Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I would like to recognize that today, May 20, is Cuban Independence Day. I am honored to join with Cubans around the world in commemorating this day. On behalf of the people of Florida and all Americans, I rise to reaffirm our solidarity with the Cuban people as they continue their fight for freedom and self-determination. Dictatorships and tyranny have no place in this hemisphere. The U.S must continue to pressure the Cuban regime, while supporting the Cuban people. It is my great hope, that the people of Cuba, with their passion for liberty and their desire to live in a free and transparent democracy, will soon enjoy the same rights and freedoms that we do. We stand in solidarity with the Cuban people as they continue to fight for democratic change and true independence in their homeland. Thank you and may God bless the Cuban people.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, and, of course, to my distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania, this Senator certainly did not mind waiting because it was a matter of great concern. And it was obvious to this Senator in the elevator that the Senator from Pennsylvania had a matter of great weightiness that was something that he wanted to share with the Senate. I shall always defer to the eminent scholar of the Senate, and I am glad that the Senator has spoken, and spoken his mind. This Senator would like to speak his mind on a subject that is heavy on the hearts of the American people; that is, what is the future of their health care. It is clear people are concerned because health care has become something that dominates someone's thinking, if they do not have the assurance of having that health care. The number of insured has reached 47 million people. It looks like that number is going to increase, particularly as we are going into an economic downturn that plagues us and seems it will continue to do so. In the meantime, the American people also know health care costs are increasing at a rate much higher than their average paycheck. So that worries the American people. It is a fact that Americans spend more money on health care than any other country in the world. Sometimes we don't have as good results. For example, one recent study says life expectancy among certain groups of women in the United States is actually going down due to the prevalence of growing chronic disease. In Florida, the problems are no less severe: 19 percent of all children in Florida are uninsured, one of the highest rates in the country; 25 percent of all nonelderly Floridians are uninsured, a quarter of the nonelderly Floridians, those not covered on Medicare. Of course, the people are getting concerned because we in Washington are unable, between the executive and the legislative branches, to strike a solution. The long and short of it is, there are some solutions that are starting to percolate to the top. There is one that has 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans, 14 of us, bipartisan cosponsors. What it does is, it insures everybody universal coverage, the 47 million people who now do not have health insurance who, by the way, get health care because they get it at the most expensive place when they get sick, which is the emergency room, and they get it at the most expensive time, because they haven't had preventive care, when the sniffles turn into pneumonia so the treatment is all the more expensive, so the most expensive place at the most expensive time. Guess who all is paying for it. The rest of us are paying for it because they do not pay and do not have the health insurance that goes into the overall absorption of those costs. The rest of us, who are fortunate to have health insurance, pay in the rates we pay for the care we get. That is one important principle of what this group of 14 bipartisan Senators, led by Senator Wyden and Senator Bennett, have come out with. The next important principle of this proposal for completely revamping and reforming the health insurance delivery system is that you let the principle of insurance work for you. That is, to get the largest possible group--in other words, millions of people--over which to spread the health risk. So if you spread that health risk over millions of people who are representative of the whole population, young and old, sick and well, you are going to bring down the per-unit cost for the premium per policyholder. That is in significant contrast to the fact of a small group, where the actuarial soundness in order to set the premiums for a small group--let's say 5 or 10 people, just a few lives over which to spread that health risk--is extremely high. That is one of the reasons why in taking that principle of insurance, you have to decouple from saying that insurance should be organized on the basis of an employer. If an employer is large, with 100,000, a couple hundred thousand lives, then, in fact, you have a large population over which to spread the health risk. However, if the employer is a mom-and-pop grocery store, with only a handful of lives, you see the prohibitive cost of that insurance and, therefore, what is happening is, employers are at the point that they are not able to afford it anymore. More and more people of those 47 million in this country who are not insured, in fact, are adding to those rolls. So what this bipartisan bill, called the Healthy Americans Act, is attempting to do is to say: We are going to bring in all those people out there who are uninsured so we spread the base, and we are going to organize the private marketplace upon which private insurance companies will compete for that business. We are going to organize it ideally around millions of people. The way the bill is structured, it organizes it around the State. But if that State is a small one, there is nothing that would prohibit that State from joining with several other small States to create a sizable population that the health insurance companies would, in fact, compete for. Then, the next principle in this insurance is that the consumer will have choice. The basic underpinning of the minimal value of a health insurance policy is the same kind we have. We, as Federal employees, have a minimal health benefit package from the Federal Government. We spread our insurance cost over 9 million Federal employees and Federal retirees. Therefore, we can get the economies of scale and let the Federal size work for us. So, too, the reorganization in this bill, the Healthy Americans Act, to allow the greater numbers to bring down that per-unit cost or the cost, in other words, of what the individual policyholder makes. It is a very complicated system, how you transition out from an employer. There is a certain amount that the employer has to pay into the system, according to the size and the payroll. Individuals would have the responsibility of paying for their health insurance. They would pay for