Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to introduce legislation that will deal with the plight of our nation's cities and Washington's increasing neglect of them. With 80% of the U.S. population living in metropolitan areas, there is an urgent need to improve our urban economies and the quality of life for the millions of Americans who live and work in cities. By simply making our cities an appealing place to live, work, recreate, and visit, urban areas can rebound to the vibrant economic centers they once were. There is a common perception that urban areas are abandoned and stripped of their resources, burdened with poverty and crime. However, cities have a wealth of resources available to not only the urban dweller but to the world--cultural centers, business hubs, and some of the finest educational and medical institutions. The real problem is that we do not draw upon these riches or strive to better coordinate them to serve people, most especially those in need. My proposal, the ``New Urban Agenda Act of 1999'' is based on legislation which I have endeavored to make law since the 103rd Congress. I am pleased to be introducing it today, in this first Congress of the new millennium, with my distinguished colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, who also recognizes the potential of both small cities and large metropolitan areas. The bill constitutes an effort to give our cities some much-needed attention, but reflects the federal budgetary constraints which govern all that we in Congress do these days. This bill, based in significant part on suggestions by Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell and the League of Cities, offers aid to the cities while containing federal expenditures and by re-instituting important cost-effective tax breaks which have been discontinued. If we are to really address many of the very serious social issues that we face--unemployment, teenage pregnancy, welfare dependency, and other pressing issues--we cannot give up on our cities. There must be new strategies for dealing with the problems of urban America. The days of creating ``Great Society'' federal aid programs are clearly past, but that is no excuse for the national government to turn a blind eye to the problems of the cities. Urban areas remain integral to America's greatness as centers of commerce, industry, education, health care, and culture. Yet urban areas, particularly the inner cities which tend to have a disproportionate share of our nation's poor, also have special needs which must be recognized. We must develop ways of aiding our cities that do not require either new taxes or more government bureaucracy. As a Philadelphia resident, I have first-hand knowledge of the growing problems that plague our cities. The most recent U.S. Census data collected showed that Philadelphia has over 300,000 individuals in poverty and when federal welfare reform took effect in October 1996, 113,000 adults were receiving some form of cash assistance. Reflecting on my experience as a Philadelphian, I have long supported a variety of programs to assist our cities, such as increased funding for Community Development Block Grants and legislation to establish enterprise and empowerment zones. To encourage similar efforts, in April, 1994, I hosted my Senate Republican colleagues on a visit to explore urban problems in my hometown. We talked with people who wanted to obtain work, but had found few opportunities. We saw a crumbling infrastructure and its impact on residents and businesses. We were reminded of the devastating effect that the loss of inner city businesses and jobs has had on our neighborhoods in America's cities. What my Republican colleagues saw then in Philadelphia is the urban rule across our country and not the exception. There are many who do not know of city life, who are far removed from the cities and would not be expected to have any key interest in what goes on in the big cities of America. I cite my own boyhood experience illustratively: Born in Wichita, Kansas, raised in Russell, a small town of 5,000 people on the plains of Kansas, where there is not much detailed knowledge of what goes on in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or other big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Detroit or Chicago. Those big cities are alien to people in much of America. But there is a growing understanding that the problems of big cities contribute significantly to the general problems affecting our nation and have an economic impact, at the very least, on our small towns. For rural America to prosper, we need to make sure that urban America prospers and vice-versa. For example, if cities had more economic growth, taxes could be reduced on all Americans at the federal and state level because revenues would increase and social welfare spending would be reduced. There is indeed a domino effect from our cities to rural communities of the country. Lately, we have been witnessing this in the violent behavior of adolescents. School violence and juvenile crime are no longer endemic to urban living. Take the Bloods and the Crips gangs from Los Angeles, California, and similar gangs; that are all over America. They are in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Des Moines, Iowa; Portland, Oregon; Jackson, Mississippi; Racine, Wisconsin; and Martinsburg, West Virginia. They are literally everywhere, big city and small city alike. In the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 1998 report on the ``State of the Cities,'' findings show that large urban schools still deal with a higher concentration of violence, and the data only represents crimes which were serious enough to report to the police. The School District of Philadelphia's most recent report on school violence shows that in the 1994-1995 academic year, students, teachers and administrators were the victims of 2,147 reported criminal incidents, up by almost 100% from the previous year. These included assault, robbery, rape, and students being stabbed or even shot. The school district also reported troubling news about abysmal attendance rates. On any given day, more than one in every four students are absent. Understandably so, city residents are afraid to continue leading an urban lifestyle. Each day, small business owners question whether they should remain in the city because they fear for the safety of their children, their employees, and ultimately, their businesses. I have personally met and spoken with shop owners in the University City section of Philadelphia who tell me that they look desperately for reasons to stay, but it gets harder and harder. Joblessness and a less skilled work force are additional problems. To facilitate economic development and job creation in the United States, I supported the Balanced Budget Act of 1995, which contained such provisions as the Job Training Partnership Act and the Targeted Job Tax Credit. As Congress put the final touches on that legislation, I circulated a joint letter from several Senators to then-Majority Leader Dole and Speaker Gingrich recommending spurring job creation and economic growth in our cities through several urban initiatives such as: a targeted capital gains exclusion, commercial revitalization tax credit, historic rehabilitation tax credit, and child care credit. Last year, I introduced the ``Job Preparation and Retention Training Act of 1998,'' which was included in the recently enacted Workforce Development Act of 1998. My legislation authorized funding for States to enroll long-term welfare dependents into a training program which would provide the necessary skills to locate and maintain gainful and unsubsidized employment. The last census taken in 1990, reported that New York City led the way, with 1.3 million individuals in poverty. My home of Philadelphia had 313,374 individuals in poverty at that time. And in HUD's 1998 ``State of the Cities'' report, by 1996, one in every five urban families lived in poverty, compared with fewer than one in ten suburban families. These facts emphasize the need for more efforts to be focused on strengthening our inner city businesses which, in turn, will boost local economies and serve to provide more jobs, reduce poverty and, hopefully, reduce crime. I have long supported efforts to encourage the growth of small business. During the 105th Congress, I once again introduced legislation to provide targeted tax incentives for investing in small minority- or women-owned businesses. Small businesses provide the bulk of the jobs in this country. Many minority entrepreneurs, for instance, have told me that they are dedicated to staying in the cities to employ people there, but continue to confront capital access issues. My legislation, the ``Minority and Women Capital Formation Act'' would help to remove the capital access barriers, thereby enabling these entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and payrolls. Municipal leaders are stressing many of the same concerns that business people are voicing. In a July, 1994 National League of Cities report dealing with poverty and economic development, municipal leaders ranked inadequate skills and education of workers as one of the top three reasons, in addition to shortage of jobs and below-poverty wages, for poverty and joblessness in their cities. They said, according to the survey, that more jobs must be created through local economic development initiatives. This ``skills deficit'' is highlighted in an urban revitalization plan prepared in 1991 by the National Urban League called ``Playing to Win: A Marshall Plan for America's Cities.'' The report cites a statistic by the Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills which showed that 60 percent of all 21-25 year-olds lack the basic reading and