Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye.''

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye''.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye.''

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. BROWNBACK addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats) and the Senator from Washington (Mr. Gorton) are necessarily absent. I also announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I compliment my colleague from Alabama for bringing this amendment because it is a really good, commonsense amendment. I might mention to our colleagues, yesterday we voted to exempt credit unions from the Community Reinvestment Act. Most of us support that amendment. I supported that amendment. I mentioned to somebody that said I am not sure we should do that because banks have to comply, and I said we have the Shelby amendment that will at least exempt small banks. Most of my banks in the State of Oklahoma are small banks. They don't need the Federal Government to tell them to invest in their community-- they do it anyway. If you have a meeting with your bankers in your State, particularly your small bankers, they will tell you the Community Reinvestment Act is one of the most bureaucratic messes they deal with. They really don't have to have the Federal Government to tell them to invest in their own community. So now we are going to say we will exempt credit unions from the CRA, but we will not exempt small banks? That is not fair. That is not equitable. Senator Shelby's amendment would correct that for the small banks. I compliment him for doing it. I think now is the time to do it. We are going to create greater inequities between credit unions and banks; I don't think that is fair. So Senator Shelby's amendment would at least provide relief for small banks. That is the right thing to do. It is the timely thing to do. The fact that the President says he might veto--if we pass this by an overwhelming vote, and if we have the Shelby amendment, it would be passed overwhelmingly, it would be adopted by the House, and I think the President would see the wisdom of signing the bill as amended with the Shelby amendment. I thank my colleague from Alabama.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``aye.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) are absent on official business. I also announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) is necessarily absent. I also announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) is absent because of illness. I further announce that if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``no.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Kempthorne), the Senator From Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Stevens), are necessarily absent. I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns) would vote ``yes.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague yielding for a moment. I sat here and waited for awhile for my colleague from Massachusetts to speak, and then the Senator from Delaware decided to speak. I wanted to make a couple of comments concerning the health care legislation. One, I regret maybe some of the tone of some of the debate that has been made. I am very interested in trying to come up with a reasonable time agreement to take up this legislation. We have offered to do that. We have offered to give a vote on both the Democrat and the Republican proposals. I understand my colleague wants more time. He probably would like to spend a month on it. I heard him say it is the most important legislation we have before the Senate. I think I heard him say the same thing about the tobacco legislation. We spent 4 weeks on tobacco legislation, and we are not going to spend 4 weeks on this. The Senate is scheduled to be in session about 5 additional weeks, so we don't have the luxury of time that maybe we have had in the past. My colleague from Massachusetts made the comment and said we tried to bring this up 18 months ago. That is not correct. His bill was introduced on March 31. Three days later, he was trying to pass a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, saying we will pass it this year. We have agreed to bring it up this year. We have agreed to give it adequate time for debate. We have not agreed to spend an unlimited amount of time on this. I want to respond to a couple of the statements that were made concerning the Republican proposal. Much to my chagrin, I had hoped my colleague, and colleagues on the other side, would try to find out what is good and maybe see where we can move forward, but instead he has trashed our proposal. I resent that, or I regret it--I guess regret would be the more proper terminology. We have 49 cosponsors of this legislation. We had a task force that met for months, 7 months, to formulate positive, constructive health care legislation, legislation that would help alleviate some of the problems in the health care industry, legislation that would help protect those people who don't have protections in health care. I heard my colleague say their plan only affects 48 million Americans and exempts two-thirds. That is absolutely not correct. The facts are, every single ERISA-covered plan, every single employer-sponsored health plan in America would have an appeal process. It is a different process than our colleagues on the Democrat side have followed, but for a good reason. We don't want to drive up health care costs. What we want to do is make sure people who are denied health care will have an appeal to where they can get health care--not that they have to go to court to get a health care decision--so they can have an appeal through an outsider who has nothing whatever to do with their case and have it be reviewed immediately or expeditiously if there is a serious health care problem. They can even have an outside appeal. We put in ``binding decision'' on the outside appeal. The decisions would be binding. The plan would have to pay if someone said, ``Wait a minute. We thought we were waiting for coverage and we didn't get it.'' They would have an internal appeal and an external appeal and that applies to every single employer-sponsored plan in America. We have heard different numbers. It is about 125 million Americans who would be covered under those plans--every single one--unlike my colleagues' plan; I looked at his. I just want to say that it is the right to sue for more. Under the Democrat bill, their idea is that we are going to get more health care by having more suits. We are going to sue people. You can already sue a health care plan to get a covered service. They want to sue for more. In the Democrat proposal, they have 56 