David Pryor

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. If we can divide the time equally, we can have 15 minutes and you could have 15 minutes.

Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I think this has been a very educational debate, to say the least. During the course of the evening, it has been proposed that we try to have a time certain placed on the sense-of-the- Senate resolution offered by the Senator from Ohio and others. It has further been proposed that if this issue goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, there might be, for example, a 120-day period when the report from the committee comes back to the floor of the Senate. Madam President, with all due respect to that idea, let us just look for a moment at what that would do. We have done a little calculation here. If we extend 120 days of protection to Glaxo for Zantac alone-- and this does not include the other dozen or so drug companies under this umbrella-- 120 days of not resolving this problem will give them unlimited opportunities to charge the highest price for their drug. They will have unlimited protection from any generic that wants to come to the market. Simply put, we are going to be depositing $720 million to the bank account of Glaxo, because by next Christmas of 1996, which is just about 12\1/2\ months from now, Glaxo will have made an extra $2.328 billion if we fail to close this loophole. Madam President, I, as a U.S. Senator, am not a stockbroker. I will never advise anybody to buy any stock or make investment because I have never been very successful at that myself. But if we extend this for 120 days, or even another 30 days, without closing this loophole, I suggest that we all go out in the morning and buy Glaxo stock because they are going to continue receiving an enormous windfall that they had no idea they would receive. Madam President, second, I ask unanimous consent to add three additional original cosponsors: Senator Bryan, Senator Leahy, and Senator Dorgan.

Mr. PRYOR. Next, Madam President, there has been a discussion this evening and quotes by my friend from Ohio, Senator DeWine, and from Senator Hatch of Utah, about Dr. Koop. Well, Dr. Koop got drawn into this issue in a very interesting way, and it appears to me, after talking to Dr. Koop some days ago, that Dr. Koop may not have been aware of--or the Glaxo people may not have presented the true case to-- Dr. Koop when they had him sign a particular advertisement which appeared in The Hill newspaper. It also appeared earlier in the Washington Post. This is the advertisement that Dr. Koop signed on October 25, 1995. The advertisement appears to have been purchased by Dr. Koop to say that ``Senator Pryor's bill would weaken the patent protection needed for the next generation of pharmaceuticals.'' I called him up and I said, ``Dr. Koop, I am probably your No. 1 fan in this country. I have supported you, I have revered you, and now you have signed this advertisement in all these papers saying that you are opposed to my amendment.'' He says, ``What amendment?'' I said, ``The amendment with which we are trying to close this loophole.'' He said, ``I did not know that was what it was all about.'' [[Page S 18220]] Well, on December 3, a Journal of Commerce appeared about Dr. Koop. ``In a brief interview, Dr. Koop said he did not know the details of the lobbying campaign by Glaxo-Wellcome when he agreed to lend his name to what was described to him as an effort to preserve patent drugs from foreign piracy.'' In fact, the lobbying was an effort by a British drug company to retain an inadvertent million-dollar loophole in last year's trade bill at the expense of generic drug companies. Dr. Koop said he was unaware that a general statement he had made on patent rights would be used in the Glaxo campaign. When asked by a reporter if he had been done a disservice by Glaxo officials, Dr. Koop responded, ``I would have to say I was,'' and expressed regret that he had ever been involved in the fight over Glaxo's loophole. Madam President, I have heard my very good friend from Utah talking about all of the research dollars that are being expended to find all of these cures for all of the problems and ailments and diseases that we have today. I want to compliment the pharmaceutical companies for doing a wonderful job. They are second to none in the world. But, Madam President, I do not think we need to shed any crocodile tears for the company Glaxo. One, it is the biggest drug company in the world, and when the Glaxo research was done on Zantac alone, which was over two decades ago--and they have had patent protection, no competition whatever for a period of 17 years, no competition, Madam President--when that research was done, not only was most of it done by NIH and farmed out to universities throughout the educational system across the land, but taxpayers' dollars helped dramatically in finding the research and the answers that this particular drug/pharmaceutical was intended to cure. Let's don't shed too many crocodile tears when we are talking about research. First, Glaxo is probably much like the other drug companies. They are spending more today to market and advertise their drugs than they are to research the new--as they say, blockbuster--drug breakthroughs. They are spending more now for marketing than they are for research. Let's look at Glaxo itself, and at the pretax profits for the last 12 months: $3.3 billion--not millions of dollars, but $3.3 billion. And much of this came from the best-selling drug in the world today, Zantac, which, unless we close this loophole, we are going to provide further protection from competition. Madam President, we have also heard a lot of discussion about patent rights and intellectual property rights. Let me once again refer, as I have in the past and as Senator Chafee has, to a letter that I received, or actually Senator Chafee received. I think I received an identical letter, dated September 25, in which our U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Mickey Kantor, said, ``This provision [the transition rules] were written neutrally because it was intended to apply to all types of patentable subject matter, including pharmaceutical products. Conforming amendments should have been made to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and section 271 of the Patent Act, but were inadvertently overlooked.'' That is a direct statement, Madam President, from our trade Ambassador who negotiated the GATT Treaty and who is there to protect not only our patent rights but also our intellectual property rights. Madam President, I am going to reserve the balance of my time. I look forward to hearing additional statements from my colleagues.

