Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, this amendment is significantly different from the one defeated yesterday by a very narrow vote. That one was for a $2.7 billion increase, but it also had a commensurate like reduction in the deficit, so the total amount taken out of tax loopholes was $5.4 billion. This amendment has only $1.8 billion taken out of tax loopholes to give to veterans for their medical care. What easier tradeoff--we, all the time, have to make tradeoffs around here--what easier tradeoff is there than to do this on tax loopholes, for example, that allow a corporation to go out and buy a bridge, turn around and lease it back to a municipality, and because it technically owns the bridge, depreciate the value of that bridge? That is a sham kind of tax loophole, and that is the kind of stuff we can go after to fund, to stand up and support the men and women in uniform who have served this country. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I call up amendment numbered 2745.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield back the remainder of my time, urging a vote for the veterans of this country.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. Just to add to his comments what he has described in North Dakota, imagine because of our size and particularly during the winter months when so many veterans come to the State of Florida how the problems are compounded. When a veteran has to wait 5 months for an appointment just to see a doctor to get a prescription, that is not health care for our Nation's veterans. I have had occasion to talk to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs quite frequently recently on problems we have in some of our hospitals in Florida. Listen to what he said in the House Veterans Affairs' Committee on February 4 of this year. Secretary Principi said: I asked OMB for $1.2 billion more than I received. Even the Secretary of the VA is calling for money. Then is it any wonder our Senate Veterans' Committee in a bipartisan analysis of the VA budget concludes that we should have at least $1.8 billion more? That is the figure I have offered in the amendment I will be offering. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for yielding.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, later on--I do not know if it will be today or tomorrow--I will be offering an amendment to bring the account that deals with veterans health care up by $1.8 billion. This is the amount that was considered and agreed to in a joint bipartisan report in the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs as the very minimum that we need over and above the President's request to give the veterans of this country the very basic minimal health care they deserve. I must say I was shocked when I offered this amendment in the Budget Committee last week that there was a partisan rollcall vote against this increase. I don't think there is one Senator in this body who has not heard the cries and the pleas from our veterans back in our States, or the anguished stories of having to wait months before they could even get an appointment with a doctor in order to be able to get a prescription. I don't think there is a Senator who hasn't heard the anguished pleas from veterans about why the President's budget starts to shift a lot of the burden to the veterans by increasing the copays and by an enrollment fee, particularly at a time such as this when we are honoring our veterans every day because of the sacrifices we see being carried on by our servicemen and servicewomen around the world. Of all times and places, not to give our veterans the minimum health care which they not only expect but which they certainly deserve is just unconscionable. Interestingly, there is a double game that is being played. There is a lot of rhetoric going around. But when it comes time to produce, the votes are never there. We are going to give the Senate an opportunity to put their vote where their rhetoric is. This amendment I will be offering at a time our leadership suggests will, in fact, provide for the offsets for the $1.8 billion to come out of the tax account and out of the tax loopholes that are rampant in the Tax Code and in the President's proposed budget. I want to take this opportunity. As soon as the leader of the committee gives me the high sign, I will be on the floor offering that so all the Senators will have an opportunity to vote on that amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, moment by moment things are unfolding down in the poverty-wracked, AIDS-infected, politically unstable island nation of Haiti. I have had quite a bit of commentary on this subject since I had sent a letter of February 10 to the President suggesting what should be done. Given the events that have unfolded over the weekend--the fact that Aristide has fled, the fact that the U.S. military is located there as a first wave of an international security force to try to establish order--I want to talk about the future of that island nation. Clearly, it is a nation that has been troubled for stability, political and economic. I think what is in the interests of Haiti, as well as the interests of the United States, is to stabilize that nation. It is a nation that has not been comfortable because of the scores of coups d'etat that have occurred over the 200-year history of that little country. It is a country where we only need to look 10 years back to see that. When Aristide was elected President, a coup went in, removed him from power, and it took the U.S. military to come back in to put him back into power. The problem is that we didn't stay for the long haul. We didn't help Haiti pull itself up by its economic bootstraps. We didn't continue to help them understand if they had no history of democratic institutions that functioned well--to help them continue to improve their institutions so it would foster free and fair elections and people would respect the rule of law. That is why we are at this place. That is why I have taken this occasion to come and talk to my colleagues about what ought to happen in the future in Haiti. First, the Haitian people are an industrious people, and they are a proud people. I visited the city slum called Cite Soleil in the capital city of Port-au-Prince amidst enormous poverty and the most meager of material