writing skills needed for the modern workplace, and only 10 percent of those in that age group have enough mathematical competence for today's jobs. The economic problems our cities are facing are not easy to deal with or answer. In a report by the National League of Cities entitled ``City Fiscal Conditions in 1996,'' municipal officials from 381 cities answered questions on the economic state of their cities. In response to state budgetary problems, 21.7 percent of responding cities reduced municipal employment and 18.5 percent had frozen municipal employment. Nearly six out of ten cities raised or imposed new taxes or user fees during the past twelve months. These numbers are of concern to me and I believe they highlight the need for federal legislation to enhance the ability of cities to achieve competitive economic status. An added concern is that city managers are forced to balance cuts in services or enact higher taxes. Neither choice is easy and it often counteracts municipal efforts to retain residents or businesses. One issue, in particular, that is hurting many cities is the erosion of their tax bases, evidenced particularly by middle-class flight to the suburbs. Mr. Ronald Walters, professor of Political Science at Howard University, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in April 1993, stated that in 1950, 23 percent of the American population lived outside central cities; by 1988, that number was up to 46 percent. The District of Columbia's population loss is among the worst in the nation, with a quarter of its population relocating since the 1970s. This trend of shrinking urban populations gives no sign of ceasing. Middle-class families continue to leave for the suburbs where there are typically better public services. These losses are devastating, not only to the financial stability of the city, but to the social fabric as well. On the financial side, statistics show that those people fleeing cities were earning an average of $30,000 to $75,000 a year. On the social side, roughly half of these are African-American Middle-class families. By losing this critical demographic group, the city loses much of what makes it strong. As America's cities struggle with the exodus of residents, businesses and industry, city residents who remain are faced with problems ranging from increased tax burdens and lesser services to dwindling economic opportunities, leading to welfare dependence and unemployment assistance. In the face of all this, what do we do? The federal government has attempted to revitalize our ailing urban infrastructure by providing federal funding for transit and sewer systems, roads and bridges. I have supported this. For example, as a member of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee and as co- chair of an informal Senate Transit Coalition, I have been a strong supporter of public transit which provides critically needed transportation services in urban areas. Transit helps cities meet clean air standards, reduce traffic congestion, and allows disadvantaged persons access to jobs. Federal assistance for urban areas, however, has become increasingly scarce as we grapple with the nation's deficit and debt. Therefore, we must find alternatives to reinvigorate our nation's cities so they can once again be economically productive areas providing promising opportunities for residents and neighboring areas. To address the need for reliable transportation systems in our nation's cities and to provide access to jobs for city residents, I introduced reverse commute and jobs access legislation, which was successfully included in last year's highway and transit reauthorization bill. The bill authorizes $400 million over the next five years in access-to-jobs transit grants targeted at low-income individuals. Up to $10 million per year can be used for reverse commute projects to move individuals from cities to suburban job centers. In addition to support for infrastructure, I believe there are ways Congress can assist the cities. In 1994, Mayor Rendell came up with a legislative package which contains many good ideas. I have taken many of these suggestions and have since added and revised provisions to take into account new developments at the federal, state and local levels to create the ``New Urban Agenda Act of 1999.'' First, recognizing that the federal government is the nation's largest purchaser of goods and services, this legislation would require that no less than 15 percent of federal government purchases are made from businesses and industries within designated urban Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities. Similarly, my bill would require that not less than 15 percent of foreign aid funds be redeemed through purchases of products manufactured in urban Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities. The General Services Administration will be required to submit to Congress its assessment of the extent to which federal agencies are committed to this policy and in general, economic revitalization in distressed urban areas. The second major provision of this bill would commit the federal government to play an active role in restoring the economic health of our cities by encouraging the location, or relocation, of federal facilities in urban areas. To accomplish this, all federal agencies would be required to prepare and submit to the President an Urban Impact Statement detailing the impact that relocation or downsizing decisions would have on the affected city. Presidential approval would be required to place a federal facility outside an urban area, or to downsize a city-based agency. The third critical component of this bill would revive and expand federal tax incentives that were eliminated or restricted in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Until there is passage of legislation on the flat tax, which would provide benefits superior to all targeted tax breaks, I believe America's cities should have the advantages of such tax benefits. These provisions offer meaningful incentives to business to invest in our cities. I am calling for the restoration of the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit which supports inner city revitalization projects. According to information provided by Mayor Rendell, there were 8,640 construction jobs involved in 356 projects in Philadelphia from 1978 to 1985 stimulated by the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit. In Chicago, 302 projects prior to 1985 generated $524 million in investment and created 20,695 jobs. In St. Louis, 849 projects generated $653 million in investment and created 27,735 jobs. Nationally, according to National Park Service estimates for the 16 years before the 1986 Act, the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit stimulated $16 billion in private investment for the rehabilitation of 24,656 buildings and the creation of 125,306 homes which included 23,377 low and moderate income housing units. The 1986 Tax Act dramatically reduced the pool of private investment capital available for rehabilitation projects. In Philadelphia, projects dropped from 356 to 11 by 1988 from 1985 levels. During the same period, investments dropped 46 percent in Illinois and 92 percent in St. Louis. Another tool is to expand the authorization of commercial industrial development bonds. Under the Tax Reform Act of 1986, authorization for commercial industrial bonds was permitted to expire. Consequently, private investment in cities declined. For instance, according to Mayor Rendell, from 1986--the last year commercial development bonds were permitted--to 1987, the total number of city--supported projects in Philadelphia was reduced by more than half. Industrial development or private activity bonds encourage private investment by allowing, under certain circumstances, tax-exempt status for projects where more than 10 percent of the bond proceeds are used for private business purposes. The availability of tax-exempt commercial industrial development bonds will encourage private investment in cities, particularly the construction of sports, convention and trade show facilities; free standing parking facilities owned and operated by the private sector; air and water pollution facilities owned and operated by the private sector; and, industrial parks. The bill I am introducing would allow this. It would also increase the small issue exemption, which means a way to help finance private activity in the building of manufacturing facilities from $10 million to $50 million to allow increased private investment in our cities. A minor change in the federal tax code related to arbitrage rebates on municipal bond interest earnings could also free additional capital for infrastructure and economic development by cities. Currently, municipalities are required to rebate to the federal government any arbitrage--a financial term meaning interest earned in excess of interest paid on the debt--earned from the issuance of tax-free municipal bonds. I am informed that compliance, or the cost for consultants to perform the complicated rebate calculations, is actually costing municipalities more than the actual rebate owed to the government. This bill would allow cities to keep the arbitrage earned so that they can use it to fund city projects and for other necessary purposes. My legislation also provides important incentives for businesses to invest and locate in our nation's cities. Specifically, the bill includes a provision which I have advocated to provide a 50 percent exclusion for capital gains tax purposes for any gain resulting from targeted investments in small businesses located in urban empowerment zones, enterprise communities, or enterprise zones. I also want to note that the exclusion would extend to any venture funds that invest in those