that by deductions from the Federal income tax, just like withholding tax is deducted now. By decoupling from their employer's insurance, if they chose to do that--and if they wanted to stay with the employer, they could, but by decoupling, they would not get less money because there would be the so-called cashing out of the employee, so the employee would get the same financial benefit from the employer they got before, when the employer was paying for their health insurance premiums. It is all very complicated. The Congressional Budget Office has done a cost analysis and says under this law the Federal Government will break even financially in the year 2014, when it is implemented, if it were to first be implemented starting this year. So it basically requires the responsibility on the individual, the employers, and the Government to come together to make this funding for health care work. You get the efficiencies of competition in the private marketplace. You get the economy of scale. That economy of scale is not only brought in by expanding the pools over which that insurance is applied but expanding those pools even more by bringing in the 47 million uninsured. The bill emphasizes prevention to improve the health of Americans. It certainly improves their access to care, once they get sick, and also access to care by giving them preventive incentives to go in and do the kind of things with medical advice before they would ever get sick in the first place. There are things in the bill that, as we continue to discuss it, certainly I wish to see. I wish to make absolutely sure that those currently covered under the Children's Health Insurance Program, which would be folded into this, as well as Medicaid, which would be folded into the program, I wish to make sure they receive affordable insurance of quality comparable to or better than what they currently receive. There are other concerns that will come up from time to time. There is no one who has filed this legislation who thinks it is going to be enacted or seriously taken up this year, but there has to be a starting point. A great responsibility will rest on the shoulders of the next President because the American people are not only crying out for health care reform, they are demanding it. Because the cost of that health care is extending beyond their reach, it is incumbent upon us to be visionary and creative. It is certainly incumbent upon the next President to be visionary and creative and cooperative, cooperative with the Congress so we can forge a solution to help America solve her health insurance problem. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I say to my friend, the Senator from Louisiana, perhaps since he is from the gulf coast, he does not understand that all the way up the Atlantic seaboard, there are areas with restricted airspace where live fire training is done. A State legislature would not necessarily be attuned to the security interests of the U.S. Government. If a State legislature were at the beck and call of a particular lobby--in this case the oil industry--wanting to drill, it would be at cross-purposes with the security interests in many of those regions off Florida, off Georgia, off the Carolinas, off Virginia, and further up the seaboard and, therefore, would have a veto over the U.S. Government.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Well, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I appreciate the Senator from Louisiana asking me to yield. But I have a lot on my mind, and the Senator has already had his 15 minutes, so this Senator is going to complete his thoughts. So here we go again. The emphasis is drill, drill, drill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, here we go again. The oil companies are trying to have it exactly the way they have had it in the past. They have developed an amendment that is very seductive by saying that you can have offshore drilling with the concurrence of the State if gasoline reaches $5 a gallon. What they have not told you is that if the price of gas goes up to $5 a gallon, of which the oil companies are making money hand over fist, they are going to utilize that to perpetuate the myth that they need to drill off the coast of a State like Florida, when, in fact, what they have not told you is that the oil companies already have under lease, which has not been drilled, 33 million acres offshore. The oil companies also have another 31 million acres onshore that have not been drilled. And the myth that they perpetuate, now using the fright of $5-a-gallon gas, is that we have to have more supply and therefore we have to go offshore. This is the seductive red herring of this amendment which was offered by a Senator whose State, Louisiana, has a big oil industry that drills off of Louisiana, where, in fact, there are deposits of oil. But when you get to a State such as Florida, there have been several dry holes, and the geology shows very little oil, plus we have the adverse interests. Now, why do we have to keep going through this drill over and over? It is because the oil companies are insatiable. Do we not remember what we did just a year and a half ago, where the oil interests wanted to drill toward Tampa, FL, 2 million acres? We worked out a compromise-- which wasn't 2 million acres, it was 8.3 million acres--but we kept it further to the south, away from the military training and testing area, where you cannot put oil rigs on the surface of the water, where we have our largest training and testing area in the world for our U.S. military. That is where we are training pilots for the F-22, where we train all of the pilots for the new Joint Strike Fighter being developed. That is where we are testing some of the most sophisticated weapons. That is because we have the area that is restricted airspace. As you are shooting that live ordnance and you are testing in your research and development of weapons systems, you cannot have oil rigs down there on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. We etched that into law. But here we go again. Having gone through this and having the oil industry have 33 million acres that is already available for lease but has not been drilled, they want to make an exception and are using the scare of this $4 gas--maybe going to $5 gas--in order to do that. That is wrong, and we ought to put a stop to it. Here is the greatest wrong it perpetuates. What it does is it keeps us in the same old mindset where we stay married to oil. The emphasis is drill, drill, drill to solve the problem, as evidenced by $5 gas, when, in fact, that is not going to solve our problem. What is going to solve our problem is using our technology to go to alternative fuels. What is going to solve our problem is to go to renewables. What is going to solve our problem is going to be to have a new President of the United States who says he is going to commit to making the United States independent of foreign oil, of which we now import 60 percent for our daily consumption from places such as Nigeria, Venezuela, and the Persian Gulf. So what we have to do is change the mindset of the old way of doing things, which this amendment by the Senator from Louisiana is suggestive of; that is, to go to the alternative fuels, to go to a serious research and development program for a new engine on down the line, to encourage the increase of miles per gallon. In Japan, they are driving cars that get 50 miles per gallon. In Europe, they are driving cars, on a fleet average, that are getting in the area of 40 miles per gallon. Why can't the United States--if we had the political will-- change our way of doing things as oil guzzlers through our consumption in our personal vehicles? We can if we have the political will.