Jay Rockefeller

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, this is a chance for us to engage in constructive discussion. It is still a very interesting proposition. I think it is going to pass, and it will be, in spite of what was said last night, bipartisan. In fact, it could not possibly pass without that being the fact. There are a number of things in here which are called cuts, but I think it is very important we remember that these are, for the most part, not cuts from the present situation but cuts from the original stimulus package, which was cut by over $100 billion, and therefore they appear to be cuts, but they are not cuts. They are actually, for the most part, additions--substantial additions--to what we already have. So if the bill had not passed, a lot of these programs would cease to exist. So I think it is a positive document. It is not without flaws. We have a conference committee coming and that will be very important. I look forward to the engagement today and to the conference committee and to the passage of the bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I first would point out that in the Grassley amendment the amount of Medicaid money--not Medicare money but Medicaid--is not affected. What is affected and what is at stake is the formula. Do you give it across the board to every State equally or do you give the majority of it across the board but you keep a part of it, which goes to States that are particularly distressed? In 2006, the GAO issued a report that said two major things: 1, the best measure of Medicaid distress is unemployment; 2, it is more efficient to target funding to States with the greatest need. That is a fact. We all know that. This bill accomplishes those very clear recommendations made by the GAO. It ties Medicaid relief to unemployment and it targets relief to States that need it the most. The Grassley amendment would make Medicaid relief less efficient and prolong the budget woes in States experiencing the greatest economic distress. I think it is a matter of fairness and not complicated. It doesn't attack the integrity of the Medicaid Program itself. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Grassley amendment.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I strongly oppose this amendment and hope it will be defeated. Yes, the State of West Virginia would do 117 percent better because of the across-the-board funding under Medicaid, but that means in the future, if we have some kind of a further recession, we get no special help. We want to have special money set aside that is used for States that have special needs, special poverty, special unemployment, and special hurt. That is the point of Medicaid, to be flexible and to react to the needs of the people. I hope this amendment will be defeated.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. No.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I will not. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the $87 billion in temporary, targeted Medicaid relief in this recovery bill. There is an undeniable link between health care and our economy, and that is obvious. The Federal investment of health care now a part of this economic recovery bill will go a long way to stabilize our economy. Health and economic stabilization, stimulus, or whatever you want to call it, are intertwined. Actually, leading economists have found that targeted aid of this sort--Medicaid--will generate increased economic activity of $1.36 for every dollar that is spent. But there are a lot more important things than that. Our economy is worse than it has been certainly in my memory. The tragedies being played out in West Virginia and other parts of the country are almost beyond belief. We sit here in constant session in the Senate and keep in touch with our States. We had another huge business close in West Virginia yesterday. The tragedies pile up, one after the other. People don't know where they are going to get their next meal. The human psychology begins to work and people begin to spiral downward, just as banks spiral downward. They begin to fold in on themselves. And when they fold in on themselves, they lose their confidence and then they aren't willing to try things, accept things, to take new steps. So the Medicaid money is incredibly important. It is getting very hard for people to put food on their table, and I think it is very easy for people to understand that Medicaid is part of the fabric of America. Hard-working families depend on Medicaid. Our families in West Virginia are hard working. Fifty percent of all the babies born in West Virginia are born under Medicaid. That is not the fault of the State of West Virginia, that is not the fault of the people of West Virginia, it is simply a reflection of the economic travails that face our State and that we have to deal with. We want to help them get back on their feet. So we have this $87 billion--and there are going to be attempts to lessen it--in FMAP. Estimates from the Government Accountability Office say local and State governments are facing $31 billion in deficits over the course of the next 2 years. I think, personally, that is modest, it is underestimated. I was a Governor. I went through the 1982-1983 recession in West Virginia, where interest rates went up to 19 percent. It was a horrible time. We survived it. But State revenues often evaporate very rapidly during an economic downturn. One of the first things Governors sometimes do is to cut Medicaid. They sort of cut Medicaid because sometimes they think Medicaid is for people who are poorer than