Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator would yield just to clarify, the Senator from Iowa came back and objected not to any particular provision in this bill; there was no objection to the underlying Homeland Security bill?

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to say how disappointed I am that we are holding back vitally important pieces of legislation in the Senate for in some respects--I understand the political shows that we all put on before elections. I understand that. But we are holding back money from States such as Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Florida, and others that right now need resources to help recover from the hurricanes that hit us in the eastern part of the United States. We have individuals-- not just one, now two--who are holding us from passing that legislation to get those needed resources the Senator from Alaska suggested are vitally needed for FEMA now to get those resources to people who need it now. I was on the phone the day before yesterday with my Governor. We were talking about the concern over the shortage of funds, the concern about the ability for FEMA to respond and get some of these businesses affected by floods in Pennsylvania up and going. The bill we have here on the floor right now, we could pass it right now and get this money into the hands of people in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and other States that have been affected by the hurricanes over the last couple of months. We are being blocked because someone doesn't like a provision that takes money out of a program that was overfunded, that is spending enormous amounts more than what it was intended to spend. So we have a program that was supposed to spend a couple of billion dollars, now is spending four or five times that amount. And the author of the program doesn't want to put any fiscal constraint on it. As a result of that, we are not getting flood relief. We are not getting hurricane relief. This is the kind of pettiness in the Senate, partisanship, that gives this institution a bad name. This is the kind of stuff people sit at home and wonder: What are we thinking here. There are people hurting. The money that is being taken out of this program that is the reason for this bill not passing, most of that money isn't for 6, 7, 8, 9 years. The Senator from Iowa can come back next year and get his money back. If there is enough support in this body to get the money back in the program, come back next year and put the money back in the program. You want the money, prove to the Members here that this is an important enough program to get the money put back in next year. If it is that wonderful, if it is that broadly supported, come back with an amendment to an appropriations vehicle and get the money put back in. But don't stop people who are in desperate need, who have to have furnaces for their homes as the weather turns cold in our area of the country, from having the resources necessary to respond to this disaster. The money being taken out of this program is over the course of the next 8 years. We are holding up vital funds for people in need today. I can understand how people get upset with this place. Because a lot of the things we do around here don't make a lot of sense. It can be one person. If anybody doesn't think one person can make a difference, one person can make a difference here in the Senate, positively and negatively. I will let you decide whether a program whose funding was cut over the next 7 or 8 years is as important, no matter what it is, as getting resources to people who are suffering now in America. You decide. Then we have the issue on a bill, the tax bill that is before us. We have the Senator from Louisiana who is upset that she didn't get a provision in the tax bill. I would like to tell the Senator from Louisiana and every other Senator, I have a long list of things I did not get in this tax bill. I spent two full days sitting over in the House of Representatives Ways and Means room, pleading with the Congressman from California and others for provisions I thought were vitally important to the economy, to average working people, to people in my State, to people in other States, energy provisions. I understand the Senator from Louisiana didn't get her provision in the bill. By the way, this is a bill having to do with foreign tax credits, foreign sales corporations. Everyone complains about putting extraneous provisions on. This is probably an extraneous provision to the core of this bill. I would make the argument that the provisions I was arguing for, which was the Baucus amendment--he offered a single amendment on this, the 5-year net operating loss carryback--to me that was important. There are businesses in my State that can't hire people because of the way the Tax Code works and unfairly treats them when they have a good year versus bad. It averages it out to keep things going smoothly. It is a vitally important provision, from my perspective, to create jobs and employment opportunities. It was defeated. The House defeated it. We passed it in the Senate. We pass lots of amendments in the Senate, and the House defeated it. I had an amendment that was vitally important for me in my State and for the neighboring State of Ohio. I worked diligently on that amendment. It wasn't a $2 billion-plus provision; it was for $30 million. I look at the Senator from Mississippi, who may be thinking: $30 million? We worry about $30 million over 10 years--$30 million? I could not get a $30 million provision in this bill. It could have meant thousands of jobs for my State and neighboring States, and I could not get it in the bill. Yes, I could grandstand before the people of Pennsylvania and grandstand before the people of America and say I am going to fight this bill and stand up for everything, and I am going to get my amendment passed and we are going to send it back to the House, and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is a rotten guy. I could do that stuff, and I could act like a hero and make great political headlines. But do you know what. That is not going to get my provision passed, and I can guarantee that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is not going to pass my provision if I call him names on the floor of the Senate, which has been done over the last 24 hours, and particularly if they don't agree with the substance of the provision. They are not going to pass it when they see political grandstanding at its worst a few weeks before