deliver any immediate benefit to the American people. In fact, it is a short- term distraction in what should be our real energy program strategy and a long-term danger. Finally, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Secretaries of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I can tell the Senator respectfully, I have been here 13 years and I know it has been an issue all that time, and I know it was debated for some time before that. My point was, though, that I think some of the contentions made on the floor in the back and forth of the debate in the last several days at least leave uncertainty. In that spirit of uncertainty, we do better to come back and debate this proposal in full, as I guess we will, after the first of next year.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I believe my time is up, but I will certainly yield for a question.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about two important votes we will have in a few hours, one on the Railroad Retirement Act and the other on the amendment introduced by the Senate Republican leader, which is an energy plan that includes authorization to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I thank and congratulate my friend and colleague from Minnesota for the outstanding statement he made on this issue. I believe the debate thus far on the question of drilling in the Arctic Refuge has revealed a record that is not quite what the proponents of drilling have argued and portrayed. That, at least, shows we should not be pressured to pass such significant legislation in a hurried or cursory fashion. It is not wise for the Senate to rush into a decision that will have a permanent impact and, in fact, do permanent damage to our environment, our national energy strategy, and our national values while at the same time being of little value to the American people. I will discuss some of the contentions made by proponents of drilling our refuge and offer some comments. Proponents of drilling have argued that the Inupiat Eskimos in the town of Kaktovik are being deprived of their right to drill on refuge land that they own in fee simple. I was struck by that argument when it was made Friday when I was in the Chamber. I have done a little research over the weekend. I find that the Inupiat Eskimos have rights to the surface of lands adjacent to the town of Kaktovik. The Eskimos also were granted subsurface rights by Secretary of the Interior Watt to over 90,000 acres that are adjacent to their town. But those rights were speculative--only granting the right to drill if Congress authorized oil and gas drilling under the surface of the Arctic Refuge. A 1989 GAO report investigating the transfer of these subsurface rights found that the transfer actually resulted in a profit for Kaktovik even without any oil and gas development. The point I am making is that no promises have been broken to the Inupiat people. In fact, they were never granted the right to drill in the refuge. That has been clear from the beginning. I will work with all of my colleagues, as I know the occupant of the chair does, to do everything I can to ensure that the Inupiat people are able to continue to sustain and improve their quality of life. But we have to do so in a manner that is in our national interest and does not sacrifice one of our great national treasures. We must also realize that other Native Americans in Alaska strongly oppose any drilling. Last Friday I mentioned the plight of the Gwich'in of Arctic Village who depend on the Porcupine caribou herd to sustain their lives and their culture. Today I will read from a letter by the city of Nuiqsut, sitting in the shadow of the Alpine oil field on the North Slope. I ask unanimous consent this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. According to the Native Americans, the impact of oil drilling has been ``far reaching.'' They provide some specific statements: Our ability to hunt and gather traditional foods has been severely impacted. Development has increased the smog and haze in our sky, affecting our health as well as the beauty of our land sea and air. Obviously, the people of Nuiqsut do not believe they have benefited from oil exploration, and they hope we will learn a lesson from their experience. We have also been asked to conclude that the wildlife in the reserve will interact happily with oil pipelines if they are built there. A picture was shown the other day of bears. I was advised that the bears in the pictures were not stuffed animals. Indeed, they were not. Unlike stuffed animals, they need real wilderness habitat to survive. I received a letter over the weekend from Mr. Ken Whitten, a retired Alaska State fish and game biologist who worked 24 years on the North Slope. Mr. Whitten felt compelled to respond to the proponents of drilling and specifically to the picture of a mother bear and cubs shown last week. I quote from the letter: Most bear cubs that have grown up in the oil fields have eventually been shot as problem bears, either in the oil field support area or at isolated villages and camps outside the oil field. Thus, the story of the three bears in the photo does not have a fairy tale ending. Three different bear groups, each consisting of a sow and two cubs, have been seen walking pipelines in the oil field recently. All three bears in one group and two cubs in another had to be shot last summer after they became habituated to human food and repeatedly broke into buildings and parked vehicles. I ask unanimous consent Mr. Whitten's comments be printed in the Record in full.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Secretaries point out the value of the land in question here, the Arctic Refuge. They quote the Secretary of the Interior under President Eisenhower. It was Eisenhower who originally created this refuge. That letter states that the area was: biologically irreplaceable land that should be put aside for the purpose of preserving the unique wildlife wilderness and recreational values. As the signatories' letter points out, the 40 years since Secretary Seaton's comments have only strengthened the case that this is a unique wildlife and recreational area of our country and deserves to be preserved. I ask my colleagues to please vote against cloture on the amendment, the Lott amendment to the railroad retirement bill. In summary, drilling in the refuge pales in comparison to more environmentally sound and strategic energy alternatives. Drilling in the refuge will do nothing to provide energy independence, providing a mere 6-month supply of oil that will not come on line for a decade. Drilling will do almost nothing to stimulate our economy, providing some short-term jobs when we can provide a much greater, longer term stimulus for our economy by undertaking projects such as the natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay and increasing our investment in new and emerging technologies. Finally, our values teach us that not every available natural resource should be exploited. Our values encourage us to respect the Earth, the treasures that the Good Lord gave us here in America, and to approach them with some humility, not to try to squeeze every last ounce of energy or anything else out of every square foot of Earth, regardless of the cost or the loss that is engendered thereby. Nature reminds us of our humanity. It inspires us. It helps to comfort us when we are hurt. It gives us opportunities for recreation. This is a time not to ignore but to recall the great American spirit of conservation which seeks, in every generation, to preserve the great natural places in America so those generations that follow us will enjoy them, have the right and opportunity to enjoy them as much as we have. I believe this expresses the interests and the values of the American people. I hope my colleagues will stand with those interests and values in voting against cloture on the Lott amendment when it comes up later this afternoon. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in responding to my friend and colleague from Alaska, it is my conclusion that the Native peoples of Alaska are of mixed opinion on this question of drilling for oil in the Arctic refuge. We have certainly heard testimony here in the Senate from differing points of view. I hear what the Senator said about this group of Native people. Obviously, we have heard very eloquent testimony from representatives of the Gwich'in people in the area who have made a different choice and want to preserve what they have described as part of not only the beauty of the environment but part of their spiritual heritage as a source of life in that area. So I would say my judgment is that opinion is mixed, and my opinion is that, having made this choice, it would be a shame to have to do the damage that oil exploration would do to the refuge to find adequate and uplifting employment for the people to which the Senator from Alaska refers. There ought to be a better way.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I come to this Chamber--and I am pleased to do so after the excellent statement by my friend and colleague from Georgia--to speak about the addition of the House energy bill to the railroad retirement bill before us. This amendment is the wrong amendment offered at the wrong time. The House energy bill, with all due respect, is, in my opinion, an unwise proposal that was written really for a different time, as Senator Cleland's remarks not only suggest but illustrate quite specifically. The bill proposes to open the Arctic Refuge for drilling, which is bad environmental policy and bad energy policy. We will soon have the opportunity to give our Nation's long-term energy strategy the thoughtful consideration that it deserves and that the American people deserve. I look forward to the introduction by the majority leader, soon, of his balanced, comprehensive energy bill, and I look forward to debating it when we return after the first of the year. We should not be attempting to pass such significant legislation dealing with so fundamental and complicated a problem as America's energy needs and systems in such a summary fashion as an amendment to a bill of this kind. We should, and I am confident will, give it the thorough, thoughtful, balanced debate after the first of the year. We owe it to the American people to determine whether the measure before us is a responsible and responsive solution to our energy needs or simply a distraction. To determine that, we do not need to hold up pictures of baby caribou or mother polar bears, although I find those pictures not only attractive but moving. We only need to ask a very businesslike question: What do we gain and what do we lose from drilling for oil in ANWR? I think, when we work that question back dispassionately to an answer, we see the error of the proposal to drill in the Arctic Refuge that is before the Senate today and will be voted on on Monday, procedurally at least. I can tell you what we gain in probably less than a minute. It would take days to catalog what we lose. I am prepared, if necessary, if the occasion arises, to take days to talk about and catalog what we will lose as a nation if we drill in the Arctic Refuge. So let me start with what I believe, in fairness, we would gain. Even if oil companies started drilling tomorrow in the refuge--which, of course, is never going to happen that quickly--even if we mistakenly adopted this legislation, it would take at least 10 years for any crude to be delivered to refineries. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there is, at best, a 6-month supply of economically recoverable oil--a yield that would be spread over 50 years. What are the costs? The visible damage, of course, would be substantial: An environmental treasure permanently lost, hundreds of species threatened, international agreements jeopardized, oil spills further endangering the Alaskan landscape, and an increase in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, among other costs. The unseen damage of drilling would be just as real: A nation lulled into believing it has taken a step toward energy independence-- arguably, by its supporters, a large step--when, in fact, it has done no such thing; a nation believing it is extracting oil in an environmentally sensitive way, when, in fact, no methods have been discovered that can avoid damage to this beautiful, untouched wilderness area of America; all in all, the American people misled on a host of critical issues. Finally, this plan would threaten something even more precious than what I have mentioned; that is, some of our most treasured American values, including the fundamental American value of conserving, conservation, conserving what the Good Lord has given us in natural treasures in the 50 American States. The first claim that my colleagues make is that drilling in the Arctic is a necessary part of a balanced, long-term energy strategy. But, respectfully, calling this part of a strategic energy plan is as if to call crude oil a beverage; it is literally and figuratively hard to swallow. This ill-considered plan will do nothing to wean us from our dependence on foreign oil. Drilling in the Alaskan national wildlife refuge is, in fact, a pipeline dream, a decision that will produce just a slight uptick in our oil production 10 years down the road and at considerable cost to our environment, our values, and our policies. It will create far fewer jobs than dozens of smarter alternatives which depend on American technology and American innovation and American industry. The much quoted study indicating that Arctic drilling would result in 750,000 jobs has since been widely discredited. Even its authors have acknowledged that its methodology was flawed. Now the agreed-upon job creation figure is much closer to 43,000, and all of those jobs are short term, as opposed to the permanent jobs that would be created through the development of other alternative, innovative forms of energy, including conservation. This plan also does not move us one step closer to the very valuable, critical goal of energy independence. First, it will take at least a decade to bring to market any oil that might be discovered in the refuge, making it useless in the context of the current international crisis. Incidentally, there is a conservative estimate from the Department of the Interior during the administration of former President Bush that has since been reiterated by many people, including oil industry executives, and that is the 10-year lead-in time. Secondly, we should realize that Alaskan crude oil is not shipped east of the Rocky Mountains, meaning that none of this oil is refined into home heating oil that is used in the entire Northeast and other parts of Middle America. Further, oil supplies are not needed for the production of electricity. Nationwide, only 2 percent of electricity is generated by oil. Finally, let's realize that increasing our dependence on oil as a source of energy is no way to wean ourselves off foreign oil in the long run. The statistics repeated frequently make it clear that we cannot drill our way into energy independence. The United States uses about 25 percent of the world's oil but possesses only 2 percent of its reserves. So the way to energy independence is clearly through conservation, through using less than 25 percent of the world's oil and for the development of new technologies that will provide genuine energy independence. The most important step, of course, we can take is reducing oil use in the transportation sector, which is responsible for over two-thirds of the oil consumed in the United States, and it is climbing. We can do that with technological methods that are in reach. Many of them are in our grasp already in our vehicles. Arctic Refuge oil is simply not the most secure source of energy for the Nation. Of course, I am not suggesting that those who support drilling in the refuge are in any way neglecting our Nation's energy security. None of my colleagues would say that of those of us who oppose drilling in the Arctic Refuge. We all agree that we want to achieve energy independence and greater energy security. Our difference is about the methods and means for doing so. At the same time, we have to realize the irony of the present situation. Just as we enter an age of heightened awareness regarding potential security risks at our nuclear plants and our other energy production centers, many Members of Congress are set on pursuing an alternative that, on top of its other liabilities, happens to be less secure than many other options. They are more difficult to secure than many other options. The fact is that the 25-year-old Trans-Alaskan Pipeline itself is vulnerable to disruption. More than half of it is elevated and indefensible. It has already been bombed twice years ago and shot at more recently. And the pipeline today is beset with accelerated corrosion, erosion, and stress. There is, of course, one other critical reason we oppose this plan, and that is the damage it will do to the Arctic Refuge itself. We should not countenance such a blatant broadside on one of the jewels of America's environment. This threat, to me, is made even more frustrating by the claim that supporters of drilling have made that the refuge can be opened up to oil exploration in an environmentally sensitive manner. The Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is known as the American Serengeti. It is inhabited by 135 species of birds, 45 species of land mammals. The plain crosses all five different echo- regions of the Arctic. It is a very beautiful picture--until you add oil exploration. I urge my colleagues to look very carefully at the suggestion that the result of oil drilling in the refuge would just be a small blemish on the grand landscape of the refuge--a little worm hole on a nice red apple. First, there will be a series of blemishes--dozens of holes that will be connected together by roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure; spidering out from these blemishes would be an elaborate additional infrastructure of roads, pipelines, air strips, and processing plants. The web would almost certainly include permanent facilities, such as roads, airstrips, docks, staging areas, central processing facilities, gathering centers, compressor plants, seawater injection plants, gas processing plants, power stations, guard stations, housing and maintenance facilities, utility lines, garbage disposal sites, gravel pits, and more. In the end, it would make a terrible change in this refuge. Mr. President, the House bill, as you know, limited development in the refuge to 2,000 acres. But it is critically important for my colleagues to understand that that figure expressly excludes roads and pipelines and fails to define the acreage as contiguous. So the illusion of minimal impact is just that; it is an imaginary landscape painted in oil. Quite simply, we are forced to make a choice between this magnificent piece of America and its preservation for all the generations that will follow us as Americans and the development of this refuge for oil. I have made mine, and I believe the American people support it. Why? Because conserving our great open spaces is fundamentally an affirmation of our core values. Conservation is not a Democratic or Republican value; it is a quintessential American value. The ethic of conservation tells us that it is not only sentimentally difficult to part with beautiful wilderness, it is practically unwise because in doing so we deny future generations a precious piece of our common culture. Let's remember, in the aftermath of September 11, that most Americans have been stepping back and asking themselves what is important, what do we value. I believe that millions of our fellow Americans have, among other things, come to the conclusion, alongside family and faith, that they value America's great natural resources. Let me recall, finally, the words of the great President Teddy Roosevelt, who, back in 1916, seemed to understand this issue very clearly. He wrote: The ``greatest good for the greatest number'' applies to the number within womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. I could not say it more eloquently or more directly than the great TR. I thank my colleagues. I hope they will vote this amendment down and we will return to a full and wholesome debate of our energy policies after the first of the year. I thank the President and yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I had not heard that, of course, but I am glad to pursue the question. What I have heard is the very fervent and, I found, compelling testimony of the Gwich'in people who have come to Congress to speak to us against drilling in the refuge. I will say a few words in response, if I may, to what the Senator from Alaska said. Alaska is a big piece of real estate. I believe those were the words used. Connecticut is a small piece of real estate. It is more developed, although the last time I looked, more than two-thirds of our State of Connecticut and the great popular sentiment in the State was to limit development, to preserve those natural spaces. For the same reasons, there is a national movement of support for preserving the great, very unusual, natural spaces in Alaska. I say also, from the experts I have talked to, the area involved is really unique. The coastal plain is the biological heart of the whole refuge. So it has to be given a special status. I quote from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, that the effects of disturbance and displacement of the Porcupine caribou herd are likely to occur more rapidly and at a much greater scale if oil development is allowed in the refuge. The accumulative effects of reduced access to the coastal plain habitat caused by industrial development would be a major adverse impact on the herd. Notwithstanding the pictures we have seen, that is the expert judgment given in a letter to our colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin. Finally, most every poll I have seen still shows American public opinion opposed to drilling in the refuge, even at a time when concern about energy has risen. I suppose this gets to a point that sounds like the old line about economists, that if you lay them end to end across the world, they would not reach a conclusion. I will present other polls. The most recent I have seen taken by the Mellman Group, based on a national survey of 1,000 U.S. voters that was conducted in early October, found that 57 percent of Americans did not believe drilling in the refuge would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. An independent poll taken by Gallup from October 8 to 11 showed a majority of Americans, 51 percent, opposed oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Beyond the polling, as I said earlier, to me this is a matter of national principles, national values, national policies, what makes common sense in terms of achieving energy security and energy independence, energy efficiency, which my friend from Alaska and I, and I presume all Members of the Senate, have as common goals. While public opinion is significant--and I am glad, according to the polls I cited, it is on our side in the debate --about whether to drill in the Arctic Refuge, ultimately I think we all have to make our judgment about what is best for our country. My judgment is that drilling in the Arctic Refuge for oil would not be best for our country. I apologize to my friend from Alaska that I have a previous commitment and I have to leave. I have a feeling we will return to this debate again after the first of the year and probably at length. I have great respect for the Senator from Alaska, so I look forward to that debate. Hopefully the result will be more knowledge and perhaps even a bit of wisdom.