they are, and therefore somehow it isn't important, it is saying that some people are not as important, which is akin to saying some people are more important than others, depending on their income-- which is a philosophy sometimes that divides the two sides of this body. So I say this is important. There will be a variety of amendments brought up to cut it. They will cloak themselves in other words, which will be good, but their purpose will be to cut Medicaid, and when you are cutting Medicaid, you are cutting health insurance and all sorts of things that people need in times of tragedy. We are surely in a time of tragedy. Having said that, I simply note to the President, with his permission, that later in the day--I do have on file at the desk two amendments, one that would jump start something which is incredibly important in this country and that is having a GPS digitalized air traffic control system. We are the only country in the modern world--in fact we are behind Mongolia in this case--that does not have a digitalized GPS system, where you can downgrade inefficiency in landings and distances of planes apart from each other because of the precision. Our present system is an x ray, an analog. This system is an MRI. That is what we need. We don't have one. We have to start one. It is a job creator. I have discussed with my ranking member, Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has a different way of funding it, $550 million. We have to do that. We have to do that for safety in the skies. It is a job creator. We have thousands of airports in this country. I put my colleagues on notice that I plan to go to that. Also, we have to extend the FAA itself. Its authorization is going to run out. We need to extend it for a variety of reasons. I will not go into those at the present time. But the extension of FAA reauthorization is in the interests of every Republican and every Democrat in this body. I will be making a case for that, if given the chance, later in the day. I yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. What he is basically saying, in an extraordinary statement, is that there shall be no closing of Guantanamo. But then he is saying that if Guantanamo is closed, that there shall be no taking of prisoners from Guantanamo and putting them anywhere within the United States of America, thereby, No. 1, casting extraordinary criticism on some of the toughest, finest and, when necessary, very tough prisons in the United States, including in his State, my State, and many other States. But what he is really saying is he wants Guantanamo to stay open. And by saying that, what he is saying is he wants to create more people who hate the United States and more people who go to the cause of al-Qaida, and I find that an extraordinary statement, which he has every right to make and every right to believe with a full heart. I just don't run into a whole lot of people who know the situation who think like that.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, be the next Democratic speaker after the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. So I am reinforcing the truth?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I will say very briefly that I am stunned by the speech from the Senator from Oklahoma. What he is basically saying--and I don't know whether he has ever been on the Intelligence Committee, but some of us have and have watched and studied interrogation and detention at Guantanamo, and a lot of other things for a very long time, and watched what happened under the Bush administration, and I choose not to get into that right now.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce legislation designed to fix the personnel laws that cover the Department of Veterans Affairs health care professionals, including registered nurses, physicians, physician assistants, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, and dental assistants. I am proud to have the support of my colleagues, Senators Webb, Brown, Mikulski, and Sanders. Whenever I visit VA Medical Centers and meet with veterans, I hear wonderful stories about nurses and other VA health care professionals who work long and hard to provide care to our veterans. Too often, our health care professionals are working under real stress due to lack of funds or staff shortages. Almost 22,000 of the registered nurses caring for our veterans will be eligible to retire by 2010. Even more stunning is that 77 percent of all resignations of nurses occur within the first 5 years. This is a clear signal that more must be done to retain VA nurses and quality health care staff. Anyone involved in health care understands the important role that nurses play in the quality of care and patient satisfaction. The goal of this bill is to support the VA health care professionals who work hard to provide quality care to our veterans. The bill seeks to return to the partnership agreement of the 1990s between VA management and workforce. Flexible scheduling and basic fairness from management are key issues that must be addressed to recruit and retain a strong workforce. Morale is important in every workplace, and particularly in a VA Medical Center. West Virginia has four VA Medical Centers, each with a dedicated team of health care professionals. I have met with the nurses and other professionals to hear their requests for flexible scheduling. I believe that we should restore the management partnership and work hard to retain our dedicated team of health professionals for our aging veterans, and those newly returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, with both physical and mental wounds of war, that deserve experienced VA care.