small businesses, which is critical because venture funds are often the lifeblood of a small business. This is one of the incentives I recommended to Senator Dole in December 1995 for inclusion in the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 which was later vetoed by President Clinton. A targeted capital gains exclusion will serve as a catalyst for job creation and economic growth in our cities by encouraging additional private investment in our urban areas. A fourth provision of this legislation provides needed reforms to regulations and the financial challenges to obtaining affordable housing. This legislation provides language to study streamlining federal housing program assistance to urban areas into a block grant form so that municipal agencies can better serve local residents. Safe, clean, and affordable housing is not widely available to most low income families. According to the National Housing Law Project, in 1996, only one in four families was eligible to receive HUD assistance, with waits of up to five years. In HUD's most recent annual report, just as many families are still struggling with the lack of affordable housing as they were when a record 5.3 million low-income renters were paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent between 1993 and 1995. This provision of the bill steers the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to take a hard look at these conditions and determine what works and what does not work in federally-subsidized housing and to consider alternatives that will provide suitable homes for America's families. I believe that we as a nation should work toward providing individuals and their families with more opportunities for homeownership which stabilizes a community and would especially restore our cities. Urban homeownership including middle-income homeownership lags behind the suburbs. According to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, city residents of all income levels are less likely to own a home than suburban residents with similar incomes. I hear time and time again from families starting out that they move out to the suburbs for better schools, because central cities lack the property tax base to provide for quality schools. Homeownership is key to saving our cities, both socially and economically. A 1998 Fannie Mae national housing survey indicated that even though homeownership rates continue to increase in the late 1990s, six in every ten renters said that buying a home is a very important priority, if not their number- one priority in life. Yet for so many families financial barriers make that dream unattainable. That is why my bill includes a tax credit to restore the American dream of homeownership. A tax credit could be used by income-eligible individuals and families to purchase homes in distressed areas. In the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, Congress approved such a tax credit for homebuyers in the District of Columbia. While single family home sales can be attributed to a multitude of factors, such as historically low interest rates and a strong economy, let me just share with you some amazing statistics related to homeownership since enactment of the tax credit in the District of Columbia. The Home Purchase Assistance Program through the District of Columbia's Office of Housing and Community Development helped 410 families purchase homes. Further, a group called the ``Washington Partners for Homeownership,'' a collaboration of realtors, banks, community and faith-based organizations, set a goal last year to create 1,000 new homeowners in the District of Columbia for each of the next three years. Remarkably, the Washington Partners have already reached that goal before the end of the first year. I believe that this country will reap extraordinary benefits if we expand such a credit on a national basis, as I propose in the ``New Urban Agenda Act of 1999.'' I believe that the revitalization of cities will require social and economic facets, but it is also imperative that our cities are safe and clean. This last component of my bill helps urban areas to address their unique environmental challenges and reforms Superfund law. First, the legislation authorizes a federal brownfields program to help clean up idle or underused industrial and commercial facilities and waives federal liability for persons who fully comply with a state cleanup plan to clean sites in urban areas pursuant to state law, provided that the site is not listed or proposed to be listed on the National Priorities List. The Environmental Protection Agency currently operates this pilot program under general authority provided by the Superfund law. My legislation would make this a permanent program and substantially increase the funding levels to a $50 million authorized level for Fiscal Year 2000. The EPA could expend funds to identify and examine potential idle or underused Brownfield sites and to provide grants to States and local governments of up to $200,000 per site to put them back to productive use. One such grant has been used to great success by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, and I hope this provision will generate additional success stories of redeveloping urban brownfields. The Brownfields Program allows sites with minor levels of toxic waste to be cleaned up by State and local governments with federal and other funding sources. Companies and individuals who are interested in developing land into industrial, commercial, recreational, or residential use are often reluctant to purchase property with any level of toxic waste because of a fear of being saddled with cleanup liability under the Superfund law. Through expanded Brownfields grants, cleanup at such sites will be expedited and will encourage redevelopment of otherwise unusable urban property. My bill would also waive federal liability for persons who fully comply with a state cleanup plan to clean sites in urban areas pursuant to state law, providing that the site is not listed or proposed to be listed on the National Priorities List. Many states, including Pennsylvania, have developed their own toxic waste cleanup programs and have done good work to clean up many of these sites. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge has developed an extensive plan, where contaminated sites are made safe based on sound science by returning the site to productive use through the development of uniform cleanup standards, by creating a set of standardized review procedures, by releasing owners and developers from liability who fully comply with the state cleanup standards and procedures, and by providing financial assistance. However, the efforts of states like Pennsylvania are often stifled because the federal government has not been willing to work with the States to release owners and developers from liability, even when they fully comply with the state plans. This section of my bill only applies to sites that are not on the National Priorities List. These are sites that the state has identified for which the state has created a comprehensive cleanup plan. If the federal government has concerns with the cleanup procedure or the safety of the site, then the government has full authority to place that site on the National Priority List. The plans, like that developed by Governor Ridge, deal with sites not controlled by the Superfund law. By not allowing the individual states to take the initiative to clean up these sites, and by not providing a waiver for federal liability to those who fully comply with the procedures and standards of the state cleanup, the federal government impedes the efforts of the states to work to clean up their own sites. This provision takes a significant step toward encouraging states to take the responsibility for their toxic waste sites and to encourage the effective cleanup of these sites in our nation's urban areas. The final environmental provision calls for the reauthorization of an existing federal program, which has served cities across the nation very well, but has not been authorized since 1995 and has also been unable to meet the demand for an ``urban greening effort.'' The Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides financial and technical assistance to urban areas to help establish and maintain community parkland and forests in our nation's 45,000 towns and cities. The number of requests for federal assistance and grants exceeds the capacity of the existing Urban and Community Forestry program by eight times. The number of communities assisted through the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program has grown from 7,548 in Fiscal Year 1992 to 11,675 in Fiscal Year 1997, a 56% increase in five years. An enhanced Urban and Community Forestry Program will enable cities to put vacant areas and abandoned structures back into use. There are more than 15,000 vacant lots in Pennsylvania, which as we know, pose serious health and safety risks, detract commercial investments, reduce property values, and cost municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance and lost revenue. The Urban and Community Forestry Program has been very successful due to its flexible design and emphasis on local creativity. In fact, the program has allowed for benefits that go beyond revenue and other economic gains. Many of the formerly broken down concrete lots are now green and welcoming to the community have provided children and their parents with a safe haven for recreation outside the home. Some city public schools have even begun to use these areas as their ``science parks'' for after-school and weekend educational activities. Mr. President, I realize that this is an initial step to reinvesting in our cities. Nevertheless, it is time to take a comprehensive approach