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I am proud to have joined Senators Landrieu, Cochran, and DeWine in offering a truly historic amendment, which will for the first time specifically target new title I funding directly to our nation's poorest communities and schools. In doing so, this amendment will help us move closer to realizing the original promise of title I and, more importantly, help us move closer to realizing the promise we have made to give every child in America a high quality education. The compromise reached today will provide $1 billion for the targeted grant formula under title I, which was enacted into law by Congress in 1994 but unfortunately has never actually been funded by appropriators. This agreement ensures that no state, or local school district will lose any funds, but at the same time ensures those school districts with the greatest need and with the greatest challenges will receive a significant boost in resources. For example in my own State of Connecticut, this would mean our three communities with the greatest poverty and educational needs including Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven would receive increases of 25, 35, and 31 percent, respectively, over their current funding levels for a combined increase of over $12.4 million. That is $12 million more worth of educational services provided and high quality teachers hired to ensure that title I children may achieve academic successes. I would also mean substantial increases in investment for many other communities serving low-income students. This agreement is by no means perfect. It leaves in place a distribution system that remains badly diluted and seriously inefficient. However, it represents a dramatic change in policy, one that Senator Landrieu and I, and the members of the Senate New Democrat Coalition have been fighting for for some time. And we are optimistic that we can build on his breakthrough in the future to really put our education money where our mouth is, and concentrate our resources and our resolve on lifting up our most disadvantaged schools. Most immediately, this amendment makes a strong statement, acknowledging that title I is just not working as it was intended. The original goal of this critical program was to compensate for local funding inequities within States and help level the playing field for low-income children. But the truth is that this well-intentioned program is not nearly as focused on serving poor communities as it is perceived to be, leaving many poor children without any aid or hope whatsoever. As my colleagues know, Federal funds for poor children are currently distributed through two grants, basic and concentration. In order to be eligible for basic grants, which comprise the bulk of current title I funds, local districts only need to have 10 school-age children from low-income families, and these children must constitute only 2 percent of the total school-age population. Under the concentration grants, districts with a child poverty rate of 15 percent are eligible to receive funding. As a result of these low threshold, title I funding has been spread too thin and too wide. In fact, according to a 1999 CRS report, title I grants are provided to approximately 90 percent of all local school districts, and 58 percent of all public schools. Even worse, because title I has not been close to fully funded, these diluted formulas have left little aid available for many of the country's poorest students. CRS found that one fifth of all schools with concentrations of poverty between 50 and 75 percent do not receive a dime of title I funding. In examining these inequities we also cannot ignore the growing impact that concentration of poverty is having on the academic achievement of our nation's school children, particularly those who live in disadvantaged communities. America's top 150 highest poverty cities have 40 percent of our all title I students. Students in these cities face many challenges, none greater that the pervasive poverty that surrounds them. Studies show that, even after controlling for student's socioeconomic background, concentration of poverty has an important negative effect on student achievement. For example, a U.S. Department of Education study found that ``The relationship between family poverty status and student achievement is not as strong as the relationship between school poverty concentrations and school achievement averages.'' An Urban Institute study of public- housing students in Albuquerque, NM found that, after controlling for home environment, if a poor child lived in a neighborhood and attended school with 20 percent poverty rather than 80 percent poverty, that child's standardized test scores were likely to improve by 13 percentage points. Concentration of poverty does create a barrier to educational achievement, but that barrier is not impenetrable. University of Tennessee's William Sanders found that high concentrations of poverty do not on their own preclude or prevent schools from raising student achievement. Low-achieving students are often the first to gain, and experience the greatest gains, from quality instruction. Unfortunately, only a small share of our federal resources are getting to the districts most in need of critical funds, which limits the ability of those districts to hire the most qualified instructors and provide the best services. The Federal Government alone cannot solve this grave inequity. We can only supplement state and local funding, but cannot supplant those resources, and states and localities must do more to target their own resources. A recent Education Trust analysis of funding inequities reveals that school districts with the greatest numbers of poor children have less money to spend per student than districts with the fewest poor children. And a growing body of research shows, according to the Education Trust report, that additional dollars, if directed at the most critical activities, can significantly raise the achievement of poor and minority students. But the Federal Government can make a real and consequential contribution, both in terms of leadership and of leverage of national resources, and this amendment aims to do both. As I have noted, it will significantly improve the targeting of Federal dollars. But it also includes a second piece that will help reduce the inequities within states. In addition to funding the targeted formula for the first time, this amendment also funds the State finance and incentive grant formula for the first time, a formula intended to reward states that have made real strides in eliminating funding gaps with their own resources. The amendment calls for channeling $500 million through this fourth formula, which is commonly known as the ``Effort and Equity'' formula. Although I share the concerns raised by many that the current design of this formula has substantial flaws and should be modified so that truly meets its intended goal, I also share the belief of my colleague from Iowa that we should do more at the federal level to prompt states to better equalize their own funding. That is why I am committed to seeing improvements made to the effort and equity formula through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act conference that is currently pending. I commend Senator Harkin for his willingness to reexamine and overhaul this formula so that it better targets funds within states to the districts with the highest concentrations of poverty. And I look forward to working with him and with a common focus to improve the fairness and the performance of title I. In achieving this goal, I believe that we can further work together to see even more funds appropriated to the targeted formula as the appropriations process moves forward. The compromise we have struck today might not be politically popular or perfect, but it is a great beginning and a way to draw our attention back to the original intent of the ESEA and the primary function of the Federal Government in education. It is a bold step forward, one that I believe that we can only enhance as the appropriations process as well as the ESEA conference moves forward, and I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting it.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I rise to support the conference committee report on aviation security and, particularly, to congratulate the chairman, Senator Hollings, the ranking member, Senator McCain, and all of the members of the committee and their staffs who have worked so hard to bring about this very critical result today. Since September 11, when we saw the worst of human nature in those who attacked us, I think here in America we have seen the best of human nature. That is particularly so in the unity that we have all felt among the American people and that unity that has been reflected in the Congress of the United States as we have worked with more nonpartisanship over a sustained period than I have seen in the 13 years I have been privileged to be a Senator. Until this morning, the one unfortunate exception to that was the critical area of aviation security, where the Senate, I am proud to say, acted more than a month ago and stood shoulder to shoulder in, again, a nonpartisan fashion to adopt 100 to 0 a strong aviation security bill. Of course, what followed was a different approach in the House. Time went on, and now more than 2 months ago our aviation system was used by terrorists to strike a terrible blow at our people. But, happily, the gap that existed between the Senate and the House has now been closed in a most positive fashion. I cannot thank the chairman of the committee, Senator Hollings, and all who are on it, enough for the persistence to principle and what would be effective here when there could have been compromises that would have gotten a bill passed earlier, but really would not have done what the American people want us to do, which is to make flying just as safe as it can possibly be. I say to Senator Hollings, who has had an extraordinary career in the Senate, I think this is one of the high points today. It is something that will not only protect the traveling public for years and years to come, and protect literally the lives of the American people, but also at this moment in our economic history, when our economy is certainly sliding in recession, he has brought to the Senate and helped us to pass today a bill that will probably do as much to stimulate our economy as most parts of that economic stimulus plan that we haven't quite yet agreed on--maybe more than all of them--because air travel is so critically important to our commerce and particularly important in the areas of the country that rely on tourists. I congratulate the leaders of the committee and say just a few words about the bill and why I think it is so critically important. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which I am privileged to chair, has held two oversight hearings on aviation security since September 11. One was on September 25, and the other was on this past Wednesday, November 14. The picture that emerges is that for too long, and with too many warnings from the GAO, from the inspector general at the Department of Transportation, from Members of Congress and committees of Congress, we lowered our guard; we allowed such weaknesses to persist in our aviation security system that created the vulnerabilities that the terrorists took advantage of, with the dreadful consequences on September 11. The measures that have since been taken have definitely improved the situation. The measures that are called for by this legislation we passed today will not only make aviation security so much stronger, but as I look back, and considering the two oversight hearings our committee has held, I would say that if this legislation had been in effect before, it would have been very hard for the terrorists to have done what they did on September 11. Let me mention a few of the weaknesses in the system that our hearings showed. This one struck me. It just came out 2 days ago at the hearing. We asked about the bomb detection equipment that is in some of our airports, how much of the baggage that is checked on to the planes is scanned for bombs. The inspector general, Mr. Mead, of the Department of Transportation stunned me by saying that today, 13 years after Lockerbie, and more than that after the earlier hijackings, less than 10 percent of checked baggage nationwide is being screened for explosives prior to being loaded on the aircraft. Of course, we all know and have heard screeners are underpaid, overworked, and undertrained. Screening, therefore, has been haphazard. The technologies being used for the screening and other identification functions at the airports are outdated. Some machines-- bomb scanning particularly--are sitting idle at airports. In one test done about a year ago by the inspector general of the Department of Transportation to see how secure the allegedly security areas of the airports were, more than 80 percent of his testers got through to the behind the scenes parts of the airports, where they were not authorized to be, and where so much critical to the security of the planes goes on. Obviously, the cockpits were unsecured. Database connections between law enforcement agencies, the FAA, and the airlines were minimal or nonexistent. A recent spot check just last weekend, Veterans Day weekend, of bomb inspection machines at selected airports in the country, found that fewer than 30 percent of the machines were in continuous use, despite an FAA directive ordering more usage. Again, just last weekend, more than 2 months after September 11, screeners at passenger checkpoints were observed leaving their checkpoints while passengers were passing through. The system was plagued--and, unfortunately, still is--by tremendous inconsistencies in the level of scrutiny across airports and even within airports. Every one of these problems can be, and I believe will be, solved by the legislation we will adopt today. I particularly thank Senator Hollings and the Commerce Committee for the accepting two amendments offered by three members of the Governmental Affairs Committee. Senator Durbin and I offered an amendment that, among other things, provides $50 million a year for the next 5 years to speed up research and development of airport technology so that the public can be better protected. It creates a 6-month effectiveness assessment and a 12-month deployment of improvements to methods of preventing unauthorized access to sterile areas of the airports--that is, those areas the public is not supposed to go--including biometrics, increased surveillance, airport exit systems, and prevention of so-called piggybacking. It expands the use of computer-assisted passenger prescreening to trigger additional screening of passengers and their carry-on items. It adds $20 million for long-term research and development. That is the amendment Senator Durbin and I offered. Senator Thompson offered an amendment which was accepted by the committee that deals with performance standards being regularly applied to aviation security. It is up to us to pay attention to the application of these standards, and the Department of Transportation will report to us how well the airports and airlines are achieving what we want them to achieve and what is expressed in this legislation. This is an extraordinary step forward. It shows that we have learned the lessons of September 11. Finally, this bill sets a standard for us as to what we must do regarding other parts of our critical infrastructure. We naturally have focused on the aviation system because that is where we were hit and hurt so badly on September 11. But I fear that similar vulnerabilities which we found in aviation security will be found in other forms of our transportation system or hubs in other forms of transportation, utilities, communications, cyberspace, and financial systems on which we all depend. I could go on and on. Basically, this is the urgent work with which Governor Ridge and the Office of Homeland Security has to deal, with the help of Congress. A high standard of public service and public protection has been achieved in this conference committee report. Again, I extend my sincere thanks to Senator Hollings, Senator McCain, and all who worked to make this happen. They have advanced the security of the American people and the well-being of the American economy. I thank them, and I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to elaborate upon the air travel security compromise reached yesterday by Congress--particularly the provisions in the bill that incorporate the amendment authored by Senator Durbin and myself. Consistent with the recommendations we made, the bill calls for the individual named to the newly established position of Under Secretary of Transportation for Security to, within 6 months, review and determine which immediately available new technologies can be used to more effectively restrict access to sensitive areas of our airports, including the tarmac, maintenance facilities, baggage handling centers and catering facilities. Such technologies may include biometrics, card or keypad-based access systems, and increased monitoring of emergency exit systems. The Under Secretary is directed to outline a strategy for deploying these technologies within 12 months at all major airports. The bill strengthens our recommendation to ensure that all checked baggage is screened for explosives by requiring that, within 60 days, all bags be either checked or matched to a boarded passenger and that, by the end of 2002, airports deploy equipment to detect explosives in all checked baggage. To meet new and unprecedented threats without delay, we must as a nation harness the power of innovation to improve transportation security. That's why I was also pleased to see included in the compromise our recommended authorization of $50 million in each of the next 5 years for the public and private sectors to accelerate development and testing of new aviation security technologies-- including faster, better, and cheaper passenger and baggage screening equipment; systems capable of detecting components of weapons of mass destruction; systems for screening catering and cargo items; advances in training of security personnel; and new methods of ``hardening'' the aircraft in the event of an in-flight explosion. As called for by Senator Durbin and myself, the compromise also includes $20 million for longer term research into state-of-the-art weapons detection systems, advanced biometrics, secure networking for sharing of threat information, and other groundbreaking technologies to prevent acts of terrorism in aviation. I am also pleased to see included in the final bill my provision requiring criminal background checks of all currently employed airport security personnel. Given recent breaches of security and growing anxiety about the baggage screening process, Americans deserve every reassurance that screeners will be reliable and trustworthy. I hope these measures and others begin to make the urgent and immediate improvements necessary to secure our skies for the American traveling public. With the holidays coming and the economy moving toward recession, this legislation could not come at a better time.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank the Chair. I have come to the floor to speak this morning about the various ideas proposed to help our economy recover from the recession that we are in currently. I say to my friend and colleague from Alaska that he will not be surprised that I respectfully disagree with most of what he just said about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But I have the feeling that either next week or sometime soon we will have the opportunity to debate these matters at length. I look forward to a good, constructive debate.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I find that the greatest fear of those who are currently unemployed or who fear that they will, in this recession, be unemployed, is: How in the Good Lord's name am I going to be able to continue health insurance for my family? I spoke to one couple last weekend who said their health insurance premiums are $600 to $700 a month. How can they afford to pay those premiums through COBRA to keep their insurance going? The Senate bill, in an act of not only humaneness but an expression of classic American values, said why would we not want to help working families who, through no fault of their own, have been laid off, to at least cover the cost of health insurance for their families? The Senate finance bill will do that up to the tune of 75 percent. This is a good, balanced program. It is the medicine our economy needs to help it grow. I hope we will not find the debate on the stimulus to be rigid, to be unthinking, to be unyielding. I think we need to be open-minded because the threat to our economy is real and profound. The American people not only need help, but they will not tolerate a partisan debate that ultimately produces sound and fury but nothing to help them hold their jobs or help their families. