Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I am happy to be here in strong support of a bill that I guess I was somewhat responsible for in giving its title to: the Tax Increase Prevention Act. We first called this a jobs or growth package or something such as that, but that is not what it is. Taxes are going to go up if we don't extend these provisions to allow people to keep more of their own money, to not have the alternative minimum tax kick in that is going to affect over 350,000 taxpayers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They will have to start paying the alternative minimum tax. As an AMT payer myself, I can tell you: You don't want to pay this tax. This isn't fair for increasingly average-income people who, if we don't fix it today, will now be thrown into this alternative minimum tax situation which will cost them thousands of dollars in their tax bill. We stop that from happening. The problem doesn't go away, though. We need to continue to work on this to make sure we don't have this problem into the future. The second thing we do is capital gains and dividends. Capital gains and dividends is a vital part of the growth that we have seen in our economy. Since we passed them, we have seen 5.3 million new jobs. We just heard the Senator from New Jersey talk about how the benefits of capital gains and dividends all go to these high-income individuals. What he forgot to mention was the 5.3 million people who have jobs today in large measure because of the tax policy that we put in place in 2001 and 2003. So while they may get a small financial benefit-- although every financial benefit, depending on your income level, is a benefit--the fact of the matter is, in many of these cases, over 5 million cases, they have a job, and they have a job paying at 20 percent above the average compensation of most jobs in America. So these are good jobs. These are jobs that are family-sustaining jobs, and these are jobs I am sure these 5.3 million people--net new jobs that we have--are very happy to have. I will tell you what. I bet if we polled all of those folks who received those jobs in the last few years, they would be happy to have someone who created that job, who had a tax incentive to grow their business so that they could, in fact, invest to make that job possible for them. They are very happy to have someone who had a tax break because of a capital gains rate reduction or a dividend rate reduction or the AMT not being in place or the marginal rates being lower or having an expense of capital equipment as a small business. Those folks would be very happy to get these jobs, from 2003 to today, I am sure, to allow that tax break to be in place so they could have the job in the first place. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about growing the economy by investing in small businesses, by investing in people who are creating economic activity, who are creating jobs, who are building wealth, who are creating a better economy for all of us. When we passed this legislation in 2003, the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent. It is now 4.7 percent. In Pennsylvania, it is below that. We have had a great run, as Senator McConnell talked about. The stock market is at all-time highs. That doesn't just mean wealth for people who own stocks and trade. We are talking about pension funds; pension funds which were on the brink and are still having problems. But can you imagine what we would be debating in the pension reform bill that we are trying to pass if we had the market at 20 or 30 percent below where it is today. A lot more pension funds would be in trouble. A lot more folks would not have the savings they have to be able to enjoy their retirement. A lot of good things have happened because of the tax policy we have put in place. Let's talk about the deficit. The Senator from New Jersey--I love to hear people get up on the other side of the aisle and gnash their teeth and woe, how terrible it is about these huge deficits--I mean huge deficits--when we are talking about letting people keep their money. But when it comes to spending their money, we never hear a word about deficits on the other side of the aisle. Never. We went through the process of a budget, and amendment after amendment, billions after billions after billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of amendments were offered on the other side of the aisle to spend more money, to increase the deficit by spending more money and not one word about how bad the deficit is. No. If Washington spends it, if the bureaucracy spends it, if we are growing the size of government, we are OK with bigger deficits. We only have a problem with deficits if we let you keep your money. Then there is a problem. This is the kind of misguided economic policy which the American public thankfully has rejected time and time again. I am very proud to be here today to say I am on the side of the taxpayer. I am on the side of the people who are the middle-income folks today and who are not going to see their taxes go up this year because of the alternative minimum tax. They are going to see capital gains and dividends policy extended for a couple more years so we can continue to see growth in our financial markets, more responsibility in the corporate board room, the kind of benefit to the average taxpayer where 28.1 percent of Pennsylvania tax returns claimed income from dividends. Over half of that money came from returns--over half of those returns have an average adjusted gross income of under $50,000. We are looking at, not high-income people claiming dividend income but a lot of my seniors--and I don't have a lot of high-income seniors as a percentage compared to some of the other States where folks retire in the South. We have a lot of moderate- and low-income seniors, and that dividend income is a big deal. Not having to pay those taxes--it may only be $40 or $50 to the Senator from New Jersey, who doesn't have to worry about $40 or $50, but there are a lot of folks who worry about $40 or $50. I hear complaints all the time from the other side of the aisle: When it comes to prescription drugs we can't have a $2 copay or a $3 copay. It has to be a $1 copay or something like that. Or we can't increase it by a dollar or two. Then they throw off $50 in a tax break as if it means nothing. Again, the idea if it is Government, it is OK; if it is letting people keep their money, it is not OK. It is OK in the minds of most people to have the people who earn the money, who made the investment, be able to keep the investment, get the fruits of their labor or wise investment, and be able to keep as much of it as possible. That is what this bill does. I am proud of the fact we have been able to make this happen. We have not concluded the exercise. We have more work to do on the tax side. I have been a staunch advocate of making sure that we do something this year to help our charities. Over the past 25 years we have seen charitable giving go down from 2.5 percent of GDP to under 1 percent. That is not to say we are not a generous country, but the bottom line is we are not giving as much as we have in the past. I think part of that is the tax structure that we have. We need to create more incentives for folks to give to those who are helping millions of people across this country in need. The charitable giving package I continue to fight for in the followup tax bill that is coming along, we need to get that done. It is something vitally important. There are several other issues we are working on in that second bill that, in the interest of time, I will not go into. But I will tell you there is more work to be done. This is a good start. This is a solid start on a package of legislation that is going to stop taxes from going up. This is not a tax reduction, this is a tax increase prevention, and that is the least we should do at a time when we want to keep this economy growing. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to continue on with some of the comments I was making earlier about the critical situation in Pennsylvania with respect to this liability crisis and a couple of examples of how out of control the system has become. I was at St. Luke's Hospital up in the Lehigh Valley, and I was saddened by the changes that have happened with some of the losses of physicians that have occurred in there. It is one of the growing areas of our State, and this is an area that has been hit with very high rates of malpractice and obviously, as I will discuss here, losing physicians. I want to talk about a couple of things. One is a case that St. Luke's was involved in that tells you how absurd, and particularly in this case, the jury awards are in Philadelphia, which has been the big problem area in Pennsylvania--some of the jury awards that have come out of Philadelphia. We had a case in September and October of the year 2000 which involved a baby girl born 3 months premature to a 17-year-old mother whose medical records indicated a crack cocaine addiction. The mother began experiencing complications, including a partial placental abruption and premature labor. The mother was admitted to another hospital for these complications and then transferred to St. Luke's. The mother was placed on strict bed rest and given medication to stop the onset of labor and to prevent progression of the placental abruption. Despite warnings from her doctor about the risks to her baby of premature birth and possible neurological damage, possibly death, the mother, against medical advice, left the hospital. She turned up 3 days later with complete placental abruption and premature delivery could not be avoided at that point. Emergency surgery was performed. The baby was delivered weighing 4.1 pounds. The baby had a common condition with premature babies which is an opening in the heart that usually closes shortly after birth. The baby was treated for 29 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Luke's, was given medication to attempt to close the opening in the heart. The baby had an adverse reaction to the medication. Surgery was required to close the opening. The surgeon was unsuccessful. There were no documented complications in the surgery, no allegations that St. Luke's did anything wrong or improper in her care. The baby was transferred to another hospital for further surgery. During treatment at the second hospital, the baby had complications, was transferred back to ICU at St. Luke's. Again, no documented complications during the second stay at St. Luke's up until the child's release. The mother during this time gave up parental rights. The baby was adopted down the road by parents who elected not to seek legal action. But--and this is somewhat unknown--somehow or another, an attorney in Philadelphia was appointed the guardian ad litem to the child because of the child's nexus to a second hospital located in Philadelphia County. So the lawyer sued on behalf of the baby without the consent or knowledge of either the actual parent or the adopted parent. The verdict in the case was $100 million against the hospital--a $100 million verdict in this case. So you wonder: Well, gee, why are we trying to put caps on awards? A $100 million verdict in this case. That verdict would have shut down this hospital, which is a major medical center in the Lehigh Valley. Subsequent to the verdict, they negotiated a settlement for substantially less money. But the bottom line is, you have a situation where things get out of control because bad things happen to people. People are injured. In this case this little baby, because of a whole lot of factors I have detailed, is going to have a tough life. But is it the fault of St. Luke's Hospital? Is it the fault of the physicians who were attending? The answer from all indications is no. But you have someone who feels bad that this child is going to need some help, so you give verdicts of $100 million. The consequence at St. Luke's was that since 2000, 32 private physicians have left St. Luke's as a direct result of the malpractice insurance crisis. Twelve OB-GYNs, 5 neurosurgeons, 2 pulmonary specialists, 3 orthopods, 3 general surgeons, 2 internists, and 1 pain management specialist. There has been a 44-percent decline in the number of private practice OB-GYN physicians on their medical staff. One of the reasons I have introduced S. 23 is because it is not just a problem at St. Luke's, it is a problem in Philadelphia, a problem in Pittsburgh. We are down to I think three maternity wards in the city of Pittsburgh. This is a problem across our State. Unfortunately, the heavy hand of politics is played not just here in Washington but also in our State Capitol. There was a study done that showed that the trial attorneys in America in the 2003-2004 election cycle contributed $182 million to political campaigns--$182 million. That sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. But it is actually a pretty good investment on the part of the trial attorneys. Because for that $182 million, they were able to collect $18 billion in fees--$18 billion in fees. That is a 10,000-percent rate of return. Not a bad investment. So they are investing in the political climate here. They are investing to make sure there is no balance in the system. They are investing because they want to keep things out of whack. They want to keep those 40- and 50- percent awards, the percentages of contingency fees to these big awards, so they can keep the gravy train coming. That is something our health care system cannot afford. We cannot afford to allow this kind of litigation to be practiced in the health care arena. It is destroying our ability to keep physicians in Pennsylvania. It is destroying our ability to have responsible medicine practiced--not defensive medicine but appropriate medicine and responsible medicine that treats patients the way they should be treated, not the way they need to be treated to avoid possible litigation. That is not responsible medicine. That is not the medicine physicians want to practice. But, increasingly, in my State, that is the medicine they are practicing, and unless we do something tonight, in a few minutes, they are going to have to continue to practice that way.