Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. It would mean that it would have to come within the total amount of money that we have on domestic discretionary spending caps. It would be in that amount, several hundred billion.

Mr. NICKLES. To respond to my colleague from Maryland, the consequences would be this: We would appropriate $1.6 billion for FEMA. There would be money in FEMA's account to meet whatever emergencies might arise. It also means that the money that is spent when spent in the year 1999 and the year 2000, which is when the money would actually be spent, would come under the caps. And we have caps, we agreed to caps, we said here is how much money we will spend on discretionary spending accounts. It is $580-some billion. That money would have to go in that amount.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator is exactly right. I appreciate the comment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. To respond to my friend and colleague from New Hampshire, who also serves on the Budget Committee, he is exactly right. The President said we wanted to save every penny of the surplus for Social Security, and right now we getting ready to spend it. My amendment, I might remind my colleague from New Hampshire who has had some disaster, and several other States--I don't want anybody coming to the floor and voting against this saying, ``I need to fund my disaster because we had flooding,'' or, ``We had a freeze,'' or, ``We had milk cows that needed assistance,'' or whatever that emergency might be, we put money in for the emergency. We put money in to fund the emergency. We are just saying it has to be on budget so next year we will have to plug money in. We can't get away with the $300 million facade we have been doing under the Budget Committee and under the Appropriations Committee and pretending we are funding things. All I am saying is go ahead, put the $1.6 billion in to take care of whatever emergency, but take the emergency designation off so Congress will have to live within the caps and hopefully still have a surplus so we can save Social Security.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of both my friends and colleagues. I had the pleasure of serving on this subcommittee with them. They do an outstanding job. Let me make a couple of comments. Is this an emergency? I don't think so. I have been informed that the administration requested this $1.6 billion yesterday. Wait, these disasters have happened for the last several months. They requested this yesterday. Gravy train. The Senate is in the process of moving an appropriations bill, and they are calling it an emergency bill. If the Senate was having ``pay fors,'' which we probably should do, they wouldn't be doing this, in my estimate. Maybe I am wrong. I know in the past this committee has already made some changes on section 8 to pay for it. I compliment them for that. I am not faulting my colleagues on this subcommittee. I am faulting the Senate, I am faulting the Budget Committee, because we have gotten this historical, sloppy budgeteering process for FEMA that we will be funding at $300 million a year when it averages $2 billion or $3 billion a year. I agree entirely with my colleagues from both Missouri and Maryland. They say we need to reform the FEMA funding process. That is exactly right. Maybe now that I have had a chance to look at it, I can help you with that. Let us give it a little attention. We need to give it attention. This is ridiculous. For my colleagues who think we are budgeting and we are real serious next week, we are serious, except for when we happen to call something an emergency. This wasn't an emergency 2 days ago, but it is an emergency now. So here is another $1.6 billion. We just had an emergency, too. We are going to add $260 million on community development block grants. Let me read something from the committee report on community development block grants. I was going to oppose both. The vote will be the same. This is from the committee report, and I compliment the authors. The committee remains concerned about the Department of Housing and Urban Development's administration of $500 million in emergency community development block grant funding which was provided in fiscal year 1997, Emergency Supplemental Act, public law 105-18, June 12, 1997, last year's urgent supplemental. This was an unprecedented amount of emergency community block development grant funding and it raised a number of concerns regarding inadequate award procedures and accountability measures. Despite repeated requests by the committee, HUD has provided little or no data regarding the funding procedures for emergency CDBG funds for the amounts of CDBG funds allocated by HUD to the States and localities by the amount or activity. It is expected that by April 15, 1998, HUD will provide a summary of the procedures used for allocating and awarding emergency CDBG funds, a summary of all waivers made, and a list of all grants by State, locality and activity. I compliment them for doing it. But the net essence is last year we gave community development block grants $500 million in emergency funds, and HUD can't account