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I do want to go back to the fiscal stimulus and put it in the context of where we are now. America is a nation at war. It is a war that challenges our values and our security as fundamentally as the great wars we fought in the last century against Nazism and communism. So a war of this kind naturally affects most everything else we do in ways that we may not yet see in America. That includes the ways we in Congress conduct our business. It is a time to put national interests ahead of narrow partisan or ideological agendas. But when there are important disagreements, we cannot sweep them under the rug. After all, democracy, in all its fractious glory, is one of the most fundamental values that unites us. It is a value that we are fighting to defend in the current war against terrorism. The moment we stop practicing democracy is the moment we start giving in to the terrorists. It is in that spirit that I wish to speak today--not negatively, but constructively, and not divisively, but I hope in a spirit of what I take to be the national interest. I want to speak in disagreement with the fiscal stimulus plan passed by the House of Representatives, which is really a House Republican plan passed almost entirely on partisan grounds. This plan has apparently now been endorsed and supported by the President of the United States. The fact that our economy was weakening before September 11th is clear, particularly in the information technology, telecom, and high- tech sectors. But after September 11, unfortunately, the terrorists helped to push the American economy from weakening into recession. That has challenged all of us to regain the kind of psychological, let alone economic, confidence that will once again create growth. Unemployment has risen now to 5.4 percent. That is a statistic which expresses itself in hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans being out of work. Demand in the business sector and the personal consumption sector is just not where it was or where we want it to be. We must always recognize that the American economy is the strongest in the world and that we have the most vibrant, productive private sector in the world--both those who invest and manage it and those who work in it. In fact, it is from that private sector that the recovery to this recession will ultimately come. It is also important for us to acknowledge that we in government have some options by which we can facilitate and encourage the private sector to do what it does best in helping to create economic growth. It is important as we put together a fiscal stimulus package to remember, ironically enough, the Hippocratic oath that every doctor knows very well. It is, ``First, do no harm.'' I say respectfully that the stimulus package passed by the House of Representatives, reflected in part in the Republican proposals that are surfacing here in the Senate, does not pass the test of the Hippocratic oath. They will harm our economy by not only being unfair but by bringing us further into long-term debt--building, unfortunately, on the precedent set when we passed President Bush's tax cut earlier in the year. That tax cut plan made the most glowing assumptions about the future of the economy, and then spent the revenue that was predicted based on those assumptions. That was not fiscal responsibility. And, of course, now the multi-trillion dollar estimates of surplus on which that tax cut was based have evaporated, have been altered. The Republican proposals for fiscal stimulus, particularly by accelerating some of the President's tax cuts that were adopted, not only do nothing to increase demand by individuals which will stimulate the economy and create growth and jobs, but they increase America's long-term debt. That means increasing long-term interest rates. And that means inhibiting the flow of capital, money that is the underpinning of growth in the private sector of our economy. So I say, respectfully, the Republican proposals for fiscal stimulus do harm. Our economy needs help, not harm. Frankly, I believe we would be better off passing no stimulus than passing the package that was adopted by the House of Representatives, because I really believe it will hurt our economy, not help it. Our economy is ready and waiting for a quick, significant, temporary shot in the arm. But if the Federal Government makes the wrong choices, we will effectively be shooting ourselves in the foot. In the current economic climate, we need to discard the stale, knee- jerk debates of the past and come together now to craft a commonsense solution that again puts the national interest ahead of narrow partisan or ideological interests, and ahead of the paying of old political debts. We need to act to produce economic growth and to protect jobs. I want to speak, for a moment, about a very significant event that occurred just over a month ago, on October 4. The chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Budget Committees--Democrats and Republicans alike--released basic principles that they thought should guide any economic stimulus proposal. They agreed that the package--and I quote--``Should be based on the recognition that long-term fiscal discipline is essential to sustained economic growth. Measures to stimulate the economy should be limited in time so that as the economy recovers, the budget regains a surplus that is at least equal to the surplus in Social Security. Any short-term economic stimulus should not result in higher long-term interest rates.'' The Republican proposals simply do not meet that test. Given the spending demands of prosecuting the war on terrorism, of upgrading our homeland defense, of rebuilding the City of New York, President Bush initially said he supported enacting a stimulus package of between $60 and $75 billion which would be balanced--half and half--between spending and tax incentives. The President asked for a finely tuned performance vehicle. Instead, the House has given him a broken-down jalopy. The House Ways and Means Committee reported a $212 billion plan that meets few, if any, of the bipartisan principles of the Budget chairs and ranking members issued on October 4. At the heart of the House Republican package is a large corporate tax cut, retroactive to 1986--before my youngest child, my 13-year-old daughter--was born. It totals about $25 billion in cost. And $6.3 billion of that ends up in the bank accounts of just 14 large companies. Madam President, I am all for tax cuts, as I know you are, including tax cuts for business. But if our goal is to jump-start the economy now, these big tax breaks to a select group of our largest companies simply make no sense. In the first place, they will not get their refunds until next year. Even then, there is no guarantee they will spend the money, which is what we need to spur economic growth. There is no guarantee they will invest in acquiring new equipment and funding the kind of research and development that will support economic growth. We are just going to have to cross our fingers and hope they use it in the right way, and don't use it to pay off their debts or buy back stock. It's the wrong strategy. The same is true, as I said briefly earlier, of the House Republicans' plan to accelerate the reduction in income tax rates adopted earlier this year. That is not going to prime the pump; it is simply going to pump up the incomes of those who need it least. It is not likely to spur new investments or job growth, but, instead, to reward past success--which is not what our economy needs now. It is not the quick action we need, but a slow road to budget deficits and higher interest rates. There are only two provisions in the House fiscal stimulus bill that meet the agreed-upon, bipartisan standards: A grant of rebates to those working Americans who did not receive them this summer, and accelerated depreciation for companies, businesses that buy and place in service new equipment in the coming year. Those are both good ideas. They are the beginning of the basis of an agreement. And they are both contained in the Senate Finance Committee's package that was reported out yesterday. This is not the time for serving old, stale, narrow party and ideological agendas. It is the time for unity, for leadership, for discipline, and for bipartisanship. I think the Senate Finance Committee has reported a bill that meets those standards. It is focused. It is disciplined. It is short term. It is a real stimulus. It will cost $75 billion over 10 years. It contains no permanent changes in law. It has minimal negative out-year impact on our budget. And, unlike the House Republican bill, it includes reasonable and effective assistance to those who are unemployed or are about to lose their health care benefits. In fact, half of the cost of the bill goes to temporarily extending and expanding unemployment insurance and a subsidy for COBRA health insurance premiums. That gives balance to the proposal. It gives heart to the proposal. And it will help to stimulate the economy because every additional dollar that goes to an unemployed worker will surely be spent. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been talking to workers who are unemployed and those who fear they will soon be unemployed. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for two additional minutes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Landrieu-Cochran amendment. Frankly, I do not see why any Member would vote against this amendment. It is the most progressive advance in reform in title I since the founding of this program in 1965. It is a program that is not working now. Every State gets more money under this program. Within every State, poor children, who were the focus of ESEA when it was created in 1965, will get more support for their education. I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Hospital Based Nursing Initiative Act, a bill that will create new and innovative incentives to lessen the impact of the critical shortage of nurses in our Nation's hospitals. I am very pleased that my respected colleague, Senator John Ensign, is joining as sponsor of this legislation/ Before I get into the specific about the bill, I'd like to talk about the overall condition of nursing in America for a moment. Several studies have been completed in the past year that show troubling trends developing in this historic profession. Take for example, the study that reflects a 41 percent dissatisfaction rate among nurses in America, higher than the dissatisfaction rate in most other countries throughout the world. Think about that for a moment, 4 out of 10 nurses in America are dissatisfied with their profession. Another study reveals that nearly one third of nurses under the age of 30 plan to leave the nursing profession within the next year. In addition, the average age of nurses in America is 45, with many nurses headed toward early retirement. We cannot afford to lose both the older and younger nurses at the same time. Further, while the number of people that are being hospitalized may continue to decrease, those people who are being admitted are sicker and need more intensive nursing care. Not a very rosy picture for patients who are sick. We need to ask will there be someone to provide care for them? The shortage of nurses has severely affected the health care industry. And hospitals have been hit the hardest since nearly 60 percent of nurses work in hospitals. Further, we know that when nurses have more autonomy, greater control and input into the decision making process, and better communication with physicians and hospital administration, they are more likely to experience greater job satisfaction and stay in their jobs longer. These very tenets make up the American Nurse Credentialing Center's ``Magnet'' accreditation process of nursing services at hospitals. As a result, Magnet hospitals lead the way in attracting and retaining nurses. Many hospitals have begun to take these steps already. But more must be done. There must be incentives for hospitals to revise their management principles to improve the quality of the work environment in the hospital, initiate aggressive retention programs for nurses currently working in the hospital setting, and create the types of programs that will increase personal and professional satisfaction for the nurses in their facilities. That is why I am introducing the Hospital Based Nursing Initiative Act of 2001. This bill will create innovative incentives for hospitals that have taken the first steps in developing aggressive retention techniques and develop a scholarship program for hospital-based nurses to return to school on full tuition scholarship to complete a nursing degree. The first component of this bill will