Barbara Mikulski

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment also has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3318

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask unanimous consent the amendment be modified with the modification at the desk.

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

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, this amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3263

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3263 by Senator Pryor of Arkansas and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3247

Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask that I be added as a cosponsor of the amendment.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3247 by Senator McCaskill of Missouri and ask for its immediate consideration.

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, they speak more eloquently about it than I have been able to. I felt badly about what happened to the Frost family. I hope we can focus on dealing with the Children's Health Initiative. It is for protecting all of the children. Today I stand up here for the Frost family. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to say to my colleague from New Mexico that we agree with him on the amendment. Certainly there are challenges facing the West. We see the scourge of meth, and that is one of the largest areas of requests we have for congressionally designated projects. I know my colleague wants them to be eligible for grants and to compete for them, and so we support the intent. Right now, there is an objection from two Senators, and we also understand that the Senator from Arizona would like to have further conversations with my colleague about the possibility of a modification. If you could have that conversation and see if we can come back, we could either move to a vote or see if it could be accepted.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3273

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I now call up amendment No. 3273 by Senator Shelby and ask for its immediate consideration.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, to bring our colleagues up to date, we are working on the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations. Senator Shelby and I are working to clear amendments now. All amendments have been filed. We have 60 of them, but we hope some can be cleared. For those Senators who wish to have a vote on their amendment, I wish they would consider offering the amendment and debating it this evening. I certainly will be willing to stay for that. While we are working on clearing these amendments, I rise to stand up for my constituents, to stand up for a family in Baltimore who has been vilified by the rightwing bloggers because they dare to say that they benefited from and support a public program called the Children's Health Initiative. I don't know what is happening in America now, where instead of working to change policies, the right wing tries to change the subject, and they do it by attacking people rather than attacking the problem-- the problem of poverty, the problem that our children don't have health care, the problem that one of my constituents, a little boy named Deamante Driver, died in Prince George's County because he didn't have access to dental care and had a severe oral bacterial infection. My colleague Senator Cardin has taken up the cudgels on that issue, and I support him. It is our Children's Health Initiative, and I will help to override the veto. Let me tell my colleagues what happened. I am taking up for a family named Bonnie and Halsey Frost who live in Baltimore. A few weeks ago they stood here in the Congress to say that they benefitted from the SCHIP program. They told the story about how two of their children had been in a horrific accident. Graeme, the boy who gave the Democratic radio address, spoke about what he needed. He had a brain injury. He was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital. So was his little sister. Graeme was in a coma for weeks. One of his vocal cords was paralyzed. One of his eyes continues to be damaged. Gemma, his little sister, has suffered permanent injuries, which I will not go through. The families had their business spread all over the right wing blogs. I will not spread it all over the Senate floor. But I want to take up for them, for the fact that when they stood up to talk about how they benefitted from this program, they were attacked because they weren't seen as worthy. The Frosts have four children: Graeme, who is 12; Max, Graeme's twin, who saw the accident; Gemma, who also was in the accident; and an older brother named Zeke. Bonnie and her children were in a car crash in 2004 when the SUV she was driving had an accident. The children had these terrible problems. Who is the Frost family? Well, the Frost family is a family of six. They live in Baltimore and they qualify under the Maryland SCHIP program, which says that if you have a family of this size and an income under $51,000 a year, you qualify. They qualified. What happened? Through other friends of theirs who were involved with health advocacy in the State, they were invited to come and tell their story to show why there is a compelling need for the Children's Health Initiative. Well, they did it. Then guess what happened. After young Graeme, who, along with his sister, had this terrible thing happen to them--after they then spoke up and Graeme gave the Democratic radio address, what followed was unbelievable. It was a firestorm against them that went across the right wing bloggers. It was vitriolic, volcanic, ugly, nasty, shredding their names and reputations. You ought to talk to them about what they went through. They could not believe they were in the United States of America. One of the right wingers showed up in the area where he has his business to do on-the-spot investigative reporting. I wish we were as good at keeping our borders safe as we are at keeping the boundaries around SCHIP. I wish we were as good at keeping an eye on terrorists. But, no, they went after the Frost family. Paul Krugman felt so outraged about it that he wrote a column in the New York Times about it. He called it ``a teaching moment on politics and health care.'' He tells the story about this and then he said what happened to this family should be a teaching moment. I will read from this and then I will ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record: . . . The Frosts and their four children are exactly the kind of people SCHIP was intended to help: working Americans who can't afford private health insurance. The parents have a combined income of about $45,000. What they have is that the father is a self-employed woodworker and welder. They bought a house in east Baltimore in a neighborhood that is going gentry, called Butchers' Hill. When they bought it, it was called Butchers' Hill from years and years ago, when there were slaughterhouses where they were killing cows for beef and making sausage for the ethnic communities. But it took on another name about the time they bought it. It was like a frontier town--riddled with drugs and all kinds of problems--but they believed in Baltimore, they believed in their country, and they were willing to be urban pioneers, so they bought this home for a modest price. Now, we have been reclaiming Baltimore. Yes, the houses are selling at very high prices, but that is not what they paid for it. This man is self-employed. When he married, yes, they were from a prominent family. Their wedding announcement was in the New York Times. Since when does that mean anything? He has a small warehouse that provides a modest rental income. His wife works part time at a medical publishing firm. They don't have health benefits. To go on with what Krugman said, he said that soon after the radio address, right wing bloggers began insisting that there is something wrong with the Frosts; that they have a house in a neighborhood they said is expensive. I can tell you that when they bought it, it was truly Butchers' Hill. They have two children in private school, but they were on scholarship. Nobody bothered to find that out. The right wing bloggers made unfounded accusations against them all of the time. It was led by a woman who, according to the technocrats, is the most trafficked right wing blog on the Internet. This tone of vitriol and viciousness has to stop. The attack on this family was picked up by Rush Limbaugh, the same guy calling dissident military people ``microphone marines.'' And then the smear went on with that. At the same time this was going on, a CNN report suggested that the Democrats made a tactical error because we had this family on. I don't know what we are doing here. Again, we are attacking a family when we should be attacking the problems of children's health. First, I called the Frost family. I listened to what they have had to endure because they didn't have health insurance, after what happened to their children after this terrible accident and the recovery. Then I listened to what they had to endure because they spoke up for the Children's Health Initiative. When I listened to them, I said to them I think the Senate owed them an apology that we now have come to this point. Now, I have watched good people be attacked by the right wing. The other day, we sanctioned MoveOn.org because of what they did to General Petraeus. I voted for that sanction. What about my Frost family? Should we have a sense of the Senate on that? I don't know if I am going to put this family through more. But I will tell you this: I think we have to start changing the tone. We have to start changing the tone in our institution to work on a bipartisan basis the way the Senator from Alabama and I have. We are moving forward a solid bill that promotes scientific research, keeps America's space program going, but equally we are funding local law enforcement. Can we not change the tone? Do we always have to attack each other? Do we have to be so violent in our language, so vicious, so vitriolic? I don't think so. I think our country has to get back to the basics, where you can disagree without being disagreeable, where you focus on the policies, not on the person, where you try to deal with issues and you don't attack people for the simple reason that they have spoken up and they have spoken out. I think we need to take a timeout in this country. I respect free speech, I respect the bloggers and what they have; but when there is a deliberate attempt from either the right or the left to go after people simply because they have spoken up, I think it is the wrong direction. I think we have been heading in the wrong direction. I wanted to bring to everyone's attention what happened to this family. I ask unanimous consent that the Krugman article be printed in the Record and that the David Herszenhorn article about what happened be printed in the Record.

