Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. My amendment is simple. My amendment says anybody born alive, any child born alive is entitled to protection under the laws of the United States of America. Unfortunately, this amendment is necessary for two reasons. No. 1, because of the treatment of children who are delivered as a result of an abortion that was botched. We have ample testimony to, unfortunately, show that children born alive as a result of induced abortions are not cared for and are discarded, not cared for as appropriate to their gestational age. So we think it is important to make it clear there is Federal protection; that the laws of the land apply to even children who are born as a result of abortion--born alive. The second reason is because of our courts in this country, particularly the Supreme Court, where two Supreme Court Justices in the most recent abortion decision, the Nebraska decision, stated that any procedure that the doctor would permit is OK in this country. This is just two of the nine. But they said the Federal Government and our Constitution does not allow regulation of any procedure that the doctor believes is in the best health interests of the mother. That, to me, leaves open the possibility, if the doctor decides in the health interest of a mother that the best thing is to deliver the baby alive and then kill the baby, two Justices on this Court would suggest that would be OK because we cannot regulate any procedure, and they use ``any procedure,'' that the doctor believes is the best interests of the mother. So I think it is important for us to draw a line at least here. I am hopeful we will have unanimous support for this amendment. It is one that seems obvious on its face, but because of the courts and because of the practice in abortion clinics, it is necessary to make this statement again on the floor of the Senate.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I make one clarification: There are eight States that currently do this. One of them is the State of the Presiding Officer. The State of Georgia takes 75 percent of punitive damages, less attorney fees, and puts them in the State treasury. That is the State law in at least eight States. Georgia was, in fact, the model we used for this legislation. By the way, those States are exempt from this provision so we don't take both the State and the Federal. If there is a State law, those are excluded under this act. This is hardly punitive. These are punitive damages, not compensatory damages. These are not pain and suffering. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I have amendment No. 814 at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, this is an amendment that I think really goes to the heart of this bill: Patient protection. This bill is purported to deal with trying to take care of patients. What this amendment does is make sure that every living human being is protected by this act as well as all other acts of Congress. This is a very simple amendment that says--I am quoting from the amendment-- In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ``person'', ``human being'', ``child'', and ``individual'', shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. That is a rather simple amendment. Obviously, I think it is an amendment that should be broadly accepted. The reason I offer this amendment is really twofold. No. 1 is the concern about how certain little children--little infants--are treated, particularly those who are born alive after an abortion, an abortion that was not successful in the sense that the child was not killed before the child was delivered outside of the mother's womb. So what we want to do is make sure those children in particular, as well as others, are treated with the same dignity and are covered by the same laws as all other people in America. There are, unfortunately, many disturbing examples of how these little children are not treated the same and not given the proper care and, frankly, the proper respect that is required under the laws that we have passed in this Congress. I am going to use a couple of examples that were given by nurses in congressional testimony. Last year, we had testimony from Allison Baker, who is a registered nurse, who witnessed three induced abortion survivor incidents. For one of them, she says: I happened to walk into a ``soiled utility room'' and saw, lying on the metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs. The fetus was visibly alive, and was gasping for breath. I left to find the nurse who was caring for the patient and this fetus. When I asked her about the fetus, she said that she was so busy with the mother that she didn't have time to wrap and place the [baby] in the warmer, and she asked if I would do that for her. Later I found out that the fetus was 22 weeks old, and had undergone a therapeutic abortion because it had been diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. I did wrap the fetus and place him in a warmer and for 2\1/2\ hours he maintained a heartbeat, and then finally expired. The second incident involved a 20-week-old fetus with spina bifida who lived for an hour and 40 minutes until she died. She continued: The third case occurred when a nurse with whom I was working was taking care of a mother waiting to deliver her 16 week Down's Syndrome fetus. Again, I walked into the soiled utility room and the fetus was fully exposed, lying on the baby scale. I went to find the nurse who was caring for this mother and fetus, and she asked if I could help her by measuring and weighing the fetus for the charting and death certificate. When I went back into the soiled utility room, the fetus was moving its arms and legs. I then listened for a heartbeat, and found that the fetus still was alive. I wrapped the fetus and in 45 minutes the fetus finally expired. We have other stories, disturbing stories of cases where children were born alive and basically discarded as trash in soiled utility closets or laying on tables fully exposed at a very tender age. This is a story from Jill Stanek, another registered nurse: One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about \1/2\ pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move and very much expending any energy he had to breathe. This is the current problem, and this is the reason we are introducing this legislation. Frankly, I have concerns that this may be even more of a problem in the future based on court decisions. The court decision I refer to is the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Nebraska partial-birth case. In that case, in a concurring opinion, two Justices said two things: One, Justice Stevens with Justice Ginsburg concurring, and the other, Justice Ginsburg with Justice Stevens concurring. I am going to quote two things that should send a chill down the spines of people here when it comes to what the future could have in store for us if we do not pass legislation such as this. This is what Justice Stevens said in this decision: The holding [of Roe]--that the word ``liberty'' in the 14th Amendment includes a woman's right to make this difficult and extremely personal decision--makes it impossible for me to understand how a State has any legitimate interest in requiring a doctor to follow any procedure other than the one he or she reasonably believes will best protect the woman in her exercise of this constitutional liberty. For the notion that either of these two equally gruesome [abortion] procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other, or that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one or not the other, is simply irrational. What that says very clearly is, according to these two Justices, that any procedure that the doctor determines is in the best ``health interest of the mother'' can be used without question. So if the doctor believes the best way to safely perform this abortion is to deliver a live baby and then subsequently kill it because it is the safest way for the mother's health to have that done, under this rationale, under this reasoning, that would be legitimate. I think we have to make it very clear that that is not legitimate; that after delivering a baby, once the baby is outside the mother, it is no longer legitimate to consider that child just a piece of property to be disposed of, or massive cells to be disposed of when it is a living, breathing individual. Justice Ginsburg's opinion says the following: Such an obstacle [to abortion] exists if the State stops a woman from choosing the procedure her doctor ``reasonably believes will protect the woman in [the] exercise of [her] constitutional liberty.'' Again, it is an open door to whatever procedure the doctor wants to use, irrespective of the baby, which again leaves the door open certainly for the doctor to say that he or she reasonably believes that the mother's health will be served if the baby is delivered and then killed because that is the safest way. This was not the majority opinion, thankfully, of the Court, but it does show that there is a possibility, at least, out there for this kind of ruling within our court systems at the highest level, much less what some district or appellate court might do. I think it is important for us to clearly draw the line, if that is called drawing the line, that once a child is born, it is no longer a health threat to the mother, and that we have a legitimate interest in protecting this child from being killed at that point or, shall we say, treat that child within the context of the law as we would treat any other child or any other person in America. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I thank the Senator from California for her comments and support of this amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. (Mr. DURBIN assumed the chair.)