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

Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, may I inquire as to how many minutes I have left?

Mr. PRYOR. Thank you, Madam President. Madam President, this debate is coming to conclusion at long last. We are about to make a tentative decision on this matter. Let me say to my colleagues, Madam President, that somehow or another, sooner or later, we have to correct this problem. We have to close this loophole. If we fail to table the second-degree amendment, sometime or another I am going to be back. I want my colleagues to know that this is not the last they will hear of this amendment and this issue, because I think it is so absolutely atrocious that this could happen, is happening, and that we have yet not closed this loophole. Like MacArthur, Madam President, I shall return. This has been a fascinating debate. It has lasted 2\1/2\ hours, about as long as a typical Senate hearing would last. And now, at the end, we see the facts have not changed. They have not changed at all. Those facts are as follows: the Congress made a mistake and we have a very rare opportunity to correct that mistake. Let us look now at who is on the side who thinks that we made a mistake and who believes that we should rectify that mistake. First, our U.S. Trade Representative, Mickey Kantor, said that Congress made a mistake, that it was never intended that these drug companies would be given this extra amount of unearned protection to market without any competition. The Food and Drug Administration said the Congress made a mistake. FDA tried to rectify the situation but they failed, and it is too bad that they did. Our U.S. Patent Office said that a mistake has been made by implication, and their decision was taken to court. Because of the technical aspects of the language, the Patent Office was overruled. If we review the Congressional Record we will find that at no time during the debate on the issue of the GATT Treaty, leading to the adoption of the GATT Treaty, at no place do we find reference to this issue by anyone--not by any of the drafters or the debaters, nor by those opposed to or in favor of that treaty. At no time did anyone even hint that we were going to carve out a special exception for a few drug companies in order to give them extra monopolistic opportunities to compete unfairly in the marketplace, and to keep generic drugs from competing. The State Medicaid directors, Madam President, have written in support of our efforts. They say that unless we correct this loophole, the Medicaid programs in each of the 50 States are going to continue to suffer and pay the highest price for these particular drugs, especially Zantac, and will be kept from buying generic drugs for the poorest of the poor population. [[Page S 18222]] The elderly, the consumers--none will benefit from the efforts of the generic drug companies to reduce the cost of drugs like Zantac by as much as 50 percent or 60 percent. Yet, we may be about to vote and say that we are going to continue to give these enormous profits, these windfall profits, to a few pharmaceutical companies, and to take those profits, to give them those profits at the expense of taking those dollars from the consumer and the taxpayers of America. This amendment that we are about to vote on is very simple. It is an attempt to kill our desire to close this loophole. That is what it is. I respect my colleagues who offer it. I realize that some may believe that this particular issue is complex. But I must say, as my colleagues have said, that this is, in fact, a very simple issue. We have made a mistake. And now it is time to rectify it. Madam President, I have frequently used the following analogy: You are walking down the street on the sidewalk, or wherever, and find a billfold, and you open that billfold up. And there is a $100 bill in there, and there is also the name of the owner. Do you take that billfold and the $100 to the owner? Do you try to find the lawful and rightful owner of that billfold that contains the $100, or, do you put it in your pocket? In this case, these drug companies have found a billfold. It has a lot of money in it. Rather than returning it to the rightful owner--the taxpayer and the consumer, in this case--Madam President, they are taking that billfold, they are taking the money, and they are putting it right in their pocket. I urge the defeat of the second-degree amendment.

Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Daschle, Senator Leahy, Senator Bryan, and Senator Feinstein be added as original cosponsors of my amendment.

Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I move to table the pending amendment, the second-degree amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, if I may have just a few seconds, I know this was a very hard vote, a very close vote. I want to compliment those on the opposing side. They made a very, very strong argument, and they prevailed this evening. But I will make it possible for the Senate to revisit this issue in the very, very near future, Mr. President. I want to thank those who supported us, and at this time I withdraw my amendment. Amendment No. 3085

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, today, I rise in the Senate to voice my very strong opposition to the actions being considered by the House Senate conference committee on the Defense authorization bill. Mr. President, I have been informed, with some of my colleagues, and I am very sorry I did not get to listen to all of the remarks of my good friend and colleague and partner in this issue, Senator Roth of Delaware, we have been informed that the conference committee is now considering turning back the clock on 12 years of progress in the war against $600 hammers, $1,000 toilet seats, guns that do not shoot, bombs that do not explode, and planes that do not fly. I believe what is at stake are the lives of our men and women who serve this country in the Armed Forces. Mr. President, I am speaking today of the very useful and most critical role of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation in the Pentagon and the effort underway in the conference committee to totally annihilate and to eliminate this office. As I address the Senate this afternoon, the conference committee on the DOD authorization bill is now deliberating over whether to repeal the bipartisan legislation written by myself, along in 1983 with Senator Roth, Senator Kassebaum, Senator Grassley, and others, that created the independent weapons testing office. This legislation this is now known as section 139 of title X establishes the Operational Testing Office that currently Mr. President, oversees, evaluates, and reports on the results of tests conducted on our new military hardware. This Office was designed to report directly to the Secretary of Defense with this independent assessment of the weapons being tested, procurement, and combat use. The job of this Office has been to help make good weapons better and to help keep weapons that do not work out of the hands of our soldiers and sailors. It has saved the taxpayers billions of dollars by exposing many troubled systems before they become costly dinosaurs and disasters. The ultimate contribution, I think, of the Operational Testing Office has been the lives it has saved by helping to ensure that our Armed Forces are not sent into combat with weapons that are faulty and do not work and will fail in an operational environment. Support for this Office, Mr. President, has always been bipartisan. For example, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said that the independent weapons testing ``saved more lives" during Operation Desert Storm than perhaps any other single initiative. Current Defense Secretary William Perry has recently described this Office as ``The conscience of the acquisition process.'' Earlier this year, I was extremely shocked to learn that the House National Security Committee recommended repealing section 139 of title X, thereby eliminating this Office. Because of what we consider to be a very irresponsible initiative in the House of Representatives, Senator Roth and myself sponsored a bipartisan sense-of-the-Senate resolution voicing the Senate's full support for the Testing Office and our strong objection to repealing its charter. This resolution passed the Senate unanimously during consideration of the defense authorization bill in August in 1995. We were recently notified that the conference committee apparently is disregarding the sense-of-the-Senate [[Page S 18056]] resolution by refusing to remove from its conference report the language that would kill operational weapons testing in the Pentagon. This news is disheartening, indeed, Mr. President. Repealing the law that established independent weapons testing would be an irresponsible, unthinkable course, and dangerously shortsighted. If this Office's charter is revoked, countless American lives will be at risk. Furthermore, the entire system by which we acquire new weapons will be pushed back to the dark ages. We will undoubtedly be bringing back the unthinkable conflict of interest of the students grading their own exams, when it comes to evaluating the results of critical weapons testing. Last Friday, after learning that the Testing Office was, indeed, in jeopardy and in danger of being eliminated, Senator Roth, Senator Grassley and myself sent a letter to Chairman Thurmond and to Chairman Spence, expressing our outrage over the apparent desire to repeal section 139 of title X. In this letter, Mr. President, we call on the conferees to maintain our legislation that created the Operational Testing Office. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this letter that we sent to Chairman Thurmond and to Chairman Spence be printed in the Record directly following my remarks.