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I am very grateful to him for giving me this opportunity. When it comes to the defense interests of the United States, I think it would be folly to allow a State legislature to impose their will with regard to the defense interests. This Senator has already given the example of the largest testing and training area in the world for the U.S. military, which is the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida, which we have prohibited in law from being drilled. Let's take, for example, the Atlantic coast of Florida. Thirty years ago, this Senator had to oppose the Secretary of the Interior James Watt from drilling off the east coast. The only way this Senator was able to beat him then was because it finally dawned on the administration that we were launching from the Cape Canaveral Air Force station from west to east and launching from the Kennedy Space Center from west to east, therefore dropping the solid rocket boosters into the Atlantic Ocean along with the first stages of the expendable booster rocket out of the Air Force station, and that, in fact, we cannot have oil rigs down there. So a State legislature might well not understand and be able to impose its will on the security interests of the U.S. Government.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, what the Senator didn't say is that this puts a State's veto power over the U.S. Government as to its security arrangements in restricted areas off the coast which you never want to put at stake. What the Senator also didn't tell you is there are already 31 million acres offshore that are ready for lease that have not been drilled. I yield to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the conference report to accompany the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. It is a good bill for Florida and I commend Chairman Harkin, Senator Chambliss, Chairman Baucus, Senator Grassley, and the members of both committees for all of their tireless work to pass this bill. First and foremost, this bill provides a substantial increase in food assistance to our Nation's low-income families. Nearly three-fourths of the total spending of the farm bill goes in fact to nutrition programs such as food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Not only do we increase purchasing power of these benefits but we also change how a family's need may be calculated; it will take into account childcare costs and education and retirement savings. For the first time in history the farm bill also takes into account an agricultural sector that is of the utmost importance in Florida-- specialty crops. Florida is the leading producer of citrus, tomatoes, cucumbers, snap beans, bell peppers, squash and watermelon, and is the second leading producer of strawberries, sweet corn, and greenhouse and nursery products. This legislation recognizes the importance of crops such as these as an integral part of our Nation's food supply, and provides nearly $3 billion in research, block grants to states, pest and disease control, farmers' market promotion, and the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. Of similar importance are the strides made in this bill for conservation and energy programs. Florida's natural resources stand to benefit tremendously from increased funding for conservation, which will allow the State to optimize participation in land preservation, environmentally friendly land management practices, and easement programs. Correspondingly, the bill notably encourages advancements in cellulosic energy, which will allow us to explore the production of ethanol from agricultural products that we don't otherwise eat-- products in which Florida is rich. There are many significant improvements for Florida in this conference report. It is not a perfect bill, but it increases funding and support for integral programs while also making reforms to a sometimes abused system. It is a good bill for Florida, and I encourage the President to support it.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon and I are introducing the World War II Accountability Act, which seeks to compel foreign governments harboring Nazi war criminals to prosecute and extradite those individuals. It is a sad truth that more than 60 years after World War II some countries continue to provide safe haven for these war criminals. Bringing these surviving Nazis to justice is a time-sensitive affair, and one that can bring much needed peace to those remaining holocaust survivors who have already suffered so much. In the United States, the Office of Special Investigations, OSI, of the Department of Justice is responsible for detecting, investigating and taking legal action to denaturalize or deport persons who took part in Nazi sponsored acts of persecution committed between 1933 and 1945. As of August 2005, OSI had successfully prosecuted 100 persons involved in Nazi war crimes who were residing in the U.S. Nongovernmental organizations are also integral to these detection and investigation efforts. In 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched Operation: Last Chance to maximize identification and to help facilitate the prosecution of remaining Nazi war criminals. Of the most egregious Nazi war criminals, Operation: Last Chance has identified suspects like Mr. Milivoj Asner, who served as the police chief of the city of Slavonska Pozega. Mr. Asner orchestrated the persecution and destruction of the local Serb, Jewish, and Gypsy communities, which culminated in the deportation of hundreds of civilians to Ustasha concentration camps. Mr. Asner currently resides in Klagenfurt, Austria. The center has also identified Dr. Aribert Heim, who served as a medical doctor at the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen concentration camps. His most terrible crimes occurred at Mauthausen, where he murdered hundreds of prisoners by administering lethal injections into their hearts or by other tortuous killing methods. Dr. Heim's whereabouts are unknown. Unfortunately, even the best efforts of OSI and organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to identify and investigate Nazi war criminals are not enough. Some foreign governments hinder the extradition of convicted Nazi war criminals between the U.S. and their country of origin. The World War II Accountability Act seeks to remedy this situation by making cooperation in the extradition of Nazi war criminals a prerequisite to a country's inclusion in the U.S. visa waiver program. This is a powerful incentive for countries that continue to harbor these criminals. I believe it is a necessary tool to compel the relevant countries to cooperate with our search for justice. For holocaust survivors, this justice is long overdue.