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Bond amendment. I commend the Senator for standing up and trying to mold patient protection legislation to comply with a fundamental principle that he has repeated many times today: The first order of business in medicine is to do no harm. And building on this principle, as I continue to iterate so many times when I come to this Chamber to speak, we cannot afford to ignore what I believe to be the No. 1 problem in health care today: the fact that we have anywhere between 42 and 44 million people who do not have health insurance. I will state again for the record--and I am happy for anyone to come forward and tell me differently--there is not one thing in this bill that increases the number of insured people in America, not one thing. This is a pretty good-sized bill. It has 179 pages to it. Not one page, not one paragraph, not one sentence, not one word will cover one additional person in America. For many of the people who are the greatest critics of the health care delivery system in this country, the paramount feature of which they are most critical is the number of uninsured in our society. If there is a criticism levied by people around the world against America's health care system, it does not have to do with quality of care. I think everyone will agree that America pretty much sets the gold standard in terms of the quality of care delivered to patients. I think most people say, yes, the best health care in the world is available here in the United States. But the critics around the world will say, it may be the best system but you have 42 to 44 million people in this country who are not insured. Do you think the first health care bill we are considering here in the Senate should consider what most people see as the greatest problem with America's health care system? Most people in this country would say, yes, that is what we should be considering. But this bill doesn't do that. Interestingly enough, what does this bill do? It provides patient protection. That is great. I am for that. There are a group of people in this country, people who have health insurance plans that are regulated solely by the Federal Government, who have very few patient protections afforded to them because they are not covered under State patient protection laws. So we should pass a Federal Patients' Bill of Rights to cover those people. I am all for that, and we should have adequate protection. But what this bill does, what the Senator from Missouri is trying to really focus on, is it does a whole lot of other things that will cause at least one million more Americans to become uninsured. Now, I am pleased that the President of the United States has vowed to veto this legislation should it come to his desk in its present form for signature. But if for some reason it is enacted into law, maybe over the President's objections, this will result in millions more being uninsured. You can put all the benefits aside. Let's assume this is the greatest patient protection bill in the history of the world, that as a result of this bill, patients will be supremely protected, a notion, of course, with which I take issue. I don't believe that will occur. But let's assume it does. The result of this bill will be millions more uninsured. In particular, if the liability provisions of this bill are enacted, which allow employers to be sued--and that is really the issue that is at heart of the Bond amendment, if it allows employers to be sued, to practically an unlimited extent--you won't have a million or 2 million people who won't have insurance as a result of this bill. You will have tens of millions of people who will lose their insurance. Why? Do I say I am against employer liability because I love employers? No. Employers are nice people. Employees are nice people. They are all nice people. The question is, What is the effect of holding employers liable? The effect of holding employers liable is employers who voluntarily provide health insurance as a benefit, will simply stop providing that benefit because it will jeopardize their entire business. If they can be sued for a decision that is made with respect to a benefit they voluntarily provide one of their employees, the provision of which is not the core function of their business, they are simply going to stop providing that benefit. That is what the Senator from Missouri is trying to get at. If we cause, as a result of the employer liability provisions, and some of the general liability provisions, and some of the contract provisions, which basically allow outside entities to rewrite contracts in litigation and in appeals, if we open up this Pandora's box of problems for employers to continue to provide insurance to their employees, employers will do what employers must do: first, protect the survival of their business. And this will be a direct threat to the survival of their business. What is now a pleasant benefit that you can provide to your employees and something that you can help to attract employees with by providing good health care insurance will become a serious liability risk that a business simply cannot afford to take. The Senator from Missouri is saying, very simply: We have a great patient protection bill here, but we have the very real potential of having a tremendous downside, in really hurting people. I am very sympathetic about all the cases being brought forward, about the need for patient protection. I think you will find fairly universal agreement on this side that we want to provide those protections. But the first protection should be to preserve the possession of insurance in the first place. If we deny them that protection, all these other protections don't matter, really, if they lose their insurance. This could be a great bill, but if you don't have insurance, then this bill doesn't help you. In fact, it can hurt you because it can cause the loss of your insurance. What the Senator from Missouri is saying is: Let's go through, and we will work on some more amendments. We will try to get this thing honed down until we have a good patient protection bill. If we can't fix the liability provisions, which I don't know whether we will be able to or not, at least let's say that if the liability provisions are what we believe they are, in other words, problematic to the point of causing devastation to millions or at least a million people in losing their insurance, then we should have a trigger. You are seeing all of these kinds of comments by folks who are supportive of this bill and supportive of the liability provisions in the bill saying: Hey, this isn't going to hurt anybody. We are not going to cause any problems with this. No, no, no, employers aren't going to drop their coverage. Health care costs are not going to go up. Millions more won't be uninsured. They will make that statement and have made that statement over and over again. Fine. They may be right. What happens if they are wrong? What happens? What happens if past experience is any guide, if we are right and millions do become uninsured? Should we have to wait for an act of Congress for this body generally to realize that we made a mistake and have to come back through this whole legislative process to repeal the problem here? Should we have to wait for that? Or should we just simply have a trigger that says, look, if we made a mistake, if we made a mistake, if we were wrong, then we are going to immediately cancel that portion of the bill that is causing the problem upon recognition that we have a problem of a million uninsured. As the Senator from New Hampshire said, a million people is a lot of folks, a lot of children, a lot of families. It is a lot of people who are going to go without health care. If what we really care about is providing good, quality health care, the first thing we should care about is to get them an insurance policy in the first place. One of the things that strikes me most about this bill is blithe references as to how we are going to go out and get the HMOs. These HMOs are a bunch of bean counters who don't care about people. There is all these horrible cases about HMOs. My understanding is that the liability provision that allows you to sue your employer, that allows you to sue your insurance company, does not just apply to HMOs. It applies to PPOs. It applies to all insurance contracts. Obviously, if it is a fee-for-service contract and there is no limitation on what provider you want to go to, that is one thing. But in most insurance plans today that are not HMOs, there is some limitation of some sort, certainly some limitation on procedures that are covered. But that is not what is talked about here, folks. What we talk about, when they talk about this liability provision, they are talking about these nasty HMOs. What they don't tell you is that it ain't just the nasty HMOs that can be sued under this bill, it is any insurance company who provides any insurance product and any employer that provides any insurance product. Oh, that is a different story, isn't it? You don't hear them up there railing against those nasty fee-for-service plans or those nasty PPO plans because they don't poll as well as going after those nasty HMOs. But this isn't just about nasty HMOs, this is about all insurance products. There is no way out of this liability provision unless, of course, you just want to say to your employees: We will cover everything. Doesn't matter what you want, where you want to go, we will just pay for everything you want. Of course, we all know what an exorbitant cost of that would entail, and so this