create a competitive grant program that would provide funds to hospitals of up to $600,000 based on staffed bed size for nursing services to use to bolster their retention efforts and improve the work environment for the nursing staff in the hospital. These grants would be made available every two years on a competitive basis. Several major nursing and hospital organizations, such as the American Hospital Association, American Nurses Association, American College of Health Care Executives, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, the American Academy of Nursing, the Pennsylvania State Nurses Association and the American Federation of Hospitals have wholeheartedly endorsed this bill. I am pleased that legislation which incorporates a number of ideas in this bill is moving toward markup in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. I appreciate the cooperative spirit with which members of the committee have worked together on these ideas. The second part of my bill would allow nurses who work in hospitals to return to school on a full tuition scholarship in order to complete a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. This ``Bridge'' scholarship program targets the nearly 55 percent of the nursing workforce who hold an Associate's Degree in Nursing or Diploma in Nursing. Under the Bridge program, nurses will have up to three years to complete the Bachelor's degree. In turn, nurses who accept the scholarship must agree to work in the sponsoring hospitals for the same number of months that they receive scholarship funding. This program is a win-win situation: It provides ongoing advanced education for nurses who seek a higher level of training and we keep skilled nurses working in our hospitals. We have the opportunity to make a difference. With the bill that Senator Ensign and I are now introducing, we can take the necessary steps to thwart the nursing shortage and provide the critical incentives for hospitals to retain their nurses. We must do all we can to improve job satisfaction for nurses, provide them with opportunities for advanced education, and keep nurses on the job. The Hospital Based Nursing Initiative is the right bill at the right time. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and help ease the burden on hospitals and nurses in our hospitals. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. I further ask unanimous consent that letters supporting this legislation and its approach from each of the organizations I cited above likewise be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Hospital Based Nursing Initiative Act, a bill that will create new and innovative incentives to lessen the impact of the critical shortage of nurses in our Nation's hospitals. I am very pleased that my respected colleague, Senator John Ensign, is joining as sponsor of this legislation/ Before I get into the specific about the bill, I'd like to talk about the overall condition of nursing in America for a moment. Several studies have been completed in the past year that show troubling trends developing in this historic profession. Take for example, the study that reflects a 41 percent dissatisfaction rate among nurses in America, higher than the dissatisfaction rate in most other countries throughout the world. Think about that for a moment, 4 out of 10 nurses in America are dissatisfied with their profession. Another study reveals that nearly one third of nurses under the age of 30 plan to leave the nursing profession within the next year. In addition, the average age of nurses in America is 45, with many nurses headed toward early retirement. We cannot afford to lose both the older and younger nurses at the same time. Further, while the number of people that are being hospitalized may continue to decrease, those people who are being admitted are sicker and need more intensive nursing care. Not a very rosy picture for patients who are sick. We need to ask will there be someone to provide care for them? The shortage of nurses has severely affected the health care industry. And hospitals have been hit the hardest since nearly 60 percent of nurses work in hospitals. Further, we know that when nurses have more autonomy, greater control and input into the decision making process, and better communication with physicians and hospital administration, they are more likely to experience greater job satisfaction and stay in their jobs longer. These very tenets make up the American Nurse Credentialing Center's ``Magnet'' accreditation process of nursing services at hospitals. As a result, Magnet hospitals lead the way in attracting and retaining nurses. Many hospitals have begun to take these steps already. But more must be done. There must be incentives for hospitals to revise their management principles to improve the quality of the work environment in the hospital, initiate aggressive retention programs for nurses currently working in the hospital setting, and create the types of programs that will increase personal and professional satisfaction for the nurses in their facilities. That is why I am introducing the Hospital Based Nursing Initiative Act of 2001. This bill will create innovative incentives for hospitals that have taken the first steps in developing aggressive retention techniques and develop a scholarship program for hospital-based nurses to return to school on full tuition scholarship to complete a nursing degree. The first component of this bill will create a competitive grant program that would provide funds to hospitals of up to $600,000 based on staffed bed size for nursing services to use to bolster their retention efforts and improve the work environment for the nursing staff in the hospital. These grants would be made available every two years on a competitive basis. Several major nursing and hospital organizations, such as the American Hospital Association, American Nurses Association, American College of Health Care Executives, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, the American Academy of Nursing, the Pennsylvania State Nurses Association and the American Federation of Hospitals have wholeheartedly endorsed this bill. I am pleased that legislation which incorporates a number of ideas in this bill is moving toward markup in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. I appreciate the cooperative spirit with which members of the committee have worked together on these ideas. The second part of my bill would allow nurses who work in hospitals to return to school on a full tuition scholarship in order to complete a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. This ``Bridge'' scholarship program targets the nearly 55 percent of the nursing workforce who hold an Associate's Degree in Nursing or Diploma in Nursing. Under the Bridge program, nurses will have up to three years to complete the Bachelor's degree. In turn, nurses who accept the scholarship must agree to work in the sponsoring hospitals for the same number of months that they receive scholarship funding. This program is a win-win situation: It provides ongoing advanced education for nurses who seek a higher level of training and we keep skilled nurses working in our hospitals. We have the opportunity to make a difference. With the bill that Senator Ensign and I are now introducing, we can take the necessary steps to thwart the nursing shortage and provide the critical incentives for hospitals to retain their nurses. We must do all we can to improve job satisfaction for nurses, provide them with opportunities for advanced education, and keep nurses on the job. The Hospital Based Nursing Initiative is the right bill at the right time. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and help ease the burden on hospitals and nurses in our hospitals. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. I further ask unanimous consent that letters supporting this legislation and its approach from each of the organizations I cited above likewise be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, at the time of the vote on the Interior appropriations conference report on October 17, 2001, I was unable to vote because I was attending the funeral of Mrs. Margaret Ann Aitcheson, mother of Mrs. Tipper Gore. If I was present, I would have voted in favor of the conference report. I note that because that report passed by a vote of 95-3, my absence had no effect on the outcome of the vote.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senators Mikulski, Bond, Frist, and Domenici in introducing an innovative response to one of the greatest challenges to the growth of the Innovation Economy, America's widening talent gap. Our technological prowess is unequaled in the world today, which is why, despite our recent slowdown and the aftershocks of the September 11 attacks, we still have the strongest, most vibrant economy on the planet, and we obviously have no deficit of ingenuity and inventiveness. But our long-term competitive standing and economic security could well be at risk if we do not address a troubling trendline in our workforce, the mismatch between the demand and supply of workers with science and engineering training. The fact is, the number of jobs requiring significant technical skills is projected to grow by more than 50 percent in the United States over the next ten years. But outside of the life sciences, the number of degrees awarded in science and engineering has been flat or declining. This has helped fuel a well-chronicled shortage of qualified New Economy workers. We have tried to temporarily plug this human capital hole with a stopgap of foreign workers. But there is a broad consensus among high-tech leaders and policymakers that it would be a serious mistake to prolong this dependence and essentially put our GDP at the mercy of H1B's. That may sound like a bit of an overstatement to some. But the reality is that technological innovation is now widely understood to be the major driver of economic growth, not to mention a critical factor in our military superiority. And it is widely understood that we cannot expand our economy in the future if we don't take steps now to expand our domestic pool of brainpower, the next generation of people who will incubate and implement the next generation of ideas. Now, most answers to serious economic challenges flow from the private sector, which is where growth ultimately occurs. But there are things that the federal government can do to help, particularly when it comes to educating and training our workforce. We can provide leadership, focus, and not least of all resources, and that is the purpose of the bill we are introducing today. Our plan aims to fix a critical link in this ``tech talent'' gap, undergraduate education in science, math, engineering, and technology. It would create a new competitive grant program within the National Science Foundation that would encourage institutions of higher learning, from universities to community colleges, to increase the number of graduates in these disciplines. This is not another scholarship program, but a targeted, results- driven initiative that goes straight to the gatekeepers. We're not asking them to change their admissions policies, but, in effect, to design new ``e-missions'' policies. Come up with effective ideas, and we will provide the dollars to make them work. For example, institutions could propose to add or strengthen the interdisciplinary components of undergraduate science education. Or they could establish targeted support programs for women and minorities, who are 54 