for it. We added $260 million this year, and in addition we are adding $1.6 billion. In a period now we are going to spend $1.9 billion, call it emergency, and say none has to be counted as discretionary spending under the budget. Almost all of this money will be spent in 1999 and the year 2000, probably 100 percent of it, yet it is off budget, it doesn't count. Every penny of that is coming out of the surplus, every single penny. I heard the President, ``We will save that surplus for protecting Social Security''--except for what he calls an emergency. And we have a supplemental bill going through and it has emergency designation. Let's pile on, let's add some more money, add $1.6 billion, make it $1.9 billion. They gave us that request yesterday, and we are going to submit to it. The managers of this bill will probably win and so we are going to spend probably 100 percent of the surplus in the year 2000 in this bill on this amendment. The year 2000, the Budget Committee did good work, but we have a $1 billion surplus forecasted for the year 2000--$1 billion--and we are going to spend it because we are calling it an emergency. All I am saying, is that it is not an emergency. Those funds should be allocated and should be under the caps. We should pay for it. I want to pay for emergencies as much as anybody else in this room, but we should put it in the budget. This is a fraud on the whole budget process to say emergency spending, we are not going to count that for the future years.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the essence of this amendment, I tell my colleagues, is it says that we allow the money to go in for an additional amount for disaster relief, $1.6 billion to remain available until expended, period. What I am deleting is the emergency. The additional part of this amendment says that I am deleting ``provided these funds will be available only to the extent the official budget request for a specific amount includes the designation of the entire amount of the request as an emergency requirement defined in the Balanced Budget Emergency Control Act of 1985,'' and so on. In other words, I am striking the emergency section of this request. So we can put the money in. If there is an emergency, by golly, FEMA has the money; it can pay it. So nobody should say, ``Hey, you took money away from my emergency.'' What it does mean is, in the budget next year we are going to have to include whatever portion of that $1.6 billion would be spent in 1999 in the budget. We have caps to spend about $580 billion, I am going to guess, next year in the discretionary accounts. This is going to have to be part of it, or, in the year 2000, this will be part of it. This means we still may be able to have a surplus in 2002. It means maybe our budgets mean something. How in the world can you have a budget and say we are going to have caps on discretionary spending and then we say, ``Oh, we're going to fund in advance future emergencies, and, oh, yes, we're not going to count that as part of the budget and it's not necessary to affect the caps''? Domestic total discretionary spending increased from $274 billion in 1997 to $288 billion in 1998. That is more than a 5 percent increase, and that is for the year we are in right now. All I am saying is if we are going to future fund FEMA, it ought to be in the budget. I do not object to adding $1.6 billion so FEMA will have the money, and if there is an emergency this year, they can pay for it; if there is an emergency next year, they can pay for it. But what I am objecting to is having it classified as an emergency in advance so there have to be no offsets. I just think that if we are going to be spending next year in total discretionary spending, that it should be included and get away from this game of, ``Oh, we're only going to fund a few couple hundred million dollars in FEMA, and, oh, yes, if an emergency comes up, we will just declare an emergency and it doesn't count.'' I do not want to spend 100 percent of the surplus in 2000 on this bill. I think that is a serious mistake. I urge my colleagues to allow the funding to go forward for FEMA, but let's strike the emergency section of this bill so in the future years it will have to be paid for. We will have to incorporate that in our total amount of spending so that our budget will mean something; so a budget that we are going to be working very hard and probably have several contentious and tough votes on, probably a good debate on in the next few days, will mean something. It is a heck of a deal for people to be saying, ``Oh, yes, we're fighting for a balanced budget; oh, we can waive the budget, we can waive it in the future, we don't have to budget for emergencies.'' We should budget for emergencies. We should have truth in budgeting. We should say, ``Hey, this should be included and it shouldn't be exempt from the budget.'' I did not say anything about the $3.3 billion. I think Senator Gramm was right yesterday, but we did not touch that. Certainly if we are going to take it from $3.3 billion to over $5 billion, which is what we are getting ready to do--we started with an appropriations request from the administration that