Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Is there any prohibition in the DeWine amendment from someone using their own money to purchase insurance to cover abortion?

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Michigan for 5 minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I have to comment on the statement of the Senator from New Jersey. One of the more vexing problems we have in political debate in America is who is telling the truth. What I am going to tell you is 180 degrees from what the Senator from New Jersey just said. What he repeatedly said is true is, in fact, not true. What the Senator from New Jersey said is that the Democrats would not be able to offer amendments on the Social Security lockbox as a result of the cloture votes that were taken on April 22, April 30, and June 15. That is not true. Let me state that again, emphatically, to the Senator from New Jersey and to the American public: What the Senator from New Jersey just said, which is that Democrats were blocked from offering amendments on the issue of a Social Security lockbox, is not true. So the entire speech we just heard was, in fact, a statement which had no basis in fact. That is true. The Senator from New Jersey could have opposed cloture and offered all the amendments he wanted on the Social Security lockbox. We could have had hours, days of debate on a Social Security lockbox. We wanted to have those kinds of debates. They refused.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. The April 22 vote was a vote on cloture on the first- degree amendment. The tree was not filled. It was a first-degree amendment vote on cloture, No. 1. We wanted a vote on that particular amendment, yes. After that amendment would have passed or failed, you were then available to offer all the amendments you wanted on Social Security. You could have offered your own Social Security lockbox. You could have taken the Abraham bill and changed the wording in it, and we could have had a vote on that, but you did not want to do that. You did not want to have that debate. You refused us even getting into a vote. All we wanted to do with these cloture motions was to say: Give us a clean vote on this particular proposal. After that, you are free to amend it. You are free to offer your own; you can do whatever you want. You can offer a Medicare lockbox. You can do whatever you want. Just give us a vote on our proposal and then you are welcome to do whatever else you want. You said emphatically, unanimously, three times: No.

Mr. SANTORUM. That was not the statement of the Senator from New Jersey. He made the statement that he could not offer amendments. The answer is, he could have offered amendments. What we wanted was a vote on the Abraham-Domenici bill. After that vote, he was free to amend that proposal. He was free to offer his own proposal. There could have been a full and open debate on Social Security lockbox, after he gave us a vote on our amendment. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to ask.

Mr. SANTORUM. All I say to the Senator from New Jersey is that all we asked for is to give us a clean up-or-down vote on our amendment. After that amendment, you could have amended that thing, you could have offered your own, done anything you wanted. All we wanted to make sure of was that we had a clean vote on our amendment to start this debate, and after that, you could have done anything you wanted. By the way, if you look at the statement you just read into the Record, you said exactly the opposite of what I just said. You said you could not have offered amendments when, in fact, you could have. You still had the right to, and you chose not to because you didn't want to enter into this debate. We see a wonderful willingness on the part of the Democrats now, after the President joined our side in saying we want a lockbox, to open up and debate this and offer amendments, when you had the very same opportunity four times to do the same thing. I welcome that. I welcome that we are going to have an opportunity to focus in on what I think is one of the most important things--not just for Social Security but important things for the long-term fiscal future of this country, this government; that is, putting in place a provision that says if you are going to spend more money on new government programs, or even if they are going to spend money on tax cuts, you are not going to spend it on Social Security unless you stand up before this Senate and before the American public and say: We are going to take Social Security dollars. We believe it is more important to do tax cuts. We believe it is more important to do funding for education or funding for defense than it is to provide money for Social Security. That is the vote we are looking for. That is the vote of accountability that we want every Member of the Senate to have to cast. That is the fiscal discipline, when people have to make that choice, and it is clear to everybody what the choice is. We have lots of points of order and procedural things, but then everybody sort of walks out of the room and spins it their way. In this case, with the lockbox vote, where it says you have to vote on a motion that says we will spend Social Security money for X or Y or Z, you have to tell the American people that you believe that is a higher priority than Social Security. We have no such vote today. But if we pass a lockbox, then the American public will know what your choices are. There may be a situation where we need to spend Social Security money. Frankly, I can't think of one, but there may be one--an emergency, a true emergency, where our national security is at risk. There may be a situation where we want to spend Social Security dollars, but it has to be voted on. That is the most important thing. That is what the other side never wanted to have happen. I thank the President for breaking the logjam over there. The House Democrats did a pretty good job; they passed a Social Security lockbox bill. But it was the folks on the other side who stood as the dam to this current that was flowing through the Congress. I thank the President for getting the beavers to work, getting them out of the way and making sure we can have a full, fair, and open debate--as we could have three or four times previous to this. We could have had a full, fair, open debate in the Senate about a very important issue, yes, for Social Security but just as important to the fiscal discipline of the U.S. Government in the future. I thank the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Abraham and Mr. Domenici, for their excellent work on this issue.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished junior Senator from West Virginia, who has been a tremendous leader on this issue.