Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. So it would come in here under the Dorgan amendment, reimportation, not being reviewed by the FDA before it came here? Only if we found out the terrorist attack was successful through this scheme would we then find out that we have a problem?

Mr. SANTORUM. That would be far too late.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, taking back my time I say not necessarily. It depends. If it were in the budget constraint and were not marked up in the committee, would it not be subject to a point of order?

Mr. SANTORUM. I did not say legitimate. I said responsible. There is a difference. They are certainly legitimate. I question how responsible they are.

Mr. SANTORUM. I would say to the Senator from Nevada, he did not receive an objection from me. All I can say is we have a Member or two on this side of the aisle who are concerned about the ability to pay for fires in their States, and I think the Senator knows that. We all have concerns about appropriations and disasters in our State. I certainly respect the Senators objecting to that. I hope we can work that out because I agree with the Senator from Nevada that we should be dealing with appropriations bills. MILCON is one that is usually not very controversial, there usually are not a lot of amendments to it, and we should be able to pass it in a very short period of time. We are certainly working on this side of the aisle very diligently to try to take care of the objections so we can get to that issue. I appreciate the Senator moving forward on that, and I hope the Senator from Nevada will then, after we get MILCON done, move to the Defense appropriations bill because I think it is vitally important, as we are fighting this war and we are trying to protect the homeland and we are doing things that are on the cutting edge of transforming our military, that we get that legislation passed in the Senate. When we get MILCON and DOD passed, the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines will know the money is there and the program dollars can be spent in a much more efficient way. I am a member the Armed Services Committee, and that is always a concern, that there will be a delay in the release of money in the appropriations process. I think that would be a very important thing we could do between now and the August recess, if possible. I will certainly work with my colleagues on this side of the aisle to get them to have a very short list of amendments and see if we can get a DOD bill passed in short order.

Mr. SANTORUM. If I did, let me correct that. AARP is certainly a legitimate organization. I would question how responsibly they are acting if they are endorsing legislation they have not seen and do not know how much it costs.

Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to comment on some of the remarks of the majority whip and some of the comments of the chairman of the committee with respect to this legislation. No. 1, the junior Senator from New Hampshire has every right, as ranking member of the committee, to be outraged at the way this bill was brought to the floor. It is my understanding, listening to him today and from the discussion in committee, that there were certain commitments made with respect to bringing this bill to the floor. The fact is, the reason we have seen delays on the floor on the energy bill, the terrorism insurance bill, election reform, a variety of other bills, was because those bills had bypassed committees. They had been brought straight to the floor. Now we are talking about another bill, the Medicare drug bill, which will be amended, attempted to be amended, to this underlying bill that will be bypassing the committee and brought straight to the floor. What is the underlying bill? A bill that was introduced on Thursday and now is on the floor. No one had seen it. I am still trying to understand this legislation. It is very technical, very complex. It is very important to my State, in which there is a lot of drug manufacturing. I am still trying to understand the complexity of what this bill actually does. It is here on the floor, and we are asked to just move ahead. The Senator from New Hampshire had some understanding of what was going to be changed. As you know, when you are marking up a bill in committee, markups are not about legislative language. There are concept documents that are then put into legislative language and brought to the floor. The Senator from New Hampshire had understandings and those understandings were not incorporated into this legislation. The Senator from New Hampshire had a right to come to the floor and explain his dissatisfaction with this procedure. We have two procedures set up: No. 1, you completely bypass the committee; No. 2, you go through committee, and then you don't bring the bill out that you say you are going to from committee. The Senator from New Hampshire simply wanted to make that point. As you know, in the Senate we have the opportunity to put a halt on things temporarily so you can make a point. The point is, procedurally this Senate is being run amok, whether it is the work now coming out of committee or, more often than not, it is the work that is not even done in committee. I don't know why we have a Finance Committee, much less a chairman of the committee, because every important issue the Finance Committee has had to deal with this session has been bypassed. The committee has been bypassed. Whether it is taxes or Medicare prescription drugs, I cannot think of any two issues more important--I also include trade--the three most important issues Finance deals with: trade, taxes, and health care--of the three major issues of this session of Congress, the Finance Committee and the chairman were simply bypassed. Partisan bills were brought straight to the floor. Why are we discussing this underlying bill? They brought this bill up because this is the vehicle by which to talk about health care because they couldn't get their prescription drug bill through the committee. They couldn't get the Democrat prescription drug bill through committee because it is a partisan approach. It will get no bipartisan support. It has no scoring. It has not even been written yet. It is still being worked on. The bottom line is, they couldn't get that through committee. Actually, the bill that would have come out of committee--I am fairly confident--the bill that would have come out of committee would have been a bipartisan bill. But it wouldn't have been a bill that the majority leader wanted. So he takes the gavel out of the hand of the chairman and runs the bill straight to the floor; that is, his bill. That is a partisan bill. Why does he do that? We are still operating on last year's budget agreement. Last year's budget agreement requires two things of a Medicare prescription drug bill: No. 1, that it be within the budget amount, which I believe is $300, $350 billion in number--it has to be that number or under--No. 2, it has to be reported from the Finance Committee. So here is the state of play now because we are playing politics with prescription drugs instead of trying to do prescription drugs. We are playing politics. Why? Because any bill that is offered in the Senate that provides a prescription drug benefit for seniors will be subject to a point of order which is 60 votes. Why? Because it was never reported through the Finance Committee. Why? Because the majority leader refused to let the Finance Committee mark up a bill. So what has he done? He has set up a game where he has placed the bar so high that no benefit will pass the Senate. Why? Morton Kondracke answered that in Roll Call when he said it is obvious the Senate Democrats wanted the issue more than the prescription drug coverage for seniors. They would rather have the issue this fall than the drug coverage for seniors as soon as possible. I have not been around that long. I have been around since 1991. But since I have been here in the House and in the Senate, I have noticed one thing: When it comes to dealing with the big issues of the day, particularly health care, taxes, Social Security, et cetera, by and large--particularly with Social Security and Medicare entitlements--you cannot pass one of these pieces of legislation without a bipartisan consensus. You cannot do it, and I argue that you should not