the election. What are they holding up? They are holding up a provision that--right now, this bill being held up stops tariffs from being levied on businesses in America, which is hurting jobs today. If we pass this today and get it to the President that much quicker, we would stop those tariffs. We hear so much complaining about how we need to be competitive internationally. This is a bill that will end unfair tariffs that are being imposed on American businesses. We are holding it back for this provision. Is it worthy? I will get into the worthiness in a moment. Even assuming it is the most worthy provision in the world, we are holding back something that is a vitally important piece of business that will get our businesses help and help people be competitive in a world with a global economy. We have political grandstanding going on. Let me assure anybody who thinks they can play this game on any amendment they may like and they are going to hold up the show because they didn't get their provision, which wasn't even offered by any individual Senator, an amendment that was so important--I understand it was so important to one particular Member, but I can tell you not one Senator on either side of the aisle offered this as a singular amendment to be passed. As the Senator from Oklahoma said, I sat there for two days. If it was that important of an amendment, I can tell you there was a whole energy bill in there that is very important. You want to talk about important for national security and for economic security and stability? How about passing an energy bill when you have $53-a-barrel oil? You bet I wanted to get that done. Am I upset that we did not include that? You bet. Part of the legislative process is that you have to make choices. This was a bill very narrow in scope. There were a lot of things we passed in the Senate that we didn't pay for, or we did pay for but the ``pay fors'' probably had more objections than the underlying amendments. When it came over to the House, all these ``pay fors'' went away. We had a requirement in this body on both sides of the aisle that this was going to be a revenue neutral bill. So there we are. We had to cut out provisions in the Senate bill. The provision of the Senator from Louisiana got cut. My provision was cut. The energy bill got cut. A whole list of very good pieces of legislation got cut. I wish they had not. I wish we could have found a way to pass them. We could not. Here we are. Are we going to end tariffs and give our businesses the opportunity to compete globally? Are we going to grandstand and talk about how we are going to keep people here all night long? The Senator from Missouri will have to sit here all night long and other Senators have to sit in the chair all night long just to show how tough we are, how we are going to stand up and fight for our men and women in uniform. Let's see. The Senator's amendment provides a tax credit for businesses who have employees who are guardsmen and reservists overseas. As the Senator from Oklahoma said, that seems to be a rather indirect way of increasing pay for Guard and Reserve. Also, I make the argument it is a very inefficient way. I have the magazine of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States in my hand. This magazine surveyed the Fortune 500 companies. I commend the article to my colleagues. This was published in the January-February 2003 edition. What this said--by the way, obviously, I don't have an updated copy. I don't know whether they have done another survey. When they did the last survey, we found that, in 2003, only 17 of the Fortune 500 companies did not provide additional compensation for guardsmen and reservists who were deployed. In fact, well over a hundred--154--provide full compensation. In other words, they pay them fully, every penny of their salary--not just what the Senator from Louisiana suggested, $15,000, but fully pay their salaries. The rest pay some or most of their salary and benefits for the individuals and their families. What are we going to do with this legislation? We are going to enrich the Halliburtons of this world and the other big Fortune 500 companies that are already providing these benefits. We are now going to give them a tax credit. We are going to spend $2 billion-plus to give tax credits to Fortune 500 companies and a lot of other companies that already are providing these benefits. Is that a very efficient, cost- effective way, in a time of big deficits, to pay Guard and Reserve a lot of money? I argue that is about as inefficient a way as possible to do this. Who are we benefiting here? Certainly the Fortune 500 companies. Are we benefiting the reservists or the Guard person when all but 17 of these companies are giving benefits now in excess of their pay that the Government pays them? So if we send those companies that money, all the company has to do is say: Thank you for the money. We are already paying them, but we could use the money. We can increase our profits a little bit. Thank you very much. There is no obligation in this legislation that they have to take that money and pay even more benefits. In fact, 154 of the companies already pay full benefits. They could not pay any more benefits. I understand the Senator from Louisiana wants her provision included. We all like to get our provisions included. We also would like to go home. We would all like to get our business done. We would all like to go out and get in touch with our constituents and find out what they really think instead of what we think here is best for them. We do a lot of that around here--what we think is best for everybody. I argue that this provision, which is going to enrich a lot of Fortune 500 companies, is the most inefficient way possible to solve this problem. If you want to pay guardsmen and reservists more, talk to the Senator from Virginia, talk to the Senator from Alaska, talk to the new chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the Senator from Mississippi, and you ask them whether we can structure something so that we are now going to compensate Guard and Reserve more than we are going to compensate Active Duty people. That is a legitimate issue. I believe we can have that debate. But to make all this fuss about how we are going to stand up for all our guardsmen and reservists and fight for them until the end, let me assure the Senator from Louisiana, at 7:40 tomorrow we are going to pass this bill. If the Senator from Louisiana wants to make everybody sit here until 7:40 tomorrow night, we can