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I am here today to stand in strong support of S. 22 and S. 23. I do so as a Senator from Pennsylvania representing a State that has been racked by the consequences of having a tort liability system that is simply out of balance, out of whack. That imbalance is causing real tragedies to occur on a daily basis in the Commonwealth. People are not getting access to the kind of care they deserve because, as I will lay out in great detail, physicians are leaving the State and hospitals are closing down because of the cost of awards, in particular in areas that serve high-risk patients in some of our communities where there are underserved populations, whether they are inner city or very rural. Patients are not getting access, whether it is to neurosurgery or high-risk obstetrics or orthopedic care and other types of high-risk specialties, and physicians are leaving areas in our State, both rural and urban, because of this liability crisis. I had hoped that the Commonwealth itself and our State legislature would have responded to this problem. They have tried on a couple of occasions, and the Governor has vetoed legislation to make that happen, and so we are here today to try to solve this problem on a national level. I believe that while Pennsylvania is severely impacted, probably as much as any State in the country, this is a problem which has national impact. It impacts the Medicare and Medicaid system which this Congress and which the Federal Government pay for. So I do believe it is appropriate for us to consider it. I wish to make sure that folks understand what we are trying to accomplish. I have had people come to me on more than one occasion and ask questions about why we are trying to limit people's right to sue. No. 1, we are not limiting anybody's right to sue. People can sue a physician or a hospital or a drug company or anybody else in the health care arena. They can sue as many times as they want and as often as they want and for as much as they want. The only thing we are attempting to do as far as a limitation in this bill is to limit the award in one category of damages. There is, of course, more than one category of damages allowed in most liability suits. Certainly there are economic damages allowed for income loss, so that if you lost income as a result of the injury you incurred, you have lost the ability to earn future income or some portion of future income, that is fully recoverable. If you have medical bills in the past or going forward--for example, let's say you were left without the use of an arm or maybe you ended up in a wheelchair as a result of medical malfeasance on the part of a provider--there is no limit on the amount of medical recovery you could have. Nothing in the bills we are looking at limit recovery in those areas whatsoever. There are also punitive damages that are available. Punitive damages are damages against someone who does something malicious or willful to harm you in the conduct of providing care, and there is no limit whatsoever on any punitive damages in this legislation. All we attempt to do is take one category of damages, which is loosely known as pain and suffering, and try to put a cap on that; we try to quantify that. It is very hard to quantify it in the first place, but we are just trying to say that we want to put a cap on that. Why? Why would you want to put a cap on that? Because in some cases, you look at the harm that has been done to somebody and you say: Wow, I can't even think about how much pain or how much suffering or how that person's life has changed, and I would like to help. Well, the reason we need to put some sort of limitation on it is in order to strike a balance between the desire of our fellow citizens, through a jury or judge, to compensate someone for the injury they had in exchange for the costs associated to our society and to the medical system, which results in other people not getting care. We can go to a recent conference I attended in Philadelphia where it was relayed to me that we have had I think it is nine maternity wards in the city of Philadelphia close down over the past few years--nine-- one most recently in northeast Philadelphia and the last one in the most densely populated area of Philadelphia, an urban population, where the OB ward closed down. So if you live in northeast Philly, which is again the largest area population-wise in the city of Philadelphia, there are no hospitals to deliver babies. You have to come into the Center City area or the neighboring county to get obstetrical care. You have consequences. You have consequences of high-risk pregnancies where people do not get to the delivery room on time and mothers and children are harmed. One of the reasons I have introduced S. 23, the bill we are going to have a cloture vote on later today in order to proceed, is, in fact, to say that this is of crisis proportion in my State, and even if we can't do a broader bill, let's try to do a narrower bill that deals with the issue of mothers and children to make sure there is care for those particularly vulnerable in our population. I had an ER doctor in suburban Philadelphia tell me that just over the last couple of years, they have been able to document I think seven people who have shown up in emergency rooms in suburban Philadelphia with head traumas who were not treated because there were no neurosurgeons available on call. There just was no one to come. As a result, seven people are now dead who, had there been someone on call and available, without question would have lived. You ask the question: Who do the family members of those deceased people sue? The answer is they can't sue anybody. They get no recovery. They get nothing. Why? Because we have a system that rewards a very few--maybe justifiably. I am not arguing that their award isn't justifiable. I would probably argue for an enormous amount of money, depending on what the injury is. The question is, How do we balance that person's right to be compensated with another person's right in the future to get health care? That is what this attempts to do: balance the rights of those who are injured with the rights of those who will be injured if we don't limit those first rights. We see that happening every day in Pennsylvania, and that is one of the reasons I feel so passionate about bringing this legislation to the floor and trying to attempt to do something here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. What we do in trying to limit rights is actually different from what we have done in the past here. We try to limit the ability to recover-- not the right to sue but the ability to recover--in some small way. It most cases, it will be a small way. What this does is it provides certainty in the insurance market. Right now, you have a category of damages called pain and suffering. I think if you asked 100 people how much suffering--if you took a case and said: How much should this person be awarded for this much suffering, would you get 100 different answers. It is hard to insure against those 100 different answers about what a judge or a jury is going to do. So by putting a limit here, you are then able to quantify for insurance purposes and allow insurance companies to offer reasonable insurance packages for physicians and hospitals, and you put physicians in--this is also important--you put physicians in a position where they are not simply practicing defensive medicine, which drives up the cost of health care precipitously. The cap we are talking about here is a $250,000 cap on a physician, a $250,000 cap additionally on the health care provider, on the institution where the care is provided. If there is more than one institution, it is a total cap of $500,000, so two or more institutions could combine, for a total of $500,000. So it is a $750,000 total cap, which is three times what we voted on here last session of Congress. So this is a much higher cap. I have said in the past, both on the floor and around my State, that I thought the $250,000 cap was a bit low, and I feel more comfortable with this cap, and it allows flexibility for the States to do something different. This just takes care of situations where there aren't any caps in place by the State. So I think we have a situation where we have a bill that puts in a reasonable limitation on damages. Even though I certainly can make the argument that there may be cases where this would be a difficult limit, it is a balance between limiting somebody's recovery and making