possessions. There is a huge drainage ditch running through this section of Port-au-Prince. It is an open garbage sewer. Yet as I walked into those little homes which many times only had a piece of corrugated tin across the top not even sealing the roof, I found those little homes so neatly kept with such pride. I found in the middle of that slum a little area no larger than half the size of a basketball court neatly swept and used as a soccer field. I found there were lots of Americans there trying to assist with education. One of our colleagues from this body, Senator DeWine of Ohio, has been to Haiti some 12 or 13 times. He contributes from his own pocket each year to some of the missions there and a Catholic priest who has a school--not only for the children but a school afterhours for the parents to come and learn what their children are learning so they will be in a position of encouraging their own children to have a chance to escape poverty by opening up their minds through education. I saw an extraordinary medical clinic, much of which is assisted by the United States, in the midst of all of that poverty and disease-- indeed AIDS as well. This medical clinic was like a beacon of light in the midst of darkness. It was well respected--even by the hooligans who are there. They respect that medical clinic as well. Our delegation talked to a Dr. Pap who has had tremendous success in bringing under control the surging numbers of AIDS infections. But when you start with a huge percentage of the population already infected with AIDS--indeed the highest degree of infection in the Western Hemisphere--then you have to start from a base that is already out of control. I saw industries that were once thriving suddenly, because those private enterprises could not get loans--by the way, what bank was to give loans to an area where it was so wracked with political and economic chaos? I saw the fact that our Government had basically not gone to bat for Haiti on international loans from the development banks; and that we were insisting that Haiti pay off arrears before it would get another loan. How was Haiti going to pay off any arrears? As a result, there were not the loans coming in to build the roads or, more importantly, to improve the existing roads and just to maintain them. As I went 50 miles north from Port-au-Prince on a road that only had a hard surface for 16 or maybe 17 miles, then there was nothing but potholes, and all the commerce running north and south in the island was attempting to go on that road. What can we learn about what to do for the future of Haiti? It is very clear to me. The United States had better be involved. We had better not have a hands-off policy as we have had over the course of the past 5 or 6 years. We had better be involved, because it not only affects Haitians but it affects the United States. Let me tell you how. In the midst of the Western Hemisphere with a country to be as poverty stricken as Haiti is, it is going to be ripe for insurrection and tumult. What happens when there is insurrection and tumult? It is ripe to attract the drug trade--which it already has in big-time numbers--and it is ripe to attract terrorists. When we start talking about what is in the interest of the United States, it had better be one conclusion: to help Haiti in the future. If there is hopelessness and despair with no way out and no jobs, what is going to happen? There is going to be a mass exodus from that island nation just as there was in the beginning of all of this political strife that occurred over the past few weeks. The Coast Guard has picked up over 700 people at sea. What is in the interest of the United States? The Coast Guard doesn't have to do that. But if people start fleeing in such huge numbers that they start overwhelming the coast of Florida, what does that do to our social system in Florida? What does that do to Immigration and Customs? What does that do in our ability to protect the homeland by securing our borders? Need I remind you that in a mass migration to the United States, is there not the opportunity for terrorists to slip into the country under the cover of that mass migration, not even to speak of the drug trade that would be entering our country? I appreciate the time in the midst of this gun debate. I thank the two Senators who are leading this debate for allowing me to come and pour out my heart. I am not looking to the past now. The past is past. Let us go forward. It is clearly in the interest of the United States and it is clearly in the interest of the Haitian people for the United States to take the lead economically and politically; for institutions to help them understand and develop. That should be an international effort outside of the Western Hemisphere. France has an interest and has already offered to help. We should work with all of the nations of the world that want to help this little poverty stricken nation. Then we will be doing what we should. We will be leading by an example--that what we preach, in fact, we are doing with our daily acts. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, as we have all heard, childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in our country. 30 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight, and 15 percent are obese. The same is true for kids between the ages of 12 and 19. And the number of overweight children has increased 382 percent in 6-11 year olds and 258 percent in 12-19 years old since 1974. According to a 2001 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle are estimated to cause 310,000 to 580,000 deaths a year due to cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Obesity is second only to the 418,000 smoking-related fatalities as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. And unfortunately, this obesity epidemic hits our country at the same time that state governments are cash-strapped and education programs are being cut. In my State of Florida, that means that physical education programs, among other programs, are discarded as non- essential. Specifically, in Duval County, where Jacksonville is, 29 elementary schools have no formal physical education programs. Five years ago, there were just five schools with no programs. To stem this horrible trend, I'm introducing legislation to encourage State, school districts and schools to provide physical fitness programs in their schools. Through the President's Council on National Fitness those schools that receive recognition either as Physical Fitness State Champions, Active Lifestyle Model Schools or Physical Activity and Fitness Demonstration Programs, will be eligible for Federal matching funds. This will encourage other schools and other school districts to strive for these distinctions because the Federal Government will reward them for their efforts. It is imperative that we continue to provide our children physical well-being instruction so that our teachers are teaching alert and fit students each day. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful elementary school in Duval County named the Alimacani Elementary School. The physical education instructor, Jan Tipton, showed me their facilities and they were marvelous. I even rolled up my sleeves and did some pull- ups. The enthusiasm I encountered in that school for physical education was amazing. All of our young people should be given the opportunity to build strong minds and bodies at school through regular physical activity. For these reasons, I hope that my colleagues will support passage of this legislation this Congress.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, as we have all heard, childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in our country. 30 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight, and 15 percent are obese. The same is true for kids between the ages of 12 and 19. And the number of overweight children has increased 382 percent in 6-11 year olds and 258 percent in 12-19 years old since 1974. According to a 2001 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle are estimated to cause 310,000 to 580,000 deaths a year due to cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Obesity is second only to the 418,000 smoking-related fatalities as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. And unfortunately, this obesity epidemic hits our country at the same time that state governments are cash-strapped and education programs are being cut. In my State of Florida, that means that physical education programs, among other programs, are discarded as non- essential. Specifically, in Duval County, where Jacksonville is, 29 elementary schools have no formal physical education programs. Five years ago, there were just five schools with no programs. To stem this horrible trend, I'm introducing legislation to encourage State, school districts and schools to provide physical fitness programs in their schools. Through the President's Council on National Fitness those schools that receive recognition either as Physical Fitness State Champions, Active Lifestyle Model Schools or Physical Activity and Fitness Demonstration Programs, will be eligible for Federal matching funds. This will encourage other schools and other school districts to strive for these distinctions because the Federal Government will reward them for their efforts. It is imperative that we continue to provide our children physical well-being instruction so that our teachers are teaching alert and fit students each day. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful elementary school in Duval County named the Alimacani Elementary School. The physical education instructor, Jan Tipton, showed me their facilities and they were marvelous. I even rolled up my sleeves and did some pull- ups. The enthusiasm I encountered in that school for physical education was amazing. All of our young people should be given the opportunity to build strong minds and bodies at school through regular physical activity. For these reasons, I hope that my colleagues will support passage of this legislation this Congress.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. That is correct. There are 40 million people in this country who do not have health insurance. But they get health care. They often get it, as the Senator suggests, at the time of the emergency. Where do they get it? They get it in the most expensive place, the emergency room. Instead of treating the sniffles, they wait until it becomes pneumonia, so the care becomes so much greater. So you have to get that much larger a group and ensure that larger group. Do it in the private sector. That is the way it ought to be done. Let there be competition to get your most efficient health insurance product, and then give the consumers, also, a choice of plan. So if they want a Cadillac plan, they can take that. If they want a Chevrolet plan, they can take that. But mix all of those elements into it. That is how we are going to get health insurance and health reform. But we are not going to until we get to such a crisis because there are so many players who have so much at stake and there is so much money to be made.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. What has happened to our world today? It is almost, if one person says it is white, another person says it is black; if a person says it is up, another person says it is down. Where is common sense? Where is reconciliation? Where is consensus building? Where is bipartisanship? Take another issue. As I continue to have this dialog with the Senator from Michigan, take another issue, take the issue of the so- called independent commission that has just been appointed to find out what went wrong with intelligence. How can a commission be independent when it is just appointed by one authority, i.e., the President, who is going to be part of the subject of the investigation of the commission? That is not independence. What we need is a commission that is truly independent, that is appointed by the Congress and the President.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I am happy to yield to the distinguished ranking member of this committee, as we consider this transportation bill, even though we are talking about other very timely topics.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Michigan as she was commenting about this report about how sending jobs out of the United States is going to help with the cost of health care here in the United States, that is as ridiculous as the old medical practice, 200 years ago, of curing the patient of his disease by bleeding him.