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon and I are introducing the World War II Accountability Act, which seeks to compel foreign governments harboring Nazi war criminals to prosecute and extradite those individuals. It is a sad truth that more than 60 years after World War II some countries continue to provide safe haven for these war criminals. Bringing these surviving Nazis to justice is a time-sensitive affair, and one that can bring much needed peace to those remaining holocaust survivors who have already suffered so much. In the United States, the Office of Special Investigations, OSI, of the Department of Justice is responsible for detecting, investigating and taking legal action to denaturalize or deport persons who took part in Nazi sponsored acts of persecution committed between 1933 and 1945. As of August 2005, OSI had successfully prosecuted 100 persons involved in Nazi war crimes who were residing in the U.S. Nongovernmental organizations are also integral to these detection and investigation efforts. In 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched Operation: Last Chance to maximize identification and to help facilitate the prosecution of remaining Nazi war criminals. Of the most egregious Nazi war criminals, Operation: Last Chance has identified suspects like Mr. Milivoj Asner, who served as the police chief of the city of Slavonska Pozega. Mr. Asner orchestrated the persecution and destruction of the local Serb, Jewish, and Gypsy communities, which culminated in the deportation of hundreds of civilians to Ustasha concentration camps. Mr. Asner currently resides in Klagenfurt, Austria. The center has also identified Dr. Aribert Heim, who served as a medical doctor at the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen concentration camps. His most terrible crimes occurred at Mauthausen, where he murdered hundreds of prisoners by administering lethal injections into their hearts or by other tortuous killing methods. Dr. Heim's whereabouts are unknown. Unfortunately, even the best efforts of OSI and organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to identify and investigate Nazi war criminals are not enough. Some foreign governments hinder the extradition of convicted Nazi war criminals between the U.S. and their country of origin. The World War II Accountability Act seeks to remedy this situation by making cooperation in the extradition of Nazi war criminals a prerequisite to a country's inclusion in the U.S. visa waiver program. This is a powerful incentive for countries that continue to harbor these criminals. I believe it is a necessary tool to compel the relevant countries to cooperate with our search for justice. For holocaust survivors, this justice is long overdue.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, next Tuesday--not Monday but Tuesday--we are going to have a series of votes and ultimately get to the final vote on the flood insurance bill. And miraculously, out of the air comes a couple of energy packages side by side that we are going to be voting on. It is very interesting that in one of those energy packages, that being offered by the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, it will have a provision for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. Now, we have gone through this drill about drilling several times, the last of which, I want to remind the Senate, when the pro drilling for oil forces wanted an additional 2 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, which would go east in the eastern Gulf of Mexico headed straight toward Tampa, FL, we worked out something that would satisfy all of the parties; that they would not have 2 million acres but they would have 8 million acres--8 million acres, not 2 million acres. But it would be further to the south, not to the east and, therefore, would not harm the interests of Florida or the U.S. military. I remind my colleagues that the U.S. military's largest testing and training area in the world is almost the entire Gulf of Mexico off of Florida. It is the pilot training for the new F-22 out of Tindale Air Force Base in Panama City. They have to have wide areas with which to do dog fighting, not at submach but at 1.5 mach, and the turning radius at 1.5 mach is extraordinary. When are you doing this with live fire exercises, you can imagine that you do not want anything down there on the surface of the water. By the way, that is also why all of the new F-35s, the new joint strike fighter pilot training, when that fighter is developed, will also be in that area. It is also the reason the Navy now sends its squadrons down to the Key West Naval Air Station at Boca Chica, because when they lift off the runway at Boca Chica, in 2 minutes they are over restricted air space where they can do their pilot training. But it is also the area where we are testing some of our most sophisticated weapons systems, many of which are with live ordnance, and you simply cannot have oil rigs down there on the surface of the water where you are doing all of this in furtherance of the training and the testing in order to have the best military in the world. Yet it is coming back. It is coming back again. Now this time it is a little easier for us because we etched it into law as to that additional lease area for drilling in the Gulf, and you have got to change the law. Until the last time, it had always been under a Presidential moratorium. So it will be more difficult for them to have to change this. But I bring this up because the attitude is tunnel vision about drill, drill, drill. That is not how we are going to solve the problem. I mean, are we not going to wake up with $120 per barrel oil prices and, who knows, with the tight world oil market, if it is not going to keep going up? And why is it at $120? We have had testimony here in the Senate from oil executives who say the typical supply-demand on the world market ought to have the price of oil at $55 per barrel. If that testimony is accurate, why the difference then between $55 and $120? I think part of the answer to that question is, you look at history. You see these spikes whenever there is an unsettling condition in the world. You saw that in the early 1970s in the oil embargo. You saw that again in the late 1970s with the