wait until then, and at 7:40 this bill will pass and her provision is not going to be on it, and her provision is not going to become a Senate bill passed by the Senate between now and then. We can wait until that time. We can wait and let the tariffs continue to be levied another day on our workers here in America. We can wait and have provisions having to do with energy such as the Alaska pipeline another day; we can wait so we can have the political opportunity to talk about how important Guard and Reserve members of our military are; but this is an inefficient and costly way of solving the problem. I argue that is as much a reason why it did not pass as anything else. The idea that someone believes their provision is so much superior to everybody else's, I think that probably every Member of the Senate had a provision they wanted or they would like to have seen in that bill that they did not get. The thing about legislating is we do the best we can. We work hard and live to fight another day, and we do so in a way that builds relationships, tries to get things done in a collegial way. I make the argument that keeping Members here on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays during recesses when people had scheduled events, when their campaigns are, obviously, at this point very much underway, when nothing substantively that they are proposing is going to happen, is not the most effective way to win friends and influence people. Now, if I were for the Senator's provision--I do not know whether I will ultimately end up voting for it, but I ask her, if I were a supporter, to please give this proposal a chance instead of making it a proposal that has fostered some ill will around this place. We have an opportunity to do something right, pass three pieces of legislation that should be passed. We have disaster assistance that should be out today, as well as homeland security. I wish I had a nickel for everybody who talked about how much more money we need for homeland security. We listened to the debate the other night where it was said we were not spending enough on homeland security. Well, we have a Homeland Security bill. The subcommittee chairman is in the Chamber. I do not know what the increase is for homeland security in this bill from last year, but I suspect it is substantial. That money is not being spent. We are in the next fiscal year right now. We could be spending that money right now. We could be securing our homeland right now.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator for his insights. Distribution of Films

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the disaster assistance conference report and the Military Construction conference report be called up, and I ask unanimous consent they be passed.

Mr. SANTORUM. It would appear that the formula assumes that the incremental tax so disclosed would be at the full U.S. tax rate of 35 percent. Is it not correct that the amount of U.S. tax disclosed would instead be a lesser amount that takes into account the amount of foreign taxes already imposed with respect to such earnings?

Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator from Iowa just objected again to this bill, which nobody objects to, being passed. Again, it is 3:30 eastern time on a Sunday and I suspect the viewing audience of this debate is not particularly high, but I would also suspect that those who are viewing are sitting there with furrowed brow asking: What was that all about? No one objects to this bill, yet there is an objection. Our country is at war. Our country is at war. There are threats to the homeland. We have the Democratic nominee for President, a Member of this body, who I suspect might have some say about what Members on his side of the aisle will do in a few weeks before the election, who complains constantly that we are not spending enough money on homeland security, that we have not defended the homeland as vehemently as we should have. Where is the Senator from Massachusetts today to put those words into action, to get this bill passed so we can get this money spent now? It is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors: Oh, yes, we are for all this stuff but a provision having to do with land conservation that is spending four and a half times more money than was originally intended to be spent over a 10-year period of time, the money in the outyears of that program have been reduced to pay for immediate drought assistance in almost the very same area of the country, and it is in a separate bill than the Homeland Security bill and that is why homeland security is not going to pass right now. That is why our homeland will go less defended today than it could be. The furrowed brows are justifiable in this case. This is wrong. We may be lucky. We may be lucky. The 5 days or 4 days I understand we are talking about, maybe Thursday before we can potentially get the bill passed, the 5 days--we could have passed it yesterday by consent, so Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday--6 days. The 6-day delay may not cost anybody's life in America. It may not cost a life. We might not have resources that are deployed because 6 days sooner we would have signed this bill and those resources would have been available to maybe protect somebody in America. We will never know that--or maybe we will. But the fact is, to hold up a piece of legislation that is a vital national security interest, for a very small piece of legislation where money was to be taken from it years down the road, I think, reflects the worst of what people see in Washington, DC. I am hopeful the persistence of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the persistence of the chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee over the next 24 hours that we will be here, or 27 hours that we will be here, will eventually pay off. I know there are Members on the other side of the aisle who are working diligently to try to convince the Members on that side to move America's business forward. Let me assure everybody--I think we all know this--that the legislation, the homeland security legislation, the drought and disaster relief, the hurricane relief money, and the FSC/ETI bill, the JOBS bill having to do with foreign sales--all three of those are going to pass just as they are. There will be no amendments. They are not allowed under the rules. There will be no separate deals that will allow other provisions to pass to make everybody happy. They will all pass. They will all pass as