is neither practical or realistic. The point is, this bill has serious consequences for millions of people who are on the edge, whose employers are sitting there right now saying: Well, I have a 13 to 20 percent increase in my premiums this year. The economy is flattening out a little bit. I am looking forward. I will tighten my belt a little bit more, and we will continue to provide health insurance to our employees. Then this bill comes along, which will increase costs more and potentially expose them to liability for doing what is right by their employees and providing insurance to them. I haven't talked to an employer yet, I have not talked to an employer yet who told me that if this bill passes and they are liable for lawsuits simply because they are providing a health benefit to their employees, I haven't talked to one employer who has told me that they will keep their insurance. They can't. How can they? In good conscience to their shareholders or the owners of the company, how can they keep providing a benefit that simply opens up a Pandora's box of liability, 200 causes of action, in State court, Federal court, unlimited damages, unlimited punitive damages, and allow clever lawyers to forum shop all over the country so as to find that good court down in Mississippi in a small county there that is used to handing out $40 million or $50 million jury awards. I ask you, whether you are an employer or employee, put yourself in the shoes of a small businessperson who has 20 employees, barely making ends meet, running a small business--maybe a family business--their employees are like members of the family. You have lots of businesses like that across America. They want to do well by their employees because they are like family. So they provide good benefits, good pay, and even before family and medical leave, they gave time off when their employees were sick or they needed to take care of their children who were sick at school. Now comes this bill that says if one person has a problem with the health care system and the insurance policy that employer offered didn't give them everything they wanted, and some savvy lawyer decides he or she can get you everything you want and more, and all of a sudden that family business that employs 20 or so people in the community all of a sudden that business is on the hook. And maybe they may even prevail against a lawsuit, but how many tens of thousands of dollars is it going to take, or hundreds of thousands, simply to defend the lawsuit? We are talking about big awards. I can tell you that a lot of companies are just going to be worried about fighting the lawsuit in the first place, about being dragged into court to prove positive against the liability ambiguities in this legislation? I am just telling you that what the Senator from Missouri has put forth is a reasonable amendment. We will have amendments on the floor dealing with employer liability. We must do something about it. I believe if we allow this employer liability provision to stand, we will destroy the private health care system in this country--the employer- provided health care system. It will go away. I know there are some Members on the floor right now who are against the private health care system, who want a Government-run, single-payer health care system. Fine.

Mr. SANTORUM. As I was saying, I know there are many people in this Chamber who believe a single-payer health care system is the best way, the most efficient way, the most compassionate way--to use these wonderful, glorious terms--to provide health insurance in this country. Obviously, I disagree, but it is a legitimate point of view. I think we should have that debate. We had that debate in 1994 with the Clinton health care proposal, and we had a good debate on the floor of the Senate about the kind of health care delivery system we should have. But it was a deliberate debate about how we can change the health care system by a direct act of the Congress. The problem with this legislation is that we are going to severely undermine one health care system, which is a health care system that is principally funded through employer contributions, and we are not going to replace it with anything. You see, as many of my colleagues well know, if employers stop providing health insurance, then people are going to have to go out with their aftertax dollars and buy health care, and the costs will be prohibitive. If you don't believe me, I would ask any of my colleagues to drop their federal health insurance plan today, and to endeavor to purchase health insurance with aftertax dollars. It is very difficult. One of the things I hope to accomplish--and maybe we can work on this in this bill--is to create refundable tax credits for those who do not have access to employer-provided health insurance, so they can get help from the Government equivalent to the subsidy that the government offers for employer-provided health insurance. We give a deduction for the business. In other words, if I am an employer and I provide health insurance to my employees, I get to deduct the cost of that off of my earnings, my income. We also subsidize it on the other end. If you are an employee and you have employer-provided health insurance, you don't have to pay taxes on the money that your employer uses to purchase that insurance. In other words, let's say it is a $5,000 family policy. That is a benefit to you. That is compensation to you. It is $5,000 of insurance costs that your employer pays for you, but you don't have to pay taxes on it. It is tax-free compensation to you. So, in that sense, we subsidize you by not taxing you on that benefit. So the employer gets subsidized and the employee gets subsidized. But if you are an individual who does not have access to employer- provided health insurance, you have to take the money that is left after you pay all your taxes--after you pay Social Security taxes, income taxes, State taxes, local taxes, and Medicare taxes--and then you can take your money and try to buy health insurance. That is a pretty rotten system. If we are going to do anything about the problem with the millions of uninsured in this country, we are going to have to start treating people who don't have access to employer-provided insurance the at least as well as we do with those who do have it. None of that is in this bill, there is no tax equity. I will say it again. There isn't one paragraph in this bill that will increase the number of insured in this country. There are, unfortunately, pages and pages and pages and pages in this bill that will result in more and more and more people losing their insurance. But we can mitigate that--or at least a big part of it--if we adopt the Bond amendment. The Bond amendment says if we have a problem, let's not wait for an act of Congress to admit our mistake. I know those who are listening might find this hard to believe, but sometimes Congress is a little slow in admitting we made a mistake. Sometimes we don't own up to the fact that it was our fault. I know some within the sound of my voice will find that to be almost an incredible proposition on my part--that somehow Congress doesn't immediately come in and say, yes, we understand we made a mistake; we are sorry America, we blew it. Everything I said the year or two before about how this wasn't going to cause a problem, you are right; it did. My mistake; we are going to repeal this. I just ask my colleagues, when was the last time that happened? I know some in this room will remember the last time it happened. My recollection is that it happened back in 1988, when it came to Medicare catastrophic coverage. Congress tried to pass catastrophic prescription drug coverage for seniors, and quickly found out that seniors really didn't like what Congress did. Seniors rose up and screamed and hollered, and within a year or so--I wasn't there at the time, but I recall Congress repealed it. That was about 12 years ago. I can't think of any instance since and, frankly, I can't think of anything before that. So let's just assume--I think it is a pretty safe assumption--that the people who are saying that this liability provision will not cause a problem are wrong. They will be in very good company if they go on to insist that they aren't wrong in the future--that even though we may have evidence of millions more uninsured as a result of this provision, somehow or another they will avoid blame and will point to something else that caused this problem, not the liability provisions. So it will be some sort of contest here as to whether we even take up this issue again. The Bond amendment avoids all that. It says, look, if the GAO says this provision, the liability provision, has caused a problem of causing more than million additional uninsured, then that part of the bill sunsets, the rest of the bill stays in place. Patient protections stay in place. Patient protections stay in place. It affects just the liability provisions. The internal-external reviews stay in place so there is patient protection. What does not stay in place are the provisions that are causing massive damage to millions of American families. I am hopeful, No. 1, we can fix these liability provisions because we should not pass a bill that is going to cause this kind of severe dislocation, this kind of trouble for millions of American families. We should not consciously do harm to people, particularly when we understand it is the No. 1 problem facing our health care system today, which is the lack of insurance for 42 to 44 million people. We should not do this. We should not pass flawed liability provisions. I know the Senator from New Hampshire and Senators on both sides of the aisle are trying to see if we can get a good provision. But should we not get a good liability provision, the Bond amendment is a very prudent stopgap measure so as to ensure that we do not go down the road of making what is the worst problem facing health care today even worse. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator will yield, I will withhold our half hour and have his time come out of the next half hour on the Democratic side.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I thank him in particular for his excellent work in this area. He is a great leader and obviously an authority, somebody who understands the issue better than any of us in this Chamber. I appreciate his willingness to be fully engaged and participate in crafting a bill that will solve the problems of the health care system today and, frankly, a bill that will be signed by this President and enacted into law. That is the balancing act which people need to come to this Chamber and pay attention to. To start, No. 1, I am certainly for a Patients' Bill of Rights, and I have worked for the past couple of years as a member of the health care task force on our side of the aisle to craft a Patients' Bill of Rights. I feel very strongly there are protections that need to be placed into Federal law for those people who are covered by plans that are regulated by the Federal Government. They do not currently have patient protections. When I first got into this now over 3 years ago, the state of play in health care was a little different than it is today. We had some issues that were hot-button issues. Maybe 4, 5 years ago, the issue of gag clauses was a big deal. I think everyone now pretty much agrees--even though there is language in the bills that outlaws them--they are gone; they are not around anymore. Most States, 5 years ago, had not really taken this issue up and gotten involved in the area of patient protections. Since that time, every State in the country has at least debated, and almost all of them have passed, some form of patient protection to cover regulated and sponsored plans of the State. We have a little different state of play with respect to the landscape of who is and who is not protected. Clearly, now the only participants in health insurance in this country who are not protected with any patient protections are those who come under the ERISA plan, or federally sponsored plans. All the others have some sort of State regulation to take care of their concerns because they are State-regulated products; they are products approved and authorized by the State and State insurance commissioners, Governors, and on down. When it comes to the Federal plans, we need to look at and I am strongly in favor of inserting some patient protections for these federally sponsored plans, called ERISA plans. It is over 100 million people. It is not a small amount of people. That is from where we need to start. The second thing we need to look at is the differences where we began to take this up 3, 4, 5 years ago and where we are today. A few years ago we thought we had health inflation under control. We were looking at rates of growth in health care costs that were slightly above the rate of inflation. As a result of some of the dynamics in the private health care system, we were settling down, and it looked like we had reined in costs in health care. We were being rather ambitious about how we can provide patient protections and not worried about the impact of costs on the system. That is a little different today. Today we are looking at double- digit increases in health care premiums. I was with an employer yesterday who told me his health insurance premiums over the past 2 years have gone up 42 percent. That, according to some other friends of mine with whom I have talked in Pennsylvania, is not unusual. Health care costs are skyrocketing again. The question is, What do we do here that impacts this system? I always say with respect to anything we do in Washington, DC, first and foremost, is do no harm. We want to do good things. We want to make sure the state of play in America with respect to getting health insurance and good quality health insurance is always to enhance that ability, not detract from it. One of the major concerns I have with the legislation before us today is what it will do to increasing costs of health insurance. At a time when we have 44 million uninsured, I believe that is the No. 1 problem in health insurance in America. We can talk about one bill covering 56 million people and one bill covering 170 million people and one covering 180 million people. None of them covers the 44 million people who do not have insurance. If we want to look at what the real problem is in America, it is the 44 million people who do not have any health insurance. There is not one thing in this bill that helps any of those people. The Congressional Budget Office and others looked at this and determined this legislation will take the 44 million people and turn it into over 45 million people. All it will do is add to their ranks. If misery loves company, this bill helps because it will add to the misery. It will take 44 million people and make them 45 million people with the increased costs in this bill. I would argue, given the employer liability provisions in this bill, that 45 million is just the beginning of the increase in uninsured. We may very well go from 44 million to 45 million if the employer provisions pass. I don't think these provisions will be signed into law because, thankfully, the President said he would veto the bill. If for some reason the employer liability provision passes, it will open the avenue for lawyers to get in there and sue employers that provide insurance to their employees. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say, so we have employers who go out and provide insurance to their employees, and we would punish employers for doing that if we in the Senate allow them to be sued simply for providing insurance for their employees. To me, that is not just going to increase the uninsured, as some say who have studied the bill, from 44 million to 45 million, but from 45 to 88 or 120 or whatever the case may be. We will have massive uninsured. Employers will be crazy, if they are in the business of making, say, podiums, to allow themselves to be sued by lawyers because they provide health insurance to employees. This is a very serious issue, the issue of access. I hope, and I believe, there will be amendments offered over the next week or two-- however long we are on the bill--that will do something about access to insurance. If we walk out of this Chamber with our arms raised, saying we have helped patients, and we have done nothing but add to the ranks of the uninsured, it is a hollow victory; we have done nothing for the No. 1 problem in health care, not just to the 44 million who do not have insurance, but to all the people who do have insurance and have to pay higher insurance premiums to pay for the 44 million people who end up at the hospital because they don't have insurance and don't get the primary care that they should at the appropriate time. Currently, we take care of hospitals that provide uncompensated care for those without insurance coverage. In my major cities--Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg--hospitals are financially strapped because of the high number of people who come through the door who don't have insurance and have to be taken care of, and are willingly taken care of by the nonprofit hospitals. Again, it is uncompensated. What do they do? They lose money. They cannot pass it all over to the insurance because the insurance will not pay for it. This is a huge problem. There is nothing in this bill that takes care of this problem except, as I said before, if misery loves company, we add more to the uninsured as a result of this bill. That is not solving the fundamental problem in health insurance. When we offer amendments, I hope we can get bipartisan support for some tax provisions that will increase the number of insured in this country, that will deal with the No. 1 problem facing America in the area of health insurance. That is, frankly, the almost embarrassing situation of having that many people on the uninsured lists. We have a lot of other issues with which I believe we need to deal. One of the things I am hopeful we will offer is an expansion of medical savings accounts. It is a pilot program right now. I would love to see that program expanded to give real choice to people in the private health insurance system, to give them the opportunity to manage their own health insurance needs, to be able to provide for themselves and their family, and do so in a way that they have maximum choice, maximum flexibility. That should be included. Giving people choices, giving people coverage, giving people flexibility--these should be the hallmarks of this discussion, not driving up costs and increasing the uninsured and having lawyers replace doctors as decisionmakers, No. 1; and, No. 2, these lawyers' fees siphon a tremendous amount of money out of the health care system. There are scarce resources, and this bill is overloaded with rights to sue not just HMOs--we can debate that. I am willing to discuss what we can do as far as suing HMOs. However, I am not willing to discuss, to be very honest, allowing employers to be sued. What are the consequences of employer liability? Any employer should think about it. Would you allow your business, for which you sweated