Barbara Mikulski

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire, along with her colleague, the senior Senator, Mr. Gregg, for offering this amendment. It does make sure that service programs in the Education Corps are also allowed to incorporate art and music. We in the committee on both sides of the aisle support this. We support it both for content reasons and process reasons. In the area of process, what the Shaheen-Gregg amendment does is actually incorporate art and music as eligible for funding, as do our colleagues in the House. So it puts it in symmetry with the House. This is what we like. It is when we are out of symmetry with the House that we do not like it. This makes it a high note for art and music. Second, we know that for many of our boys and girls, the involvement in art and/or music can have a profound impact on, No. 1, school attendance--they really want to come to school to follow their passion; No. 2, it also seems to have a particularly positive effect in the area of behavior for special education children. Special education children seem to have a real affinity in engaging in music and art activity and often by the enrollment in those activities. What we see in our public schools is that art and music programs have been the first on the budget block when it comes to the reduction of funds. Having talented young people come in with this kind of approach can really help school attendance, help with behavior problems in schools, and also unlock a talent in a child. If a child grows up, as I see in Baltimore in that show called ``The Wire''--where neighborhoods that are so drug saturated that there is constant police activity, and the informants become the wire--the children of those communities are so terribly disadvantaged. The teachers work under such Spartan circumstances that AmeriCorps being able to come in could change lives--could actually change lives. The Shaheen-Gregg amendment is an excellent concept to add to our Education Corps. We, under normal circumstances, would accept it, but we understand a vote will be required. But when they call my name, I am going to be in the ``aye'' column. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from Oregon. I understand it is his very first speech he has given on the Senate floor; is that correct?

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I call up my amendment which is at the desk.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all postcloture time be yielded back, the motion to proceed be agreed to, and that after the bill is reported, I, Senator Mikulski, be recognized to call up the substitute amendment.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from Montana on his amendment. I understand his amendment is also a bipartisan amendment; is that correct?

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Absolutely. The Senator will get a determination on his amendment. I give him my word. Is that agreeable?

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, first of all, I say to the Senator from Nebraska, I wish to thank him for his compassion. This side of the aisle, and I know the other cosponsors of the Serve America Act, are very much interested in working with him to accomplish the goal he so eloquently stated in his very compassionate statement. I would ask respectfully if we could--before I make a request--lay the amendment aside, and the staff on both sides of the aisle would like to work with the Senator to achieve these objectives. We want to be sure we don't inadvertently negatively impact either senior programs or some other programs for the disabled. Would the Senator be agreeable to that?

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I rise to pay tribute to the spouse of one of our colleagues. The entire Senate has now been notified that Mrs. Christine Sarbanes, the beloved wife of Senator Sarbanes, has passed away. I come to the floor with a heavy heart and with fond memories of, indeed, a remarkable person. Christine Sarbanes was quite a woman in her own right. She was a woman of keen intellect, warm heart, and a compassion for the underdog. She was a woman who was a force in her own very quiet, understated way. If you really liked and admired Paul Sarbanes, which all of Maryland did, you also really loved Christine Sarbanes. Senator Sarbanes often joked that whenever he would come to an event, they would say: Where is Chris? Or they would say: Where is Christine? She often represented him in and around our State. She had a unique way of talking that brought immeasurable commonsense and practicality but yet a connection to people and their day-to-day needs. Theirs was a remarkable relationship that I had the good fortune of observing. I have known the Sarbanes family for more than 30 years. I met the young Paul Sarbanes, a spirited reformer, in Baltimore during the 1960s. Baltimore was dominated by political bosses. There were those of us who were bringing a new day, change that one could believe in. We reformers were running for local offices and challenging the machine. The local press nicknamed us the ``shiny brights'' because we saw ourselves as a new force. Paul Sarbanes was the first to beat the machine, running for the House of Delegates and then for Congress. When he ran for the Senate, I filled the House seat held by Senator Sarbanes. It was the remarkable third congressional seat. That seat was held by Paul Sarbanes, then by me, then by Ben Cardin, and now by John Sarbanes. One of the joys of Christine's life was to see John take the oath of office and to take the seat in the House of Representatives that his father held. This was a remarkable couple, as you saw them doing good and having a strong presence in our community. They were really made for each other. These were people who really believed in the life of the intellect, but the life of the intellect lived in the community. They met at Oxford. Christine, like Paul, shared a very modest background. Her dad was an electrician; her mother was a waitress. She was a scholarship girl, as they said in those days, to some of the private schools in England that then took her to a scholarship at Oxford where she won both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. The Baltimore Sun has a wonderful article about Mrs. Sarbanes, which I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record.