percent of our total workforce, but only 22 percent of scientists and engineers, to increase enrollment in these fields. Or they could partner with local technology companies to provide summer industry internships for ongoing research experience. The pilot program is authorized at $25 million for Fiscal Year 2002, but our bipartisan coalition hopes the level will rise over the next several years to approximately $200 million annually, based upon pilot program results. With that kind of seed money, we're optimistic thousands of promising new scientists and engineers will soon bloom. We realize that solving the undergraduate problem is not going to singlehandedly close our talent gap. We must also dramatically reform our K-12 public education system, through innovative initiatives such as Congressman Boehlert's math and science partnerships bill, and strengthen our national investment in R&D. But it is a vitally important piece of the productivity puzzle. For evidence of that, just look at the collection of letters of support we have received from industry, academia, and professional organizations, including letters from TechNet, a national network of CEOs and senior executives from the leading technology and biotechnology companies; the National Alliance of Business; and STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Paul Romer, a leading growth economist, whose pioneering research underscores the long-term talent crisis facing our Nation, and who helped us think through this bill. These industry, academic, and educational leaders recognize as do we, that in our knowledge-based economy, we must have people who know what they're doing, and that is why they have made this problem and our legislation a top priority. We are grateful for their knowledge and their support, and we look forward to working with them to better harvest the enormous potential of America's workforce. I ask unanimous consent that letters of support for the Tech Talent bill, from the following organizations and individuals, be printed in the Record: TechNet, Professor Paul Romer, National Alliance of Business, Semiconductor Industry Association, American Astronomical Society, K-12 Science, Mathematics, Engineering & Technology Coalition, General Electric, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the American Society for Engineering Education.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senators Mikulski, Bond, Frist, and Domenici in introducing an innovative response to one of the greatest challenges to the growth of the Innovation Economy, America's widening talent gap. Our technological prowess is unequaled in the world today, which is why, despite our recent slowdown and the aftershocks of the September 11 attacks, we still have the strongest, most vibrant economy on the planet, and we obviously have no deficit of ingenuity and inventiveness. But our long-term competitive standing and economic security could well be at risk if we do not address a troubling trendline in our workforce, the mismatch between the demand and supply of workers with science and engineering training. The fact is, the number of jobs requiring significant technical skills is projected to grow by more than 50 percent in the United States over the next ten years. But outside of the life sciences, the number of degrees awarded in science and engineering has been flat or declining. This has helped fuel a well-chronicled shortage of qualified New Economy workers. We have tried to temporarily plug this human capital hole with a stopgap of foreign workers. But there is a broad consensus among high-tech leaders and policymakers that it would be a serious mistake to prolong this dependence and essentially put our GDP at the mercy of H1B's. That may sound like a bit of an overstatement to some. But the reality is that technological innovation is now widely understood to be the major driver of economic growth, not to mention a critical factor in our military superiority. And it is widely understood that we cannot expand our economy in the future if we don't take steps now to expand our domestic pool of brainpower, the next generation of people who will incubate and implement the next generation of ideas. Now, most answers to serious economic challenges flow from the private sector, which is where growth ultimately occurs. But there are things that the federal government can do to help, particularly when it comes to educating and training our workforce. We can provide leadership, focus, and not least of all resources, and that is the purpose of the bill we are introducing today. Our plan aims to fix a critical link in this ``tech talent'' gap, undergraduate education in science, math, engineering, and technology. It would create a new competitive grant program within the National Science Foundation that would encourage institutions of higher learning, from universities to community colleges, to increase the number of graduates in these disciplines. This is not another scholarship program, but a targeted, results- driven initiative that goes straight to the gatekeepers. We're not asking them to change their admissions policies, but, in effect, to design new ``e-missions'' policies. Come up with effective ideas, and we will provide the dollars to make them work. For example, institutions could propose to add or strengthen the interdisciplinary components of undergraduate science education. Or they could establish targeted support programs for women and minorities, who are 54 percent of our total workforce, but only 22 percent of scientists and engineers, to increase enrollment in these fields. Or they could partner with local technology companies to provide summer industry internships for ongoing research experience. The pilot program is authorized at $25 million for Fiscal Year 2002, but our bipartisan coalition hopes the level will rise over the next several years to approximately $200 million annually, based upon pilot program results. With that kind of seed money, we're optimistic thousands of promising new scientists and engineers will soon bloom. We realize that solving the undergraduate problem is not going to singlehandedly close our talent gap. We must also dramatically reform our K-12 public education system, through innovative initiatives such as Congressman Boehlert's math and science partnerships bill, and strengthen our national investment in R&D. But it is a vitally important piece of the productivity puzzle. For evidence of that, just look at the collection of letters of support we have received from industry, academia, and professional organizations, including letters from TechNet, a national network of CEOs and senior executives from the leading technology and biotechnology companies; the National Alliance of Business; and STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Paul Romer, a leading growth economist, whose pioneering research underscores the long-term talent crisis facing our Nation, and who helped us think through this bill. These industry, academic, and educational leaders recognize as do we, that in our knowledge-based economy, we must have people who know what they're doing, and that is why they have made this problem and our legislation a top priority. We are grateful for their knowledge and their support, and we look forward to working with them to better harvest the enormous potential of America's workforce. I ask unanimous consent that letters of support for the Tech Talent bill, from the following organizations and individuals, be printed in the Record: TechNet, Professor Paul Romer, National Alliance of Business, Semiconductor Industry Association, American Astronomical Society, K-12 Science, Mathematics, Engineering & Technology Coalition, General Electric, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the American Society for Engineering Education.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, today, Senator Specter and I are introducing legislation to create a Department of National Homeland Security. One month ago, America suffered devastating attacks at the hands of terrorists with whom we are now at war. Our Nation has struggled to adjust to the realization that our citizens are vulnerable to hostile acts on the part of adversaries whose methods are as fanatical as their goals. The legislation we are introducing is intended to provide Americans with the assurance they need to return to their daily routines without fear of further attack, and so confound the terrorists, whose aim was to disrupt our lives and break our spirit. Shortly after the attacks, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to explore how government could better organize itself to defend against such threats. Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co-chairs of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, offered compelling testimony in favor of creating a homeland security agency. The legislation we are introducing today is based largely on the Commission's recommendation. It will create a cabinet-level Department of National Homeland Security. This Department would bring the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, and certain offices responsible for critical infrastructure protection under a single administrative umbrella. The Department will be headed by a Secretary, who will be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and who will be a statutory member of the National Security Council. The Secretary will be accountable to the Congress and the American people. Like other cabinet members, the Secretary for Homeland Security would enjoy executive control over personnel and programs, and have all-important budget authority over his department's spending priorities. The Secretary for Homeland Security would have the rank and power to ensure that the security of our homeland remains high on our national agenda, and that all necessary resources are made available toward that end. The new Department would be organized into three functional directorates that would be responsible for ``3 Ps": prevention, protection, and preparation for response. The Coast Guard, Customs Service, and Border Patrol would comprise the ``prevention'' directorate, responsible for securing our borders and making sure that potentially harmful persons or materials never make it onto American soil. Each of these organizations is now on the front line of our nation's efforts to prevent future acts of terrorism; however, they are not working together as well as they should, a problem exacerbated by the fact that homeland security is not among their parent agencies' primary missions. They require additional resources, but they also need to be under a single Secretary, who can direct their efforts jointly to fulfill a shared homeland defense mission. The Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office and the Information Infrastructure Protection Institute, both of the Commerce Department, and the National Infrastructure Protection Center, now located in the FBI, would serve as the nucleus of the ``protection'' directorate, with the difficult task of working to help safeguard our transportation networks, power grids, water supply, cybersystems and other essential systems from attacks or other threats. These offices share essentially the same mission, and it makes sense that they are placed under a single Department and Secretary, so that they operate in unison. Finally, FEMA and the FBI's National Domestic Preparedness Office would form the core of the ``preparation'' directorate, which would conduct the planning and