do it. You should try to work together to get a consensus. If you are serious about getting a bill through the Senate on prescription drugs, you cannot bypass the committee, bypass bipartisan agreements, bring a partisan bill to the floor, play games of 60-vote points of order, and claim you tried and the other side blocked you from succeeding, which is exactly the way this is going to play out. Let's have no illusions as to how this will end. This is not a serious discussion, folks, of getting prescription drugs for seniors. This is a serious campaign rhetoric debate about who is for seniors more, knowing full well, the way the game was set up, seniors will lose, no matter what happens. If you were serious about getting a prescription drug benefit for seniors, you would take it through the Senate Finance Committee and they would do the work that should not be done on the floor of the Senate. You have folks on the Finance Committee who have waited years and years to get on that committee and have studied these issues very hard, such as the Senator from Massachusetts, who is an expert in the areas under the Labor Committee's jurisdiction. He is an expert. He has been working on these issues. This is his area of expertise in legislating. When the Finance Committee deals with welfare, taxes, trade, Medicare, and health care, this is their area of expertise. They work together. This is a dynamic. That is how committees work. They work together and find compromise. They understand the real intricacies of the issues, and they work together to knead together legislation that will work and come to the floor without all of the different problems that confront a virgin piece of legislation that is dreamed up in some back room somewhere. That is how the process works to help the Senate do its work. You build consensus in committee. You get Democrats and Republicans working together to form agreements and coalitions, to bring a bill to the floor so you can continue that. That has all been thrown out the window. Why? This bill is about partisan politics. This bill is about the November election. This is not about providing prescription drugs for seniors. This is really tragic. It is amazing to me that the Senator from Nevada would complain about losing 2 days. We are going to lose 2 weeks in the Senate. We are going to spend 2 weeks debating health care issues that, because of the procedure that has been set up, will never pass the Senate, because we have set up a procedure that is doomed to fail, we have set up a procedure that does not allow bipartisan cooperation. We have a bill introduced by members of the Senate Finance Committee--a tripartisan bill--that would have passed the committee, that could have come to the floor. A lot of the problems already could have been worked out. We could have spent less time, not more time, here in the Senate. If we really wanted to do a prescription drug bill, we could have let the Finance Committee do its work and we would have had the issues narrowed as a result of that. We could have come to the Senate floor and worked together and tried to get a bipartisan bill that could be conferenced with the House, so we could get a Medicare prescription drug bill. But a prescription drug bill is a partisan issue now. That is the result of this procedure we have going right now. I don't understand why we say we have lost 2 days. We just voted on the corporate accountability and accounting bill at 7 o'clock last night. We had amendments and debate going on up until then--which would be allowed. There were amendments that were not allowed to be offered. We had debate going on and we had 4 or 5 votes last night. So I don't know how we have lost 2 days. The Senator from New Hampshire, about an hour ago, said he would be willing to vitiate the vote. There has been plenty of time for Members to lay down amendments. I think I can stipulate for the record, if anybody on the other side would care to have the stipulation as a satisfactory admission on our part, the vote tomorrow will be unanimous to move to proceed to the bill. I don't think there is any question that every Member on this side wants to proceed to the bill. We want to talk about prescription drugs. We want to have our ideas. We have three different plans on this side of the aisle that are supported by various Members. Senator Smith from New Hampshire and Senator Allard have a plan, Senators Ensign and Gramm have a plan, and the tripartisan plan that is supported by many Republicans, all of which I think bring a tremendous contribution to the debate. We will have good discussions about it. I know the Senator from Nevada said he wishes we had the Democratic prescription drug bill up. I hope the Senator from Nevada offers that bill right out of the shoot. I hope we do have a vote on that tomorrow, or lay down that bill and have a discussion about it. I think it would be great.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is not what last year's budget agreement says. I also make the other point that, with respect to this bill--and you said you were shocked at the objection. I hope you listened to the Senator from New Hampshire in laying out what were legitimate complaints about the way this bill was brought to the floor, when certain assurances were given. As you know--and the Senator is a committee chairman and knows how markups work--certain assurances were made about issues being brought up in committee, and technical corrections or other corrections were ``agreed upon.'' And then when the bill came to the floor, those changes were not made.