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield to the senior Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Ohio, a great champion of this legislation, 3\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to pick up where the Senator from West Virginia left off, and that is to make very clear what we are voting on today. We are not voting on a steel quota bill. We are voting simply to bring the issue to the floor of the Senate for open debate and discussion and amendment. I do not think anyone in this Chamber can say what has gone on in the steel industry has been good for America. I have heard from some of the speakers--incredibly so--that somehow or another this was good for American jobs; we create American jobs when people illegally, against our trade laws, being subsidized by foreign governments, dump product into this country--that somehow that is good for America. I do not think it is good for America. We have laws that are in place to stop that because we think it is unfair. We think that is illegal. So when I hear these arguments that we have to let the marketplace work, the fact is the marketplace is not working. The administration is not working in enforcing our laws. So what we are saying is, the Congress needs to get to work. Congress needs to get to work, to talk about how we can put this together. The Senator from Michigan talked about the bill that came out of the Finance Committee. That could be an amendment to this bill. It could be a substitute to this bill. If you want a vehicle to have a fair and honest debate about what our steel policy should be, what our trade policy should be, this is the vehicle to do it. Let's vote on the motion to proceed. Let's bring up this matter. It is an important matter, as the Senator from West Virginia said, to at least 16 States. It has impacted tens of thousands of workers across this country. It is a very serious, desperate situation for many major companies in the United States. All we are asking for out of this vote is to let us be heard on the floor of the Senate. If you do not like the solution, as the Senator from Delaware said--the junior Senator from Delaware said he does not like the solution--fine. Bring up another measure. Bring up an alternative. We will have a debate on that. We will have a vote on that, and we will work our will in the Senate to address an issue that needs to be addressed. That is all we are saying. Please, let the folks back in Akron, OH, in Pittsburgh, PA, and Weirton, WV, the people in the Senate care about what is going on in their lives. Let them know we are not deaf to the pain they are going through in losing their jobs. Let them know by just giving us a chance to debate this bill and do something about the crisis in the steel industry in this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I control the time in favor of the cloture motion.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request from the leader. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XII, immediately following the 12:15 p.m. vote, Senator Dodd be recognized to speak relative to the State Department authorization bill for up to 15 minutes. I further ask unanimous consent that following his remarks, the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m. for the policy conferences. I also ask that at 2:15 p.m. today, there be 5 minutes equally divided for debate on the Feingold amendment, and following that debate, the Senate proceed to a vote on the Feingold amendment No. 692. I ask unanimous consent that following the vote, Senator Helms be recognized to offer the managers' amendment and it be considered agreed to. Finally, I ask there be 5 minutes equally divided between the chairman and ranking member for closing remarks, that the bill then be read a third time, and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage of the bill, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SANTORUM. I withhold the request.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the cloture motion on the motion to proceed to the issue of steel quotas. Senator Rockefeller, who is my counterpart on the Democratic side leading this debate, and I are not people who have come to the floor of the Senate in favor of quotas. In fact, we think we are driven to this point as people who believe in free and fair trade, to ask the Senate to consider imposing quotas on the dumping of steel in this country by foreign nations. It is remarkable what has occurred. It is unprecedented what has occurred in the steel industry over the past 2\1/2\ years. We have seen the level of steel rise, as far as imports into this country, two, three, four, five times the amount from some countries in the past 2\1/ 2\ years--and it continues. One of the mantras I hear from the administration, which is lobbying against this bill, is that the crisis is over. I can say that in the case of China, for example, the world's largest producer, just in the first 4 months of this year their dumping was up 80 percent--their imports were up 80 percent. So if the crisis is over, why then was the largest steel manufacturer dumping more steel into our market in the first 4 months of this year? We have a continuing problem. What Senator Rockefeller and I, and others who have joined us in this cause, are suggesting is something, frankly, that is very modest. We are suggesting a quota for 3 years to stop this outrageous and, I might add, illegal dumping. We have won or are winning every single dumping case in the international arena. Every single case we are winning because of the illegality of what is being done by our foreign competitors in the steel industry. What we are asking is not to go to a low rate of imports; what we are asking is to go to a rate of import into this country, a share of imports in the domestic market equal to a level that has only been reached four times in the past 30 years. So arguably we are setting the bar very high. We are not going in to protect an industry that is inefficient or that is uncompetitive. The steel industry today is the most productive, competitive, and efficient steel industry in the world. Yet they are being wiped out by subsidized, illegally dumped steel, costing us thousands of good-paying jobs and thousands of families not going home with paychecks to support their children. I am very hopeful that we can get a bipartisan vote today to at least move to proceed to the bill. That is all this vote does. It says let's put this issue front and center in the Senate, let's point out to our competitors around the globe that the Senate is not going to step aside and allow this illegal dumping to continue, that we are going to debate it, that we take this issue very seriously, and that we are not going to allow this kind of illegal action to continue. I know my 3 minutes are up. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the junior Senator from West Virginia for his remarks.