to reversing urban decay, which is what I believe my bill can accomplish. It may well be that America has given up on its cities. That is a stark statement, but it is one which I believe may be true-- that America has given up on its cities. But this Senator has not done so. And I believe there are others in this body on both sides of the aisle who have not done so and I invite the input and assistance of my colleagues in order to fashion a strong plan of action to help cities to face their pressing problems. As one of a handful of United States Senators who lives in a big city, I understand both the problems and the promise of urban America. This legislation for our cities is good public policy. The plight of our cities must be of extreme concern to America. We can ill-afford for them to wither and die. I am committed to a new urban agenda that relies on market forces, and not a welfare state, for urban revitalization. I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am introducing, along with the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, legislation to deal with America's cities. Some are urgently in need of assistance. Our legislation is not to add new funding through appropriations but, instead, to have the General Services Administration allocate 15 percent of new expenditures to enterprise zones, to distressed areas, to have Federal buildings constructed, with the priority in cities where there are depressed areas to provide jobs in those areas, and to reinstitute certain historical tax breaks which could be of great benefit for the cities.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, a third legislative matter is a resolution calling for the Budget Committee to allocate an additional $2 billion to the health account to be used for the National Institutes of Health, being offered on behalf of myself and Senator Harkin in our continuing effort to see to it that additional funds are allocated for the National Institutes of Health, which is really the crown jewel of the Federal Government. In fact, Mr. President, it may be the only jewel in the Federal Government. We understand that the allocation in health is to a category, but the funds are very, very limited on our subcommittee. Last year, Senator Harkin, ranking, and I as chairman, were able to take the lead in some $2 billion to NIH, but it was at the expense of other programs which were very, very important for worker safety, for education programs, for other health programs. We are committing this resolution with that specific request to the Budget Committee.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, as the 106th Congress commences, those of us in the Senate and the House have a new opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of the American people. It is a chance for us to learn from the past, determine how best to respond to the challenges that are before us, and forge important alliances which will enable us to pass legislation that is important to this nation. I believe it is clear that one of our first priorities must be additional incremental reforms of our health care system. Mr. President, there is no time to waste. Many of our nation's health care problems are getting worse, not better. In its December 1998 report, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) analyzed the March 1998 Current Population Survey, a document generated yearly by the U.S. Census Bureau. EBRI's analysis tells us that in 1997, about 193 million working-age Americans derived their health insurance coverage as follows: approximately 64.2 percent from employer plans; 13.0 percent from Medicare and Medicaid within a total of 14.8 percent from public sources of coverage; and 6.7 percent from other private insurance. This survey also details another troubling statistic: 43.1 million Americans, or 18.3 percent of Americans aged 18-64, were uninsured. This reflects an increase of 7 percent, or 2.8 million uninsured working-age people, since 1995. Among the elderly, the outlook is a bit brighter, with only 1 percent uninsured, and 96.4 percent deriving coverage from public sources. As I have said many times, we can fix the problems felt by this growing number of uninsured Americans without resorting to big government and without completely overhauling our current system, one that works well for most Americans--serving 81.7 percent of our non- elderly citizens. We must enact reforms that improve upon our current market-based health care system, as it is clearly the best health care system in the world. Accordingly, today I am introducing the Health Care Assurance Act of 1999, which, if enacted, will take us further down the path of the incremental reforms started by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (Kassebaum-Kennedy) and various health care provisions enacted during the 105th Congress. I would note that the final version of Kassebaum-Kennedy contained many elements which were in S. 18, the incremental health care reform bill I introduced when the 104th Congress began on January 4, 1995. I would note that the bill I am introducing today is distinct from my recent efforts regarding managed care reform. During the 105th Congress, I joined a bipartisan group of Senators to introduce the Promoting Responsible Managed Care Act of 1998, a balanced proposal which would ensure that patients receive the benefits and services to which they are entitled, without compromising the savings and coordination of care that can be achieved through managed care. I look forward to working again with my colleagues to enact responsible managed care legislation. The Health Care Assurance Act of 1999 is intended to initiate and stimulate new discussion, so we may move the health care reform debate forward. I welcome any suggestions my colleagues may have concerning how this bill can be improved, as long as such suggestions are consistent with the incremental approach to reform that has proven to be the only way to achieve successful health care reform. Given the importance of enacting this type of legislation, it is worth reviewing recent history which has taught us that bipartisanship is crucial in accomplishing these goals for the American people. In particular, the debate over President Clinton's Health Security Act during the 103rd Congress is replete with lessons concerning the pitfalls and obstacles that inevitably lead to legislative failure. Several times during the 103rd Congress, I spoke on the Senate floor to address what seemed to be the wisest course--to pass incremental health care reforms with which we could all agree. Unfortunately, what seemed obvious to me, based on comments and suggestions by a majority of Senators who favored a moderate approach, was not obvious at the time to the Senate's Democratic leadership. This failure to understand the merits of an incremental approach was demonstrated during April 1993 during my attempts to offer a health care reform amendment based on the text of S. 631, an incremental reform bill I had introduced earlier in the session. This bill incorporated moderate, consensus principles in a reasonable reform package. First, I attempted to offer the bill as an amendment to legislation dealing with debt ceilings. Subsequently, I was informed that the consideration of this bill would be structured in a way that precluded my offering an amendment. Therefore, I prepared to offer my health care bill as an amendment to the fiscal year 1993 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill. To my dismay, Senator Mitchell, then Majority Leader, and Senator Byrd, then Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, worked together to ensure that I could not offer my amendment by keeping the Senate in a quorum call, a parliamentary tactic used to delay and obstruct. I was unable to obtain unanimous consent to end the quorum call, and thus could not proceed with my amendment. Three years later, well after the behemoth Clinton health care reform bill was derailed, the Senate once again endured a lengthy political battle concerning the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill, which I was pleased to cosponsor. We achieved a breakthrough in August 1996, when enough Senators sensed the growing frustration of the American people to finally pass Kassebaum-Kennedy and its vital health insurance market reforms, such as increased portability of health insurance coverage. There is no question that Kassebaum-Kennedy made significant steps forward in addressing troubling issues in health care, although I recognize that there is much more to be done. The bill's incremental approach to health care reform is what allowed it to generate bipartisan, consensus support in the Senate. We knew that it did not address every single problem in the health care delivery system, but it would make life better for millions of American men, women, and children. In retrospect, I urge my colleagues to note a most important fact-- the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill was enacted only after Democrats abandoned their hopes for passing a nationalized, big government health care scheme, and Republicans abandoned their position that access to health care is not really a major problem in the United States which demands Federal action. Perhaps the greatest recent example of the power of bipartisanship took place during the 105th Congress, with the passage of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. This historic bipartisan agreement between Congress and the White House to balance the budget by 2002 extended the life of the vital Medicare hospital trust fund by ten years, while expanding needed benefits for seniors. The new law created a National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare to address the implications of the retirement