hard and perhaps built as a family business, or a big corporation, would you allow your corporation to be liable to suit simply because you provided a health benefit to your employees that has nothing to do with your business? If you did, my guess is, if you were a big corporate CEO, you would be fired. No shareholder in their right mind would want their company, their investment, to be wiped out by a group of employees who were unhappy with the health care coverage the employer provided. That is not their business. Their business is making podiums or printing paper or generating electricity. It is not providing health care to their employees. So it is one thing to be sued for the products you make or the services you provide. That comes with the business. But you shouldn't be liable for suit for benefits you provide to your employees. If you are liable for suit, you simply must get out of the business of providing health insurance to your employees. The impact on the number of uninsured in this country will be profound. I will shortly yield to the Senator from Arkansas, and I am interested to hear what he says. The No. 1 thing to understand in dealing with this issue is, first, do no harm. If we look at the greatest problem in the health care system, it is the number of uninsured in America. And the greatest harm this legislation will create is to explode that number. That is not a victory for patients. That is not putting patients first. That is putting lawyers first, putting litigation first. It is not putting mothers and fathers and children who need and want affordable health insurance first. It is not putting these people first who are saying they need these procedures. Taking insured people who have a problem with their HMO and turning them into uninsured people is not helping them. Taking someone who has a problem with their insurance company and turning them into someone who is no longer covered is not helping them. That is not putting patients first. What we want to do is put patients first, make sure there are adequate protections in the law, but not create a system where we will simply destroy the private health insurance system in this country. That is what this bill does. We, hopefully, can fix it. We will have amendments to fix it. There is a lot in common with these bills, but we have to fix the things that are the most egregious, and hopefully over the next week or two we will be able to do that.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the critical situation concerning the Taliban in Afghanistan. The seriousness of the Taliban's gross injustices is alarming. This movement continues to make outrageous demands on religious minorities, women, and the relief workers trying to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people. With impunity, the Taliban has largely ignored international condemnation, becoming increasingly fanatical and strict. I am cosponsoring a bill with Senators Brownback and Boxer which condemns the Taliban for its harsh demands on Muslims, Hindus, women, and religious minorities. The legislation strongly urges the Taliban to reopen United Nations offices and hospitals so that the people of Afghanistan may receive necessary relief. I encourage my colleagues to consider cosponsoring this legislation. Hindus and all other religious minorities have been ordered to distinguish themselves from Muslims by wearing yellow badges. This decree is reminiscent of the Nazis forcing the Jews to wear the yellow star of David. It is shocking that the Taliban would order this kind of religious branding. Furthermore, Muslims and non-Muslims are prohibited from living together, and religious minorities are not permitted to construct new places of worship. The fanatic Taliban religious police invoke terror on city streets, sometimes whipping those who are not attending mosques at designated times. This kind of religious intolerance is abominable and should not be allowed. The Taliban's iron grip on Afghanistan not only affects religious practices, it is further devastating the suffering Afghan people by obstructing relief efforts by the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations. The United Nations World Food Program believes it may be forced to close around 130 bakeries in Afghanistan's capital city if the Taliban will not allow women to help address the needs of the hungry. Without the aid of both men and women, program leaders cannot maintain the bread distribution program. Also in the capital, a 40-bed surgical hospital was forced to close its doors. Sixteen international staff members escaped to Pakistan because there were genuine concerns about their safety. This is not the first time foreign staff have had to flee. Several U.N. workers have even been arrested, a gross violation of a previous agreement between the Taliban and the U.N. that relief workers would be protected. The Taliban is compromising both the safety of international relief workers and the well-being of the Afghan people with their harsh and unreasonable policies. The injustice meted out by the Taliban is sobering and demands continued attention. That is why I am cosponsoring S. Con. Res. 42 with Senators Brownback and Boxer, and it is my fervent wish that the suffering endured by all the Afghan people and international workers be quickly relieved.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. When I was first elected to the Senate in 1994, I never imagined that the bill I am offering today would be necessary. Simply stated, this measure gives legal status to a fully born living infant, regardless of the circumstances of his or her birth. I am deeply saddened that we must clarify Federal law to specify that a living newborn baby is, in fact, a person. One could ask, ``Why do you need Federal legislation to state the obvious? What else could a living baby be, except a person?'' I will begin my explanation with events in 1995, when the Senate began its attempts to outlaw a horrifying, inhumane, and barbaric abortion procedure: partial birth abortion. In this particular abortion method, a living baby is killed when he or she is only inches from being fully born. Twice, the House and Senate stood united in sending a bill to President Clinton to ban this procedure. Twice, President Clinton vetoed the bill; and twice, the House courageously voted to override his veto. Although support in the Senate grew each time the ban came to a vote, the Senate fell a few votes shy of overriding the veto. Then, on June 28, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Nebraska's partial birth abortion ban. The Supreme Court's ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart, as well as subsequent rulings in lower courts, are disturbing on a number of levels. First, the Supreme Court struck down Nebraska's attempt to ban a grotesque procedure the American Medical Association has called ``bad medicine,'' and thousands of physicians who specialize in high risk pregnancies have called ``never medically necessary.'' Further, the Court said it did not matter that the baby is killed when it is almost totally outside the mother's body in this abortion method. In other known abortion methods, the baby is killed in utero. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Third Circuit Court have stated it does not matter where the baby is positioned when it is aborted. This assertion, to me, is the most horrifying of all. In the years of debates on partial birth abortion, I have asked Senators a very simple question: If a partial birth abortion were being performed on a baby, and for some reason the head slipped out and the baby were delivered, would it be o.k. to kill that baby? Not one Senator who defended the procedure has ever provided a straightforward ``yes'' or ``no'' response. They would not answer my question. I believe it is important to define when a child is protected by the Constitution; so, I revised my question. I asked whether it would be alright to kill a baby whose foot is still inside the mother's body, or what if only a toe is inside? Again, I did not receive an answer. Unfortunately, evidence uncovered last year at a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution suggests my questions were not so hypothetical. In fact, two nurses testified to seeing babies who were born alive as a result of induced labor abortions being left to die in soiled utility rooms. Furthermore, the intellectual framework for legalization of killing unwanted babies is being constructed by a prominent bioethics professor at Princeton University. Professor Peter Singer has advocated allowing parents a 28-day waiting period to decide whether to kill a disabled or unhealthy newborn. In his widely disseminated book, Practical Ethics, he asserts, ``killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.'' In response to these events, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act grants protection under Federal law to newborns who are fully outside of the mother. Specifically, it states that Federal laws and regulations referring to a ``person,'' ``human being,'' ``child,'' and ``individual'' include ``every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.'' ``Born alive'' means ``the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, caesarean section, or induced abortion.'' The definition of ``born alive'' is derived from a World Health Organization definition of ``live birth'' that has been enacted in approximately 30 states and the District of Columbia. Again, all this bill says is that a living baby who is completely outside of its mother is a person, a human being, a child, an individual. Similar legislation passed by the House of Representatives last year by an overwhelming vote of 380-15. I am hopeful that Senators on both sides of the general abortion debate can agree that once a baby is completely outside of its mother, it is a person, deserving the protections and dignity afforded to all other Americans. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. When I was first elected to the Senate in 1994, I never imagined that the bill I am offering today would be necessary. Simply stated, this measure gives legal status to a fully born living infant, regardless of the circumstances of his or her birth. I am deeply saddened that we must clarify Federal law to specify that a living newborn baby is, in fact, a person. One could ask, ``Why do you need Federal legislation to state the obvious? What else could a living baby be, except a person?'' I will begin my explanation with events in 1995, when the Senate began its attempts to outlaw a horrifying, inhumane, and barbaric abortion procedure: partial birth abortion. In this particular abortion method, a living baby is killed when he or she is only inches from being fully born. Twice, the House and Senate stood united in sending a bill to President Clinton to ban this procedure. Twice, President Clinton vetoed the bill; and twice, the House courageously voted to override his veto. Although support in the Senate grew each time the ban came to a vote, the Senate fell a few votes shy of overriding the veto. Then, on June 28, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Nebraska's partial birth abortion ban. The Supreme Court's ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart, as well as subsequent rulings in lower courts, are disturbing on a number of levels. First, the Supreme Court struck down Nebraska's attempt to ban a grotesque procedure the American Medical Association has called ``bad medicine,'' and thousands of physicians who specialize in high risk pregnancies have called ``never medically necessary.'' Further, the Court said it did not matter that the baby is killed when it is almost totally outside the mother's body in this abortion method. In other known abortion methods, the baby is killed in utero. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Third Circuit Court have stated it does not matter where the baby is positioned when it is aborted. This assertion, to me, is the most horrifying of all. In the years of debates on partial birth abortion, I have asked Senators a very simple question: If a partial birth abortion were being performed on a baby, and for some reason the head slipped out and the baby were delivered, would it be o.k. to kill that baby? Not one Senator who defended the procedure has ever provided a straightforward ``yes'' or ``no'' response. They would not answer my question. I believe it is important to define when a child is protected by the Constitution; so, I revised my question. I asked whether it would be alright to kill a baby whose foot is still inside the mother's body, or what if only a toe is inside? Again, I did not receive an answer. Unfortunately, evidence uncovered last year at a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution suggests my questions were not so hypothetical. In fact, two nurses testified to seeing babies who were born alive as a result of induced labor abortions being left to die in soiled utility rooms. Furthermore, the intellectual framework for legalization of killing unwanted babies is being constructed by a prominent bioethics professor at Princeton University. Professor Peter Singer has advocated allowing parents a 28-day waiting period to decide whether to kill a disabled or unhealthy newborn. In his widely disseminated book, Practical Ethics, he asserts, ``killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.'' In response to these events, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act grants protection under Federal law to newborns who are fully outside of the mother. Specifically, it states that Federal laws and regulations referring to a ``person,'' ``human being,'' ``child,'' and ``individual'' include ``every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.'' ``Born alive'' means ``the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, caesarean section, or induced abortion.'' The definition of ``born alive'' is derived from a World Health Organization definition of ``live birth'' that has been enacted in approximately 30 states and the District of Columbia. Again, all this bill says is that a living baby who is completely outside of its mother is a person, a human being, a child, an individual. Similar legislation passed by the House of Representatives last year by an overwhelming vote of 380-15. I am hopeful that Senators on both sides of the general abortion debate can agree that once a baby is completely outside of its mother, it is a person, deserving the protections and dignity afforded to all other Americans. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today, Senator Joseph Lieberman and I are introducing the Savings for Working Families Act, which seeks to expand opportunities through Individual Development Accounts, IDAs, to enable the working poor to save for a home, educational expenses, and micro-enterprise and small business efforts. We have already reintroduced this provision this year as Title I of bipartisan legislation, S. 592, ``the Savings Opportunity and Charitable Giving Act of 2001.'' Rep. Pitts and Rep. Stenholm are also introducing a bipartisan companion bill on IDAs in the House of Representatives today. IDAs have been endorsed by President Bush during the presidential campaign and were included in his budget. IDAs are also included in H.R. 7, ``the Community Solutions Act.'' We strongly support the charitable giving incentives in our bill but in the context of this legislation, which includes savings incentives provisions, we are seeking to add additional tax relief for those working hard to save. IDAs are matched savings accounts for working Americans restricted to three uses: 1. buying a first home; 2. receiving post-secondary education or training; or 3. starting or expanding a small business. Individual and matching deposits are not co-mingled; all matching dollars are kept in a separate, parallel account. When the account holder has accumulated enough savings and matching funds to purchase the asset, typically over two to four years, and has completed a financial education course, payments from the IDA will be made directly to the asset provider. Financial institutions, or their contractual affiliates, would be reimbursed for all matching funds provided plus a limited amount of the program and administrative costs incurred, whether directly or through collaborations with other entities. Specifically, the IDA Tax Credit would be the aggregate amount of all dollar-for-dollar matches provided, up to $500 per person per year, plus a one-time $100 per account credit for financial education, recruiting, marketing, administration, withdrawals, etc., plus an annual $30 per account credit for the administrative cost of maintaining the account. To be eligible for the match, adjusted gross income may not exceed $20,000, single, $25,000, head of household, or $40,000, married, to prevent the creation of any additional marriage penalties. Our legislation is aimed at fixing our Nation's growing gap in asset ownership, which keeps millions of low-income workers from achieving the American dream. Most public attention focuses on our growing income gap. Though the booming American economy has delivered significant income gains to the Nation's upper-income earners, lower-income workers have been left on the sidelines. This suggests to some that closing this divide between the have-mosts and the have-leasts is simply a matter of raising wages. But the reality is that the income gap is a symptom of a larger, more complicated problem. Success in today's new economy is defined less and less by how much you earn and more and more by how much you own--your asset base. This is great news for the millions of middle-class homeowners who are tapped into America's economic success, but it is bad news for those who are simply tapped out--those with no assets and little hope of accumulating the means for upward mobility and real financial security. This widening asset gap was underscored in a report issued earlier this year by the Federal Reserve. The Fed found that while the net worth of the typical family has risen substantially in recent years, it has actually dropped substantially for low-income families. For families with annual incomes of less than $10,000, the median net worth dipped from $4,800 in 1995 to $3,600 in 1998. For families with incomes between $10,000 and $25,000, the median net worth fell from $31,000 to $24,800 over the same period. The rate of home ownership among low-income families has dropped as well. For families making less than $10,000, it went from 36.1 percent to 34.5 percent from 1995 to 1998; for those making between $10,000 and $25,000, it fell from 54.9 percent to 51.7 percent. How do we reverse this troubling trend? IDAs are the unfinished business of the Community Renewal and New Markets Empowerment initiatives which became law in December of 2000 and will increase job opportunities and renew hope in what have been hopeless places. But to sustain this hope, we must provide opportunities for individuals and families to build tangible assets and acquire stable wealth. How do we do this? We believe that the marketplace can provide such