Mr. SANTORUM. The Republican leader is correct. As I said earlier, if a drug benefit bill were brought forward that cost $10, it would be subject to a budget point of order because of this procedure. People are asking: Why is the 60-vote procedure such a problem? The Senator from Nevada asked would I object to an up-or-down vote on one of them? I can certainly agree to that. The problem is the 99 other Senators; only one of them needs to object to an up-or-down vote and make a point of order against the underlying bill because it is not reported out of the Finance Committee, and we have a problem. We have to get 60 votes. The interesting question is why are we in this situation? Obviously, because the majority leader has decided to bring a bill straight to the floor and not through committee. Why are we in this situation even stepping back from what happened yesterday? Because we do not have a budget. We have no budget. For the first time since 1974, we have no budget in the Senate. Now we are starting to see the consequences of not having a budget. The other point is we do not have any appropriations bills passed. I am not the one objecting to the MILCON appropriations bill, and I hope we can work that out and I would be very supportive of passing it on a very short timeframe. The fact is, we are way behind on appropriations, and if I look at the schedule, we are talking about health care this week, next week, and talking about homeland security the week we leave. I do not see any time in here to do 13 appropriations bills that are necessary to run the Government of the United States. We have no budget, we have no appropriations bills, and as a result of having no budget, we have a, to be very candid, screwed-up system by which we are dealing with a Medicare prescription drug bill, which to my constituents--and I represent per capita the second oldest population in the country--is perhaps one of the most important bills, maybe the most important bill, we are going to deal with in Washington, DC, for the people of Pennsylvania. I always say we are second to Florida per capita in the number of seniors, but my comment is, my seniors care more about Medicare and prescription drugs than the ones in Florida because all my rich seniors move to Florida, and what is left in Pennsylvania are the folks who really need the coverage and cannot afford it. So this is a very important bill for the folks in Pennsylvania. This is something we want to accomplish. This is not something I want to be held up by some procedural trick. I will say without reservation that if we had a clean process and we had a bill that came out of the Finance Committee that was not subject to a point of order, we could begin the amending process and have the Senate work its will. Would I be happy with the product? I would probably not be overjoyed with it. I do not even know if I would vote for it. But we would move the process forward where we get a bill to conference that is conferenceable with the House, and we have the potential of getting a prescription drug benefit for millions and millions of seniors across America who are relying on us to do it. But instead of going through the process which assures us of getting a bill, we have developed a process which assures us of getting no bill. So don't anybody next Friday say, oh, golly, we did not make it; oh, golly, we did not pass a bill and think, gee, we really gave it a good chance. This process was scripted for failure. This process was created for a partisan issue in November and nothing more. This is not a serious debate about Medicare prescription drugs. When we are serious about doing Medicare prescription drugs, we will do it the way it was intended to be done and contemplated by the budget of last year, which is what is done with every other major entitlement bill we have ever dealt with in the Senate. What is that? Go through the committee of jurisdiction. The committee works its will. A bill is brought that has had a lot of the kinks worked out, has had bipartisan compromise by experts who study and work on that kind of legislation--that is why they are on the committee--and the bill is brought to the floor to work out the final, in many cases major, issues. Then you get the bill done, you go to conference, and you move on. That is not what is happening. Why? That is a good question. Why? Do we not trust the chairman of the Finance Committee to mark up a bill? Do we not trust the committee of jurisdiction to take up this legislation on which there is intense interest in the committee? There are several bills germinating out of members of that committee on both sides of the aisle. Why do we not trust this committee to do its work on the most important issue that that committee will deal with this year? Why have we said we do not trust the Finance Committee, we do not trust the chairman, we are going to go over their head, we are going to bring a partisan bill, which to my knowledge no one on this side of the aisle has seen? And I suspect there are a lot of folks on that side of the aisle who have not seen it. The bill has not been scored. We have no idea how much it costs. The Senator from Nevada said he hoped to be debating this bill tomorrow. I hope to be debating the bill tomorrow, too, because I would like to see it. Think about this: The largest expansion of entitlement programs in the history of the country, and we are going to bring the bill to the floor, having not gone through committee, having not seen it, and ask for a vote on it. The rumor mill among the press is this bill costs $800 billion. Now, that may be high. I do not know. That is the number I heard outside. That is $800 billion, not over 10 years, because the bill sunsets, but only 6 years. So it is a trillion-dollar expansion of government. That is even a big number for Washington, a trillion-dollar expansion of government, and no one has seen the bill. It has not gone through committee. There has not even been a hearing on the bill. A trillion- dollar expansion of government, and there has not been a hearing on the bill, much less a markup. Now what they are telling the American public is: We are really serious, aren't we? We are serious about passing a drug bill, aren't we? We have not had a hearing on it, we do not know how much it costs, we haven't gone through committee, haven't marked it up, we have not brought it to the floor, but trust me, we are serious about passing a bill. This is real, this is legit, we really want to do this, we really want to make this happen. Remember, we have not drafted the bill, do not know how much it costs, have not had a hearing, have not had a markup, have not even brought the bill up to the floor, but we are serious, and it is, by the way, a trillion dollars. We really want to make this happen, and we are going to get it done in a couple of days, trust us, and we will work it out. That is the procedure. Then we have people saying: How dare you raise a point of order against this bill that has not been finished, that costs a trillion dollars, has not had a hearing, has not been marked up, has not come to the floor. How dare you raise a point of order against this trillion- dollar expansion of government. How can you do that? You must not care about seniors. That is going to be the issue in November: You do not care about seniors because you did not allow us to pass a bill that no one had seen, costing potentially a trillion dollars, that no hearing had been held on, that no markup had been done on, and that we had not had the opportunity to even see and debate on the floor, with people wondering why we raised a point of order.