new causes of action where you can sue. It would be an invitation for litigation, to not only sue the health care plan but to sue the employer as well. I have been in the private sector, I have been an employer, a small employer--maybe a little larger; I went from a few employees to 100 employees. If you make employers liable for suits on health care plans, they will drop health care plans very quickly and you will have an increase in the number of uninsured that will be in the millions. You will also have costs. CBO estimated that the Democrat bill would increase health care costs by 4 percent over what they are already estimated to cost, at 5.2 percent. That is a 9.2 percent cost increase if we enact the Democrat bill. That would cause millions of people to lose health insurance. I don't think that is smart. So I want to just make sure that our colleagues are aware of the fact that we are willing to have a significant, credible debate. We are willing to consider various alternatives. We are not willing to get an unlimited amount of time. Earlier, my colleague had offered his bill on an appropriations bill. I said it didn't belong there. Maybe we should have left it there. We could have offered some substitutes. One way or another, we are going to take up this issue. It is our intention to take it up prior to the August break. That is the majority leader's call. We understand that we have a lot of appropriations bills to do, and that must be done. I know my colleagues on the Transportation Committee are ready to go to work. I won't delay them much longer. We will have adequate time to debate the pros and cons of this bill. I heard some other allegations--that they don't do anything. The Senator from Delaware said, ``They have all this lip service. They provide for emergency care, gag clauses, and access, direct access to OB/GYN and pediatricians, but that doesn't do anything.'' I disagree. We protect the unprotected. We don't have the philosophy that we should preempt States who are, in many cases, doing a better job than the Federal Government. There is a presumption on the Democrat side that the Federal Government can do it better than State government. Let's protect the unprotected, cover the plans that don't have protections often by the State. My State has 24 mandates. They have a lot of things that aren't in the Democrat plan or Republican plan, and they are doing quite well. They are considering many more. Most States are looking at the Patients' Bill of Rights, and 36 States have already enacted several others, and 45 States already have a gag clause. Maybe some people think Washington, DC, should decide what kind of communication should or should not be made by physicians, and so on. My point is, I think we have tried to craft a very careful, balanced, good proposal that won't escalate costs, that won't have undue mandates. The Democrat proposal has 359 mandates. Maybe instead of calling it the Kennedy bill, the Patients' Bill of Rights, they should call it the Kennedy bill of mandates, because it is this idea that the Government in Washington, DC, should dictate everything. So I look forward to the debate. I look forward to resolving this issue and trying to come up with a good, responsible bill that won't drive up health care costs, that won't add layers and layers of bureaucracy and regulation and red tape, that won't really deter quality health care. Our bill, I might mention, has a lot of things to deal with improving quality health care. I compliment Senator Collins, Senator Frist, Senator Jeffords, and others who worked to put a lot of quality provisions in this health care, whether you are dealing with women's health, or dealing with research, trying to get research out to States and rural areas that would really improve quality health care--not a Federal definition that we know best, but trying to really advance technology and get that information to patients, to various areas around the country that would actually improve the quality of health care in America today. I thank my colleagues who are managing this bill. I hope they will have success in moving this bill forward. I look forward to the debate and, hopefully, a debate next week on the so-called Patients' Bill of Rights. Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, certainly, my colleague has a right to oppose the amendment. Let me capsulize it again. We have a situation where Federal death penalty cases--most of them are handled in the States and most States have caps. My State has a cap of $20,000 for the lead attorney. We are not doing that. We are not capping what somebody can pay for their private attorneys. They can pay their private attorney anything they want to. Since we are talking about court-appointed attorneys, they are going to be paid for by the taxpayers, like we pay U.S. attorneys. I am saying that we should not pay that individual--their compensation, not their overhead or expenses; those are other items--three or four times as much as we pay the U.S. attorneys. I didn't even say we would limit the number of attorneys. I want people to have an adequate defense. In the McVeigh case, the defense counsel had 13 or 14 attorneys. The expenses are going to come out and be public, and people will be outraged. I am trying to have basic equity. I don't think they should make more than a U.S. attorney. I think that is a real outrage. Then when you find out they might have made three or four times as much money as a U.S. attorney--and again, I am not talking about expenses, I am talking about what they make--that is an injustice. We need equity and balance. That is why I have proposed this amendment. I hope my colleagues will vote for it. Mr. President, my colleague from South Carolina says U.S. attorneys almost make as much as U.S. Senators. Most of us work a little more than 40 hours a week. Again, I just urge my colleagues to support the amendment. I will ask for the yeas and nays if my colleague from New Mexico wants them.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. NICKLES. To respond to my colleague, we are talking about so much, not per case, but per attorney. We didn't limit the number of attorneys. We just didn't want to be in a situation where a U.S. attorney is hiring additional counsel and to have the defense counsel say, ``Hey, we can pay three or four times more. Come fight on our side of the case.'' Right now, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing case, the defense attorneys made--I am not talking about expenses--they individually made probably three or four times as much as U.S. attorneys. I think that is inequitable. I am talking about what they receive in take-home pay, per attorney.