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3239

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3239 by Senator Kennedy and ask for its immediate consideration.

Ms. MIKULSKI. This amendment has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask for its immediate adoption.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I, too, rise to oppose the Vitter amendment. For the benefit of our colleagues, they should know a similar amendment was defeated on the immigration bill this year. I opposed the amendment then and I oppose it now. I oppose it on substantive grounds, and I oppose it also on the grounds related to States rights and home rule. To refresh everyone, what the Vitter amendment would do is ban local governments from receiving Federal law enforcement funds if a city or a locality has passed a law prohibiting police from asking an immigration status. Why is this bad? First of all, local law enforcement officers all across America are opposed to this amendment. Their opposition has been very well articulated by our colleague from New Jersey. What has been articulated by local law enforcement communities is they believe they should not be held responsible for enforcing Federal immigration laws; that Federal laws on immigration should be enforced by Federal immigration authorities. This amendment would also make it harder for local police to enforce laws and stop crime. One of the things that would happen, if police are forced to do this, it would foster great mistrust in our immigrant communities--meaning immigrants who are here legally. You know, there are many immigrants who are here legally. Because you might have a last name such as Sanchez doesn't mean you are an illegal immigrant. You might be the owner of an IT business in Silver Spring, MD. One of the things we are concerned about is that immigrants, then, will not report crimes or will not give information to those who could go after serious crimes--such as the gang effort. We are also concerned when people will not come forward particularly related to domestic violence. If there is domestic violence, a battered spouse might not call the police because it could trigger some type of raid in their own community. This is not a good way to go. Let's go to the consequences of local communities deciding what they want to do. What we are talking about is a situation where a city or a locality has passed a law prohibiting police from asking an immigration status. That is their right. That is their right, to say what they want to do in their own community. Then to deny Federal funds for law enforcement, funds for all the other things they might be applying for funds for, I think is outrageous. What happens if they are applying for interoperable communication equipment so they can fight violent crime? Oh, no, they can't have it. What happens when they have applied for funds for the Violence Against Women Act, to deal with battered spouses or abused children? Oh, no, they would not be able to get their Federal funds. What happens, then, in the issue of sexual predators? We have a robust effort to go after sexual predators in our communities. If they have applied for grants to be able to protect our children, they will not be able to get them under the Vitter amendment. So the Vitter amendment is not targeted at illegal aliens or illegal immigrants. What the Vitter amendment does is target law enforcement. If the Vitter amendment is agreed to, in many of these communities it will stifle, shackle, and impede local law enforcement from applying for Federal funds to which they would otherwise be entitled. I think this is misguided. I think it is misdirected. For those of us who are very concerned about the issues of protecting our borders, we understand we need to protect our borders, but we also need to protect our communities. One of the ways we protect our communities is to let law enforcement apply for Federal funds for a variety of things, from cops on the beat, which they wouldn't be able to get; Byrne grant money for technology or bulletproof vests, they wouldn't be able to get it; violence against women funds, they wouldn't be able to get that. I think the Vitter amendment is misguided and misdirected. We should defeat it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.