Iranian capture of the American Embassy people and holding them hostage. You saw it again at the beginning of the 1990s with the first gulf war, when Saddam Hussein had moved on Kuwait. You have seen it again in this decade with the Iraq situation, and you see it now with the jitters about what is happening in the Middle East. You see it also in the unsettling relationship we now have with the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who bombastically keeps threatening to cut off oil. Now, that is a hollow promise because we have the refineries that have to process his grade of crude. But over time he could change. Nevertheless, it unsettles the markets. By the way, we get 14 percent of our oil daily, our daily consumption of oil, from Venezuela. You see it also with regard to Nigeria. Mark my word. Nigeria is an accident waiting to happen with regard to the 12 percent of our daily consumption of oil that comes from Nigeria. And already the battery, the thievery, the kidnappings, all of that being done by criminal thugs, that is one threat. But I recall for the Senate the fact that in northern Nigeria, al-Qaida is ascending. So that is certainly one reason for the difference between what some people have testified that the supply and demand would have oil at $55, and instead it is at $120. But there is another reason. That is the speculation on oil futures and bidding the price up that gets us to this point. Now, I am giving all of this background to say, well, what do we do? Is the answer the tunnel vision or myopic vision of drill, drill, drill, or do we do what we know we have to do? And the question is, where is most of our oil consumed? It is in transportation. Where in transportation is most of the oil consumed? It is in our personal vehicles. So why do we not get serious, as we had our first inkling that we are, by having more conservation with greater miles per gallon? We passed in this Senate 35 miles per gallon phased in all the way out until 2015. In Japan today, they are running around in their cars at 50 miles per gallon. In Europe today, they have got an average of 43 miles per gallon. Why cannot America summon the political will to say we are going to do something different than what we have been doing in the past, and we are going to try to wean ourselves from dependence on foreign oil which makes up 60 percent of our daily consumption. If we had the political will, we could do it. And, of course, if we had the political will, we could not only do the miles per gallon, we would put the money into the research and development to ultimately get to cellulosic ethanol so we would not be making ethanol from what we need to eat, and instead we would be making it from fiber, from that which we throw away. If we summon the political will, we would get serious about conservation measures and renewable fuels such as wind and solar, all the more than we are now. We would get serious about a major R&D effort and pouring the money into it in order to start developing the engine of the future that does not depend on any kind of petrol, such as hydrogen, or perfecting these batteries so we can have an all- electric vehicle. That is what we would be doing if we summoned the political will. At the end of the day, that is what we are going to have to do. It is going to have to be the new President who does it. On this subject I will close by saying, America has a historical tendency to drag its feet until we are abruptly shoved up against the wall and we have to do something, and you see this throughout our two centuries of history. There was at a time, for example, during the Korean war, the Soviets had the high ground. Their MiGs could fly higher than our jets. Again in 1958 they had the high ground, because they put up the first satellite, Sputnik. Again in 1961 they had the high ground, when they put up Yuri Gagarin, the first human to orbit the Earth. We did not even have a vehicle that was powerful enough until 10 months later when we put John Glenn in that flimsy Atlas that had a 20- percent chance of failure, and finally got up. Again, they had the high ground when they rendezvoused, the first time in space, with two spacecraft. They beat us to that. But then America summoned the political will when the President said: We are going to the Moon in 9 years and return. And we did. And we have the high ground now. Now it is another complete subject--I will not get into it--about how we could be losing that high ground with NASA, because NASA is not getting enough resources for all of the things it is trying to do and, therefore, it is not going to have a chance to achieve and keep that high ground if we do not. But I will save that one for next week. Israel's 60th Anniversary I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Thank you, Mr. President. Amendment No. 4707

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendment No. 4709.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, prepaid telephone calling cards are used by many Americans to stay in touch with loved ones around the country and throughout the world. Unfortunately, some providers and distributors of these cards are scamming consumers--by imposing undisclosed junk fees, charging exorbitant rates, and selling cards that expire shortly after consumers start using them. Over the past couple of years, a number of State Attorneys General and the Federal Trade Commission have opened investigations and found that a number of providers and distributors are engaging in unfair and deceptive business practices. These practices include charging customers for calls where they receive busy signals, imposing weekly ``maintenance fees'' that may take away up to 20 percent of the card's overall value, and billing for calls in 3-minute increments. As a result of these investigations, some companies have been fined or have entered into consent decrees forbidding them from engaging in some deceptive practices. In addition, some states--including Florida-- have imposed certain regulatory requirements on prepaid calling card providers and distributors. To date, however, neither the Federal Communications Commission nor the Federal Trade Commission has taken any action to impose up-front nationwide consumer protection requirements on this industry. This lack of Federal standards allows many of these unscrupulous operators to move from State to State, and create new ``shell companies'' to escape consumer protection regulations. This is wrong, and I think we need to fix this situation. That is why I rise today to introduce the Prepaid Calling Card Consumer Protection Act of 2008. The Prepaid Calling Card Consumer Protection Act of 2008 requires the Federal Trade Commission to draft comprehensive rules requiring all prepaid telephone calling card providers and distributors to disclose the rates and fees associated with their calling cards upfront, at the point of sale. It also requires providers who market their cards in languages other than English to disclose rates and fees in that language as well. Furthermore, the legislation requires providers to honor the cards for at least a year after the time the card is first used. To enforce these disclosure requirements, the bill gives the Federal Trade Commission, State Attorneys General, and State consumer protection advocates the ability to sue the fraudsters who violate these requirements in Federal court. In addition, the law expressly preserves additional state consumer protection requirements--such as state utility commission certification or bonding requirements. I invite my colleagues to join with Senators Snowe, Kerry, Martinez and myself in supporting the Prepaid Calling Card Consumer Protection Act of 2008. We should waste no time in ensuring that military servicemembers, seniors, immigrants and other Americans using these prepaid telephone calling cards are protected from bad actors in the marketplace. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, on May 14, 1948, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel, and 60 years later now, we celebrate this momentous time in Israel's history. I congratulate, along with all of the other Senators, Israel on its 60th anniversary, and the close relationship the United States and Israel have. It serves as an important purpose of promoting peace in the Middle East. Helping Israel achieve peace with its neighbors while maintaining its security strengthens both of our strategic interests. We must do everything we can to end the bloodshed and bring the parties together. We must resume those positive measures. We must, as the Good Book says: Come, let us reason together. Most of us out here support two states living side by side in peace and security for both. That was outlined by the President in a speech on June 24, 6 years ago. To achieve that, the Palestinians need to reform their institutions and cease those continued terrorist activities against all the innocents. Continued engagement by our country is required to help us get to that goal of peace in the Middle East. I look forward to the continued cooperation of Israel and the United States toward that goal. My hearty congratulations to Israel on its 60th anniversary.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I send amendment No. 4709 to the desk. It has been filed, and I call it up.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, this is an amendment to recognize what we have been discussing on this floor earlier: that the big one is coming. The big one is either a category 5 hurricane that is hitting an urbanized area of the coast, of which there is some loss of $50 billion of insurance losses in wind losses, or it is an 8.5 earthquake on the Richter scale that hits downtown San Francisco or downtown Memphis--either one of which no one State could withstand that kind of economic loss. There is no one insurance company that can withstand that economic loss. It is clear that the package of bills Senator Martinez and I--and he, by the way, is a cosponsor of this amendment--the package of bills we have filed to address the plethora of subjects having to do with catastrophic risk--a national catastrophe fund is one of those bills. That is not going to pass. The White House opposes it. But what could pass is what has already passed the House of Representatives and is down here and is the essence of this amendment; that is, it sets up two things. It sets up, on the one hand, a consortium whereby if a State's catastrophe fund goes dry and they need additional bonding, that State then has set up a consortium where it is easy to go into the private bond market for catastrophe bonds and get that bonding back to the State catastrophe fund. That is one part of this bill. The other part of this bill is also where the State has a State catastrophe fund. What is a catastrophe fund? It is a reinsurance fund. It reinsures insurance companies against the catastrophic risk. In the case of Florida, it is hurricanes. In the case of California, it is earthquakes. In the case of Memphis, TN, it is earthquakes. In the case of the gulf coast, the Atlantic seaboard, it is hurricanes. That is what a State catastrophe fund is. Florida has that fund. There are a lot of other States that do not. So this amendment would only apply to those that set up and address the catastrophic risk at the State level first. Therefore, if a State has a State catastrophe fund, it would have another opportunity to have the Federal Government help it. If the well ran dry in its State catastrophe fund and was out of money, it then could borrow cash from the Federal Government at market rates to replenish the cash until it could get its own cash reserves replenished by its mechanism which, in the case of Florida, is that they assess all of the policyholders--the property and casualty policyholders--in the State. Now, that is the way Florida does it. This is not a new Federal program. This is a Federal incentive to the States solving this problem but recognizing that the big one is coming--either a hurricane or an earthquake--that when the big one does, if the State catastrophe fund, the reinsurance fund cannot handle it, the Federal Government is going to step in but only to the extent of helping the State catastrophe fund facilitate getting bonds in the private marketplace--catastrophe bonds--or, No. 2, help the State catastrophe fund have ready quick access to cash from the Federal Government but lent at fair market rates. Now, this is utilizing the private marketplace. This is not a new Federal program. It is a commonsense solution. It has already passed the House overwhelmingly. This is the vehicle that we have to offer it all. Even though this is a flood insurance bill, it is an insurance bill. We are not trying to monkey around with the flood insurance program; we are merely trying to have a vehicle by which we can bring this up. Now, they are going to say it is not germane because it is not flood insurance. So that means we are going to have to get the 60-vote threshold to waive a point of order that it is not germane, and that is a high threshold. But nevertheless, we have to try. I notice my colleague from Florida is here, and he is a cosponsor. I wish to thank him for that cosponsorship. I ask unanimous consent that a detailed explanation of my amendment be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I indicated in my opening remarks that not only do I support the Wicker amendment but the similar Schumer amendment. It is important, symbolically, to get something done. Now, the Senator from Mississippi has suggested another idea, that at the end of the day, when it is very difficult to enact a national catastrophic fund, what the Federal Government can do is encourage, by giving incentives to the States, enactment of a regional catastrophic fund. Florida, of course, had to take the lead because we were the ones