Mr. PRYOR. I gladly join my good friends from the other side of the aisle in voting our strong bipartisan support for independent weapons testing. This Office has always enjoyed support from each side of the aisle. I hope it always will. It was created in this spirit. I certainly hope that it does not die under a cloud of partisanship. I would like my views to be known clearly and publicly before the conferees conclude their deliberations on the Defense authorization bill. I know they will take heed of the remarks of my colleague and good friend, Senator Roth, who just delivered his eloquent speech on the floor of the Senate with regard to this issue. If this conference report comes to the Senate, Mr. President, with language that revokes the charter of our weapons testing office, I will strongly oppose the conference report and I will ask it be rejected by the entire U.S. Senate. As we prepare to send American troops into Bosnia, it would be wrong--absolutely, totally wrong--to eliminate the most important checks and balances in the military procurement chain that has proven to save time, money, and most importantly, the lives of our fighting forces. The American taxpayers, the American men and women in uniform, deserve much better. I thank the Chair for recognizing me. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, December 1, 1995. Hon. Strom Thurmond, Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee, SR 228, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: We are writing to voice our strenuous objection to an action the defense authorization conference committee is considering that would jeopardize independent operational and live-fire weapons testing in the Department of Defense. We believe that what is at stake are the lives of our men and women who serve in the armed forces. As you know, the conference committee is currently discussing various measures to streamline the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). We are aware that the conference committee is considering repealing section 139 of Title 10. Repealing Section 139 would eliminate the authority of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) to oversee, evaluate, and report on the operational worth of weapons prior to their production and procurement by the U.S. government. The DOT&E office was created 12 years ago with strong bipartisan support. Its existence has been critical to Congressional and Pentagon efforts to promote a ``fly-before- you-buy'' approach to the multi-billion dollar arena of military acquisitions. Section 139 of Title 10 is the foundation upon which this important contribution to DOD procurement is based. Since its enactment, this provision has saved time, money, and most importantly, the lives of our soldiers and sailors who must rely on tested, proven weapons. We truly believe that any decision by the conference committee to repeal section 139 would result in many unintended consequences. Eliminating this office would not eliminate the requirement to conduct testing under realistic operational conditions. However, it would raise the question as to who would be responsible for approving test plans and for providing independent evaluations of testing. This uncertainty would be costly indeed. We appreciate the conferees' desire to streamline the Office of the Secretary of Defense. However, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act recently enacted by Congress merged live-fire testing with the operational testing function. Thus, independent testing oversight has already been streamlined. Furthermore, the DOT&E office is already one of the smallest in the Pentagon bureaucracy. This directorate has proven itself as one of the most important checks and balances in the DOD procurement system. Its value has been lauded by our two most recent Secretaries of Defense. After Operation Desert Storm, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said that the vigorous, independent testing oversight put in place by Congress ``saved more lives'' than perhaps any other single initiative. Current Defense Secretary Perry recently described the DOT&E as ``the conscience of the acquisition process.'' In August, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a Sense of the Senate resolution that stated clearly the Senate's opposition to repealing section 139 of Title 10. We continue to believe that repealing the law that guides independent weapons testing is wrong and dangerously shortsighted. Clearly the question facing Congress is do we care more about reducing the size of OSD or protecting the lives of our service men and women. We firmly believe that if the provisions repealing section 139 are not removed, Congress will be putting countless lives at risk in the name of reducing a handful of billets. We urge you to continue the bipartisan Congressional support for independent testing by deleting from your conference report any provisions that would repeal section 139 of Title 10. Thank you for your consideration of this urgent matter. Sincerely, William V. Roth, Jr. Charles E. Grassley. David Pryor.

Mr. PRYOR

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

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I have an amendment that I send to the desk at this time and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, with that understanding, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, second-degreed by the majority leader from Kansas, be set aside.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. Amendment No. 3082 (Purpose: To clarify certain provisions of law with respect to the approval and marketing of certain prescription drugs)