sure that by doing so, you have access to care for other people who will be harmed if we don't limit that recovery. I want to talk about the situation specifically in Pennsylvania. This is a tragic situation that we have seen evolve over the past several years where the liability costs have just gone through the roof. We have a situation where, if you look between 1999 and 2005, the 20 most populous States saw a 15-percent to 35-percent increase in the number of Medicare physicians. In Pennsylvania we saw a 10-percent decline in the number of physicians available to treat Medicare patients. The number of doctors in training who stayed in Pennsylvania? In Pennsylvania we are very blessed with a lot of great medical schools. We train a lot of physicians and train a lot of health care workers generally in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in between. Twelve years ago, in 1994, we had a rate of about 50 percent of all the physicians we trained in Pennsylvania stayed in Pennsylvania. Two years ago it was 7.8 percent. We went from 13th in the country, during this time, of the percentage of physicians under the age of 35--we were 13th in the country in the percentage of physicians under the age of 35. Today we are 45th in the country in the percentage of physicians under the age of 35. We have older and older doctors; fewer and fewer are staying. This is a crisis. It is horrible now. It is only going to get worse if we do not do something about it. Why? If you look at it, the payouts have skyrocketed from $180 million in 1991 to $450 million 2 years ago. The average liability payout per physician--the average is $6,000 nationwide. It is $16,000 in Pennsylvania, almost three times as much. This is a serious problem in our State. We are looking to Washington, DC, to help. They are saying just in a couple of years we could have a shortfall of nearly 10,000 physicians in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So this is a pressing problem, one I hope we can get to. Just allow us to bring up the bill, allow us to debate. Here we are, the greatest deliberative body in the world. We have a huge problem in my State, and I suggest we have others stand up and talk about the problem in their States. If you don't like the solution we have put forward, then let's have a debate. Let's have some amendments. Let's talk about how we can change the bill around to move it forward. But not allowing us to bring it up is not a reasonable alternative. We have heard from folks in our State. This is a petition. We have gotten a whole bunch. I just wanted to reproduce one of the hundreds of petitions we have received, particularly focused on what is going on with our obstetrical care. These are citizens, in this case, from West Reading, PA, who said: Every day OBGYNs are closing doors because of America's medical liability crisis. Is yours next? We the undersigned are in favor of keeping women's health care availability and strongly urge Congress to enact meaningful legislative relief. That is what we are trying to accomplish today. It is amazing, the effect of this on--I always say physicians, but it is health care professionals, not just physicians. ``One-third of residents''-- This is from the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Harvard School of Public Health. They did some surveys and talked to physicians out in our State. It says: One-third of residents in their final or next to last year of residency planned to leave Pennsylvania because of the lack of availability of affordable malpractice coverage. . . . Those who are about to leave Pennsylvania named malpractice cost as the primary reason three times more often than any other factor. I met with a woman graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in thoracic surgery. She had a decision to make: to come to Washington DC, or stay in Philadelphia. She is from Philadelphia; her family is there. She wants to stay. The cost of malpractice insurance in Washington is $4,000 for her specialty. In Philadelphia, $40,000, 10 times the amount, plus the complexity of not being able to practice the medicine she wants to practice. Seventy-one percent of residency program directors reported a decrease in retention of residents in the state since the onset of the professional liability crisis. For some programs the decreases were very large. An environment of mounting liability costs in Pennsylvania appears to have dissuaded substantial numbers of residents in high risk specialties from locating their clinical practices in the state. This is a serious problem. I am going to talk about it some more. We probably are not going to be successful today, but I will be back on the floor, not just today but in the future to continue to talk about this critical crisis that we have in our commonwealth. It is not just about making sure that we have reasonable malpractice rates. It is about access to care. It is about people who are going to be hurt and are going to die because we have not put this medical liability system in balance. We need to do so and it would be a great start if the Senate would allow us to proceed to that debate today.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, it is a pleasure for me to come to the floor of the Senate to give good words of encouragement to my colleagues to support Tom Golden for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania judgeship. This is a vacancy that the Office of Administration at the U.S. Courts has determined is a judicial emergency, so it is high time that we get this vacancy filled. Tom Golden has proven to be just the right medicine for us to be able to move this process very quickly in the Senate. On April 27 he was moved out of committee by a voice vote, so I guess, from all reports at least, unanimously. Certainly there were no vocal objections. He now comes to the floor for confirmation. I congratulate him in anticipation of a strong positive vote today on his successfully negotiated, what can be tough shoals in the Senate when it comes to judicial nomination. The record speaks for itself. This is a man of great legal ability, as well as someone who is a fine member of his community and citizen of this country. He started out with great potential. He graduated from Penn State University, which happens to be my alma mater, and also graduated from the Dickinson School of Law, which happens to be my alma mater. He has a fine background and education, and he has come forward from that education to work at a law firm in Reading, PA. He is from Berks County. Berks County is one of the larger counties in our State. It has not had a judge there for some time, even though there is a courthouse in Reading. We are quite excited. Folks in the Eastern District are rather exited about the opportunity of having their cases heard and their filings be filed before judges and motions be heard in Reading as opposed to having to travel all the way to Philadelphia to have their cases proceed. This is not just a good moment for Tom Golden, but it is a good moment for all of the litigants in the western part of the Eastern District, to be able to have their cases heard in a much more convenient fashion. Aside from a variety of involvements in charitable organizations and specific organizations, I want to mention the fact that Tom was very active in the bar association. In fact, not only is he in the House of Delegates at the ABA, and has been since 2002, he was the president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association from 2003 to 2004 and served, as you can imagine, often as chair leading up to his election to the presidency in 2006. He has been active in the Berks County Bar Association and a whole lot of other legal areas. He was rated ``well-qualified,'' not surprisingly, by the bar association. He is coming here with the highest recommendations from the legal community, as well as the community at large in Berks County. It is a pleasure to come here with a noncontroversial nomination, someone who has the highest character, as well as great legal ability, and someone who, I am confident, will do a fine new job as judge on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would like to engage my colleague from Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens, on a topic of importance to our Nation's military and our industrial base. The issue of importance concerns additional funding included by the House of Representatives for Bradley fighting vehicles and Hercules improved recovery vehicles. The House added $250 million for Bradley ODS vehicles and another $100 million for Hercules vehicles.