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. What it was billed as was a $400 billion bill for prescription drugs. We now find it is $525 billion over 10 years. And where did it go mostly? As a bailout to the pharmaceutical companies and as a bailout to the insurance companies.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. What we need to do about the cost of health care is get to the cost of health care. The cost of health care is going up. Technology has brought us miraculous new medicines and procedures. All of that is going up. But where do you have an opportunity to bring down the cost of health care? You do it by having best business practices that allow you to have the economies of scale, ergo health insurance, the largest possible pool of people. You use the principle of insurance to work for you, which is take the health risk and spread it over the largest possible group so you bring down the per unit cost. But we are not approaching it that way. We divide up the population in these little narrow categories and then, when that category gets sick and it gets older, what happens to the costs of that health care? It goes up to the point they cannot afford it.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Both parties. That is not a commentary on the people on the commission because these people seem to be--several of them are personal friends of mine--enormously accomplished people. It is the question of setting up the commission. If I have been informed correctly, it is hard for my ears to believe what I have heard, which is that in setting up this commission to examine the intelligence that was faulty in Iraq, they are not giving this commission subpoena power. Then how are they going to get the documents? How are they going to compel the witnesses? Is it all going to be voluntary? Our very existence is on the line in order to have adequate, timely, and accurate intelligence to protect ourselves in this era of terrorism in which we find ourselves. Where is common sense in this country?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. That is exactly the opposite of what ought to be done. What was that report the Senator cited again?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The distinguished 9/11 commission composed of well-respected and very accomplished people, headed by former Governor of New Jersey Kean and so many other distinguished citizens on that panel questioning the intelligence and trying to find out what went wrong on the September 11 attack, has been frustrated over and over again by delays and a lack of willingness to come forth with the information. If they have had that experience in the last year and a half, why are we to think this next so-called independent commission is going to have any different experience? I think, since what is at stake is the security of our homeland, raw election year politics is getting in the way much to the frustration of those members of the panel and certainly to the frustration of this Senator.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. This is what I was informed this morning by the leadership of this, that this commission is not going to have the ability to subpoena. If that commission that has just been announced over the weekend doesn't have the ability to subpoena people--witnesses and documents--then how can we get at the truth? What we want to do is get at the truth. We were told there were weapons of mass destruction and we were told there were unmanned aerial vehicles, pilotless drones, and we were told there was even a potential plan to put those drones on ships off the Atlantic coast to drop those chemical and biological weapons over eastern seaboard American cities, and all of that turned out not to be true. We were told that was the gospel truth when, in fact, as the Washington Post reported a week ago, there was a huge dispute in the intelligence community, including Air Force intelligence which knows best about unmanned aerial vehicles, and, as reported by the Post, that those UAVs did not exist to drop biological and chemical weapons. So why were we not told that there was a dispute in the intelligence community? It was presented to us before we voted on that resolution in October of 2002 as if it were the gospel truth. The long and short of it is the whole point of a commission is to get to the truth so we don't make these mistakes in the future. If the commission--a so-called independent commission--is not given the power to subpoena, how in the world are you going to get to the truth?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Or what about what we did in the Medicare bill here, the prescription drug bill, for which the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Florida certainly didn't vote.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Not in a way of providing a direct benefit. When the senior citizens in the State of Florida find out how meager this benefit is, when it kicks in in 2005, I predict senior citizens are going to be somewhat upset. I thank the Senator from Michigan for her comments.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Probably no more than 8 or 10 minutes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Oklahoma. It has been a pleasure working with him as the cochairman of our Senate prayer breakfast, and now having the opportunity this morning with 4,000 people assembled at the Washington Hilton to cochair the National Prayer Breakfast with him--which really is a misnomer because it is an international prayer breakfast. We had people from 150 nations. We had five heads of state there. Of course, we had dual speakers this morning in the persons of former Congressman J.C. Watts and Congressman John Lewis. They were both riveting. I appreciate his collegiality and considerable cooperation as we entered into this delightful once-a-year event that occurs in Washington. I say to the Senator from Ohio, though, before he walks out the door, that as he was talking about the transportation bill providing jobs, we have a saying in the south: ``Amen, brother.'' We need the jobs in Florida, too. Indeed, they are needed all over the country and that is why I will support this bill, and that is why I did. I congratulate the chairman and the ranking member of the committee in how they have fashioned this bill. There are parts of this bill I would like to see improved. For years, my State of Florida has given a dollar in in