if, in fact, we just stood up here and called for the vote on them right now. There will be no difference. The question is how long are some individuals going to make the Senate wait. But candidly, I complained about not being able to be with my family today. It is Sunday. Usually I take Sundays off and try to be home with my six children. I will tell them, they might be watching, I will be home soon, I hope. But that is a minor inconvenience. That is meaningless. Our job is to be here to do the job we have to do to get what we need done for the American people. The reason I am here today and the Senator from Mississippi and the Senator from Missouri and the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Hawaii--we are here because we want to get the people's business done. We want to cut those tariffs. We want to eliminate them. We have a chance to do that today. We want to get that money out for disaster assistance. We have a chance to do that today. We want to get that money to the law enforcement agencies and the transportation agencies to protect people here at home. We can do that today. But, because of two individuals, we are not. They may stand here and give speeches about how heroic their effort is, and how important their job is to get these provisions they have worked so hard on, but we could all be doing that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of all of the amendments considered in the Finance and Ways and Means Committee conference report on October 5 and 6. There is a whole page of them. There are 23 amendments on the first day and another 10 amendments on the next day. We had 33 amendments also considered. I would argue the amendment of the Senator from Louisiana was not offered, except that at the end of the markup all the amendments that no one wanted to offer that were in the Senate bill, that were not offered individually, we threw them all together in one big package and offered them, and her amendment was in the big package that no one thought was important enough to offer individually. I will not argue her provision is not important. It is, obviously, certainly important to her. But not one member of the Senate Finance Committee, Republican or Democrat, House or Senate, offered it. And we are being held up on the Senate floor. I don't know why. It is not going to become law. At some point you have to say, getting those tariffs off the backs of American business is more important than even the most important provision in your heart. Trust me, I had some of those amendments. It is time for responsible legislating. It is about time we get serious. Let's get our job done. Let's get our job done for the American people. It is decided. Nothing is going to change. It is just a matter of when we are going to do it. I hope through the good work of the Democratic and Republican leadership--I know Members on both sides are working diligently to try to work through this--that we stop the tariffs that are making us globally uncompetitive; that we start funding homeland security at the levels the President and this body said they wanted; and that we start getting the resources to people all throughout the eastern part of the United States, including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, get the resources into the hands of the small business people and homeowners who have been hurt by the floods and storms of the last couple of months. That is what this is all about, those three things, three vitally important provisions, three bills that could pass in 5 minutes. In 5 minutes we could call those bills up and pass them. I feel like ``Name that Tune.'' I bet we could do it in 4 minutes, maybe even in 3 minutes we could pass all these bills. And, by the way, they are going to pass. They may not pass tomorrow--well, one of them will pass tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. They are going to pass. So what are we accomplishing? We are hurting the American public. We are costing jobs. We are adding insult to injury to people who have been devastated by natural disaster, and we are making our country more vulnerable by not having increased homeland security protection at home. That is what we are accomplishing. Congratulations, Senate. Good job. Keep those tariffs high. Make us uncompetitive. Don't give that money to people who suffered through natural disasters. Let's keep it here in Washington because we have some political points to make. I have some political points I need to make. You know, you can wait. You can wait, Transportation Security Agency, for that additional funding. You can wait, Coast Guard, for that additional funding. You can wait, because politics here in the Senate comes first. Opportunities to show the folks back home I am fighting for you, that comes first. Amazing. Amazing. The most amazing thing is it is a futile fight. All three bills will pass without changes. Do you know why? Do you know why I am certain, why the Senator from Mississippi is certain? Because that is the rules of the Senate. They cannot change. They are conference reports. They cannot be amended. So what is this all about? It is about putting personal political interests above the interests of those hurt by natural disasters, those who are being hurt by high tariffs, and those who would like to feel more secure in our country with increased homeland security spending. That is what it is about. Let's tell the story. Let's tell the story about what is going on here on a Sunday afternoon in the Senate. Everyone is safely at home, we hope, watching their football games or the league championship series. What is going on here in the Senate is political demagoguery at its highest level. Let's call it for what it is. We need to stop this. We need to get our job done. We need to go home and talk to our constituents and work on problems. I ask unanimous consent, again, on the issue of homeland security, that we call up the Homeland Security conference report that has not been objected to on any substantive ground, that we call up the Homeland Security Subcommittee appropriations conference report and pass that bill by unanimous consent.

Mr. SANTORUM. I believe the purpose of this provision is to determine the amount of permanently reinvested earnings eligible for repatriation in the case in which a company discloses in its applicable financial statements the incremental amount of U.S. tax that would be due on such permanently reinvested earnings if they were repatriated, rather than stating the actual amount of such earnings.