started around $2 billion, and the administration keeps sending amendments up: ``Oh, yes, now we have a little amendment; we want another $300 billion, some $260 billion, I think, for community block development grants,'' that was just adopted. ``Now we have another little amendment, $1.6 billion for FEMA; ``oh, yeah, we would like that, too.'' They did not give us that request when we had the markup. They did not give us that request 2 weeks ago. But all of a sudden, they just determined a new need. The reason they determined a new need, in my opinion, is they said, ``Hey, if this is an emergency, this will give us more money to spend next year for other purposes.'' I think that is wrong. I think it is a serious mistake. So I urge my colleagues to adopt our second-degree amendment and strike the emergency portion of this future funding for FEMA. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. NICKLES. The reason I ask the question is because I have heard this figure bandied around the last few days. But anyway, FEMA did not request any money initially. This is a late request. This is a late request, and the Senators from Missouri or Alaska can correct me if I am wrong, this request did not come in from the administration when they were marking up the bill; this request just came in lately: ``Oh, we need an additional $1.6 billion for disasters that we think might happen. And, oh, yes, we want to call it an emergency.'' What does that mean? By calling it an emergency means there will be no offsets. These emergencies have not happened yet, but we are basically going to take this $1.6 billion, and most of the money, I might mention, will be spent in 1999 and the year 2000, maybe 2001. The money is going to be spent in the future, but, ``Oh, we don't have to put that in the budget.'' I am on the Budget Committee, and we had an agreement. The President signed that agreement, and he said, ``Here's how much money we are going to spend on discretionary accounts,'' and we passed it. The President in his State of the Union Address bragged about how good that is: ``Boy, now we have a balanced budget. We are going to have a balanced budget for a long time because we worked together.'' Well, this is voiding that agreement. This is saying, let's take $1.6 billion for the future and we are going to call it an emergency and, therefore, we don't have to have any offsets--none. It is just going to come out of, I guess, the surplus. Guess what? The budget that we are going to be considering next week talks about the surplus. Senator Domenici did a very good job in working it through. Guess how much the surplus is in the year 2000 when probably most of this money would be spent. The surplus is $1 billion. And we are working on an emergency supplemental, if we adopt this amendment, which will be over $5 billion and probably a couple billion of that will be spent in the year 2000. In other words, certainly if we adopt this amendment, we are going to be spending 100 percent of the surplus in 2 years. And we are spending real money. I just don't think we should do it. If FEMA wants to ask for this money, it should be in their budget. They come before the appropriators. Senator Bond does a very capable job in that subcommittee. They can come up and say, ``Here is the historical average; therefore, we should have a couple billion dollars a year in FEMA for our budget.'' They have not done that. What they are really trying to do is, ``Hey, we want to get around the budget.'' In other words, we have a cap on discretionary spending but we are not going to include FEMA, like it doesn't count, even though we have historical averages. I do not think we should prefund the account and call it an emergency. If we want to prefund it, fine. I am just saying we should take the emergency designation off. We should not declare it an emergency; it has not happened. Frankly, if we have an emergency in 3 months, FEMA will not be able to spend the money until the year 1999, and we won't have an appropriations bill. Let's go through the appropriations process. Amendment No. 2131 to Amendment No. 2123 (Purpose: To ensure that additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not reduce the unified budget surplus)

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, yesterday Senator Gramm had an amendment that said let's fund the 1998 emergencies and we will call it an emergency; we don't have to have an offset. That was the underlying bill. The underlying bill had money for defense, money for Iraq, money for Bosnia, money for the so-called emergencies--weather-related emergencies. I thought he had a good amendment. I did not speak out on the floor, and I wish I had. That was on the underlying bill, which is about $3.3 billion. Now we are looking at an amendment to expand that bill by an additional $1.6 billion. I ask the Senator from Missouri, is that correct--$1.6 billion for FEMA?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I notice my colleague from Missouri is here. He is in charge of the subcommittee with responsibility for FEMA. He may want to make some comments on this amendment. Does the Senator from Missouri want to speak on this?

Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator will yield, I appreciate his willingness to do that, because I am opposed to both amendments. I do not find that to be necessary. I will confine my remarks to this amendment. My guess is the outcome would be identical. But I feel rather strongly about it.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, I think we are very close to concluding debate on this amendment. I want to thank my colleague from Vermont, and my colleague from New Mexico and others who have spoken on behalf of this amendment. I also share his concern. If there are going to be that number of employees in HCFA, it should be temporary. I very much appreciate that. I also mention that my friend and colleague from Massachusetts said that Oklahoma had recently hired five employees to comply with this provision. I think that is fine. I think that is great, because I happen to believe in State control of insurance instead of the Federal Government. States are trying to comply. They are in the process of complying. The State of Oklahoma can probably hire five employees for less than $93,000 each, as we would be doing under this piece of legislation. So, again, for the information of our colleagues, my amendment would strike out the provision that would add $16 million for HCFA for the hiring of an additional 65 employees. I do not think that is necessary. They have over 4,000 employees today. They certainly can borrow, they can use, they can have temporary employees. They do not need 65 permanent employees. We also do not need to be taking money away from the Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, a permanent entitlement provision, to pay for this measure. Again, the administration was well aware. The Health and Human Services Administration has 58,000 employees. Surely they can shuffle some employees around, if necessary, to meet any emergency that might arise. So I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, just for the information of my colleagues, I think we are winding down. Just a couple comments. HCFA is not a starved agency. This is not an agency that has been ignored by this Congress in last year's appropriations bill. Last year, in 1997, we spent $1.77 billion in HCFA. In 1998, this year we are in, $1.88 billion. I tell my colleagues, that is $110 million, and an increase of $30 million just in the administrative portion of HCFA alone. And the number of full-time employees, I have mentioned before, is over 4,000--4,000. So this is not an agency that has been starved. If you ask anybody in the medical community, anybody in a hospital, HCFA is a disaster. It takes 10 years sometimes to promulgate regulations. I do not think there is a direct relationship between increasing an agency's budget and improving the quality of health care for families. My colleague from Massachusetts said, ``Boy, if we don't give them more money, we're going to have bad quality health care in various States.'' I do not think there is a direct correlation between an increase in HCFA's budget for bureaucrats and improving quality health care. It may be just the opposite. It may be that a lot of those bureaucrats, instead of increasing the quality health care, frankly, cause a lot more headache, a lot more paperwork, a lot more compliance costs and less quality health care. And so is this urgent? Now, the administration has a big request in 1999. And we are going to fight that on the appropriations bill. I am sure they have asked for $80 million in new money. They have asked for another 217 employees. Now they are trying to squeeze in an extra 65. I do not think we should do it. I do not think we should do it. It is not that big of a deal, but, hey, do we want to turn that much additional bureaucracy over to HCFA, that much more money, or can't they borrow some more of those employees that they now have who are probably reading through reports that are obsolete and maybe not doing so much good? Sixty-five happens to be about 1.5 percent of their work force. Surely, they can borrow a few employees if they have this urgent request to get these five States in compliance. Heaven forbid, five States. It is 2\1/2\ months, and they have not stepped up to do what we told them to do. Now, does that mean those States do not care about quality health care? I do not think so. Maybe they have not passed the bill in their legislatures, but, all right, let us borrow some employees from HCFA. Maybe that can encourage this process. But do we really need to hire 65 more when 26 were doing this function for the first 20 months? Do we really need to hire an additional 65? That is an increase of 250 percent, when you only have basically five States that have not complied when GAO says that HHS' regulatory role under this law is not yet known. Some implementation challenges may soon recede. Others are hypothetical and may not materialize. And yet we are going to more than double the number of bureaucrats dealing with this? I do not think that makes sense. And then, Mr. President, I