Ms. SANTORUM

Ms. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for yielding me time. I congratulate him and the entire working group on the Republican side of the aisle--Senators Jeffords, Collins, Frist, and Gramm for putting together what I believe is a bill that this Senate should embrace. I think America, if they were given the choice between what is being offered on the Democratic side and what is being offered on the Republican side, would quickly embrace this plan for many reasons. No. 1, it is a much more comprehensive plan. This is the Patients' Bill of Rights Plus. It is not just some consumer protection measures which Democrats have put forward--and we have, to some degree, done the same--but it goes much farther. By looking at the health care picture in America, on a comprehensive basis, we took a step back and said, what can we do to improve quality, to improve access, to reduce costs-- not responding to hot button poll issues? It seems to be the popular move around here--when something polls well, we rush out here and try, with legislative fixes, to pass something that sounds good to the American public. We did not take that approach. We took the approach of how, from a public policy point of view, we are going to solve real problems in America--not real problems that maybe poll well but real problems that solve structural problems, structural problems in the health care system, which will end up benefiting millions of people. One such area is that of access. Much has been talked about in relation to patients' rights. We have not heard a lot of talk on the other side about access to insurance. There are a couple of components to that. No. 1, keep the costs down. We have heard a lot of talk about how the other bill, the Kennedy bill, dramatically increases costs. Our bill does not do that. So in that respect, we already, by virtue of not driving up health care costs, improve access. But we do more than that. We do two specific things in the tax portion of this bill. First, we increase the deductibility of insurance for the self-employed up to 100 percent. So we put them on an even playing field with those who have employer-provided health care. We give 100 percent deductibility, thereby increasing the desirability of owning health care insurance, of buying that insurance for yourself as a self-employed individual, thereby getting more people into the health care system, which is something everybody believes is necessary and desirable. Second, we provide for medical savings accounts. Medical savings accounts have gotten, from a public policy perspective, a little bit of a bad rap based on what was passed here a few years ago. What was passed here a few years ago was a program that was designed to fail. Those who designed it got exactly what was predicted--failure. It is a program that is very limited. Very few taxpayers can participate in it. It is time limited. It does not allow you to carry contributions from year to year. It is a program that has very little in the way of a design that would be attractive. In fact, what would attract people to MSAs is the ability to control their own health care costs, which is the ability to profit personally--instead of the insurance companies managing your health care, doing things that keep you healthy. Those are some of the attractions of MSAs that are the control element, all of which are forfeited under the existing MSA proposal. The bill that we are offering removes all these restrictions-- artificial--to dampen the enthusiasm for the program, to make it less attractive and less workable, and allows a full-blown medical savings account proposal to go forward and to put it into the mix of health care delivery options, insurance options, again, creating more choices, creating, in this case, a high deductible insurance option that is very attractive to people who we have a very difficult time bringing into the insurance system but are very important to get in there, and those are younger workers, in particular. We have a very difficult time convincing younger uninsured people that it is maybe worthwhile to go out and buy insurance coverage. Most young people think they are infallible, that they cannot be hurt, that they do not need insurance. What we do is create a savings component to health insurance which is a very attractive thing, particularly for younger people and yet, at the same time, very useful for everyone-- once people understand how the dynamics of medical savings accounts work. So it has the dual components of attracting those very desirable people into the insurance pool--younger workers who have, in fact, less health care costs--and at the same time provides the kinds of choices and quality and the proper incentives to the rest of the population in the health care system through these medical savings accounts. So I am very excited that what we have been able to accomplish in this bill is not just to provide some hot button issues with regard to HMOs which poll well--and I understand that----

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. We have provided a comprehensive approach to health care reform and one that I think we can all be very proud of. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for yielding me time.