Mr. SANTORUM. I think we should have up-or-down votes on every plan I just listed. If the Senator would agree to up-or-down votes on the tripartisan plan and the other two plans I just listed, which are serious legislative proposals, I think there would be no question you would easily get an agreement to have an up-or-down vote on the point of order on all of those.

Mr. SANTORUM. Obviously, the procedure by which this bill has been brought to the floor has tainted this entire process. I believe, actually, the best chance we have to get the high-water mark--in other words, the most votes on any bill--will be the tripartisan bill because it has tripartisan support.

Mr. SANTORUM. Which I find remarkable to believe, and the answer is, I do know that some organizations support it, but I find it remarkable to believe that any legitimate organization would endorse a bill they have not seen and have no idea how much it costs. The answer to your question is, yes, I am aware that certain organizations have endorsed it. I question the responsible nature of those organizations that would endorse a bill they have not seen, have no idea what the impact is on their members, and have no idea what the impact is as far as the cost to their members and the cost to the taxpayers, because we do not know that yet.

Mr. SANTORUM. I understand they have been involved in the writing of the legislation.

Mr. SANTORUM. Again, I suggest that you have created the atmosphere by which the point of order is available to some Members, and whether I agree or not doesn't matter. I think there will be Members on both sides of the aisle who will raise a point of order. Why? Because it is available. The Senator from Nevada knows full well if points of order are available, someone on this side--or the other side of the aisle, I might add--will raise a point of order. You have brought this bill to the floor by bypassing the Finance Committee. You have brought it with an instant point of order. That is the remarkable thing. You could have a prescription drug benefit bill that would cost $10, and if you brought that to the floor, it would have a budget point of order. Why? Because the budget says the bill had to come through the Finance Committee. So what we have done is set the bar where you now have to have every single Member of the Senate agree that this bill comes to the floor without objecting to it on a point of order. As the Senator from Nevada knows, you hardly get anybody to agree to anything around here, much less a multibillion-dollar expansion of health care benefits, without having someone opposed to the legislation and then raising a point of order. So what we have done, as I said before, is set the bar so high that you have ensured that nothing will happen. I will yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. Was there not a markup scheduled for the Finance Committee this week?

Mr. SANTORUM. Reclaiming my time, the Senator knows fixing legislation on the floor is a lot harder than having something in the base bill. The fact is, the Senator believed certain assurances were made and those assurances were violated. He wanted an opportunity to pause to make that case. Subsequent to him making that case, he agreed to vitiate the vote. In fact, he agreed to proceed to the bill over an hour ago, and he agreed to vitiate the vote a couple hours ago. All I suggest is, if we were serious about moving to this legislation, having a discussion about prescription drugs, we could be doing that right now. We are in some degree doing that right now. We could be on an amendment. I hope the Senator from Nevada or somebody on his side puts down the Democratic proposal that we can have this debate, begin in earnest and have votes. I will be happy to yield to the leader.

Mr. SANTORUM. Sure.

Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator from Nevada is always courteous to Members on our side when we come to the floor and we appreciate that gentility in the way he deals with questions and answers and appreciate his questions. I know we can work together in a bipartisan way to manufacture as many appropriations bills as possible between now and the August break. I know the Appropriations Committee has begun to churn out these bills in marathon sessions. That is welcome news. Hopefully, we can get to what I believe is the most important. It is a big bill and it is complex. It is several hundred billion dollars. It is still smaller than this bill and a heck of a lot less complex, a bill that potentially could be presented here by the majority to expand prescription drugs. Again, even though I object to the way this procedure is being done, I am very much for having this debate on the Senate floor and trying to get a prescription drug bill done that meets the needs of our seniors all across the country. I don't like the way it is structured. I don't believe it has been structured in a way that will lead us to a result that can be satisfactory to any senior. It is certainly a debate we should have. I just wish we had it under circumstances with a possibility of success. I don't think we are heading in that direction at this time. A final point is on the underlying legislation. As I said before, I have only had a chance to look at it over the last 24 hours since I have been back in town. I have some concerns about this underlying legislation. This is more of a vehicle than a substantive issue. We have to understand, when it comes to the pharmaceutical companies, they are the great whipping boy in the Senate and certainly in the House and many places across the country. The fact is, about 50 percent of the new drugs that come on the market come from innovations in the United States of America. People are alive today who are listening to my voice because of pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars in investments each year to create new drugs, to move the envelope forward, to improve the quality of and to lengthen people's lives. I understand they get beat up on because they try to use their patents and they charge more money here than in other countries and all the other things said about them, but the fact is, if bills such as this pass--and I am concerned about this particularly, some of the litigation provisions--we are going to erode the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to invest in cures. It is popular, very popular, to go around and promise seniors you are going to get them cheap drugs; that these generics are the answer. These filthy horrible drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the name brand pharmaceutical companies are horrible people who are raping and pillaging you, and if we just give all their patents to the generic folks as quickly as possible and give the generics an opportunity to get in there quicker, your drug prices will be lower. That is an argument that appeals very much to this generation of seniors and this generation of pharmaceutical users at the expense of future cures for them and others. Some may say that is a good tradeoff. The politics is smart, I guess, because people would rather have the money in their pocket than the perspective of maybe something happening that may or may not affect them in the future. I understand the game. I understand the politics. The politics are great in being able to promise somebody a 50-percent reduction in their drugs, or a 30-percent reduction in their drugs. That is great. People see it, feel it, and hear it. But people also need to realize that when you do that, you limit the innovation that occurs; you limit those lifesavings drugs, the enhancing of the quality-of-life drugs that come out of this Nation's terrific pharmaceutical industry. Sure, I will join others on this side with some amendments. I know Senator Hatch and Senator Gregg have concerns about this underlying legislation, have concerns about some of the issues, such as the reimportation of drugs. I have very serious concerns about the safety of the reimportation of drugs. In Canada, they are cheap and they can send them back here and they are cheap. They sell them in Canada because they say this is how much you are going to charge; if you don't want this price, you cannot sell your drug in Canada. By the way, if you really want the drug, we will make it and sell it here ourselves. So you have no market and we will sell your drug anywhere. You say: I cannot believe that happens. That happens. Here is a pharmaceutical company that says: I charge $2 for the drugs in America; it costs me a quarter to make them. I charge $2 for the drug in America. It costs me a quarter to make it--that is, the process to make it. But the rest is to make up for the many cases, hundreds of millions, invested to get this formula to where it is. I have to make it up somehow so I have to charge more. Canada says: I will only pay you a dollar; I will not pay you $2. I will only pay you $1 or 50 cents. The drug company has to make a decision: Do I sell it for less there and get the wrath of the American politicians who say, look how cheap this drug is, or do I sell it for less there, still cover my costs, and make a small profit--not as much, but I make a small profit--or do I not sell my drug there, have a Canadian steal my patent, make the drug and sell it there anyway? If you are a pharmaceutical company, that is a decision you have to make. Some say: No, I don't want to sell the drug. I will not do it. Others say a little profit is better than none. And some suggest this is perhaps a unique drug, they feel a social obligation to make it available in countries because this is a drug that maybe doesn't have anything similar to it. So they sell the drug even at a very small profit because they feel a social responsibility to do so because it will save lives. For this, they have Senators of the Senate holding up drugs and saying: Look at these rotten drug companies. Look at these rotten drug companies. Look what they are doing. Understand the story because you are not being told the full story. You are not being told what really happens. Yes, they are cheaper, but now you understand why they are cheaper. They can say no. Fine. In some cases, saying no means people will die. Most pharmaceutical companies, contrary to what you hear, are not in the business of wanting people to die so they sell their drugs. I suggest we understand the whole story before we get into how bad these guys are for selling drugs cheaper in other places. The bottom line is the American public, as a result of the way foreign governments operate, subsidize research in the world. Is it the right thing to do? We should have a good policy discussion on that. There might be legitimate competing arguments whether we should subsidize the research by paying more for research. However, if we do not, the research will not get done and people will die because that new drug that could have been invented had the investment been made will not be developed or it will be much later. Those are the chances. I know that is taking the dollar you could get now for cheaper drugs for the promise of something better later. One thing drug manufacturers can point to is the promises have been made good, if you look at the quality of the pharmaceuticals that we have on the market today and for people whose lives are being saved and the quality of life that is being improved. Understand what we are doing. This is not as simple as some would let you believe. Understand what we are doing. We are going after the big bad pharmaceutical companies that are responsible for many people being alive today.