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, a motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I wish to not only recognize what the Senator from Texas has indicated, but also I wish to say that these last couple days, weeks--whatever it is--have been a study in bipartisan cooperation. We have been up, we have been down. It wasn't going to work, it could work, it might work. What we have concentrated on is going to the people who have concerns and answering every single question they might have. In a deliberative body such as the Senate, where we actually do that and people actually know we are trying to answer all their questions, and are answering all their questions, and when you have a chairman and a ranking member who are in tandem, working together on a very important matter, it counts. I yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 352 introduced earlier today.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I am proud to reintroduce, with my colleague Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, a bipartisan effort to ensure that all universal service programs can continue to operate smoothly and effectively. While Congress has annually taken action to deal with this issue, our hope is to enact a permanent solution. For many years, we have fought hard for universal service, including the E-Rate. It is essential for all of the universal service programs to operate in a timely manner. The Universal Service Fund is accomplishing its mission, and every member who has worked with us should be proud of the progress of this program. Our country has a strong telecommunications network, and rural customers are getting service at affordable rates. Lifeline and Linkup programs help the poorest of customers keep basic telephone access which is essential in our modern world. Rural health care is helping connect our rural clinics to modern medicine and specialists. In 1996, when the Telecommunications Act passed, only 14 percent of all classrooms were connected, while just 5 percent of the poorest classrooms were connected. The latest data is encouraging with 93 percent of all classrooms connected and 89 percent of the poorest classrooms connected. Since 1998, West Virginia schools and libraries have received over $101 million in E-Rate discounts. While this is an extraordinary success, the need for E-Rate discounts remains because schools and libraries face monthly telecommunication costs and Internet access fees. Additionally, every school and library will periodically need to upgrade its internal connections as the demand of technology grows and institutions need greater bandwidth to handle ever increasing demand. At the beginning of the debates in 1996, schools were talking about dial-up access, now every school wants--and needs--broadband. This legislation gives the Universal Service Fund a permanent exemption from the Antideficiency Act which will provide sustainability and consistency for the program. Over the last few years, we have done one-year exemptions. Other Federal programs have permanent exemptions for the Antideficiency Act, and it is common sense to grant an exemption for the Universal Service Fund.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I am proud to reintroduce, with my colleague Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, a bipartisan effort to ensure that all universal service programs can continue to operate smoothly and effectively. While Congress has annually taken action to deal with this issue, our hope is to enact a permanent solution. For many years, we have fought hard for universal service, including the E-Rate. It is essential for all of the universal service programs to operate in a timely manner. The Universal Service Fund is accomplishing its mission, and every member who has worked with us should be proud of the progress of this program. Our country has a strong telecommunications network, and rural customers are getting service at affordable rates. Lifeline and Linkup programs help the poorest of customers keep basic telephone access which is essential in our modern world. Rural health care is helping connect our rural clinics to modern medicine and specialists. In 1996, when the Telecommunications Act passed, only 14 percent of all classrooms were connected, while just 5 percent of the poorest classrooms were connected. The latest data is encouraging with 93 percent of all classrooms connected and 89 percent of the poorest classrooms connected. Since 1998, West Virginia schools and libraries have received over $101 million in E-Rate discounts. While this is an extraordinary success, the need for E-Rate discounts remains because schools and libraries face monthly telecommunication costs and Internet access fees. Additionally, every school and library will periodically need to upgrade its internal connections as the demand of technology grows and institutions need greater bandwidth to handle ever increasing demand. At the beginning of the debates in 1996, schools were talking about dial-up access, now every school wants--and needs--broadband. This legislation gives the Universal Service Fund a permanent exemption from the Antideficiency Act which will provide sustainability and consistency for the program. Over the last few years, we have done one-year exemptions. Other Federal programs have permanent exemptions for the Antideficiency Act, and it is common sense to grant an exemption for the Universal Service Fund.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