who got devastated in 1992 by Hurricane Andrew. Florida set up this fund called the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. It is a reinsurance fund to insure against catastrophes. But that cost is spread over 18 million Floridians. Does it not make a lot more sense to spread that hurricane catastrophic risk over 50 million Americans, by getting all the Gulf States and the Atlantic coast States to combine in a regional catastrophic fund, since at the end of the day, it is going to be very hard to get a national catastrophic fund? So as we get on down the line, with the commission, if that is the only thing that survives this legislative process, then certainly that should be an item on the table that the commission would consider when they would report back to the Congress. I am hopeful for the first time now, we have something on the floor that is going to address this, and I am grateful I can speak out on behalf of 18 million Floridians who are hurting because what they want is available and affordable homeowners insurance. Right now many times it is not available, and they have to go to a government insurance company such as Citizens or it is unaffordable. Remember, if you can't have homeowners insurance, you can't build homes, make loans on homes, or sell homes. The necessary component for all three of those industries--real estate, construction, and banking-- is an available and affordable homeowners insurance policy. We have reached the point that it is either not available or it is not affordable. Finally, we are beginning to address it, right here. I am grateful for that. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I would yield for the purposes of a question, without losing my rights to the floor, to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I want to speak to the Wicker amendment. This amendment, which will add wind coverage to the flood insurance policies, is a major policy change with regard to the Federal Government. Wind coverage has always been handled by the private insurance sector and/or the quasi-government sector, covering wind through a catastrophic insurance fund as we have in Florida, or a quasi-insurance company such as we have in Florida. This is a major policy shift. The bottom line is, I support this amendment because it is an important symbolic amendment. Our people are hurting and they need some help with regard to the potential catastrophic wiping out of not only their lives but their property as well. What has happened in this day and age of the huge natural catastrophe first came to the fore in the example in 1992 by the monster hurricane, Hurricane Andrew. Andrew--now they think it was a category 5, which is winds upwards of 150, 155 miles an hour--had insurance losses in 1992 of $16 billion. That was by far the largest insurance loss through a natural catastrophe in the history of the United States. In today's dollars that would be somewhere around a $22 or $23 billion insurance loss. What really shook up the insurance marketplace at that time was, had Andrew turned 1 degree to the north and drawn a bead on the city of Miami or Fort Lauderdale instead of the city of Homestead--which is way to the south in a relatively undeveloped part of Miami, Dade County-- had it turned 1 degree to the north and hit that other area, it would have been a $50-billion-loss storm, and that would have taken down every major insurance company in the country that was doing business in the path of that storm. That is what shook up the markets. Then we had a few others--not anything upwards of category 4 or 5--in the latter part of the decade in the 1990s. Then along comes 2004 and we get four hurricanes in Florida within a 6-week period. There was virtually no county in the State of Florida that did not have hurricane damage. The only good news coming out of that year was none of them were above category 3--in the range of 120 to 125 miles per hour. Of course, the damage goes up exponentially as winds increase in miles per hour above 110, 115. When you get on up into the range 130, 140, 150, the damage goes up exponentially. The insurance marketplace was just roiled, and insurance companies could not find what is known as catastrophic coverage, or in this case insuring against catastrophe to insure the insurance company against that catastrophic loss. Of course, right on the heels of 2004, then we had the awful mess with Hurricane Katrina. That is an interesting storm because it was a typical category 3 storm that can cause the amount of damage that you would expect a storm to do hitting the Mississippi coast with category 3 winds. What people did not expect was, on the back side of that hurricane--remember the hurricane is counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere--the back side of those winds coming across Lake Pontchartrain, as the eye of the hurricane moved over the coast to the east in Mississippi, those winds brought the rain, and that started filling up the canals in New Orleans. The pumps did not work or were inadequate to pump out the canals. The water rose, the water pressure rose, it breached the dikes, and it filled up the bowl of New Orleans so you get so much more water damage, flood damage, with a lot of the people in New Orleans not having flood insurance when, in fact, they were below sea level in the location of their homes. What the amendment of Senator Wicker, and a companion side-by-side of Senator Schumer, is doing is adding wind to the flood insurance policies. Symbolically it is important because our people are hurting. They cannot find available hurricane wind insurance, and they can't find it affordable. That is why I am going to support it. Now, let me tell you what is wrong with it. Should this legislation pass, it would have to be fixed down the line. It has two major flaws. The first is that it sets up a standard that says the rates for this wind insurance have to be actuarially sound. That sounds real good. Rates ought to be actuarially sound. But the problem is, there is no check and balance on the person or persons who are going to be doing that as there is in the regulation of insurance by the insurance commissioners of the 50 States. Therefore, what I fear with legislation like this is that some secretive group or Star Chamber outside the normal government in the sunshine, making mathematical calculations that are actuarially sound, would suddenly enact rates that would go through the roof, and the very purpose of what we are trying to do--to have available and affordable insurance for people in the face of hurricanes--would be for naught. It would have exactly the opposite result with no accountability and no insurance regulator that would crack the whip on them. The other flaw in the requirement of actuarially sound rates is, if a loss occurs and you are covering both wind and flood, the wind losses may well absorb all of the available reserves in the Federal flood