opportunity. Non-profit groups around the country have launched innovative private programs that are achieving great success in transforming the ``unbanked''--people who have never had a bank account--into unabashed capitalists. Through IDAs, banks and credit unions offer special savings accounts to low-income Americans and match their deposits dollar-for-dollar. In return, participants take an economic literacy course and commit to using their savings to buy a home, upgrade their education or to start a business. Thousands of people are actively saving today through IDA programs in about 250 neighborhoods nationwide. In one demonstration project undertaken by the Corporation for Enterprise Development, CFED, a leading IDA promoter, 2,378 participants have already saved $838,443, which has leveraged an additional $1,644,508. While data have been encouraging, unfortunately IDA programs are still limited and too scattered across the Nation. This amendment will expand IDA access nationwide by providing a significant tax credit to financial institutions and community groups which they will pass through to IDA account holders. This credit would reimburse banks for the first $500 of matching funds they contribute, thus significantly lowering the cost of offering IDAs. Other State and private funds can also be used to provide additional match to savings. It also benefits our economy, the long-term stability of which is threatened by our pitiful national savings rate. In fact, according to some estimates, every $1 invested in an IDA returns $5 to the national economy. IDAs are supported by a variety of groups including the Credit Union National Association, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, the National Association of Homebuilders, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the National Conference of State Legislators. Individual Development Accounts, combined with other community development and wealth creation opportunities, are a first step towards restoring the faith in the longstanding American promise of equal opportunity. That faith has been shaken by stark divisions of income and wealth in our society. With the leadership of the President and the Speaker, I am hopeful, along with Senator Lieberman and other supporters in the Senate, that Congress will take this significant step toward restoring the long-cherished American ideals of rewarding hard work, encouraging responsibility, and expanding opportunity this year.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today, Senator Joseph Lieberman and I are introducing the Savings for Working Families Act, which seeks to expand opportunities through Individual Development Accounts, IDAs, to enable the working poor to save for a home, educational expenses, and micro-enterprise and small business efforts. We have already reintroduced this provision this year as Title I of bipartisan legislation, S. 592, ``the Savings Opportunity and Charitable Giving Act of 2001.'' Rep. Pitts and Rep. Stenholm are also introducing a bipartisan companion bill on IDAs in the House of Representatives today. IDAs have been endorsed by President Bush during the presidential campaign and were included in his budget. IDAs are also included in H.R. 7, ``the Community Solutions Act.'' We strongly support the charitable giving incentives in our bill but in the context of this legislation, which includes savings incentives provisions, we are seeking to add additional tax relief for those working hard to save. IDAs are matched savings accounts for working Americans restricted to three uses: 1. buying a first home; 2. receiving post-secondary education or training; or 3. starting or expanding a small business. Individual and matching deposits are not co-mingled; all matching dollars are kept in a separate, parallel account. When the account holder has accumulated enough savings and matching funds to purchase the asset, typically over two to four years, and has completed a financial education course, payments from the IDA will be made directly to the asset provider. Financial institutions, or their contractual affiliates, would be reimbursed for all matching funds provided plus a limited amount of the program and administrative costs incurred, whether directly or through collaborations with other entities. Specifically, the IDA Tax Credit would be the aggregate amount of all dollar-for-dollar matches provided, up to $500 per person per year, plus a one-time $100 per account credit for financial education, recruiting, marketing, administration, withdrawals, etc., plus an annual $30 per account credit for the administrative cost of maintaining the account. To be eligible for the match, adjusted gross income may not exceed $20,000, single, $25,000, head of household, or $40,000, married, to prevent the creation of any additional marriage penalties. Our legislation is aimed at fixing our Nation's growing gap in asset ownership, which keeps millions of low-income workers from achieving the American dream. Most public attention focuses on our growing income gap. Though the booming American economy has delivered significant income gains to the Nation's upper-income earners, lower-income workers have been left on the sidelines. This suggests to some that closing this divide between the have-mosts and the have-leasts is simply a matter of raising wages. But the reality is that the income gap is a symptom of a larger, more complicated problem. Success in today's new economy is defined less and less by how much you earn and more and more by how much you own--your asset base. This is great news for the millions of middle-class homeowners who are tapped into America's economic success, but it is bad news for those who are simply tapped out--those with no assets and little hope of accumulating the means for upward mobility and real financial security. This widening asset gap was underscored in a report issued earlier this year by the Federal Reserve. The Fed found that while the net worth of the typical family has risen substantially in recent years, it has actually dropped substantially for low-income families. For families with annual incomes of less than $10,000, the median net worth dipped from $4,800 in 1995 to $3,600 in 1998. For families with incomes between $10,000 and $25,000, the median net worth fell from $31,000 to $24,800 over the same period. The rate of home ownership among low-income families has dropped as well. For families making less than $10,000, it went from 36.1 percent to 34.5 percent from 1995 to 1998; for those making between $10,000 and $25,000, it fell from 54.9 percent to 51.7 percent. How do we reverse this troubling trend? IDAs are the unfinished business of the Community Renewal and New Markets Empowerment initiatives which became law in December of 2000 and will increase job opportunities and renew hope in what have been hopeless places. But to sustain this hope, we must provide opportunities for individuals and families to build tangible assets and acquire stable wealth. How do we do this? We believe that the marketplace can provide such opportunity. Non-profit groups around the country have launched innovative private programs that are achieving great success in transforming the ``unbanked''--people who have never had a bank account--into unabashed capitalists. Through IDAs, banks and credit unions offer special savings accounts to low-income Americans and match their deposits dollar-for-dollar. In return, participants take an economic literacy course and commit to using their savings to buy a home, upgrade their education or to start a business. Thousands of people are actively saving today through IDA programs in about 250 neighborhoods nationwide. In one demonstration project undertaken by the Corporation for Enterprise Development, CFED, a leading IDA promoter, 2,378 participants have already saved $838,443, which has leveraged an additional $1,644,508. While data have been encouraging, unfortunately IDA programs are still limited and too scattered across the Nation. This amendment will expand IDA access nationwide by providing a significant tax credit to financial institutions and community groups which they will pass through to IDA account holders. This credit would reimburse banks for the first $500 of matching funds they contribute, thus significantly lowering the cost of offering IDAs. Other State and private funds can also be used to provide additional match to savings. It also benefits our economy, the long-term stability of which is threatened by our pitiful national savings rate. In fact, according to some estimates, every $1 invested in an IDA returns $5 to the national economy. IDAs are supported by a variety of groups including the Credit Union National Association, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, the National Association of Homebuilders, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the National Conference of State Legislators. Individual Development Accounts, combined with other community development and wealth creation opportunities, are a first step towards restoring the faith in the longstanding American promise of equal opportunity. That faith has been shaken by stark divisions of income and wealth in our society. With the leadership of the President and the Speaker, I am hopeful, along with Senator Lieberman and other supporters in the Senate, that Congress will take this significant step toward restoring the long-cherished American ideals of rewarding hard work, encouraging responsibility, and expanding opportunity this year.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I do.