tax and only gotten back about 80 cents. Over the years, my senior colleague, Senator Graham of Florida, has been working on that. Since I have been in the Senate the last 4 years, I have been working with him to improve that. We have got that ratio up to 90.5 percent that we get back for every dollar we send. In the bill the chairman and the ranking member have crafted, over the 6-year period that will rise to 95 percent. Floridians will be very grateful for that. I wish it could rise 1 percent a year over those 6 years instead of the way it is crafted, which is that it stays at a 90.5 percent return on Florida's tax dollar and then it jumps in the sixth year to 95 percent return on the dollar, but that was part of the give and take. I would certainly like to improve it, but I am grateful for it, because finally this battle Florida has had for ages in getting a return on its tax dollar, particularly a gas tax dollar it sends to the Federal Government, is going to get some equalization, particularly with other States that have in the past gotten in excess of a dollar's worth when they send in a dollar to the Federal gas tax trust fund. I have lots of good things to say about it, but, oh, does it make it tough in this environment in which we are, a highly charged partisan environment in an election year in which the deficit that was just announced 3 days ago is over a half a trillion dollars. Now, deficit is a fancy word, but let me say to my colleagues simply what I think it means. It means if we are spending this much in this coming fiscal year, but we only have this much coming in in tax revenues, the difference, since we are spending more than we have coming in in revenue, is the deficit. That has been estimated, in the President's budget, at $525 billion. That is over a half trillion dollars. Well, what does one do? Where does it come from? If spending is going to be here, but the tax revenues are only here in a given year, what is to be done? The difference is borrowed, and that difference then, when borrowed, is added to the national debt. We can see if we are borrowing to the extent of over half a trillion dollars a year, it does not take too long to see the national debt just continue to go out of sight, and then on that debt we have to pay interest. When the interest rates go up after this year, then that is another big slug out of the Federal budget we will have to pay, interest on the national debt. Goodness gracious. And think what we could be doing with money: $200 billion a year in interest. Think what that would buy in the programs that are being cut under this President's budget. These are programs such as law enforcement assistance from the Federal Government such as the COPS program, putting police on the beat, on the street. That is being cut. Education expenditures are being cut. Children's health programs are being cut. Environmental programs are being cut. I could go on. Yet that creates the environment, the fiscal reality, that in times of huge budget deficits, if you are going to get that figure from here to match your revenues, you either have to cut spending or raise taxes or, in the alternative, stop tax cuts that are projected to go into effect in the future and don't let them go into effect, or both, in order to get your Federal budget into balance. We had a chance 3 years ago. We were in a surplus situation with so much surplus projected over 10 years. We could have paid off the national debt if we had been wise and conservative in our approach. But we didn't. We went and blew it. We were like drunken sailors, spending and enacting tax cuts that were targeted to the more well off among us. The result is what the President's budget just said. In the budget that was just released, the deficit spending this next fiscal year is going to be over half a trillion dollars. This is not conservative fiscal policy. This is wild and reckless policy. When you give a continued tax cut to the rich to be financed by out and out borrowing, that is not conservative fiscal policy. That is out of control fiscal policy. By the way, guess where we borrow that money. We borrow it from Social Security recipients, because we are taking it out of the Social Security trust fund. Guess where else we borrow it. We borrow it from other countries and their companies and their investors. You think it is just you and I who buy U.S. Treasury bills? Some of us do. And we borrow it from us. But you would be shocked to know how much of the Nation's debt and the new borrowing that will occur is being bought up by corporations and governments in China and Japan. If they end up having a good bit of our debt that is owed to them, what does that do toward putting us in a vulnerable position in the future with regard to our foreign policy with those countries, China and Japan? If they own a lot of our debt or, put another way, if we owe them a lot of money, that is not a position in which I think America ought to be. There are some clever little tricks in this budget, too. They are very technical. For example, one provision is that people are encouraged, if the President's proposal is enacted, to take money out of their individual retirement accounts, IRAs, or their 401(k) plans and put them over into basically a privatizing of Social Security accounts. But the little fiscal sleight of hand is that when you take it out of an IRA, you are going to have to pay taxes on it. Lo and behold, that gins up an additional $15 billion over this 5-year projection in the budget of new tax revenue, to make it appear as if there is going to be more revenue coming in than there is. This is really not an economic document. It is a political document. Unfortunately, it is a political document that is not a conservative political document. So I am looking forward to us getting our fingers into this budget and beginning to pick it apart. But what it does when you have a budget this much out of control is it makes it so much more difficult for very important programs such as this transportation bill that will provide so many jobs, that will cause dollars to be spent and circulated and restore the economy--it causes it to be a very difficult time in which to enact this kind of legislation, particularly at the level that some of us would like. Mr. President, I wanted to share my thoughts on this subject. I yield the floor.