want to touch on--and I have the Budget Committee chairman here and the Appropriations Committee chairman here. I want to touch on how this was paid for. Now, this is supposedly an urgent supplemental. I know on occasion--I know on the highway bill we are going to make a change on an entitlement program to help pay for the entitlement program, and most everybody signed off on it. Maybe that is good; maybe it is not good. But the way we are paying for this, I tell my colleague from Minnesota, we are taking money out of the Hospital Insurance Fund. We are taking money out of an entitlement program, mandated program, that is supposed to be dealing with quality health care. We are taking money away from that program and saying, well, we want to spend it in an urgent supplemental and money going out this year. Now, we only have a few months left this year. The HI, the Hospital Insurance Fund, happens to have some problems. Its problems are that more money is going out than going in. And so now we are all of a sudden saying--and this portion of it deals with peer review organizations, and so on. We are supposed to be implementing quality, supposed to be improving quality for seniors, and we are going to say, ``Oh, no, we're going to take money out of that. We'll take enough money out of that to pay for this.'' We are taking money out of the entitlement side to pay on the discretionary side, and further compound the problems we have in the Medicare trust fund. I just do not think that makes sense. I do not think it is right. I told the chairman of the Finance Committee we should not do this. I have heard people say we are going to protect the Medicare fund and we are going to protect seniors and we are going to have quality health care for seniors, and the next thing you know, well, we are playing games on HI, on the Hospital Insurance Fund, so we can get more bureaucrats for HCFA. I do not think we can do it. If HCFA has the need, they have 4,002 employees. The can borrow, they can get by, they can make sure they can make it happen. They have a total of 58,000 employees in their whole organization. Health and Human Services has 58,500 employees. Maybe they could borrow one or two of those. They could borrow 1 percent of those. My land, 58,000--1 percent would be 580. Do we really need that? I do not think so. So I just urge my colleagues to vote no on expanding bureaucracy. Let us allow some common sense and some fiscal discipline to happen for a change. Let us not be taking money out of an organization that is supposed to be improving quality health care for seniors and further jeopardizing the Hospital Insurance Fund at the same time. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I beg to differ with my colleague. The original legislation set up said: States, do these things. We told the States to do them, and 45 States have done them. This is a temporary -- temporary -- encouragement to get the States to have portability. We did it; 45 States have done it. This was not to have HCFA micromanage State insurance plans throughout the land. That was not why this bill was passed. If they could not do that with 26 employees, then I would be surprised if they could do it with 65 employees. Some people are trying to take a bill that passed unanimously and say that gives us great authority to be able to micromanage all the health care plans in the States. That is not what we passed. That is not what we agreed to. What we told the States to do was put in portability and put in conversions, where you could convert to an individual plan. We did that; 45 States said yes; 5 still have not. That is temporary. Even the GAO report that was quoted by my colleague from Massachusetts said--he was quoting that report where the director who made the report said we may not have this need. We don't even know, because those five States may be in compliance, and once they sign up, we are done, they are done. My colleague is talking about mental parity. The States have that in their plans if they are complying. That is a State regulatory function, it is not ours, where the Federal Government has an involvement to tell my colleague under an ERISA plan, that's enforced under the Department of Labor. It is not under HCFA. HCFA did not ask for that, because it is not under their domain, their jurisdiction. I don't want people to be confused and say this may hinder mental health parity enforcement. It does not. It doesn't have a thing to do with that. What this whole legislation is about is getting the States to comply with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Mr. President, 45 States have done that; 5 are in the process, working on it. They have done that with 26 employees. This is a measure to say we need another 65, and incidentally, when they finish this, we will have them doing something else. This is a massive effort to expand the bureaucracy of an agency that already spends $364 million, has 4,000 employees. I might mention, the administration wants to increase that next year by about $80 