Ms. MIKULSKI. It tells the story. Senator Sarbanes has told this story as well. He went to a meeting of the American Association, where he met a young British woman who was interested in getting women in the Oxford debating union. Women were excluded from the Oxford debating union. He saw Christine. He saw her charm, her charisma, her passion, her advocacy for women when it was just coming to the fore. Suddenly, Paul Sarbanes became an impassioned supporter of getting women in the Oxford Union. He was an equally unabashed supporter of getting women in the Senate, which helped me become the first Democratic woman here. That was the Sarbaneses. They met there. They met on a cause. The cause began their love for each other and their love of this country and the love of making this country a better place. We all know Senator Sarbanes's remarkable career in the Senate, a man we all admired for his honesty, his integrity, his honor, and his ability to get the job done. Maryland loved him by reelecting him on several occasions, often being the highest vote getter. Christine came back and helped Paul with his career. She also continued her work in our community. Mrs. Sarbanes was a gifted teacher, a spirited volunteer, and a civic leader, while she was raising a family of four remarkable children: three young men and a wonderful young woman who has a doctorate in literature and is in California. She also was an avid civic volunteer. Her great passion was books. She believed books would change lives. Books changed her life. They helped her win a scholarship, they got her to Oxford, and this would continue. For her, the world of books was so important, one of her advocacy areas was libraries. If you ever wanted to meet someone who believed in the power and the empowerment of libraries, it was Christine Sarbanes because she believed ideas belong to everybody. Books should be available to everybody. There should be a public institution that no matter who you are, no matter what your economic background, no matter what Zip Code you were born in, you could have access to the great books of our world. That is why she devoted herself to that and was on the board of the Enoch Pratt Library. She did a fantastic job there. In fact, her memorial service will be held at the Enoch Pratt Library in a few days. In her work, she also was a teacher. She taught at Goucher College. She taught at one of the more prominent prep schools, and she taught the classics. But in teaching the classics, we should all note that Mrs. Sarbanes was, indeed, a very classy lady. When we think about her, we will always remember her, again, for being able to light up a room while she worked so hard to light up the lives of others. She will be greatly missed by all of us. As all of you know, Senator Sarbanes and I shared a very special relationship in the Senate, but that relationship was also shared in the Maryland community with Mrs. Sarbanes. Mrs. Sarbanes was there for everybody, and everybody in Maryland mourns for her.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 24, 2009 at 2:30 p.m.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Addressing Insurance Market Reform in Health Care Reform'' on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. The hearing will commence at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at 2:30 p.m.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled Alleviating Global Hunger: Challenges and Opportunities for U.S. Leadership.''

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 10:30 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to hold a hearing entitled, ``Three Mile Island--Looking Back on Thirty Years of Lessons Learned.''