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I will respond to the Senator from New Jersey. The Senator from New Jersey knows if we get cloture on this bill, germane amendments would be allowed. So if what he is concerned about is Social Security and debating Social Security, germane Social Security amendments will be available. What will not be available are spurious amendments to make political points that have nothing to do with Social Security, such as what is being discussed by the Senator from North Dakota who wants to take non-Social Security money, non- Medicare money, and create a lockbox of general fund revenues for Medicare. As the Senator from New Jersey knows, that has nothing to do with Social Security. It has nothing to do with lockboxing Social Security. It has nothing to do with lockboxing the Medicare trust fund. It is a tangential amendment aimed at making political points, having nothing to do with Social Security, as are the bulk, from my understanding, of the other amendments. So in sincerity, I say to the Senator from New Jersey, if he really is concerned about Social Security and having an honest debate about Social Security and the amendments thereto, vote for cloture because he will have ample opportunity to have a plethora of amendments that deal with the issue of Social Security and the lockbox thereon. So the demagoguery we have heard that somehow we are precluding debate on the most vital issue of the day is false. We are, in fact, providing a forum for a limited and narrow and focused discussion, absent political demagoguery, to talk just about Social Security. So, if the Senator is truly concerned with the issue of Social Security and the preeminence of it as a policy issue, then he has the opportunity before him right now to vote for cloture so we can focus the agenda and the discussion on that very issue. Second, I want to respond to the Senator from North Dakota who I think has offered a very reasonable concept, although I am not sure his charts follow through with that concept. The Senator from North Dakota suggested that we need to lockbox Medicare and suggested there were $650-some-odd billion to be lockboxed for Medicare. I do not know where he comes up with $650-odd billion that is in the Medicare fund surplus in the future. In fact, between the years 2000 and 2009, the net surplus in the Medicare trust fund is $14 billion. In the next 5 years the surplus will be $53 billion, but then it goes negative, from 2006 to 2009 $39 billion. I am willing right now to coauthor a bill with the Senator from North Dakota to put a lockbox on the Medicare trust fund similar to the Social Security trust fund. But that is not what the Senator from North Dakota is saying. He would lead you to believe that is what he is saying, that we need a similar lockbox for Medicare as we have for Social Security. Remember, the Social Security lockbox said Social Security money must be used for Social Security. A similar Medicare lockbox would be very simple: Medicare taxes must be used for Medicare. Is that what the Senator from North Dakota has asked for? No, he has not. What the Senator from North Dakota said is all of the surplus in the future--the non-Medicare surplus, the non-Social Security surplus, the general fund surplus--has to be used for Medicare. That is what the Senator from North Dakota did. That is not what he told us, but that is what he did. Why does he want to do that? Because he wants to take the general fund surplus--which many believe, if we have more money in the general fund than we need, we should provide tax relief to those who overpaid-- and use it for Medicare. I believe in the integrity of the Medicare program and the integrity of the Social Security program. They are funded specifically by taxes and spent within that trust fund. That is how we should fix Medicare, and that is how we should fix Social Security. We should not be borrowing from other areas any more than on the general Government side we should not be borrowing from Social Security and Medicare. It is honesty in budgeting. What happened a few minutes ago on the floor was not exactly the most forthright explanation of budgeting in this area. What we are proposing is very simple. We have a surplus in Social Security, and if we do not lock it up and create hurdles for spending that money, there will be those, incredibly enough, who will use that money for other things such as, oh, wonderful things, including tax cuts. There may be some who want--I do not want to do tax cuts with Social Security money; I will not do tax cuts with Social Security money. You will not find any tax cut I will not vote for. I will vote for all of them, but I will not use Social Security money. It puts constraints on us on this side of the aisle who would love to see tax cuts but will not use Social Security, contrary to what the Senator from New Jersey just said. You cannot use it for tax cuts and spending increases. That is all we say. Let's make a downpayment on Social Security reform by not spending the money. It is as simple as that. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, finally I want to comment on the vote we just had on the lockbox. I have to say I am puzzled and disappointed at the unanimous opposition by Senate Democrats to a proposal that passed with 416 votes in the House. Obviously, almost every House Democrat-- all but 12--voted in favor of this measure, a measure which obviously has broad bipartisan support and, as many have stated in the House and the Senate, one that is a first step toward dealing with the long-term problems of Social Security. The first step is very simple. We have a surplus. Do not spend it on things other than Social Security; save it for Social Security. We are eventually going to have to do Social Security reform. We are going to have to strengthen it and save it for future generations. It runs out of money in the next 15 years, so we are going to have to do something. We have surpluses building up which are now just being borrowed by the Government and spent on other things. We have had that happen for the past 20 years. We are now in a unique position. We are close to an on-budget surplus. We are not quite there, but we are very close to an on-budget surplus, non-Social Security surplus. So we have the Social Security money which will go to save Social Security by reducing the Federal debt unless we spend it. In a sense, all this lockbox does is say: Don't spend the money. Don't come up with new ideas and new ways to spend Social Security. We are not asking anybody to cut anything. That is one