mitigation measures necessary to prepare for disasters as well as to operate the crisis and recovery response machinery when emergencies do occur. Importantly, by building this directorate around FEMA, we will ensure that much of the Homeland Defense Department's organizational infrastructure will be focused towards working effectively with State and local governments, which are clearly key players in homeland defense. In short, this legislation is meant to structure homeland defense in a way that makes sense operationally, but also in terms of maximizing funding priorities, interagency cooperation, and bureaucratic clout. In proposing this legislation, we know well that there are other ideas and proposals under consideration, and we look forward to working with our House and Senate colleagues, as well as the President, to arrive at what is best for the American people. The President has appointed Governor Tom Ridge to head a the new Office of Homeland Security in the White House, to coordinate strategy across the 40-plus government agencies that now have important roles to play in the fight against terrorism. This is clearly a critical function. I absolutely agree that there must be better coordination across the agencies, including intelligence and law-enforcement functions, which are central to preventing acts of terror at home. My fear is that it is not enough to improve coordination and cooperation across the existing array of federal agencies and programs. I am convinced that protecting our homeland requires nothing less than the establishment of a robust, cabinet-level Department, and led by a Secretary who has executive control over key agencies, full authority over his organization's budget, the ability to deploy personnel and resources, and the capacity to make and implement decisions immediately. I am proud to have Senator Specter as a principal cosponsor of this legislation. I am pleased to note that similar legislation has been offered in the House by Rep. Mac Thornberry, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, and others, who deserve our thanks for drafting this legislation well before the events of September 11, 2001. We look forward to working with them and other interested Members of Congress, as well as the Administration, to ensure that our government is effectively organized to defend the American people at home. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to support the Carnahan amendment. All of America was shaken by the horrendous events of September 11. America's heart still aches for the thousands of people who lost their lives and whose lives have been altered permanently in one way or another. And now, as we watch America valiantly begin to recover, we are just starting to realize the economic impact of this terrible tragedy. As we are all too well aware, people are losing their jobs and futures are at risk. I cannot imagine living through the tremendous stress of the past several weeks only to be told that I have now lost my job or I am being laid off because my company cannot afford to keep running at full speed. Unfortunately, the numbers of layoffs are increasing and the unemployment rate is trending upward. One of the industries hardest hit by the economic downturn is the airline industry. In the short span of just a few weeks, hundreds of thousands of workers at airlines, airports, aircraft manufacturers and at the companies that supply the airlines, have lost their jobs. Workers from commonly known companies like Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, American and United Airlines, to name but a few, are losing their jobs and being laid off, their futures are less than certain. The effects have been devastating. Hundreds of thousands of men and women who support the airline industry are losing their family's primary source of income and health insurance. But we can help. We can lend a helping hand to the thousands of displaced workers at these companies. We can restore their hope. We can make a difference. That is why I support and I ask my colleagues to support Senator Carnahan's displaced worker relief amendment. This amendment would provide income support, job training and health care benefits for those airline industry workers affected by the aftermath of the events of September 11. It would extend State unemployment benefits to provide income, establish job re-training or job upgrade benefits to those who permanently lose their jobs in the airline industry, and provide critical health care coverage for the workers and their families. These initiatives will go a long way to restore the economic security of airline industry workers and their families. No one expected the events of September 11, and no one envisioned these terrible events would have such devastating repercussions in our country's most critical transportation industry. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and help airline industry workers get back on their feet and back to work.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senator Durbin to offer an amendment to S. 1447, the Aviation Security Act, to improve airport and aircraft safety through heightened screening of passengers, carry-on luggage, checked baggage, and those entering secure areas of airports. The overriding purpose of my amendment is to put our superior technological knowledge to better, more accurate, more widespread, and, therefore, more effective use. In the wake of the horrific attacks of September 11, the Nation's confidence in the safety of our skies has been deeply shaken. Apart from the thousands of lives lost, public trust in airport security has suffered a severe blow, which in turn has had a devastating impact on the fortunes of the airline sector as well as the general economy. Three weeks ago, Congress approved a $15 billion bailout plan for the airline industry, which we all hope will keep the nation's carriers financially and operationally viable for at least the immediate future. Ultimately, however, the long-term recovery of air commerce will require nothing less than developing ironclad confidence in the safety of our airports and air carriers. My amendment and the bill now under discussion are first steps toward achieving that goal. On September 25, the Governmental Affairs Committee, which I chair, held a joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, chaired by Senator Durbin, to explore the adequacy of airline and airport screening. Witnesses from the airline industry, the aviation security industry, major airports, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation Inspector General's Office, and the General Accounting Office provided sobering testimony on shortcomings in our current airport security system. The amendment I am offering today is derived in large part from the expert advice and recommendations the Committee received at the hearing. The amendment has three general aims: First, to expand the use of current security technologies and procedures; second, to improve upon and upgrade those existing technologies and procedures; and, third, to fund development of newer, better, and more cost-effective technologies and procedures. The very first step that must be taken in order to accomplish these ends must be to ensure that those working in and around airports are beyond reproach, because the best technologies and procedures are, frankly, useless if the people employing them cannot be trusted. My amendment, therefore, would require completion of intensive background checks on all airport personnel who have access to secure areas at commercial airports. This includes FBI criminal checks for all workers, not just for new hires but for current employees as well. Next, the amendment would require the Federal Aviation Administration to expand the use of bulk explosive detection technology already being deployed at most major airports. We would require the technology to be used more precisely, more cost effectively, and more often than is currently the case. To ensure that every link in the chain of security is strong, the FAA would also be asked to establish goals for the purchase of additional detection machines for certain mid-sized airports. Carriers would be required to increase the number of checked bags that are positively matched with a boarded passenger, until airports are scanning 100 percent of checked baggage with explosive detection technology. The purpose here is to prevent a situation in which a terrorist loads explosives onto a plane in his baggage, without actually boarding the plane himself. The measure would require carriers to build upon the Computer- Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, (CAPPS), which now uses a range of criteria to identify passengers who may present a threat. The way it works now, baggage checked by selected passengers is subjected to scanning for possible explosives. Under this amendment I am offering, passengers identified under this system would be subject to additional security checks of their persons and their carry-on luggage, whether or not they had checked baggage. Additionally, to improve and upgrade existing procedures, the amendment focuses on the ease with which people may obtain unauthorized access to restricted areas within airports. This is a widespread and potentially lethal problem that can be easily remedied. In 1998 and 1999, undercover investigators working for the Department of Transportation Inspector General's office were able to access secure areas in airports a whopping 68 percent of the time. Once the investigators entered the secure areas, they were able to board aircraft in 117 cases, an astonishing number. The amendment calls on the Department of Transportation to recommend ways to prevent unauthorized access to restricted areas--for example, by employing so-called biometrics systems, systems that employ retinal, facial, and hand identification technologies or similar scanning methods, that are currently in use at several U.S. airports; or by increasing surveillance at access points; upgrading card- or keypad- based access systems; improving airport emergency exit systems; and eliminating the practice commonly referred to as ``piggy-backing,'' where an unauthorized person follows an authorized person through a security access point. Further, the amendment calls for better coordinating the distribution of information about passengers on law enforcement ``watch lists.'' And, it requests a review of options for improving the positive identification of passengers, through biometrics and smart cards. Finally, the amendment would set aside $50 million for researching and developing new technologies to improve aviation safety in the future; and, $20 million for research and development of longer-term security improvements, including further advances in biometrics, advanced weapons detection, and improved systems for the sharing of information among law enforcement entities. I believe that these provisions together represent a substantial improvement on the present state of passenger and baggage screening and other elements of the aviation security system. In conjunction with the larger changes contemplated in the underlying bill, I am confident that the measures I call for in this amendment will take us along the path toward real and measurable safety and security for our airways. Like all Americans, I look forward to the day when each of us can once again enter an airport, and board an airplane, knowing that terror has been banished from our skies. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.