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Abusive Credit Card Practices and Bankruptcy?'' on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at 2:30 p.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, first of all, I rise to thank my colleague from Utah for his excellent statement. I think he outlines exactly where we are in terms of both the content of the bill and the way we have approached this bill. It is my belief, as is the belief of Senator Kennedy, that we govern best when we govern together. That is exactly what the Serve America Act exemplifies. The architects of this legislation are Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch, bringing to bear their own passion on Americans being able to give back to our society. Yet, with 16 years of lessons learned on the running of the Corporation for National Service, we have learned a lot. So this bill, as originally introduced, had not only good ideas and good intentions, but came from lessons learned on how to better focus our efforts, get more of a dollar's worth out of our efforts, and, at the same time, be able to harvest this growing desire of people to serve. This year, there are far more people who are applying for national service opportunities than at any other time in our history. Senator Hatch has also outlined the very important parameters we have set in the bill: no money will be going to participants to engage in partisan activities, no money going to participants that cannot demonstrate they are providing viable services and meeting the very clear requirements of AmeriCorps. There are other issues both Senators Hatch and Enzi have worked so constructively on to bring to our attention--great yellow flashing lights around these issues--and we heard them. We not only heard their concerns, I want to thank them because they brought not only concerns to the table but very sound solutions. So I want to thank them for that. I think on our side of the aisle, we have looked at AmeriCorps, we have looked at what President Obama is calling for, along with Senator Kennedy, and the wonderful contributions of Senator Dodd, and want to expand this program. But we realize there is a limit. There is a limit to the money we can spend, and there is a limit to our organizational capacity on what we can undertake. So on our side there was an attempt to find that sensible center to be able to focus exactly on what we want to do in certain basic corps, and, at the same time, to merely make sure, increase the number of people volunteering. We have taken a look at the education voucher award. It has been frozen for 16 years. We made a modest increase, and our index will be to peg it to the Pell grants. This seems to be a sensible solution. There were those on my side of the aisle who wanted to double or even triple the education award. If we looked at inflation over 16 years, I would have been in that category. Well, in the spirit of compromise and consensus, we all sometimes have to not make the perfect the enemy of the really excellent. Therefore, in 2010, we will raise the education award to $5,350--a $500 increase. That would be less than $50 a year over the last 16 years. So we trimmed what the education award would be. We looked at how we wanted to triple the number of volunteers. We knew it couldn't be done in a day or a year, so instead, we phase it in over a 7-year period. Again, it was taking what we wanted to do, but organizing it at a pace we knew the taxpayers could afford, and so the corporation could develop the capacity to be able to expand the programs in a sound way. Then there comes the stewardship idea, which is, how do we make sure we build in certain reporting that really would ensure we were getting a dollar's worth of service for a dollar's worth of taxes? Senator Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking member of the committee, once again brought his very sound accounting skills to the table, and we came up with a way to, again, ensure value for the taxpayer, value for the community, and do it in a way that does not create a lot of micro-processes. We have put a lot of work into this bill. We don't want to lose sight of the fact that this legislation is to intended to really tap into the idealism of our young people. Idealism doesn't know gender, it doesn't know religion, it doesn't come from a ZIP Code. I believe it is really in the hearts of people everywhere in the world. It is a unique American characteristic to want to help your neighbor. Some people call it the Golden Rule--``Do unto others as you would have them do unto you''--but this is more. This is really saying: I want to take my life my talent, and put it to work in the community and make the community a better place. That is the original purpose of this bill. Yesterday, I don't know how my colleagues felt, but, gosh, I was buoyed when Senator Kennedy came on the floor, when he walked in that door with his jaunty cane and his good humor. The cheer that he brought to this body--it was very edifying, very inspirational, very energizing. Senator Kennedy brings his own unique energy to this. I have been talking to him about this bill. He is so pleased that the Senate is taking it up. He has been working with us as we have talked back and forth about improvements and so on. I know how strongly he feels about it. If he were on the floor himself today, he would be encouraging us. He would be motivating us. He would be inspiring us to pass this legislation so that we can engage a new generation of young Americans in national service, while at the same time, welcoming the large-scale participation of all generations to address national needs because, again, the desire to serve isn't based on age. It is not only young people who feel it. We all do. Communities across our country face challenges too numerous to count. If Senator Kennedy were on the floor, he would be reminding us about rising unemployment, particularly among young people, rising poverty, and falling home prices. At the same time, all of us are aware of the fiscal challenges many States and schools and communities are facing, which means they have to cut back on services just when families and children need them the most. Some of my colleagues believe we can't afford this legislation at a time when our debt is growing and our economy is struggling, but I say we can't afford not to pass this legislation. This bill offers innovative solutions to those challenges by asking more Americans to give their time to serve their country and their community. It answers the economic challenges of communities and families and what they are facing