Mr. PRYOR. First, I would like to just take a very, very few moments of the Senate's time this evening to explain basically what my amendment does. I know there will be no vote on this amendment this evening, Mr. President. I realize that. I know that to accommodate some schedules tomorrow, it is likely that we will come back to this legislation late in the afternoon. But having said that, Mr. President, I would like to state that this amendment relates to the issue of GATT and prescription drugs. I have spoken on this issue on several occasions on the floor of the Senate. And I would like, if I might, to just take a very few moments to explain basically what we have done and what I plan to speak about tomorrow. When Congress voted on the GATT treaty, Mr. President, we did two things. First, we extended all patents from 17 to 20 years in duration. Second, we said in the GATT treaty that a generic drug company could market their product on a 17-year expiration date if they had already made a substantial investment and were willing to pay a royalty to the particular drug company that they were going in competition with. We all considered and all agreed that this was a fair balance of interests. The treaty, Mr. President, applies in our country to every person, to every product, to every company and every industry in our country. We thought it was fair. We thought it was universal. But we were wrong. We simply made a mistake. We accidentally left the prescription drug industry out of the picture. Today there are certain prescription drug companies that get the patent extension, but the GATT loophole shields them from any generic competition. Why is this, Mr. President? [[Page S 18005]] First, because we by our own mistake--and we should admit that mistake; and, by the way, we have the opportunity to correct that mistake--we failed to have the food, drug and cosmetic law of our country comply to the GATT treaty language. Second, the Food and Drug Administration tried in vain to correct this mistake. The U.S. Patent Office tried in vain to correct this mistake, but to no avail because the law was written and we failed to conform the food, drug, and cosmetic law to the specific GATT treaty language. The drug industry is the only industry which enjoys this special protection under GATT. The American consumers are going to be paying, therefore, much more for their drugs as a result, as much, as a matter of fact, $2 to $6 billion a year more. If we take Zantac, for example, Mr. President, the world's best selling drug for uclers, we will have to pay a price twice as much as we would be paying for a generic competitor. As a matter of fact, Mr. President, tomorrow, on Wednesday, we will see the drug company that manufactures Zantac--we will see that particular company taking in profits that they did not expect of $2 to $6 billion a year, unless we correct this outrageous loophole. There is no conceivable reason why we should allow this loophole to remain uncorrected. Mickey Kantor, our own U.S. Trade Representative, the Patent Office, and the FDA all agree that it should be fixed. Even the drug companies admit that it was all a mistake. Mr. President, we think that our cause is correct, and on behalf of Senator Chafee of Rhode Island and Senator Brown of Colorado, I submit this amendment this evening. We will be talking about this amendment and what it does tomorrow. But I urge my colleagues to remember: Congress made a mistake. It led to consumers being forced to subsidize an unjustified multibillion-dollar windfall to a few undeserving companies. And tomorrow, we will have our sole opportunity to do the right thing and correct this mistake. I yield the floor. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. I thank the Chair for maintaining order. Mr. President, I do not have time to complete my statement. Let me just say that the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform has written me today urging that we look very carefully at passing this legislation. The AARP, in their press release this afternoon, expressed their concern about the enforcement of nursing home quality standards and implies that they are further weakened in this particular conference report. The Nursing Home National Seniors Center, run by Toby Edelman, has done a memorandum that I am going to ask be printed in the Record, and other documents, Mr. President. I also have a letter from Service Employees. These four documents I ask unanimous consent to be printed in the Record.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and thank my friend from Nebraska. I spent most of today looking through the Republican package, specifically with respect to the so-called nursing home standards that have been included in this legislation before us tonight. Mr. President, I cannot say strongly enough how deeply offended I am by the extraordinary means that have been used to undermine the progress made in the most basic nursing home protections that have been won over the past 3 decades. I think that these Republican assaults on nursing home safeguards are no less than callous--I hate to say that-- and will open the door to a litany of further abuses that we have attempted to cure since the 1960's. The Republican leadership, through this attack, is saying basically ``too old, too sick, too bad'' to residents of nursing home facilities across our country. Mr. President, before I touch on some of the most glaring offenses of this package, I want to tell my colleagues that the law which this budget package is completely undermining, the 1987 nursing home quality standards law, was developed on a bipartisan basis, was agreed to by all interested groups, including the nursing home industry, nursing home advocates, care providers, unions, States, and finally, yes, the Congress of the United States. It followed literally years of discussions and came about because the record of the States in preventing nursing home abuse was appalling. In 1986 the report by the National Academy of Sciences, which was commissioned by the Congress, found shocking evidence of deficient care and inadequate enforcement. The study found that Government regulations of nursing homes, which was then conducted by the States, was totally unsatisfactory because it allowed too many marginal or substandard nursing homes to continue in operation. Mr. President, that was how it was during a time when lack of money was not all that much of a problem. Now, at this critical moment, as we prepare to severely reduce Medicaid funding to the States, the Republican budget also abdicates nearly all Federal responsibility to our most vulnerable citizens, the disabled and the infirm elderly in our nursing homes across our land. What we have before us, Mr. President, in this basic conference report that we will be voting on in a short time--this conference report includes what I declare as an abdication of our Federal role, an abdication of our responsibility to the 2 million nursing home residents in our country today. In this Republican budget we find that their version of what constitutes nursing home standards, in my opinion, is a warped version of the current law. Some very crafty legislative drafters have spent long hours in their attempts to totally and completely undercut the basic progress that we have made over the past years in protecting the nursing home residents from abuse. Let me try to explain exactly what this means: Where current law allows for Federal standards for nurse aide training, they are eliminated. Where current law allows for Federal guidance with respect to transfers and discharges, the Republican proposal eliminates all guidance in that area. Where current law, Mr. President, prohibits discrimination against Medicaid residents and prohibits facilities from charging residents, their families or friends to guarantee admission to the facility, those Federal protections by the Republicans are totally removed from this bill. Where current law requires Federal guidelines to qualify as a facility administrator, these guidelines are totally removed, Mr. President. They are now left to the States. Where current law requires that facilities meet Federal standards with respect to protecting residents' personal funds, these protections are totally stricken and left up to the States and to the nursing home owners. Where current law imposes requirements for sound administration of a facility, these guarantees are totally expunged from the record. To add insult to injury, in addition to abdicating so many Federal responsibilities to these vulnerable individuals and dumping these requirements on the States, the Republican plan now before us would also eliminate any required date by which the States must be sure to meet its responsibility that had formerly been handled by the Secretary of HHS. [[Page S 17281]] So we are now saying that States must meet these requirements whenever, but not at a specific time. This is unconscionable, Mr. President. How can we in less than a decade abandon these nursing home residents? How can we, by a vote of 51 to 48 in this body, say we want the strongest standards, and again just a few days ago by a vote of 95 to 1 on Monday of this week, and now walk away from all of those standards and say we are abdicating our responsibilities? What in the world is going on? What we are about to do is basically to begin a program of warehousing the elderly population of our country. We have identified at least 11 basic nursing home standards that have been abolished under this plan. I know that there are many more. This plan allows homes to extort money in return for a guarantee of admission to a facility. Under present law, Mr. President, this is prohibited. Now we are abolishing that prohibition. The Republican plan allows facilities to commingle residents' individual savings accounts. It allows homes to keep the interest on resident savings accounts below $250. And it goes on and on and on. In fact, it kills Senator John Danforth's self-determination provision on living wills so that residents will have all of the information about making and what constitutes a valid living will. Mr. President, further, what other quality assurance protection does the budget package eliminate? It cuts down the fines from $10,000 to $5,000 per nursing home. The budget plan eliminates the uniform assessment tool which has been hailed universally by providers, States, surveyors, and residents alike, and by those people who service ombudsman nursing home patients and the residents. All of these changes are bad enough. This legislation allows private entities to certify that facilities have met the quality standards, further reducing accountability of the State and the facilities to meet the Federal guidelines of the Government.