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that the FSC/ETI conference report be called up and passed by unanimous consent to stop the tariffs from being imposed on our workers across the country.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Mississippi that we could have done that in less than a minute. If we had not heard the word ``objection'' three times, those bills would be passed right now. By the way, mark my word. All three will be passed just as they are, but we are just going to have to wait a while because while the business of the Senate is done, the talking isn't done. While the business of the American people has been done, the politics isn't over yet. At this point I yield my time, and let the show begin.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I wonder if the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee might respond to a colloquy. I specifically have a question about the formula used to calculate the financial statement limitation for computing the amount of permanently reinvested earnings eligible for repatriation.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I read with great interest an exchange of letters in the House between my colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. English and the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, regarding regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service under section 263(g) of the Internal Revenue Code in the context of the Conference Report on H.R. 4520. The issue raised in their discussion relates to the IRS decision in regulations published on January 17, 2001, to expand its authority under that section. Without at this point questioning the IRS interpretation of the law, the colloquy notes that the IRS has in some case imposed its new interpretation retroactively. The colloquy urges the Department of Treasury to take the position that the new interpretation should be applied only on a prospective basis. I rise to agree with my friends in the House. Our practice in Congress is to give taxpayers notice when we intend to change the law in ways that could affect ongoing transactions that were undertaken in reliance on the law as it existed. Certainly Treasury can and should follow the same rules. I hope the Treasury Department will take note and act accordingly. business aircraft

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that is getting quite a bit of play in the press, other than the security issue having to do with our intelligence community and homeland security. This is a different kind of security issue. It is an issue having to do with health care. I wanted to discuss with Members today the two approaches that the candidates for President have about health care and what the consequences are to the consumer, to the patient, as well as to the taxpayer and to our health care system in general. This is a very important debate we are having about health care because there is an acute problem. It is a problem that, candidly, this Congress has not dealt with. We saw in the debates last night and other conversations about the importance of a Patients' Bill of Rights, which would have done nothing but add more cost to the health care system. It would have caused more uninsured, and that is the term I want to focus on today, ``the uninsured.'' As I travel around Pennsylvania--and I am sure this is true for my colleagues as they travel in their States-- what we hear repeatedly is the problem of the spiraling cost of health care. A Patients' Bill of Rights would have done nothing but add more cost to that system and add more to the uninsured problem. What we don't hear are answers from Congress on how to deal with the problem of the uninsured. We have two Presidential candidates who have laid out a plan to deal with this very complex problem. I will say that Senator Judd Gregg chaired a task force on our side of the aisle that put forth a variety of different proposals to deal with the uninsured because it is a very complicated group of people in the sense that there isn't one reason people are uninsured. Senator Gregg has given eloquent talks about the approach we have offered. But, candidly, we have not moved forward on this on either side of the aisle to try to bring it to fruition. The Presidential candidates have put forward some ideas. I wanted to talk about both of those plans. Let me first talk about Senator Kerry's plan. Senator Kerry has proposed a plan which, according to the revenue estimates, runs in the area of about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, $1.5 trillion in new spending for tax breaks to provide for the uninsured. What the Senator from Massachusetts has suggested is that this $1.5 trillion will cover roughly 27 million people who are currently uninsured, which would make up a little over half of the uninsured in America. But at a cost of $1.5 trillion over 10 years to get someone insured in America, one person under his proposal is $5,500 per insured per year--not per family, per insured per year, $5,500 in Government subsidies to provide for insurance per year. That is a very high-cost way of trying to provide insurance. On top of that, not only is it a high-cost way, but as you will see in a moment, it is a very bureaucratic way. It is a very inefficient way, and it is a further Government takeover of the private health care system. It federalizes under Medicaid a dramatic expansion of Medicaid for a lot of the people who currently are either uninsured or in many cases insured by private sector employers. I want to talk about the fiscal voodoo that is going on as to how this program is going to be paid for, which is one of the many proposals that Senator Kerry has put forth in the election. But this is by far the most expensive, $1.5 trillion. He says he is going to pay for it by repealing the Bush tax cuts. As you can see from this chart, the Bush tax cuts, scored over the next 10 years, will cost the Treasury $1 trillion. So there is still an unaccounted for half a trillion dollars, if we repeal all of them. Now, what he has said is he only wants to repeal the ones that are on those who make over $200,000. Well, if we go down here and look at what is the tax cut for those who make $200,000, it is roughly $612 billion over the next 10 years, which is less than half of this $1.5 trillion. There is still almost $900 billion in unaccounted-for new spending or tax incentives in the Kerry plan that are not paid for. He could add an additional $400 billion, roughly, in getting rid of the 10-percent bracket and the marriage penalty, the child credit, and the middle- class rate reductions. We can do that, too. We are still half a trillion dollars short. The plan doesn't add up. It adds up to a fiscal disaster. As many know, the biggest group of people, as far as percentage, who pay in this bracket for which the Senator from Massachusetts wants to eliminate this tax reduction is small businesses. These are the job creators. He wants to eliminate tax incentives for people in small business who are the job creators. He wants to get rid of, I assume, or add other taxes on to pay for the additional $900 billion it is going to take to pay for this