million, just in administration function, and increase that by another 215 employees. We will have to wrestle with that in next year's appropriation bill, which will just be another few months from now. But what we have on the floor now is the so-called urgent supplemental that the administration tried to stick in the back-door to expand their bureaucracy. They want to use this urgent supplemental as an excuse to expand the bureaucracy when there is nothing urgent. I think if you have a bill that passed 20 months ago and you have 45 States in compliance and the bill has only been in effect 2\1/2\ months and there are 5 remaining, there is no reason to almost triple the bureaucracy to be able to get those 5 States to comply. That is what we are talking about. That is a temporary need, and surely HCFA, with 4,000 employees, if they need a couple more employees, can borrow a couple of those employees out of that 4,000. I mean the 26 that are already working in this one branch, they still have 3,970-some-odd that they could use, that they could borrow. They can borrow a couple of people. Or there is something like almost 60,000 people in Health and Human Services--60,000 employees. Maybe they could borrow a couple of those. We don't need to permanently fund an additional 65 employees to expand this bureaucracy. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. He said this GAO report mentioned there was widespread abuse and so on, and I take issue with that. The GAO report says this, and I will just quote: HHS regulatory role under this law is not yet known. Some implementation challenges may soon recede. Others are hypothetical and may not materialize. As Federal agencies issue more guidance and States and insurers gain more experience with HCFA, concerns about the clarity of its regulations may diminish. In other words, we have 45 States now in compliance, according to HCFA; 5 are in the process of working on it, and maybe those 5 will never get it together. Then maybe there will have to be some Federal implementation of Kassebaum-Kennedy, but that remains to be seen; we don't know. This has only been in effect for 2\1/2\ months. So, do we really have an emergency of such a magnitude that we must triple the staff for HCFA so these five States can get in compliance? Those five States may sign up within the next month, or the next 2 months. So there is no reason to hire 65 people. There is no reason whatsoever, at $92,000 each--or an average cost of $92,000. I don't think it makes sense. Does HCFA have some other alternatives? Yes; they have over 4,000 employees. Do we really need to give them 65 more in this so-called urgent supplemental? HHS has a total of 58,500 employees--58,000 employees. Do we really need to give them an extra 65? I don't think so. I mean, this administration has shown a great ability to be able to borrow employees from agency to agency. The Legal Counsel's Office in the White House seems to borrow quite a few from various agencies to help in their legal battles that they have ongoing in the White House. They can move employees within HHS, they can move employees within HCFA, to meet with any temporary demand that is there. This is a temporary demand. You only have five States in noncompliance. They may be in compliance by this summer. So why in the world would we need to hire 65 additional bureaucrats that would be permanent, that would be added on forever, that would be looking for other things? I might mention, we even found a list from HCFA that says what these people will be doing after these five States are in compliance. I might tell my colleague from Minnesota, it doesn't have anything to do with mental health parity but it is ``review all State legislation''--it has a bunch of things that they would be doing. In other words, more bureaucrats, more Federal intervention over State law. That is not what we passed in Kassebaum-Kennedy. My colleague from Minnesota was successful, with the Senator from New Mexico. They said, we want to have mental health parity. That passed as part of Kennedy-Kassebaum, but I tell my colleague, dealing with Federal legislation, it only would deal with the Labor Department on ERISA plans. It has nothing to do with State regulation of plans. We do not send out an army of bureaucrats to set out and micromanage insurance throughout the States. Maybe that is what some in this administration would like to do. I hope we will not do it. I hope we will have the wisdom to say we will not give them this additional money for 65 employees. They have 26, and 45 States signed up--45 States in the last 20 months signed up. Do we really need to give them an additional 65 employees in hopes that maybe they will be able to run the insurance programs of the 5 States that haven't yet signed up? I don't think so. This is an urgent supplemental. This is an abuse of the process, I think, by HCFA, to expand their bureaucracy, and I think it would be a serious mistake. So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. Let me conclude, if you don't mind.