today. It is a carefully developed and focused solution. We have learned a lot in the past 16 years since we passed the original legislation about what works and what doesn't work. Senator Hatch spoke eloquently about it a few minutes ago. This bill draws on those lessons and actually puts them to work. We have learned that service can make a big difference in addressing specific challenges and that service opportunities early in life can put young people on the path of lifetime service. We have seen that older Americans want to serve their communities with skills and experience and that social entrepreneurs in the private sector are coming up with very innovative ways to tackle the challenges we face in a way that is affordable. This bill focuses national service programs where service can do the most good. I will repeat that. AmeriCorps, and these new programs with focused approaches, will focus service programs on where service can do the most good. In other words, following a Marine Corps adage, we are saying to the AmeriCorps volunteers: Be best at what you are best at, and be best at what you are most needed for. Be best at what you are best at, and be best at what you are most needed for. That is why we are talking about an education corps. That is why we are talking about a health futures corps, a clean energy corps, a veterans corps, an opportunity corps focusing on poverty. This is why we are focusing our service efforts. Social entrepreneurs such as those who started City Year and Experience Corps are the ones who are teaching us many of these lessons. When City Year began, it was about giving a year of service by a young person to do good in the community. That was the aegis of AmeriCorps. Back then, City Year took on all kinds of programs, but as City Year has matured, they found it is better to focus. City Year focuses primarily on tackling one of our greatest national challenges--the dropout crisis in high schools. In Baltimore City, my hometown, only one in three students who starts high school actually graduates. This is a travesty mirrored in inner cities and rural areas throughout our country. City Year focuses on how to deal with that dropout rate. Let's talk about Experience Corps. Experience Corps takes older adults and uses them as AmeriCorps volunteers. What they found is Experience Corps works best by working in schools. They are taking adults with years of experience and putting their skills to work, and it is making a difference. I have seen Experience Corps work in my own hometown of Baltimore in a school called Barclay Elementary School that has had its ups and its downs and its sideways. It has had talented teachers, often a good principal, and yet they needed help. In that surrounding community, within the shadow of Johns Hopkins University, Experience Corps works, and in many ways it has helped and assisted with volunteers and others coming from Hopkins. With that blend of volunteers, Barclay Elementary School has improved. When I asked the CEO of Experience Corps--because the people in this age group can do a variety of things--why education, he told me that's what Experience Corps could do best, where it was most needed. We have learned from programs like this, which is why AmeriCorps will now focus on these very specific core programs. We also found that this bill will, of course, encourages service learning opportunities for students, because students want to give as well. Working with Senator Dodd, who has been such a leader on these issues, we now have Summer of Service opportunities for middle and high school students. These young people want to do it. College is where so much of our young people's character and experiences are shaped. This bill recognizes that, going the extra mile by allowing the designation of 25 campuses of service which will undertake activities to help students engage in service that will actually encourage people to go on to public service careers. This legislation also creates Encore Fellows to help adults transition to longer term public service with a nonprofit organization. These adults are volunteering by choice. They have knowledge and experience, and we just need to get them in the door. This is a way to bring in people who have retired and who have incredible skills, such as that retired accountant who can help a nonprofit get its books together and maybe find new grant opportunities. Finally, it is to help older Americans get more involved through Senior Corps, RSVP, Senior Companions, and Foster Grandparents. These are excellent programs. In this bill, we have taken innovation, creativity and lessons learned and come up with a new framework of service. Right now, our country faces an incredible economic challenge. We see it in homes, families, factories, farms, and communities all over America. But as you look out, you don't see faces of despair. People believe in this country, and children and grandparents know and even believe, also, in great possibilities. So while we are facing these great challenges, we have a great opportunity. This is not the ``me generation'' of a decade ago; it is the ``we generation.'' I think this bill will help us be ``we, the people'' who serve each other. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. President, I rise today to introduce two important social work bills; the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act and the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2009. I am proud to sponsor these pieces of legislation that will improve the shortage of social workers and properly reimburse social workers for the services they provide. Social workers play a critical role combating the social problems facing our nation and are an integral part of our healthcare system. As we move into an era of unprecedented healthcare and social service needs, we must have the workforce in place to make sure that our returning soldiers have access to mental health services, our elderly maintain their independence in the communities they live in, and abused children are placed in safe homes. Social workers support physical, psychological and social needs. They provide mental health therapy, caregiver and family counseling, health education, program coordination, and case management. In these tough economic times social workers play a more important role than ever to keep communities together and help individuals and families cope with the new stresses they are facing. The Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act reinvests in social workers by providing grants to social workers, reviewing the current social workforce challenges, and