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. Reserving the right to object, I want to make a couple of points. No. 1, the Senator from Michigan suggested that all amendments that are germane postcloture should be allowed to be offered. I wish that were the case. I wish we had the opportunity to do that in all situations, but that has not been the case in this Senate, or has not been necessarily the history of the Senate. There have been many instances where germane amendments have not been allowed to be offered postcloture. No. 2, I make a point and reiterate the point that the chairman of the committee has made. The Senator from Michigan has made the point that FASB has been compromised because it wanted to do things and it felt constrained by the constituency which funds it. We have set up an independent funding source for FASB now, and I think that would allow a lot more independence to be able to deal with these accounting issues, such as the way we treat stock options, in a way that allows an independent judgment. Finally, while we do have a sense of the Senate that is 8 years old on this issue, the Congress has never directed FASB to study an issue of accounting. This is precedent setting. There is nothing in this bill that directs FASB to do anything. It is an independent board. It sets up the accounting standards. I think there is no question that it will in all likelihood review this issue. For the Congress to begun to weigh in--even 8 years ago, we did not direct FASB to do this; we simply expressed our opinion. To direct FASB to do something would be a very bad precedent to set. I object.

Mr. SANTORUM. I object.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I want to pick up on what the Senator from Idaho just said, which is, we were just meeting on the House side among the leadership. One of the messages that was very clear was, when this bill passes, the House is very eager to appoint conferees and to move forward to get a bill out as quickly and as responsibly as possible, to send all the right messages to the investing public and to Wall Street that Congress has seen the problem and that we are ready, willing, and able to act, and act in an expeditious way. I think it is important for us to act. I agree with that sentiment. The House, obviously, acted months ago in dealing with this problem. We have taken a little bit longer, which we have a tendency to do in the Senate--take a little longer to get things done. But we are now moving forward, and we should not delay in getting to conference. We should not delay in appointing conferees in the Senate. And we should have a process by which we engage in these meetings earnestly and come up with a product, if possible, by the August recess. It is little difficult. The House is going to be out a week before the Senate. So it is a pretty big task ahead of us, but we should go about it in earnest, and we should do our best to move this forward and send the signals that the Congress has moved as expeditiously as possible to meet the concerns of the investing public about the markets and the reliability of the numbers that corporations are sending out to the investing public. I have to say, as one of the four members of the committee who voted against this bill in the committee, I have some concerns about the underlying bill that came out of committee. I have some concerns about particularly the impact on some of the small companies that will be governed by this legislation. A lot has been made that this is a piece of legislation that just deals with publicly traded companies, and so we are talking about the big companies. As any of you who have watched the market for any length of time know, there are a lot of small companies that go into the equity markets and are publicly traded, particularly a lot of technology companies. A lot of the economic growth engines of our economy are small publicly traded companies. One of the concerns I have is this bill may be appropriate for large multinational corporations--such as General Motors or IBM; you can go down the list; Xerox, whatever--but it may not be particularly an appropriate vehicle of regulation for small-cap stocks. As you know, there are small-capital stocks, mutual funds, small-cap funds. To apply the same rigorous accounting standards and rules and regulations that very well may be appropriate for these large companies to these smaller companies could have a very significant negative effect on economic growth in our country. To put these kinds of rules and regulations in place for these small companies is going to be very expensive, very onerous, and make it very difficult for them to conduct business. And remember, folks, who is responsible for economic growth in America, job creation in America. Let me underscore this. We have job claims up again just last week. The economic engine for job creation is smaller businesses. A lot of them are these small publicly traded companies. It is a very grave concern to me that, yes, we look at these companies we are talking about here. These are big companies that have done a lot of things that, obviously, they should not have done, and with big accounting firms. We are not hearing about scandal in these smaller publicly traded companies that use small accounting firms in most cases. To apply these rules to these smaller companies is really problematic and has a negative effect on our economy. The last thing I want to see us do--yes, we want to strengthen confidence in the capital markets. Yes, we want to deal with the problems of fraud, and we want to hold people who commit fraud more accountable, and toughen punishments, which is what we have done on the floor. Those are very important things to do. But we should not do that at the expense of jobs and economic growth in our economy. I understand there is a provision in the bill that allows smaller-- any company, I guess, to seek a waiver as to some of the provisions of this act. I know a lot of small businesses, and most of them do not have a lot of money to hire lobbyists and lawyers and other people to come here to Washington, DC, or to New York and plead their case that they should somehow be preempted from the provisions of this act. You are talking about 16,000 publicly traded companies, most of which--well over 75 percent--are relatively small in size. Imagine the burden of the regulators having to deal with petition after petition after petition. Senator Gramm has an amendment, which I presume he will offer on Monday. I am hopeful that the Senate will seriously consider giving the regulatory body some flexibility in providing blanket waivers to classes of companies, or based on some sort of rational scheme of determination of size and scope of a company, that we give a little flexibility to the regulators not to sort of throw all the babies in this one big basket, and understand that there are real significant consequences to jobs and future growth of this economy if we did that. So I know that is an issue on which we are going to have a discussion next week. But, to me, it is a very significant issue, one where you can be for tougher regulation, you can be for increased accountability, you can be for tougher penalties--all those things, setting up this governing board, having standards in place--you can be for all these things in the bill, but you have to understand that General Motors and ABC Tech Company in Scranton, PA, are fundamentally different entities and should not be treated the same way. It really is important for us to have some sort of provision for the regulatory body to exempt some of these smaller entities, where some of these regulations do not really apply or misapply, from this scheme of regulation that is in this bill. So with that, it looks as if we have another Member who might be interested in offering an amendment or giving a speech. I am happy to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Reserving the right to object--and I will not object-- this is a very important piece of legislation for the continent of Africa and has to do with AIDS relief, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. There is a provision in this legislation that Senator Biden and I have offered on debt relief for Third World countries. This is a vitally important piece of legislation that dovetails very well with the President's initiative in trying to stem the scourge of AIDS in Africa and provide some hope for some of these heavily debt ridden countries. I am very pleased we were able to do this in wrap-up today. I will not object.