Mr. SANTORUM. I want to thank the Senator from Alaska for his efforts to address these and other Army programs in this supplemental appropriations bill. I recognize that there are financial limitations on what the Committee on Appropriations is able to do with respect to addressing the Army's recapitalization needs.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank my colleague for his remarks and I stand ready to provide whatever assistance might be necessary to secure supplemental appropriations funds for Bradley fighting vehicles and Hercules improved recovery vehicles. public housing energy costs

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from Oregon for his indulgence. I call up amendment numbered 3640 and I send a modification to the desk.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, this is an amendment to add $25 million to the money that the President requested for prodemocracy efforts for Iran within the Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental. It is vitally important to understand how important this effort is in the face of what we are dealing with in Iran today. We have heard lots of talk in the press about military options, given the potential nuclear threat from Iran. This is not a military option; this is a diplomatic option. It is a vitally important option. It is an option that says we in the United States are going to step forward and provide funding, a robust level of funding, for efforts through telecommunications as well as by seeding prodemocracy movements within Iran to effect change within the country of Iran so they do not move forward with this technology, do not move forward and continue to support terrorism, do not move forward and continue to be a disruptive force in Iraq, do not move forward and continue to be a disruptive force in the world, by having a more prodemocratic regime in this country. What this amendment does is add $12.5 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors--again, for public diplomacy in Iran--as well as $12.5 million for the Iran Democracy Fund. It is a total of $25 million in addition to the 75 in the bill. We also authorize using the language from the Iran freedom and support bill. This is a bill that has strong bipartisan support, close to 60 cosponsors, I think 56 or 57 as of this date. It is very strongly bipartisan. It is supported by a lot of the groups with interests in the Middle East. We put authorizing language in here to make sure this money is spent in conformity with how the Congress would wish it to be spent. This is Congress putting its imprimatur on this supplemental appropriation language the President has put forward. Having spoken to Secretary Rice and the President about this language, one of the reasons they put forward this money in the supplemental is because of the strong support Congress has shown both in the House and the Senate for the Iran Freedom and Support Act. We are using this opportunity to provide more direction for the use of this fund from the Congress, which I think is vitally important. In my opinion, today there is no more important foreign policy area than in dealing with the emerging and present threat of Iran. To be very honest, the Congress has done nothing to address this issue. We have not stepped forward and articulated what our policy is within Iran. We do this with this amendment. We say as a sense of the Senate that we express support for a transition to democracy within Iran. That is language included in this amendment. We make clear statements about what we intend and what our direction is, what this money is to be used for. We provide a broader outline than what is in the current legislation. I hope this language would be supported. We fence this money within the money for the State Department in this legislation so we are not stealing money from anywhere else. We are just making sure that the $100 million is spent in this area and we provide more guidance for the administration to do so. I am hopeful this language can be accepted by both sides. As I said before, this is a bill that has strong bipartisan support and this language also has very strong bipartisan support. I thank again the Senator from Oregon for his indulgence. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, as we are in the midst of North Korea Freedom Week, I would like to speak to the human rights situation in North Korea. As we continually strive to protect the freedoms that this country holds dear, such as the freedoms of religion, press, speech and assembly that are recognized in our Constitution, we must also concentrate on spreading these freedoms to those who do not enjoy them. As these rights should be enjoyed by all people, not just Americans, freedom must extend beyond our borders to reach those who live in a world unknown to many of us, one that includes starvation and deprivation of all freedoms. North Korea Freedom Week gives us the opportunity to shed light on the situation inside this oppressive regime. Several years ago in order to help promote freedom throughout the world, I began the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom. The purpose of this group is to focus attention on issues of domestic and international religious freedom. As a group, we seek to uphold and help enforce the meaning of article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: ``Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.'' As has been noted by human rights groups and others, the human rights situation in North Korea is severe. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have fled their country in hopes of survival and in search of a free life. However, even if they manage to escape, they still live in constant fear of repatriation and imprisonment. President Bush has called North Korea's autocratic leader, Kim Jong Il, a ``tyrant'' who runs ``concentration camps.'' Despite the country being embedded in secrecy, unfortunate stories of persecution, starvation, and public executions for crossing the border manage to be released to the rest of the world. Such actions under this regime are a terrible travesty. While the North Korean constitution provides for ``freedom of religion,'' such freedom does not exist. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in their 2005 annual report: ``By all accounts, there are virtually no personal freedoms in North Korea and no protection for universal human rights. In pursuit of absolute control of all facets of politics and society, the government under dictator Kim Jong Il has created an environment of fear in which dissent of any kind is not tolerated. Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief remains essentially non-existent, as the government severely represses public and private religious activities and has a policy of actively discriminating against religious believers. There are a growing number of reports from North Korea refugees that any unauthorized religious activity inside North Korea is met with arrest, imprisonment, torture, and sometimes execution by North Korean officials.'' Furthermore, the U.S. Department of State's 2005 Country Report on Human Rights Practices sums up North Korea's actions by listing documented or alleged human rights abuses over the years. Such instances include: abridgement of the right to change the government; extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and arbitrary detention, including many political prisoners; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; torture; forced abortions and infanticide in prisons; lack of an independent judiciary and fair trials; denial of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; government attempts to control all information; denial of freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and worker rights; and severe punishment of some repatriated refugees. I also want to note President Bush's appointment last August of Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz to the position of Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea. The Special Envoy post was established under the North Korea Human Rights Act, and with this appointment, signaled the administration's intensified attention to human rights in North Korea. I am confident that Ambassador Lefkowitz will continue to take steps toward ending North Korea's suppression of freedoms. As we in the Senate continue to address the persecution and the fears that North Koreans face, it is my hope that we will do all we can in order to improve the conditions in this communist state and to spread the freedoms that we all enjoy.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3214 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this is an amendment offered along with Senator Mikulski on the Polish visa waiver program. This is an issue I have talked about on numerous occasions along with Senator Mikulski. We have concern that one of our best allies--in fact, one of our staunchest allies--has great concerns about the way they are being treated in the United States with respect to the visa waiver program. The visa waiver program is available to 27 countries around the world. That allows citizens from those countries to travel in the United States for vacation and visiting families, et cetera, without requiring a visa. This is a program which is given to countries which we have a special relationship with and which are able to meet certain criteria laid out in the law and have been certified by the Department of State as having met that criteria. Poland, so far, has not been able to meet the criteria that has been laid out in statute, although I will say that when Senator Mikulski and I introduced this in the last session and pushed for its adoption, I think we energized the administration and State Department to get to work and try to find a way for us to meet the Poles halfway with respect to getting them into the visa waiver program. I am very pleased to see that last year, they were again writing letters, putting on pressure, threatening to bring this bill up for purposes of passage. We brought it up in the 108th Congress and tried to pass it. Unfortunately, there was an objection on the other side of the aisle. We cleared it here, and I think there is broad support for taking a country--and it is now 25 years since the strike at the Gdansk Shipyard. There has been a tremendous change in this country which was brought about by real freedom fighters, led at the time by Lech Walesa and subsequent leaders to establish a stable democracy there--a democracy that is thriving and one that had an election recently and elected a new President. It is a President who I believe will continue to have very strong ties to the United States. I know the Polish people. I have a lot of Poles in my State, and they tell me they travel over there, and the sentiment and feeling toward America is very strong. There is support for us in the war on terror, as strong as any country in the world. They have been a terrific ally during this period of time. Obviously, the contribution the Polish Americans have made to this country, from Revolutionary War times all the way through today, is quite striking and important. So we have a country that has made fundamental changes toward democracy and toward a free market economy, which is doing relatively well, a country that we have so much in common with. Yet while almost all of the European Union countries participate in the visa waiver program, unfortunately, Poland has not been granted that waiver. The President, last year, in response to the activity here in Congress, was able to put together what is called the roadmap. The roadmap was negotiated on February 9 of last year with then-President Kwasniewski. He laid out some very real steps to try to help give Poland another chance to show that they are prepared to meet the requirements of the law. Unfortunately, we still have a situation where we have very high refusal rates. That is one of the criteria, but I am not too sure it is a good criterion. It basically trusts a bureaucrat in an embassy in Poland to determine whether someone should enter this country for the purpose of travel. When they are refused, for whatever reason, that adds to the refusal rate, and that rate is high. I don't know whether the embassy there is tougher or what. Also, the refusal rate sometimes is not reflective of the actual percentage of people who are trying to come here and are refused. If 1 person wants to come and asks 10 times, that is 10 refusals, not 1. To me, that also can skew the number of refusals. I am just suggesting that I think we have a special case here. Congress has done this in the past with Ireland. Congress stepped forward, and we pushed the executive branch at that time to allow Ireland into the visa waiver program. I think it is time for us, given the tremendous support we have gotten from the Polish people, the tremendous relationship between our countries, the tremendous contribution the Poles continue to make to this country--and I can tell you, hearing from them on a regular basis as I do, since we have a large Polish population in our State, that this is something vitally important to Polish Americans--the ability of family members to come for weddings, funerals, birthdays, et cetera, and not have to wait for the bureaucracy at the American Embassy in Poland to approve these types of activities. This is an important sign to a good friend that we stand with them and that we want to treat them as one of our best friends because, indeed, they are one of our best friends in the world. Senator Mikulski and I have drafted a piece of legislation that puts Poland into the visa waiver program. I reached out to the Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for this bill. I said: Look, if you have concerns and some tweaks we can make that gets them into the program but puts reasonable standards in place, we are happy to consider that. To date, on both sides of the aisle, we have not had very much cooperation in making what I consider to be some minor tweaks that would be necessary to pass this legislation. I have come today to offer this