determining how this shortage will affect the communities social workers serve. I am honored to introduce this bill named after two social visionaries, Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young. Dorothy Height, a pioneer of the civil rights movement, like me began her career as a case worker and continued to fight for social justice. I am particularly honored to introduce this bill today, on Dorothy Height's birthday. Whitney Young, another trailblazer of the civil rights movement, also began his career transforming our social landscape as a social worker. He helped create President Johnson's War on Poverty and has served as President of the National Association of Social Workers. This bill is about reinvesting in social work. It provides grants that invest in social work education, research, and training. These grants will fund community based programs of excellence and provide scholarships to train the next generation of social workers. The bill also addresses how to recruit and retain new social workers, research the impact of social services, and foster ways to improve social workplace safety. This bill establishes a national coordination center that will allow social work education, advocacy and research institutions to collaborate and work together. It will facilitate gathering and distributing social work research to make the most effective use of the information we have on how social work service can improve our social fabric. This bill also gives social work the attention it deserves. It creates a media campaign that will promote social work, and recognizes March as Social Work Awareness Month. Today 30,000 social workers specialize in gerontology, but we will need 70,000 of these social workers by 2010. I want to make sure that when the aging tsunami hits us, we have the workforce in place to care for our aging family members, the Alzheimer patients, and the disabled. The Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2009 ensures that clinical social workers receive Medicare reimbursements for the mental health services they provide in skilled nursing facilities. Under the current system, social workers are not paid for the services they provide. Psychologists and psychiatrists, who provide similar counseling, are able to separately bill Medicare for their services. Since my first days in Congress, I have been fighting to protect and strengthen the safety of our nation's seniors. Making sure that seniors have access to quality, affordable mental health care is an important part of this fight. I know that millions of seniors do not have access to, or are not receiving, the mental health services they urgently need. Nearly 6 million seniors are affected by depression, but only one-tenth ever receive treatment. According to the American Psychiatric Association, up to 25 percent of the elderly population in the United States suffers from significant symptoms of mental illness and among nursing home residents the prevalence is as high as 80 percent. These mental disorders, which include severe depression and debilitating anxiety, interfere with the person's ability to carry out activities of daily living and adversely affect their quality of life. Furthermore, older people have a 20 percent suicide rate, the highest of any age group. Every year nearly 6,000 older Americans kill themselves. This is unacceptable and must be addressed. This bill protects patients across the country and ensures that seniors living in underserved urban and rural areas, where clinical social workers are often the only available option for mental health care, continue to receive the treatment they need. Clinical social workers, much like psychologists and psychiatrists, treat and diagnose mental illnesses. In fact, clinical social workers are the primary mental health providers for nursing home residents and seniors residing in rural environments. Unlike other mental health providers, clinical social workers cannot bill Medicare directly for the important services they provide to their patients. Protecting seniors' access to clinical social workers ensures that our most vulnerable citizens get the quality, affordable mental health care they need. This bill will correct this inequity and make sure clinical social workers get the payments and respect they deserve. Before the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, clinical social workers billed Medicare Part B directly for mental health services they provided in nursing facilities for each patient they served. Under the Prospective Payment System, services provided by clinical social workers are lumped, or ``bundled,'' along with the services of other health care providers for the purposes of billing and payments. Psychologists and psychiatrists, who provide similar counseling, were exempted from this system and continue to bill Medicare directly. This bill would exempt clinical social workers, like their mental health colleagues, from the Prospective Payment System, and would make sure that clinical social workers are paid for the services they provide to patients in skilled nursing facilities. This bill is about more than paperwork and payment procedures. This bill is about equal access to Medicare payments for the equal and important work done by clinical social workers. It is about making sure our nation's most vulnerable citizens have access to quality, affordable mental health care. The overarching goal we should be striving to achieve for our seniors is an overall improved quality of life. Without clinical social workers, many nursing home residents may never get the counseling they need when faced with a life-threatening illness or the loss of a loved one. I think we can do better by our nation's seniors. I am fighting to make sure we do. As a social worker, I have been on the frontlines of helping people cope with issues in their everyday lives. I started off fighting for abused children, making sure they were placed in safe homes. Today I am a social worker with power. I am proud to continue to fight every day for the long range needs of the nation on the floor of the U.S. Senate and as Chairwoman of the Aging Subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2009 and the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act is strongly supported by the National Association of Social Workers. I also want to thank Senator Stabenow and Senator Murray for their cosponsorship of the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2009. I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact these two important pieces of legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.