of the Baby Boom generation, and marked the first balanced Federal budget in thirty years. This landmark accomplishment clearly would not have occurred without all members of Congress and the Administration crossing party lines, compromising, and doing what was right for the American people regardless of political affiliations. We must realize that if we are to continue to be successful in meeting the nation's health care needs, the solutions to the system's problems must come from the political center, not from the extremes. I have advocated health care reform in one form or another throughout my 18 years in the Senate. My strong interest in health care dates back to my first term, when I sponsored S. 811, the Health Care for Displaced Workers Act of 1983, and S. 2051, the Health Care Cost Containment Act of 1983, which would have granted a limited antitrust exemption to health insurers, permitting them to engage in certain joint activities such as acquiring or processing information, and collecting and distributing insurance claims for health care services aimed at curtailing then escalating health care costs. In 1985, I introduced the Community Based Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Projects Act of 1985, S. 1873, directed at reducing the human tragedy of low birth weight babies and infant mortality. Since 1983, I have introduced and cosponsored numerous other bills concerning health care in our country. A complete list of the 26 health care bills that I have sponsored since 1983 is included for the Record. During the 102nd Congress, I pressed the Senate to take action on this issue. On July 29, 1992, I offered a health care amendment to legislation then pending on the Senate floor. This amendment included provisions from legislation introduced by Senator Chafee, which I cosponsored and which was previously proposed by Senators Bentsen and Durenberger. The amendment included a change from 25 percent to 100 percent deductibility for health insurance purchased by self-employed persons, and small business insurance market reforms to make health coverage more affordable for small businesses. When then-Majority Leader George Mitchell argued that the health care amendment I was proposing did not belong on that bill, I offered to withdraw the amendment if he would set a date certain to take up health care, just as product liability legislation had been placed on the calendar for September 8, 1992. The Majority Leader rejected that suggestion and the Senate did not consider comprehensive health care legislation during the balance of the 102nd Congress. My July 29, 1992 amendment was defeated on a procedural motion by a vote of 35 to 60, along party lines. The substance of that amendment, however, was adopted later by the Senate on September 23, 1992 when it was included in an amendment to broader tax legislation (H.R. 11), offered by Senators Bentsen and Durenberger and which I cosponsored. This amendment, which included essentially the same self-employed tax deductibility and small group reforms that I had proposed on July 29th of that year, passed the Senate by voice vote. Unfortunately, these provisions were later dropped from H.R. 11 in the House-Senate conference. On August 12, 1992, I introduced legislation entitled the Health Care Affordability and Quality Improvement Act of 1992, S. 3176, that would have enhanced informed individual choice regarding health care services by providing certain information to health care recipients, would have lowered the cost of health care through use of the most appropriate provider, and would have improved the quality of health care. On January 21, 1993, the first day of the 103rd Congress, I introduced the Comprehensive Health Care Act of 1993, S. 18. This legislation was comprised of reforms that our health care system could have adopted immediately. These initiatives would have both improved access and affordability of insurance coverage and would have implemented systemic changes to lower the escalating cost of care in this country. S. 18 is the principal basis of the legislation I introduced in the 104th (S. 18) and 105th Congresses (S. 24), and the Health Care Assurance Act of 1999, which I am introducing today. On March 23, 1993, I introduced the Comprehensive Access and Affordability Health Care Act of 1993, S. 631, which was a composite of health care legislation introduced by Senators Cohen, Kassebaum, Bond, and McCain, and included pieces of my bill, S. 18. I introduced this legislation in an attempt to move ahead on the consideration of health care legislation and provide a starting point for debate. As I noted earlier, I was precluded by Majority Leader Mitchell from obtaining Senate consideration of my legislation as a floor amendment on several occasions. Finally, on April 28, 1993, I offered the text of S. 631 as an amendment to the pending Department of Environment Act (S. 171) in an attempt to urge the Senate to act on health care reform. My amendment was defeated 65 to 33 on a procedural motion, but the Senate had finally been forced to contemplate action on health care reform. On the first day of the 104th Congress, January 4, 1995, I introduced a slightly modified version of S. 18, the Health Care Assurance Act of 1995 (also S. 18), which contained provisions similar to those ultimately enacted in the Kassebaum-Kennedy legislation, including insurance market reforms, an extension of the tax deductibility of health insurance for the self employed, and deductibility of long term care insurance for employers. I continued these efforts in the 105th Congress, with the introduction of Health Care Assurance Act of 1997 (S. 24), which included market reforms similar to my previous proposals with the addition of a new Title I, an innovative program to provide vouchers to States to cover children who lack health insurance coverage. I also introduced Title I of this legislation as a stand-alone bill, the Healthy Children's Pilot Program of 1997 (S. 435) on March 13, 1997. This proposal targeted the approximately 4.2 million children of the working poor who lacked health insurance. These are children whose parents earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid, but do not earn enough to afford private health care coverage for their families. This legislation would have established a $10 billion/5 year discretionary pilot program to cover these uninsured children by providing grants to States. Modeled after Pennsylvania's extraordinarily successful Caring and BlueCHIP programs, this legislation was the first Republican- sponsored child health insurance bill during the 105th Congress. I was encouraged that the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, signed into law on August 5, 1997, included a combination of the best provisions from many of child health insurance proposals throughout this Congress. The new legislation allocated $24 billion for the next five years to establish State Child Health Insurance Programs, funded in part by a slight increase in the cigarette tax. The bill I am introducing today, the Health Care Assurance Act of 1999, would further augment this new State Child Health Insurance Program and would enable States to cover even more children, and includes new provisions to assist individuals with disabilities to maintain quality health care coverage. My commitment to the issue of health care reform across all populations has been consistently evident during my tenure in the Senate, as I have taken to this floor and offered health care reform bills and amendments on countless occasions. I will continue to urge the Senate to address this vital issue and to stress the importance of the Federal government's investment in and attention to the system's future. As my colleagues are aware, I can personally report on the miracles of modern medicine. Five years ago, an MRI detected a benign tumor (meningioma) at the outer edge of my brain. It was removed by conventional surgery, with five days of hospitalization and five more weeks of recuperation. When a small regrowth was detected by a follow-up MRI in June 1996, it was treated with high powered radiation from the ``Gamma Knife.'' I entered the hospital in the morning of October 11, 1996, and left the same afternoon, ready to resume my regular schedule. Like the MRI, the Gamma Knife is a recent invention, coming into widespread use in the past decade. In July 1998, I was pleased to return to the Senate after a relatively brief period of convalescence following heart bypass surgery. This experience again led me to marvel at our health care system and made me more determined than ever to support Federal funding for biomedical research and to support legislation which will incrementally make health care available to all Americans. My concern about health care has long pre-dated my own personal benefits from the MRI and other diagnostic and curative procedures. As I have previously discussed, my concern about health care began many years ago and been intensified by my service on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which I now have the honor to chair. My own experience as a patient has given me deeper insights into the American health care system beyond my perspective from the U.S. Senate. I have learned: (1) our health care system, the best in the world, is worth every cent we pay for it; (2) patients sometimes have to press their own cases beyond the doctors' standard advice; (3) greater flexibility must be provided on testing and treatment; (4) our system has the resources to treat the 43.1 million Americans currently uninsured, but we must find the way to pay for it; and (5) all Americans deserve the access to health care from which I and others with coverage have benefitted. I have long been convinced that our Federal budget of $1,700,000,000,000, could provide sufficient funding for America's needs if we establish our real priorities. The real question has been whether we have enough doctors, hospitals, medical personnel, etc. to take care of Americans in need of medical attention. I am convinced that we do. The part which has yet to be accomplished is to work out the financing for the delivery of such health care. As specified in the legislation which I have introduced, I am convinced that sufficient savings are possible within the current system to provide health care for all Americans within the current expenditures. I share the American people's frustration with government and their desire to have their problems addressed. Over the past six years, I believe we have learned a great deal about our health care system and what the American people are willing to accept from the Federal government. The message we heard loudest was that Americans did not want a massive overhaul of the health care system. Instead, our constituents want Congress to proceed more slowly and to target what isn't working in the health care system while leaving in place what is working. As I have said both publicly and privately, I am willing to cooperate with the Administration in solving the health care problems facing our country. However, in the past I have found many important areas where I differed with President Clinton's approach to solutions and I did so because I believed that the proposals would have been deleterious to my fellow Pennsylvanians, to the American people, and to our health care system. Most important, I did not support creating a large new government bureaucracy because I believe that savings should go to health care services and not bureaucracies. On this latter issue, I first became concerned about the potential growth in bureaucracy in September 1993 after reading the President's 239-page preliminary health care reform proposal. I was surprised by the number of new boards, agencies, and commissions, so I asked my legislative assistant, Sharon Helfant, to make me a list of all of them. Instead, she decided to make a chart. The initial chart depicted 77 new entities and 54 existing entities with new or additional responsibilities. When the President's 1,342-page Health Security Act was transmitted to Congress on October 27, 1993, my staff reviewed it and found an increase to 105 new agencies, boards, and commissions and 47 existing departments, programs and agencies with new or expanded jobs. This chart received national attention after being used by Senator Bob Dole in his response to the President's State of the Union address on January 24, 1994. The response to the chart was tremendous, with more than 12,000 people from across the country contacting my office for a copy; I still receive requests for the chart. Groups and associations, such as United We Stand America, the American Small Business Association, the National Federation of Republican Women, and the Christian Coalition, reprinted the chart in their publications--amounting to hundreds of thousands more in distribution. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post later stated that he thought the chart was the single biggest factor contributing to the demise of the Clinton health care plan. And, as recently as the November 1996 election, my chart was used by Senator Dole in his presidential campaign to illustrate the need for incremental health care reform as opposed to a big government solution. With the history of the health care reform debate in mind, I have drafted an incremental bill which would provide quality health care without adversely affecting the many positive aspects of our health care system, which works for 81.7 percent of working-age Americans. It is more prudent to implement targeted reforms and then act later to improve upon what we have done. I call this trial and modification. We must be careful not to damage the positive aspects of our health care system upon which more than 193 million Americans justifiably rely. The legislation I am introducing today has three objectives: (1) to provide affordable health insurance for the 43.1 million working-age Americans now not covered; (2) to reduce health care costs for all Americans; and (3) to improve coverage for underinsured individuals, families, and children. This legislation is comprised of initiatives that our health care system can readily adopt in order to meet these objectives, and it does not create an enormous new bureaucracy to meet them. This bill includes provisions to encourage the formation of small group purchasing arrangements, to expand access to health insurance for children, to improve health coverage for individuals with disabilities, to strengthen preventive health benefits under the Medicare program, to increase access to prenatal care and outreach for the prevention of low birth weight babies, to facilitate the implementation of patients' rights regarding medical care at the end of life, to improve health education, to place greater emphasis on and to expand access to primary and preventive health services, to utilize non-physician providers, to reform the COBRA law to extend the time period for employees who leave their jobs to maintain their health benefits until alternative coverage becomes available, to increase the availability and use of consumer information and outcomes research, and to establish a national fund for health research within the Department of Treasury. Taken together, I believe the reforms proposed in the Health Care Assurance Act of 1999 will both improve the quality of health care delivery and will bring down the escalating costs of health care in this country. These initiatives represent a blueprint which can be modified, improved and expanded. In total, I believe this bill can significantly reduce the number of uninsured Americans, improve the affordability of care, ensure the portability and security of coverage between jobs, and yield cost savings of billions of dollars to the Federal Government, which can be used to cover the remaining uninsured and underinsured Americans.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, tomorrow legislation will be introduced by a coalition of bipartisan Senators--Democrats and Republicans--to bring some relief to the steel industry. The steel industry has been very, very hard hit in America. In the past two decades, steel jobs have declined from some 500,000 to about 150,000. Billions of dollars have been invested in the steel industry, and we have had a surge of dumped steel--that is, steel which is sold in the United States at a lower price than it is sold in the country of origin. Russia, with their economy in great distress, will sell steel at any price in the United States to get dollars. A similar problem has evolved, too, in Japan, Korea, Indonesia and other countries. The Senate Steel Caucus, both on the House side and the Senate side, has held hearings. Senator Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Steel Caucus, and I, in my capacity as chairman, will be introducing the legislation tomorrow with many Senators in support--Senator Byrd, Senator Santorum, and many others--as well as representatives of the steelworkers union and the steel industry themselves. On the House side, Representative Regula of Ohio, who chairs the House Steel Caucus, will be joining us in this legislative introduction. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I thank my colleague, Senator Ashcroft, for asking for order. I would like to hear myself and am having some difficulty. As I was saying, Mr. President, notwithstanding the fact that this bill contains funding for many, many vital programs for America, I decided on balance to vote against it because it made such drastic changes in existing procedure where the Constitution gives to the Congress the authority to appropriate, 435 Members in the House and 100 Members in the Senate, and as the arrangements were finally worked out, critical decisions were made excluding the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, excluding the chairmen of the relevant subcommittees such as myself, with only the Speaker, the leader of the Democrats in the House, our distinguished majority leader, and the minority leader in the Senate. I think that is very, very problemsome. During the time allotted to me this morning I intend to summarize my views. Starting first with the accomplishments, it does provide for $83.3 billion in discretionary spending for the subcommittee which I chair which has jurisdiction over three major departments--the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor. There were some very important appropriations items included, such as a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health. My distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin, the ranking member, and I worked very closely on this bill with our staffs, and I learned a long time ago that if you want to get something done in the Congress and the Senate, you have to cross party lines to do it. We added $2 billion to $13.6 billion in the National Institutes of Health budget, with a vision for the 21st century of conquering cancer, which takes the lives of 44,000 women a year from breast cancer, and the lives of many men from prostate cancer, conquering Alzheimer's, arthritis and Parkinson's. We appropriated $1.1 billion for LIHEAP, which is home energy assistance going principally to the poor, significantly to elderly people who only have the option of either heating or eating. We have $2.5 billion for substance abuse. We have appropriated $156 million to protect women from violence, an increase of $21 million over last year. For education programs, the total budget is $32.9 billion, an increase of $3.5 billion over last year. For student