Mr. SANTORUM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 798

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his support of my amendment. I hope the Senate will overwhelmingly vote for and support the amendment that I have offered. The Senator from Wyoming was just talking about the role of the Federal Government in education. I was just thinking about the many visits I have made to school districts around my State. I have been to about 160 or 170 school districts in my State. We have about 500 school districts. I talked about education in many of those visits. Maybe other Senators have experienced the same thing, but when I talk about education in schools, when I talk about educational reform, superintendents and teachers tend to get a little stiff in front of me, tend to get a little tense, because they are living it. And here we are, on the outside, trying to tell them how to do it better. One of the reasons I go to those schools is to listen to the schoolteachers and to principals and superintendents, parents, and students. One of the things I hear more and more from people and parents and teachers in particular is, yes, we need to improve education, but we also need to look at what is coming into the educational system, the children coming into our system, particularly in our lowest performing schools, where children are coming in with many more profound problems than they did 20, 30, 40, even 50 years ago, when we thought we had a pretty good educational system in the country. To sit here and say all the problems in our society, all the problems with our children are because they don't have a good education or there is not a good school, whatever the case may be, sort of laying all the blame on the schools for not producing educated children, in some respects, I believe, misses the mark or certainly doesn't tell the whole story of the problems that we are confronting as a culture and as a nation. We have a couple minutes before the vote, and I wanted to put my two cents in. For those teachers and administrators, people who work very hard in the school system, particularly the poor schools and schools that are in difficult neighborhoods, you are right; the schools are not the sole source of blame for having children who can't read coming out of them. I even argue in many cases they aren't the principal sources of blame or even a particularly big share of the blame. When we talk about educational reform, particularly leaving no child behind--and I support that--we need to look not just within the school system; we have to look outside the school system. We have to look at our culture. We have to look at the American family, our neighborhoods, at our popular culture, and the message being sent to the young children. We have to look at neighborhoods. And whether it is crime or the breakdown of the family or the breakdown of the community, the lack of economic opportunities, whatever the case may be--in most cases, it is all of those things--we need to recognize that education is just a piece of solving this puzzle for a child growing up in these very poor neighborhoods. I hope we don't walk away from here flexing our muscles, raising our hands, saying: We have now solved the problem; We have fixed the educational system and that alone is going to solve the problems we face in our poor and downtrodden communities. It will not, no matter how good our schools are. I always share this story of going to a high school in north Philadelphia, a very poor high school, a very poor neighborhood, a crime ridden neighborhood. I walked through that school. First I walked through the metal detectors. And I finally got to a classroom where, of the students going to the school, less than 5 percent were going to go on to some education beyond high school. I went into the classroom where those 5 percent were, and they were being talked to about their opportunities. They were all from public housing, poor neighborhoods. They could get a free ride to any school they wanted to go to. I remember talking to them about the opportunities they had and sort of seeing somewhat blank stares back at me. We got into a discussion. I said: What is your biggest fear? What is your biggest concern about the school you go to and your education? And the consensus developed was this: Getting to school alive every day. When you are an achiever in a group of people who do not achieve academically, you are a target. You can throw more money at that school, you can improve the quality of the teachers, you can have smaller class size, but if your concern is getting to school alive, we are missing the boat somewhere. I want to step back, as we hopefully will celebrate passage of this bill and say that we have done great things to help children. If we don't get to the issues outside of the school, throwing more money into the school is whistling through the graveyard at night. It isn't going to solve the problem. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to talk about my amendment which will be voted on in roughly 40 minutes. This is an amendment that is a sense of the Senate. It is a sense of the Senate that deals with the subject of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the classroom, in primary and secondary education. It is a sense of the Senate that does not try to dictate curriculum to anybody; quite the contrary, it says there should be freedom to discuss and air good scientific debate within the classroom. In fact, students will do better and will learn more if there is this intellectual freedom to discuss. I will read this sense of the Senate. It is simply two sentences-- frankly, two rather innocuous sentences--that hopefully this Senate will embrace: ``It is the sense of the Senate that-- ``(1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and ``(2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject. It simply says there are disagreements in scientific theories out there that are continually tested. Our knowledge of science is not absolute, obviously. We continue to test theories. Over the centuries, there were theories that were once assumed to be true and have been proven, through further revelation of scientific investigation and testing, to be not true. One of the things I thought was important in putting this forward was to make sure the Senate of this country, obviously one of the greatest, if not the greatest, deliberative bodies on the face of the Earth, was on record saying we are for this kind of intellectual freedom; we are for this kind of discussion going on; it will enhance the quality of science education for our students. I will read three points made by one of the advocates of this thought, a man named David DeWolf, as to the advantages of teaching this controversy that exists. He says: Several benefits will accrue from a more open discussion of biological origins in the science classroom. First, this approach will do a better job of teaching the issue itself, both because it presents more accurate information about the state of scientific thinking and evidence, and because it presents the subject in a more lively and less dogmatic way. Second, this approach gives students greater appreciation for how science is actually practiced. Science necessarily involves the interpretation of data; yet scientists often disagree about how to interpret their data. By presenting this scientific controversy realistically, students will learn how to evaluate competing interpretations in light of evidence--a skill they will need as citizens, whether they choose careers in science or other fields. Third, this approach will model for students how to address differences of opinion through reasoned discussion within the context of a pluralistic society. I think there are many benefits to this discussion that we hope to encourage in science classrooms across this country. I frankly don't see any down side to this discussion--that we are standing here as the Senate in favor of intellectual freedom and open and fair discussion of using science--not philosophy and religion within the context, within the context of science but science--as the basis for this determination. I will reserve the remainder of my time. I have a couple of other speakers I anticipate will come down and talk about this amendment, and I want to leave adequate time. I yield the floor.