Mr. NICKLES. Let me just complete my response. I think I will answer my colleague's statement. The Senator from Minnesota says if we do not fund this money we are jeopardizing mental parity enforcement, and he is absolutely wrong-- absolutely wrong. I want to make sure people understand it. The reason why Kassebaum-Kennedy had a lot of support is because it provided major reforms to improve access and portability, to make sure if somebody loses insurance in a group plan they can have access to coverage in an individual plan. I supported that. But we left it under State regulation. We gave States the authority to regulate this. Mr. President, 45 States have stepped forward. We passed that bill 20 months ago. The bill became effective, I tell my colleague, in January of this year. It has only been in effect for 2\1/2\ months. 45 States now comply; 45 States have done what we asked them to do. They have amended their State laws, because States regulate insurance. I know a lot of people in this body would like the Federal Government to regulate all insurance, but a lot of us said no, we should keep that under State control, we should let the States do it. We are not insurance commissioners. And needs may vary from State to State. Some people wanted to nationalize it. They have not been successful. They were not successful when they passed the so-called Kennedy-Kassebaum legislation in federalizing insurance. What the bill did say is: States, make these changes. Make sure insurance in your State is portable. Make sure there are options to go to individual plans if they lose coverage under a group plan. We passed that unanimously in the Senate. Mr. President, 45 States have adopted it. The law became effective January 1 this year. It has only been in effect for 2\1/2\ months. To help the States make that transition, HCFA had 26 employees--26. Forty-five States now comply. The other five States, as I understand it, are still working on it, and maybe they have had a disagreement between the Governor and the legislature or one body in the House or the Senate, and so they have not passed legislation in their State to be in compliance. So they are working on it. But wait a minute. Do we need to hire a whole new army? Do we need to go from 26 employees and add another 65 on top of it, creating a whole new big base or army of HCFA employees to get these 5 States to comply? I do not think so. I think it would be a serious mistake. And it has absolutely nothing to do with mental health parity. I look at the administration's HCFA supplemental request; it doesn't mention mental health parity. It doesn't have anything to do with mental health parity. Those are all under the State plans. So I just mention that. I want to make sure my colleagues understand that. Let me now just touch on a couple of other things. Senator Kennedy mentioned that GAO came up with a report.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I appreciate the statement of my colleague from Minnesota, but he is absolutely wrong. Let me just tell my colleague from Minnesota, the administration did not request a dime dealing with mental health parity--not a dime, I tell my friend from New Mexico. Let's go back to the legislation, the original legislation----

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, the amendment I am offering today will strike a nonemergency appropriation of $16 million for the Health Care Financing Administration, commonly called HCFA. This provision in the supplemental bill includes $6 million for HCFA to hire 65 new Federal employees. That is an average of $92,300 per person. Mr. President, I will try to be very blunt and very quick with my discussion on this amendment. HCFA has today 4,002 employees. It is unbelievably large, and some would say not a very well-run agency. It has an administrative function that spends $364 million. Its total program management is $1.88 billion and it has been growing significantly. The administration in their budget request says next year they want to hire an additional 215 employees, an increase in their Federal administrative request from $364 million to $456 million. This is an agency that has been growing and, under the administration's request, would continue to grow profusely. It doesn't need to be in this so- called emergency supplemental bill. The administration requested it, and it was initially agreed upon. But I started looking at the request, and I am astounded that it would be made. Supposedly, the request was made to fund HCFA's enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the so-called Kassebaum-Kennedy bill that we passed last Congress. This provision would hire an additional 65 bureaucrats. They now have 26 administering the program. Forty-five States have already complied. This is temporary assuming all 50 States are going to comply. Twenty- six employees were able to help monitor compliance and help achieve compliance within 45 States. Five States have not. All five States, I believe, will at some point be in compliance. Do we really need to hire an additional 65 and expand this bureaucracy? I don't think that we should. I think we should save the taxpayers the $16 million. One of the things that bothers me is how we are paying for this. This is paid for by taking money out of a function that is paid for in the Medicare trust fund. So we are taking money out of entitlement functions and putting it in discretionary funds so we can hire more bureaucrats. HCFA already has over 4,000. I really do not think we need another 65, especially in an emergency supplemental bill. So my amendment would be to delete this amendment to the bill that would add $16 million in new federal spending, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. Reserving the right to object. I am not managing this bill, so I ask my colleague from Wisconsin if he would withhold that amendment until the Senator from Alaska is back. That would be appreciated. So I object at this time.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. What is the amendment?

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