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

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, notwithstanding the previous order, I ask unanimous consent that the technical amendment which is at the desk be considered and agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table.

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

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate Admiral Denny Blair on his unanimous confirmation as the Director of National Intelligence, one of the most important and demanding jobs in our government. This position requires a leader with tremendous management skills--someone capable of bringing the 16 disparate agencies of the intelligence community into a cohesive organization that provides timely, accurate intelligence to our government. This intelligence is necessary to keep our Nation and our people safe, so Admiral Blair undertakes a sober, solemn responsibility today. He will take on this task at a time when we are fighting two wars as well as a global fight against terrorist networks, not to mention enormous long-term strategic challenges--including those that have arisen in recent months in the wake of the global financial and economic crisis. These are perilous times, but I am confident he is up to the task. Admiral Blair brings a wealth of valuable experience to the job. As a senior military commander he was a high level consumer of intelligence and familiar with the systems used to collect and produce intelligence. He also knows the Central Intelligence Agency having spent time as the first Associate Director for Military Affairs. Perhaps his greatest attribute, however, is his experience directing a large, sprawling organization, made up of disparate agencies and cultures, to achieve a common mission. That is what he accomplished successfully as the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Pacific, and that is exactly what his mission will be as the DNI. I think this is a very promising time for our intelligence community and our national security, and Admiral Blair's confirmation is a big part of that. I want to underscore what he told us in his confirmation hearing--that we are entering a ``new era in the relationship'' between Congress and the executive branch on matters of intelligence. Specifically, Admiral Blair said that he will place great importance on keeping Congress informed--not just formally notified, but fully informed--on intelligence activities. He said that he will work to ensure that classification is not used as a way to, in his words, ``hide things'' from Members of Congress who need to know about them. He stated clearly and I quote, ``We need to have processes which don't just check a block on telling somebody but actually get the information across to the right people.'' These are very important commitments, and they portend good things for our intelligence community and for our national security. I have had the opportunity to speak with Admiral in great depth over the past several months, and these discussions have given me confidence in his sincerity with these commitments. And I expect that, likewise, he and the Obama administration have confidence that Congress will hold them to it. In fact this cooperation has already begun. With this new era of cooperation in mind, I want to state for the record that we have an opportunity to make a sharp turn toward new intelligence policies that will bolster our counterterrorism efforts and strengthen our national security in general. To be accurate and valuable, intelligence must be politically neutral information, not spin. And it must be collected with methods that enjoy bipartisan support as both legal and effective. To ensure this, secret intelligence activities must be subject to rigorous congressional oversight. We are the only independent reviewers of secret intelligence activities, and we are the only outside check on activities that are not legal or not effective. Oversight should not be adversarial--it is a necessary partnership between the executive branch and the Congress. I have fought to remove politics from intelligence and to restore Congress's vital oversight role since I joined the committee in 2001, and I will keep fighting for it now. I don't want to get into who is at fault for the cycle we were caught in over the past several years. Instead I want to look ahead to what is possible now. I think there is a real chance that in this new year, we can have a new start. We can and should debate how we go about collecting and analyzing intelligence--for instance on interrogation policies--but we can do that without the stain of political considerations. Between the executive and legislative branches, we can and should engage and debate these policies, but we can do that in partnership, with the knowledge that more information exchanges and deliberations give rise to better intelligence collection and analysis. In short, we can recognize that we are all on the same team when it comes to finding out the sensitive information we need to protect this great Nation. If we play on that same team, I know we can have accurate, reliable intelligence that is collected in a way that makes this country proud, and is analyzed without the taint of political influence. I congratulate Admiral Denny Blair on his confirmation.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 328, introduced earlier today by Senator Rockefeller.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

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

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Mary L. Schapiro to fill an unexpired term, received today; that the Senate then proceed to the consideration of the nomination; that the nomination be confirmed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record; that no further motions be in order; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and the Senate return to legislative session.