aid, so vital for American competitiveness worldwide and to improve quality of life for individuals, we have $9.3 billion, an increase of $369 million over last year, and for Head Start a total of $4.6 billion, an increase of $313 million. We have increased special education program funding to $5.1 billion, and we have put up some $1.2 billion for classroom size reduction, an objective I agree with, although we didn't get there the right way procedurally. The bill further provides for $1.7 billion for job training, very important; $1.3 billion for the Job Corps, $1.4 billion for dislocated workers, $564 million for mine safety, $871 million for summer youth jobs, a program which the House of Representatives had tried to totally eliminate. And why in the face of these important expenditures did I vote against the bill? Because this bill never came to the Senate floor from the subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services and Education Appropriations. My staff and I worked on an expedited basis in August so that on our second day back, September 1, the subcommittee could vote it out. The full committee voted it out on September 3, but it never came up on the Senate floor. And similarly, the House of Representatives took only a small portion of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill up. As a result, when we did not follow the regular order and the customary process, we did not follow the constitutional direction and the direction which the Senate has adhered to for so many years. This was, I think, to the detriment of the bill, although so many important items have been funded, there could have been, I think, a better allocation had the people really responsible been involved throughout. When the chairman of the subcommittee is excluded from the final negotiations and the chairman of the full appropriations committee is excluded, you lose the impact and the experience of the people who have worked most closely on the bill. I would illustrate this point by noting what happened on October 9. The President had a press conference in the Rose Garden severely criticizing the Republican Congress on education, and I was asked to provide part of the response in a subsequent press conference. I did so by pointing out that the House-Senate conference had provided more money on education than the President had requested in his February budget. We had $31.8 billion, contrasted with the President's request for $31.2 billion, meaning that we put up $600 million more than the President asked for. Not unexpectedly, with the President's bully pulpit, his message carried the day and the congressional response was lost in the shuffle. Then we had the issue of reducing average classroom size by hiring teachers, where the President had requested $1.2 billion. What was not ever understood publicly was that those funds were to be provided by moneys from the tobacco settlement. However, there never was a tobacco settlement. The President and his administration never provided any alternative source of funding. Senator Harkin, my distinguished ranking member, and I and the rest of our subcommittee understood that, so we found $300 million for title I, which could have been used for reducing classroom size for next year. This was substantially more than that which could have been expended, and that, too, was lost in the shuffle. What I think is especially disconcerting is the fact that when we Republicans control both the Senate and the House, we should have been able to come to terms in September before the fiscal year ended and submitted bills to the White House, to the President, in regular order where the President would either have to sign them or veto them. Had we done this in regular order, I think, with the public debate focusing on the education issue, for example, the chances were excellent the President would not veto it when it would be understood the Congress had provided more than he had requested and that we had complied with much of his initiative classroom size reduction. But, when those bills were not presented until October and the only other option is closing up the Government, then the leverage is all with the President, and the Congress cannot really perform its appropriation and legislative function. The bills were not presented in September because of very strong disagreements on so many substantive matters which should have been handled by the authorizing committees. There was endless debate on whether there would be student testing, endless debate on organ transplants, endless debate on ergonomics--and we Republicans should have concluded those matters. We should have excluded the legislation, by and large, although realistically you can never exclude it all. And while we should not legislate on appropriations bills, some of that is necessarily done, but should not be done in a quantity to defeat our process of presenting these bills. In the conference we had on October 9, with representatives from the Office of Management and Budget, I raised the question about a disagreement in priorities of some $330 million out of the $32 billion bill--a relatively small part, about one percent. Was the President going to veto our bill over that amount of money, because of those differences in priorities? The Office of Management and Budget representatives said they did not know. I replied if they did not know, they ought not to be in the process, that we ought to be legislating. It would have been a very different outcome had we presented these bills to the President in September and had we focused on precisely what the Congress had done and where the areas of disagreement were, and on the fact that at that stage we had provided more money than the President had requested by $600 million, and that we had taken care of the issue on reduction of classroom size. We live in a society with many, many different views. What has been the strength of the institutions of the American Government has been the procedures which we have established for more than 200 years. Those procedures are for the subcommittee to report, the full committee to report, the matter to come to the floor of the Senate, for 100 Senators to be able to debate and offer amendments--and that was not done. And that was not done in the House. We did not have an actual House-Senate conference on our bill, although we met informally. The product is not what should have been done. We do not live in an oligarchy under the constitutional doctrine which governs our society. But, where you have these decisions made on $500 billion in expenditures and many, many substantive issues at the very last minute, it is an oligarchy. Mr. President, 535 of us have surrendered our power and our authority to a group of 4, and that is not the way the American Government is supposed to run. That has given disproportionate power, enormously disproportionate power, to the President because of the experience we had at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996 when the Government was closed and the Congress got the blame. What I have seen in the time I have been here is when there is blame, you can usually divide it 50/50, right down the middle, half to the Congress and half to the administration. If there is partisan blame, you can divide it right down the middle, half to the Republicans and half to the Democrats. I think the failure to follow regular order and our established procedures, the constitutional mandate and what we have developed as a matter of congressional practice, is very, very, very serious. I think it warrants a very, very strong protest vote, which I have cast. I was interested to hear the comments of the distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, who yesterday made a speech and, in more graphic terms than mine, called this a Frankenstein bill-- it did not have a mother and a father--and said he was going to vote for it. A few minutes ago Senator Byrd approached me on the floor and said he decided to vote against it. I asked him why. He said he had persuaded himself. He went home last night, thought about his speech, decided he was right. He decided he was right on the Frankenstein part; he was wrong on the part to vote for the bill. I said I was delighted to hear that because of the high regard I have for Senator Byrd, also the high regard I have for Senator Santorum, who is presiding at the moment, my colleague from Pennsylvania, who also voted against this bill. We discussed it and he did not quite have the oligarchy in mind, but he agreed with the principle that the 535 of us ought not to cede our power to 4. It is not easy to get to the U.S. Senate. It is not easy to stay here. There is a lot of hard work that goes into what we have done. For example, Senator Santorum and I represent 12 million people and, in chairing the subcommittee on this $83 billion bill, I have given very, very serious consideration to all of these issues and I join him in thinking they should have been legislated in regular order. I, again, compliment my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin, for his diligence and his work and his outstanding staff, Marsha Simon and Ellen Murray. My staff is second to none, with Mark Laisch, Jennifer Stiefel, Jack Chow, Mary Dietrich, Jim Sourwine. Most of all, ``Senator'' Bettilou Taylor--she is technically the clerk--who commented to me that she did not like my negative vote. Here she comes back on the floor. She heard her name mentioned. She thought it might have been interpreted that I was not for education and health care. I think my record is strong enough that my negative vote as a protest to the procedure will be understood in light of all the work we did on these education allocations and health care allocations. And Dan Renberg, who is my deputy chief