of the most remarkable things about it. We are not asking the other side to cut money to make sure the money is there for Social Security. All we are saying is don't spend more. That is why it received bipartisan support in the House. We hear so much talk on both sides of the aisle about how we have to save Social Security first, how Social Security is the highest priority, how we have to make sure money is there for future generations. In fact, in the budget vote just a couple of months ago, we had a 100-to-nothing or 99-to-nothing vote that we need to save Social Security; we are not going to spend that money in the trust fund. That was just a sense of the Senate. In other words, the first had no binding effect in law. Now the mechanism comes along that says if we are going to pass a bill that is going to spend Social Security surpluses, we have to have a separate vote where we have to stand up before the clerk and say: Yes, I will spend the Social Security surplus on this. There is no such vote that has to be cast right now. This will set up a point of order where every Member of the Senate has to say to the people back home: I want to spend Social Security money on this, because I think it is more important than Social Security. That is all this point of order does. There are points of order out there on spending, but there is nothing clear. There are points of order whereby you can challenge something if it breaks the budget point of order or this and that, and people run out and say it is really not Social Security. You can dance around it. You can spin it back home. There are lots of folks very good at spinning. The wonderful thing about this provision is you cannot spin it. It is what it is. It is a vote that says we will spend the Social Security surplus on this. That will have, I believe, the greatest impact--in this body and the other body, and in particular the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the President--on controlling our willingness to raid the Social Security trust fund for the demands of spending today. Or, for that matter, the demands of tax cuts today. I want to add, it is not just a governor on those, principally on the other side, who want to spend more. It is also a governor on those on this side who want to cut more taxes. As I said before, there is no tax cut I will not vote for, just about. But I am not going to do it out of the Social Security surplus. We will do it out of the general fund where the taxes are paid in. If people are paying in too much in the general fund, give them a tax cut, if we can. I will vote for it. If we can cut spending in the general fund to pay for a tax cut, I will vote for it. But I will not fund a tax cut out of Social Security funds, and that is what this says. While on the first vote on cloture many Democrats will vote no as a matter of principle, I am hopeful they will understand this is a bill that has consensus, that can be signed, that can put real restraints on our ability and the President's ability to spend the Social Security surplus and, hopefully, we will reach a point where we can have bipartisan consensus on this, because Social Security is simply too important to continue to play political games. I think what we have seen here is all the rhetoric says: Yes, we agree; yes, we agree. But when it comes down to casting the vote, what we have is this spurious argument, ``You are not letting us amend it,'' which I find is quite remarkable because, if you look at the amendments, they have virtually nothing to do with Social Security. In fact, I have not seen all the amendments, but those I have been made aware of have absolutely nothing to do with Social Security. They all have to do with what we do with the general fund surplus, and that is the non-Social Security, non-Medicare surplus. We have on a bill, which is focused on Social Security, on how we save Social Security, an attempt to bring in a whole lot of other issues to clog up this issue, to bog it down, and, in my mind, to try to destroy any chance of this ever becoming law.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will respond to that. It is a far different thing to put a Government program--and I do not know of any Government program that exists, with maybe the exception of defense, but defense has changed over time--in the Constitution of the United States and say we are going to set up this Federal program that must be, in a sense, left alone when future Congresses, as I certainly hope will occur, will be making adjustments to that program. In fact, 200 years from now, who knows what this country is going to look like. It may, in fact, want to do something completely different than what we have in mind today. I think that was the concern of a lot of us. If we were going to start enshrining Government programs in the Constitution, that is a fairly dangerous precedent, and I think a lot of us had real concerns about that. At the same time, there was broad sympathy that we do need during this time of surplus, because it is not going to be forever that the Social Security surpluses will be there, as the Senator knows because, again, things change--for this time period, we can lock this away and do it by legislation, in this case a point of order. As the Senator knows, 15 years from now, that provision in the Constitution would work almost in some respects against Social Security because they would be running a deficit. As the economics of Social Security change, enshrining that in the Constitution I do not think is in the best interest of Social Security. Here we can react to what is a surplus situation and make sure that it is protected from raids. What will happen in the future is that it will be a deficit situation, and there may be a different dynamic that goes on with respect to that, which I do not think the Constitution would provide for.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from North Dakota.