Mr. PRYOR. May I inquire as to how much time remains?

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, finally, I never thought I would see the day of such an attempted emasculation of nursing home standards which we fought so hard to protect. I never thought I would see it; never thought it would happen. I do not know why it is happening, but it is unbelievable that this Nation, the greatest Nation on the face of the Earth, with the full force and effect of the Republican-controlled Senate and the House, our Federal Government is about to wash its hands of the responsibility toward protecting 2 million seniors who today reside in American nursing homes. While we have the basic safeguards of 1987, we are today basically walking away from those safeguards and saying to that nursing home resident, ``We want no more to do with you. We are going to cut you adrift, and we are going to let you basically fend for yourself.'' Over Thanksgiving, I challenge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or anyone who supports obliterating these standards, to go back to a nursing home in your State, to look those residents in the eye and to tell them how proud you are to have voted to compromise their safety and well-being and quality of life and walk away from the commitment that we have had for almost a decade to protect their livelihood. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor. Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Fifteen.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I do not want to object, and I usually am not an obstructionist around this Chamber. But I want to be guaranteed some time, and enough time to explain a position that I have relative to the farming out of private tax collection.

Mr. PRYOR. Let me say to my friend from Alabama that I do not think that I would use over 30 minutes. If I could have 30 to 35 minutes, I think I could cover the areas that I need to be covering. I would like the opportunity to ask some questions of my friend from Alabama as to how this very onerous provision crept back into this conference report.

Mr. PRYOR. I would be glad to ask either.