of staff and legislative director, who is extraordinary in working with Bettilou in handling some 1,300 requests which come to our office, and about five times that many phone calls, and David Urban, my distinguished chief of staff, who also helps in making these legislative arrangements. So, it is with mixed emotions that I vote no because procedures and format are still the most important; that we follow regular order because we don t know about the quality of the next oligarchy of four which may seek control of the appropriations process. I now ask unanimous consent that my full statements on the Omnibus Appropriations bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I would also like today to recognize the efforts of my staff in my personal office and State offices, who help me each day in responding to the needs of 12 million Pennsylvanians and countless other Americans who write, call or visit. I have long said that I believe I have the best staff in the Senate, and I want to convey my appreciation publicly for the work they do on behalf of the taxpayers. Thus, as the work of the 105th Congress comes to a close, I extend my thanks to David Urban, Gretchen Birkle, Molly Birmingham, Kristin Bodenstedt, Jane Brattain, David Brog, Mark Carmel, Allison Cooper, Juliette Cox, Alli DeKosky, Aura Dunn, Jeff Gabriel, Cathy Gass, David Grindel, Peter Grollman, Patricia Haag, Andrea Haer, Alegra Hassan, Kevin Mathis, Pam Muha, Anthony Pitagno, Dan Renberg, Charlie Robbins, Jill Schugardt, Mary Louise Sinclair, Seema Singh, Erin Streeter, Jim Twaddell, John Ullyot, Ron Williams, and Chris Wilson of my Washington office. Similarly, I appreciate the efforts of my Pennsylvania-based staff, which includes Ken Braithwaite, Mary Clark, Anthony Cunningham, Patty Doohan, Kenny Evans, Carmen Santiago, Banita Sharma, Gil Stein, Bella Straznik, Corene Ashley, Stan Caldwell, Katherine Risko, Doug Saltzman, Salena Zito, Lynda Murphy, Tom Bowman, Joe Connolly, Steve Dunkle, Joan Mitchell, Mary Jo Bierman, Andy Wallace, and Vincent Galko.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to honor a special member of my staff who is retiring from government service at the end of the 105th Congress. Mary Louise Sinclair has served with loyalty and with distinction in the United States Senate family for nearly 36 years. During the course of her service in the Senate, Mary Louise has worked for some notable members of this body. She has worked for Senator Everett Dirksen as a secretary from 1962 to 1970. She then joined the staff of Senator Robert Taft as the office manager and secretary, where she stayed for his full term until 1977. My fellow Pennsylvanian, the late Senator John Heinz, was also privileged to have Mary Louise on his staff as a special assistant for a remarkable 13 years from 1978 to 1992, and since 1993, Mary Louise has served with distinction as my Executive Secretary. Through her dedication and diligence, Mary Louise has enabled me to maximize my efficiency to ensure that I am in the best position to represent Pennsylvania. For that, my staff, my constituents, my family and I are very grateful. I applaud her service and offer her, on behalf of my Senate colleagues, our goodwill and best wishes upon her retirement.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I would be pleased to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. SPECTER. Yes, the Senator from New Jersey is correct. The committee intends that the National Pediatric and Family HIV Resource Center should continue to receive adequate funding.

Mr. SPECTER. I appreciate the remarks of my friend from Mississippi. He is correct that Parkinson's disease is a very serious disability, but one for which medical science does hold great promise. In addition, I too would like to commend the efforts of the Parkinson's community who have worked tirelessly to achieve passage of the Udall Act and increase funding for Parkinson's research.

Mr. SPECTER. The gentleman has brought up important issues, which warrant further discussion.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the gentleman from Idaho and look forward to future discussions on his suggestions. It is a pleasure to recognize the sponsor of the Udall Act, and someone who remains very close to Mo and the Udall family, the distinguished Senator from Arizona.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the gentleman for his remarks, and look forward to continuing to work with him on these matters. Now I would like to recognize the other Senate sponsor of the Udall Act, another Senator with a deep and sincere connection to Parkinson's disease, the gentleman from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator from Minnesota and all of my colleagues for their remarks today about Parkinson's research funding through the NIH. I look forward to working closely to address the concerns expressed here today. springfield, vt, workforce development center

Mr. SPECTER. I would be pleased to join my good friend and colleague in a colloquy.

Mr. SPECTER. The Senator is correct. The Appropriations Committee recommendation includes funding for the Springfield Workforce Development Center, and this recommendation is retained in the conference agreement on the omnibus bill. medical university of south carolina

Mr. SPECTER. I would be pleased to hear from the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator for his clarifying statement. hepatitis c funding

Mr. SPECTER. I will be pleased to yield to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator for her question. I agree that more needs to be done by CDC to address the hepatitis C epidemic. The conferees have provided a substantial increase for Infectious Diseases at CDC and I will urge the CDC to allocate increased resources to this matter.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to thank the chairman of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee for having included in this legislation funding for the Drexel University Intelligent Infrastructure Institute. I have been pleased to have worked with Drexel for several years on obtaining funding to establish the institute, which will focus on the link between intelligent transportation systems and transportation infrastructure. Drexel has teamed up with the Delaware River Port Authority to study that agency's infrastructure, which includes four major bridges that provide critical links in the east coast corridor. Congress has previously appropriated $750,000 toward this project and authorized establishment of the institute in the TEA-31 legislation enacted earlier this year. It is my understanding that it is the intent of the managers for the Transportation Appropriations bill that the $500,000 provided for the institute shall be made available pursuant to the provisions of section 5118 of TEA-21, which specifically authorizes the establishment of the Institute.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I would like to speak for a moment on the importance of our veterans and their service to this nation. As you know, November 11th is Veterans Day, the day we honor those who have served in the United States Armed Forces. For over two hundred years, the democratic form of government that so many of us take for granted has survived and prospered in an increasingly dangerous world. The fulfillment of our Declaration of Independence's tenets of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was achieved through the genius and drive of our main resource--our citizens. But that genius and drive could never have occurred without the sacrifice and security provided by those who bore the brunt of our defenses and even gave their lives to this cause. From the early days of our isolated republic to today's challenges as a global leader, this country has trusted and relied on the unwavering protection provided by our men and women in military uniform. Veterans Day provides us an opportunity to reflect upon and recognize those who have served in the world's finest military. We will honor those who have fought in wartime and protected our nation in peacetime; those who have served on the battlefields of the world and in the communities that make up this vast and prosperous nation. As Abraham Lincoln so eloquently articulated in his Gettysburg Address, it is our solemn obligation ``to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced . . . and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'' We should remember these powerful words and continue to do the best that we are able to meet the expectations of those who have guaranteed our freedom. I have long been impressed with so many veterans' commitment to public affairs long after their military service. My frequent meetings with veterans in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania reinforces my view that they are America's finest citizens whose duty did not end with active military service. They remain continued supporters and activists in reminding the U.S. Congress and, indeed, the American people of the need for a strong national defense. It is this lifetime commitment to service that should be recognized on Veterans Day. Since the Senate is not expected to be in session on Veterans Day, I would like to extend my appreciation to all veterans of the United States Armed Forces. To quote Abraham Lincoln again, during his second Inaugural Address he said, ``let us strive on to finish the work we are in; . . . to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. . . .'' November 11th will be a day of recognition to the service of America's 25 million veterans. I am certain that my colleagues will join me in thanking all veterans for their remarkable legacy of commitment to honor, duty, and country.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.