new proposal which spends $5,500 per person to provide insurance for them. I would just suggest that that is a very costly way. Let me contrast that with the President's approach, which does not, as Senator Kerry's plan does through his program, displace private insurance. What do I mean by that? The reason this costs so much is because he is going to be insuring more people than the 27 million in his new program, but a lot of those people he is insuring are already insured. He is going to take them from the private sector and move them to the public sector. That is why it costs so much. It is a new publicly borne cost that is now a privately borne cost. The taxpayers are going to pay for this, as opposed to employers and employees. What the President has done is a much smarter, more targeted approach. He put together a plan that does not cost $1.5 trillion but $129 billion. It spends $1,900 to attract someone who is currently uninsured into the new insurance pool that will be created, and it does so in a way that doesn't take someone who has insurance and displaces them into a public pool, which is what the Kerry plan does. So this is a much more commonsense approach, leaving the private insurance market, which has served our country so well, in place and not replacing it with a public sector plan, but creating incentives through low-income tax credits, small employer tax credits, above-the-line deductions, some private market reforms, like AHPs and other things, to broaden the pool for people to be able to purchase health insurance. This will add almost 7 million people to the ranks of the insured from the ranks of the uninsured. It does so at a responsible cost, something we can likely afford over the next 10 years, as opposed to blowing a hole through the deficit. I find it remarkable that we hear over and over again from the Senator from Massachusetts about how this President has very high deficits, yet we look at a plan here that, under the current scenario he proposes, is a $600 billion repeal of taxes to pay for a $1.5 trillion program. If you are talking about blowing a hole in the deficit, this will do so, and then some; it will add about $100 billion in new deficits every year as a result of this proposal. This is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is how the Kerry plan works. Unlike the Bush plan which, again, doesn't displace people from the private sector to the public sector, does not cost $5,500 per person to get them into the insured category, Senator Kerry's plan is incredibly complicated and promises things he cannot deliver. For example, he talks about how he is going to provide the same health plan that Members of Congress have, by participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefit system. He said that, and then the Federal Employees Union got to him and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, you are not going to do that; you are not going to put everybody into our insurance pools. That is going to drive up the cost of our health care dramatically. You can say you are going to give everybody what Members of Congress have, but we are going to set up a separate pool. So he sets up a separate insurance pool. It is not what Members of Congress have. It is something completely different. It sets up this insurance pool that people can participate in, but the cost of that pool is going to be based on who enrolls in it. So I don't understand how that will save any money, because all insurance pools are based on who is enrolled in the plan. So there is this idea that somehow or other we are going to give you a congressional health care benefit-- which, by the way, is the same as every other Federal employee--for nothing, when in fact they are going to get something like a congressional health care plan. Let me assure you, it won't be for nothing; it will be for a lot of money, in a very complicated way. This is a chart that tries to describe how the Kerry plan works from the standpoint of the Medicare portion over here, including schools, by the way. Schools are going to be responsible for being a social service agency and signing up people for Medicaid. Now we talk so much about how schools are being asked to do so much more when it comes to education. Senator Kerry has another idea for them. They are going to take the responsibility for enrolling children into Medicaid as part of their responsibilities. Over here, you have sort of how we interact with the doctors and the hospitals. You have this new agency, the premium rebate pool agency-- not a particularly creative acronym. We have this agency that is going to determine what is covered, how much we pay. So you are going to have, in a sense, the Federal Government making these decisions as to what doctors you see, how much they are going to pay these doctors, what is going to be covered by these plans. Again, it is not just an expansion of Medicaid, which is very costly, and bringing a lot of new people into the Medicaid Program, many of whom already have insurance, not only setting up this other plan to deal with how we are going to handle the ``private market reforms'' Senator Kerry wants to impose to help, in this case, those who are high-cost patients in the health care system. So here is the congressional health plan, and you have all these different organizations, or different functions with new organizations, and some are going to be organizations that will have increased responsibility to offer this new congressional health plan, which isn't a congressional health care plan. You have a tax credit idea. It is not simple. In fact, Senator Kerry has not been particularly clear about how these tax credits will work. He has several of them, not just one. There are four different tax credits Senator Kerry is going to put in place here. Here they are. This is a very complicated system, and it is an extremely costly system, and one that puts more people into Government, less in the private sector, and when private sector reforms happen, puts more oversight into the Government over the private sector--all at the cost of $1.7 trillion. This is not the direction we want to take in health care. We don't want more Government oversight of the private sector to drive up costs in the private sector. We don't want more people from the private markets going into the Government pools, and we don't want to create the shell game that Senator Kerry is in the area of the new congressional health plan, which isn't a congressional health plan. The idea of tax credits has some appeal to me. The President's proposal is to try to provide tax credits. But this is a very complicated plan, and it has not been well spelled out. We worked very hard to try to understand it. It is not a very well thought out, planned out approach. I suggest this is bad policy. This is complicated policy. It is very costly policy. It doesn't deliver to people what has been promised. What it does deliver is a big tax bill, or very big deficits in the future, neither of which is something we should be desirous of here in the Senate. With that, I think we have done a pretty good comparison of where the President wants to go, which is responsible reform and the encouragement of people who do not have insurance to be insured, without disrupting the private markets, without increasing the size of the Government-run health care plans, and doing so at a responsible cost, as opposed to Senator Kerry, who wants to dramatically increase Government's role in health care, increase the Government's role in overseeing private health care, and play a shell game because it sounds good that you are getting congressional health care for nothing, when in fact you are not, and for a lot. Again, I will give Senator Kerry credit for the tax credit idea, but it is very foggy and not particularly well thought out, in my opinion. So I think it is a failure on all fronts. It is very complicated and will not serve the best interests of the patients in America and will not serve the interests of taxpayers in America. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 748, H.R. 1787, the Good Samaritan Volunteer Firefighter Assistance Act.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, we have been working for several weeks on this bill. I know both Senators Collins and Lieberman have been helpful. We are getting to the end of the bill. It is vitally important to be able to get this passed so we can get this help on the way. It only had three negative votes in the House of Representatives. This is something we should be able to do for our first responders.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I was going to talk about the Kerry health plan, but I will do that later. I want to talk briefly on the Good Samaritan Volunteer Firefighter Assistance Act. We have been trying to clear a provision that would allow more equipment--used equipment--to go to volunteer firefighters from companies all over the United States by giving a slight change in the liability standard for companies that donate this equipment. We have done this in the area of the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which resulted in billions and billions of dollars in additional food going out to hungry people in America. Nobody has been sued, by the way. What was sued under the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act--we were not taking money out of anyone's pocket with lawsuits. No one, to my knowledge, has been sued by donating firefighting equipment. Nobody is going to lose out--no lawyers--from lawsuits by this donation. It is an opportunity for companies that waste a lot of resources to be able to give back.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today I am introducing along with Senator Rockefeller the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act of 2004. Passage of this bipartisan bill would serve to help reduce the tremendous annual economic and human loss that fire in the United States inflicts on our Nation. In the United States, fire departments responded to approximately 1.7 million fires in 2002. Annually, over 500,000 of these are structural fires causing approximately 3,400 deaths, around 100 of which are firefighters. Fire also caused some 18.5 million civilian injuries and $10.3 billion in direct property loss. The indirect cost of fire in the United States annually exceeds $80 billion. These losses are staggering. All of this translates to the fact that fire departments respond to a fire every 18 seconds. Every 60 seconds a fire breaks out in a structure and in a residential structure every 80 seconds. There are literally thousands of high-rise buildings built under older codes that lack adequate fire protection. In addition, billions of dollars were spent to make these and other buildings handicapped accessible, but people with disabilities now occupying these buildings are not adequately protected from fire. At recent code hearings, representatives of the health care industry testified that there are approximately 4,200 nursing homes that need to be retrofitted with fire sprinklers. They further testified that the cost of protecting these buildings with fire sprinklers would have to be raised through corresponding increases in Medicare and Medicaid. In addition to the alarming number of nursing homes lacking fire sprinkler protection, there are literally thousands of assisted living facilities housing older Americans and people with disabilities that lack fire sprinkler protection. The solution resides in automatic sprinkler systems that are usually triggered within 4 minutes of the temperature rising above 120 degrees. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a public assembly, educational, institutional, or residential building that has fully operational sprinklers. Furthermore, sprinklers are responsible for dramatically reducing property loss. Building owners do not argue with fire authorities over the logic of protecting their building with fire sprinklers. The issue is cost. This bill would drastically reduce the staggering annual economic toll of fire in America and thereby dramatically improve the quality of life for everyone involved. This legislation provides a tax incentive for businesses to install sprinklers through the use of a 5-year depreciation period, opposed to the current 27.5 or 39-year period for installations in residential rental and non-residential real property respectively. While only a start, the bill will help eliminate the massive losses seen in nursing homes, nightclubs, office buildings, apartment buildings, manufacturing facilities, and other for-profit entities. This bill enjoys support from a variety of organizations. They include: the American Insurance Association, the American Fire Sprinkler Association, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Campus Firewatch, Congressional Fire Services Institute, Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, International Association of Arson Investigators, International Association of Fire Chiefs, International Fire Service Training Association, National Fire Protection Association, National Fire Sprinkler Association, National Volunteer Fire Council, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, and the Mechanical Contractors Association of America. The Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act of 2004 provides long needed safety incentives for building owners that will help fire departments across the country save lives. I ask my colleagues for their support of this important piece of legislation.