insurance program and there is no money left in order to pay the flood insurance claims. What it does is it translates into higher premiums and a potential loss of flood subsidies. The requirement in the bill that the multiperil rate be actuarial could cause the current flood policyholders, who are eligible to receive subsidized rates through the standard National Flood Insurance Program, through their flood policy, to lose the subsidy that is already there in the National Flood Insurance Program. If this policy in this amendment were to be enacted, it could certainly lead some States with existing wind coverage options--such as my State of Florida--to discontinue that coverage, which would further provoke policyholders to have to purchase the expensive but actuarially sound National Flood Insurance Program multiperil coverage. This would essentially shift the liability from the State to the Federal Government while at the same time actually limiting consumers' access to affordable wind coverage--exactly the opposite of what is intended by the offeror of the amendment. Nevertheless, it is a logical conclusion unless you clean up this language. Now, the next concern I have with it is both the Wicker and the Schumer amendments could destroy the financial integrity of the National Flood Insurance Fund. In both these amendments being offered, the multiperil policy would be offered as an optional coverage under the National Flood Insurance Program. Because the proposals do not expressly separate the premium from the standard flood program, there is a potential for the entire flood fund to be drained without paying the claims for the wind damage. This would put the flood insurance program right back in the situation it finds itself now: relying on borrowing from the U.S. Treasury to pay the claims to flood policyholders. So this is a complex problem. But as we try to solve it, we must ensure that we do not inadvertently undermine the viability of the National Flood Insurance Program and fail to fulfill the promise we made to 5.5 million current policyholders, and, oh, by the way, 40 percent of all those flood insurance policyholders are in my State of Florida--40 percent of them. All of us along the gulf have struggled with availability and affordability of homeowners insurance. But, Members of the Senate, this is not only a Florida problem and it is not only a gulf coast problem; insurers are cancelling coverages from Texas to Massachusetts, and those who say the Federal Government does not belong in the catastrophe insurance market are mistaken. Because when the big one comes, and mark my word, the big one is coming, the big one is a category 5 storm that hits at a high-density urban concentration population on the coast, be that anyplace on the gulf or Atlantic seaboard, when that big one comes, the availability of private markets to handle that natural disaster is not going to be able to be there. And the Federal Government keeps denying the fact that we ought to face this problem. The Senators in the Midwest say: Well, Hurricanes are Florida's problem or earthquakes are California's problem. What they do not recognize is, no, it is everyone's problem. Because what typically happens when a natural disaster of this magnitude hits, it is the very same Federal Government that picks up the tab. I remember my first year as a young Congressman back in 1979. I had to vote for what were Federal disaster funds and the cleanup of a natural catastrophe that was the blowing of Mount St. Helens, which spewed ash all over several cities. I thought to myself at the time, when others were trying to kill that disaster assistance saying: Well, that is not our problem; that is the problem of the State of Washington. No, it is all of our problem. The Federal Government does have the disaster funds to come to that aid. If you take a State such as Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that full hurricane now is something like a $200 billion economic loss. The Federal Government has picked up at least half of that, $100 billion. And we say we do not think there is a Federal responsibility to try to plan ahead for that catastrophe by providing some kind of catastrophe insurance if the States cannot provide it? This whole instability has repeatedly forced the Federal Government to absorb billions of dollars of uninsured losses, including the most recent ones of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, just those hurricanes alone. So as we go on down the line, we have a must-pass bill. We have to reauthorize this Federal Flood Insurance Program. I wish to thank the chairman and the ranking member in that what they have done, if we do not pass anything else--and I have a couple amendments on trying to arrange for a loan program from the Federal Government. It has already passed the House--a loan program at fair market rates; in case the State catastrophe fund, which is a reinsurance fund against catastrophes, in case that goes belly up, that there will be a loan program from the Federal Government at market interest rates. But if we fail on all these, at least in the bill, thanks to the chairman and to the ranking member, is the setting up of a commission that would have to report back, a commission composed--and the ranking member is coming on the floor. I have been singing his praises, along with the chairman's, of putting in the bill a commission made up of experts, broadly representative of the communities that are affected, to recognize we have a problem on covering catastrophes in the insurance business. That commission would have a certain day on which to report. What that will signal, if that is the only thing we can get in here, I hope we can get this loan program that I talked about for a State insurance catastrophe fund. If it goes drain dry, that Federal Government would lend money to it at market rates so that at the State level, they can try to take care of that catastrophe. But if we cannot get that, there is a question of germaneness; therefore, I would have to get a 60-vote threshold to have the amendment considered. But if we cannot do that, at least we have in the bill, in a must-pass bill, the Federal flood insurance bill, for the first time, the Federal Government will have on the table the recognition that we have to understand and do something about the response from the Federal Government when the big one comes. And it is coming. Madam President, I made a commitment to the Senator from Louisiana that when I yield the floor I will ask for the quorum call. So I would merely take my instructions from the Senator from Louisiana if she wanted me to entertain a question from any Senators standing, without losing my rights to the floor. The Senator from Louisiana has so indicated. So I would certainly yield for the purpose of a question without losing my right to the floor to the distinguished chairman.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.