amendment. Hopefully, we can get this accepted. If not, I would like to have a vote on this amendment. I believe it is important for all of us to stand up before our friends in Poland and affirm our support for them, as they have affirmed over the past many years their support for the United States and the initiatives we have taken around the world. Mr. President, if you look at some of the countries that are in this program, we have countries such as Brunei in the visa waiver program, San Marino, and Liechtenstein. I suggest that if you are looking at countries that are supportive of the United States, I am not too sure you would name those above Poland. If you name a country whose culture, whose people have close ties to the United States, I am not too sure you would list those countries above Poland. I hope we can consider this amendment and adopt this amendment, approve this amendment, and send a very strong signal to our friends in Poland that we stand in solidarity with them for their efforts to democratize, to open markets, and to create the freedom that our President and so many in the Chamber have advocated over the past several years. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment and acknowledge the dedicated service of Tim Petty, director of information resources for the U.S. Senate Republican Conference, which I chair. Tim is moving on to become a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Interior, and today is his last day serving the Senate. Since 1999, Tim has served as an integral team leader in the creation and development of the Internet technology department established by the Senate Republican Conference. This department was created to help the Conference implement a comprehensive technology strategy to help the Republican leadership efficiently and effectively use evolving Internet communication capabilities. Over the course of the past 7 years, Tim has led efforts and worked in collaboration with Senate and leadership offices in transforming the way the conference communicates and disseminates information using 21st century strategies and technology. Tim is always thinking of the next step, the next tool, the next idea. Highlights of just a few of Tim's many accomplishments at the Senate include a 2002 overhaul of the leadership's Intranet, known as the TrunkLine. This successful redesign and restructuring of the Intranet enhanced the ability of staff members to find key information provided from the Leadership, which helps strengthen communication strategies and overall messaging. In 2004, the TrunkLine was recognized by a prominent Internet usability report as one the top 10 government Intranets in the world. Only 3 of the top 10 Intranets selected were from the United States. In keeping with the vision of helping offices with their technology strategies, Tim led an initiative involving online database access that allowed all Senate offices to develop their own dynamic Web sites. Many offices are now able to more fully manage their own Web sites and share information as a result of this effort. One of Tim's primary objectives over the past 2 years has been enhancing the conference's ability to utilize wireless communications. A year ago the Republican Cloakroom began posting key legislative updates to the TrunkLine which then generates notices to wireless devices instantaneously when a legislative bill is hotlined. Prior to this change, notifications were done through a telephone broadcast system. Another technological communications tool Tim initiated for the conference is videoconferencing, which has allowed Senators to talk to State offices, meet with students in their classrooms, and to participate in conferences and meetings of constituents in real time. Tim also recognized the value of blogging and has implemented a strategy to reach beyond the usual media to take advantage of reaching a new audience with the Republican message. Tim's leadership in the area of technology strategy has been invaluable to our conference. I appreciate his enthusiasm and tireless efforts to help move an institution known for holding onto traditions into the 21st century. I wish him the very best in his new service.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I have to respond to my colleague from Illinois, who suggested that somehow the Iraqis are not standing up and fighting for the freedom of their country and the comment, ``How much longer do we have to wait?'' Ask the Iraqi families of the men who were beheaded--30 of them most recently--whether they are waiting for the Iraqis to step forward and sacrifice for their country. Ask the Iraqis who are in the military who are dying today, sacrificing for the freedom of their country, whether they are waiting. The people of Iraq are stepping forward and fighting for their country. We are helping them do that. It is the clear intention of our policy in Iraq to hand over the responsibility, and it is happening. I find it almost remarkable that here now, 3 years into this conflict, where we are trying to transform an entire society, that the level of patience for this very difficult process, given all the progress made and all the elections that have been held and the Constitution drafted--I think in all but four of the provinces, there is very little terrorist activity, or insurgent activity, or whatever you want to call it. There is a concentration in a few provinces where there are problems. But I met with people from Mosul yesterday--elected officials--who came here and talked about the dramatic improvements that are going on in that area, and the lack of any kind of al-Qaida operations and terrorist operations in that area, saying that life is dramatically advancing. We don't hear talk about that. We hear talk about the problem spots, and that is legitimate. But the idea that the Iraqis are not fighting for their country, that they are not stepping forward--as we see day in and day out that they are conducting missions and they are eliminating the terrorist threat in Iraq--I think it is almost incredible. I don't know how you can read the news and suggest that the Iraqis are not stepping forward to defend their country and fight for their freedom. Also, coming back to the issue of patience, I thank God sometimes that some of the elected officials who are here today were not around in 1777, 1778, and 1779. We would still be singing ``God save the queen,'' not ``hail to the chief.'' It took us 11 years to put a democracy together, in circumstances that I suggest were far less difficult, in a neighborhood that was far less problematic than the neighborhood Iraq happens to be situated in. So the idea that we have lost our patience in a struggle against Islamic fascism, which is a real present danger to the future of the United States of America, to me, is almost unconscionable. This is a struggle we are engaged in. This is a struggle for our time. It is one that I believe history will look back upon and suggest that we met the threat that would have fundamentally changed the future of the world, and we met it before it did so. We met it with strength, with determination, and we overcame the doubters, overcame those who would have rather cut and run. I am not for cutting and running when it comes to the future security of this country. I have patience because things that are difficult and meaningful take time. We have to give that time. I suggest there are some things that we are finding out now. Another effort I have been working on in Iraq is the intelligence information we have been able to gather from the former regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has been a project that Congressman Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been working on--and I have worked with him--to make sure these 48,000 boxes, containing roughly 2 million documents, are released to the American public and the world to determine what was the intelligence assessment and the activity level and, in particular, in Iraq with Saddam, and with his interaction with elements of al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. What we are finding is that some of the statements that have been made on the floor and statements that were made just as recently as March 19, 2006 by my colleague from Pennsylvania, Congressman Jack Murtha, who said: There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there. None. There was no connection with al-Qaida. There was no connection with terrorism in Iraq itself. Yet if we look at some of the documents that are being released by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte--and, again, only a few hundred of the millions of documents have been released. As a caveat, while Congressman Hoekstra and I are excited about the fact that DNI decided to release these documents, the pace of the release is, let us say, unsatisfactory to this point. We have, with the blogosphere, the Internet, the opportunity to put these documents out there and have almost instantaneously translated postings about what these documents contain. During the time the Director of National Intelligence Negroponte has had these documents--this is 3 years ago--less than 2 percent of the documents have been translated. At this pace, my grandchildren may know what is in these documents. We need to get these documents out. Mr. President, 600 over a little over a 2-week period is almost the same pace as translating with the people they had over in DNI Negroponte's shop. We need to get these documents out quicker. Why? Because if we look at what is in these documents, there is important information in understanding the connection between Iraq and terrorist organizations and the threat we were facing, the potential threat we had talked about, which is the coordination between a country that had used chemical and biological weapons, was thought universally to have chemical and biological weapons, and terrorists who have expressed a direct desire to use those weapons and get access to them. If we look at a report that was issued by the Pentagon Joint Forces Command translating and analyzing some of these documents, called the ``Iraqi Perspectives,'' on page 54, they write: Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers--this is 9 years, by the way, before the Iraq war-- graduating more than 7,200 ``good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm'' in the first year. Mr. President, 7,200 in the first year, 1994. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting ``Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, `the Gulf,' and Syria.'' Volunteers. I wonder why they would be volunteering to help Saddam. It is not clear, it says, from the available evidence where are all these non-Iraqi volunteers who were ``sacrificing for the cause'' went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training. They didn't stay in Iraq. They came for training from countries in the gulf regions, and they went home. Odd that they would be fighting for the cause which would, in that case, be Saddam, if they went home. Before the summer of 2002, as I said, most volunteers went home upon completion of the training, but these camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war. As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the Heroes Attack. Stephen Hayes, who deserves a tremendous amount of credit for his reporting on these documents in the Weekly Standard, has brought this issue to the forefront and has awakened Members of Congress, myself included, to the importance of discovering the content of these documents as well as some of the information contained in these documents. He reminds us of the special significance of that training in 1998: That is the same year that the U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq for good; the same year a known al Qaeda operative visited Baghdad for 16 days in March; the same year the U.S. embassies were bombed in East Africa; the same year the U.S. bombed Baghdad in Operation Desert Fox; and, the same year Saddam wired $150,000 to Jabir Salim, the former Iraqi Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and ordered him to recruit Islamic radicals to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free Europe. What we have here is, again, information that I believe is vitally important for the American public to see. I encourage Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to step up the pace. Congressman Hoekstra and I have introduced legislation which would require just that: it would require the release of these documents and provides a way to do so. We introduced this legislation prior to the decision to release these documents, but, again, I just make the point that the pace with which these documents are being released is inadequate. We need to continue to step that up, allow this information to get out for people to see, pro and con--all the information that is available to us. These are old documents. They are at least 3 years old; in some cases much more than that. The classified nature is specious, at best. We want to protect names, obviously, if there are reasons to protect certain names because of potential fallout from having their names released. If there are recipes for chemical weapons, fine. But the bottom line is most of this information should be released, can be released, and is not being released. I assure my colleagues--and I think I can speak for Congressman Hoekstra in this regard--we will stay on this issue, and we will make sure all of this information is made available to the American public so we have a better understanding of what the situation was in Iraq prior to the war. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3052 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this amendment adds $566 million for the Global AIDS Fund. This is a fund that historically the United States has participated at one-third funding level. It is an encouragement and incentive for the rest of the world to contribute to end the scourge of HIV/AIDS, particularly on the continent of Africa. To be able to meet that requirement for this funding year required an additional $566 million above the President's request of $300 million. That will fund 85 percent of the renewals that are coming due this year, in addition to round six of new funding for this initiative by the Global Fund. This is a commitment that the United States has made. We have been a leader on this. We need to continue to lead in an area that does cry out for humanitarian support and compassion by the people of the United States.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded 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. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 3050.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3015

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this amendment does what the Byrd amendment does, except it doesn't raises taxes. It offsets the money from the 920 account. I would encourage Members to let their voices be heard in support of Amtrak funding to make sure that the Appropriations Committee understands that this is a continuing priority for the United States, and I ask for a ``yea'' vote.