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Special Olympics Sports Empowerment Act. I am very pleased that Senator Reid has joined me in introducing this legislation to authorize $15 million for Special Olympics programs. We are also joined by 31 other cosponsors, both Republican and Democrat, conservative, moderate, and liberal, demonstrating the wide range of support for this legislation. According to the World Health Organization, there are 170 million individuals with mental retardation worldwide. Up to 7 million of these individuals live in the United States. Unfortunately, these individuals tend to have much shorter lives--by 10-20 years--in most countries. In developed countries, there is still significant preventable morbidity, pain and suffering. This population is also generally underemployed, stigmatized and many experience violence or abuse at some point in their lives. Thirty-six years ago, Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who had already been working for years with individuals with intellectual disabilities, founded Special Olympics. In July 1968, Special Olympics held its first games in Chicago, hosting 1,000 athletes. Over the years, Special Olympics has continued to serve many individuals with intellectual disabilities around the world by providing year-round sports training and competitive opportunities. Special Olympics now serves over 1.5 million individuals with intellectual disabilities, their families and communities. Special Olympics recognizes the value and dignity of every life. As well as providing children and adults with intellectual disabilities with the opportunity of athletic training and competition, these programs provide participants with health screenings using the donated time of voluntary health care providers. In addition, they help to improve awareness throughout the world of the abilities and unique contributions that individuals with intellectual disabilities can make, thus helping to dispel negative stereotypes. The Special Olympics Sports Empowerment Act will aid an organization that is already hard at work in assisting and providing affirmation to these individuals and their families. It does this by, for the first time, authorizing funding for Special Olympics over 5 years. It authorizes $15 million in fiscal year 2005, and such sums as necessary each year through fiscal year 2009. This bill recognizes the success Special Olympics has had, will ensure that their funding is more stable, and will help Special Olympics to continue to increase the number of athletes and families they serve each year. I am pleased to be sponsoring this legislation and to have the support of so many of my colleagues. I am hopeful that the Senate and House will act to pass this legislation during the 108th Congress.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Special Olympics Sports Empowerment Act. I am very pleased that Senator Reid has joined me in introducing this legislation to authorize $15 million for Special Olympics programs. We are also joined by 31 other cosponsors, both Republican and Democrat, conservative, moderate, and liberal, demonstrating the wide range of support for this legislation. According to the World Health Organization, there are 170 million individuals with mental retardation worldwide. Up to 7 million of these individuals live in the United States. Unfortunately, these individuals tend to have much shorter lives--by 10-20 years--in most countries. In developed countries, there is still significant preventable morbidity, pain and suffering. This population is also generally underemployed, stigmatized and many experience violence or abuse at some point in their lives. Thirty-six years ago, Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who had already been working for years with individuals with intellectual disabilities, founded Special Olympics. In July 1968, Special Olympics held its first games in Chicago, hosting 1,000 athletes. Over the years, Special Olympics has continued to serve many individuals with intellectual disabilities around the world by providing year-round sports training and competitive opportunities. Special Olympics now serves over 1.5 million individuals with intellectual disabilities, their families and communities. Special Olympics recognizes the value and dignity of every life. As well as providing children and adults with intellectual disabilities with the opportunity of athletic training and competition, these programs provide participants with health screenings using the donated time of voluntary health care providers. In addition, they help to improve awareness throughout the world of the abilities and unique contributions that individuals with intellectual disabilities can make, thus helping to dispel negative stereotypes. The Special Olympics Sports Empowerment Act will aid an organization that is already hard at work in assisting and providing affirmation to these individuals and their families. It does this by, for the first time, authorizing funding for Special Olympics over 5 years. It authorizes $15 million in fiscal year 2005, and such sums as necessary each year through fiscal year 2009. This bill recognizes the success Special Olympics has had, will ensure that their funding is more stable, and will help Special Olympics to continue to increase the number of athletes and families they serve each year. I am pleased to be sponsoring this legislation and to have the support of so many of my colleagues. I am hopeful that the Senate and House will act to pass this legislation during the 108th Congress.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I say to the Senator from Nevada that on March 30, I did that. I actually proposed the unanimous consent to allow a vote in relation to the Boxer amendment, with a substitute offered by Senator McConnell on the issue of minimum wage, which I know was an important issue at the time of this discussion. I offered that unanimous consent so we could move forward and dispose of those two amendments and then move the bill to conference, and that was objected to. There was objection to the extension with some minor modifications to help marriage and fatherhood. There was an objection to a unanimous consent that puts $1.2 billion into new child care funding to go to conference. We have seen objections--I suspect this will be objected to again, if I would offer it, which is an opportunity to have a vote on minimum wage up or down, and a vote on our minimum wage proposal up or down, and then send it to conference. I do not know how many times one has to say no to get the idea that maybe there is something other than trying to get votes on issues that are of concern to the minority, that there might be some underlying concern about having an extension of the welfare bill or a modification to it, and I think that is probably where we are. It is unfortunate because it is important to reestablish work requirements. It is important to give people the best opportunity to succeed in America. We have seen, for example, in this country, as a result of welfare reform which passed in 1996, the lowest rate of black poverty in the history of the country, lowest ever as a result of requiring work and changing the dynamic in low-income families in America. So we have shown success. It is unfortunate we are not going to be able to continue that success as a result of the blocking maneuvers on the side of the Democrats. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I object to the modification.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I will object for the moment. I understand the House is working on an extension right now. We may agree later today. Certainly, we need to do an extension and I will check with the leader on that.

Mr. SANTORUM. H.R. 4. And send it to conference and ask for a conference with the House.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would be happy to read it again, but in essence it is to take the bill on the calendar now, which has the Snowe-Dodd amendment in it.