Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. The reason I mention that is that there are, I think, today in our country about 11 million children who have no health care coverage whatsoever, I say to both of my colleagues. And, every year since 1987, employment-based health insurance coverage has been dropping. Do you know what has filled the gap? Medicaid. That is what has filled the gap. I think in Minnesota--I say to my other colleague who is presiding--there are about 200,000 children or thereabouts who are covered by Medicaid. I have to say, as long as we are talking about children, when I see these kinds of dramatic, I think draconian, reductions in reimbursement I have to wonder what the effect will be on those children. That is my first point. My second point, and we can come back to it in debate, but I think it is a point well worth making because these statistics all mean something. My colleagues know this. I am not intending to be self- righteous. I am just saying we need to understand the faces behind the statistics. The second point about Medicaid is that I have heard some discussion majority of Medicaid expenditures in Minnesota, and I am sure other States as well, go toward nursing homes, covering nursing home expenses for elderly people who by definition are in nursing homes because they are frail. Many of them are struggling with diseases and illness. They are hardly powerful. I would say to my colleagues, I do not quite know what we intend to do with the dramatic, draconian cuts in reimbursement, Medicaid-wise. I met with a good number of people from southeast Minnesota last Saturday and there was one man who runs a hospital nursing home in one of our smaller towns in southeast Minnesota. He almost had tears in his eyes. Maybe this is melodramatic. His question was, ``What is going to happen to these people? Will the State pick up the costs? What is going to happen to them?'' That is just a question that I raise. As long as my colleague from Missouri was talking about children, let me make another point, and I would like to commend Senator Moynihan from New York for his powerful voice dealing with the issues of race, poverty, gender, and children in America. As I understand it, in this budget proposal we are talking about something like $20 billion in reduction for food stamps. I would not want any of my colleagues to believe, if they do believe so, that by going after fraud--and there are some, I am sure, abuses that take place--that is how you get a $20 billion reduction. I ask my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, not to be ahistorical and to understand that we had a lot of exposes, a lot of studies on these issues. There was a Field Foundation study. There was a CBS ``Hunger USA'' documentary. And what did those studies point out? What did we see on television? What we saw was that in the United States of America there were children who were suffering from scurvy and rickets, distended bellies, malnutrition, and hunger. As a matter of fact, the expansion of the Food Stamp Program, which is one of the really true safety net programs, led to a dramatic reduction in that malnutrition and hunger among children in America. Are we now going to turn the clock back? I would like to know where the evidence is that says that we can have those kinds of cuts in a major food assistance program without having a serious effect on children, the poorest of the poor in America. So many of my colleagues keep talking about, ``for the sake of children in the future.'' How about the children now? Every 30 seconds a child is born into poverty in America. One out of every four children--poor; one out of every two children of color--poor. What about those children now? I just mentioned two programs with dramatic reductions, draconian reductions. I know we will have time for debate. I have not seen anybody stand up yet. I know that we will have this debate and it should be substantive debate. We respect one another. Tell me how we are going to do that without harmful consequences to those citizens; in this particular case I am talking about children. We ought not to be doing deficit reduction based upon the path of least political resistance, that is to say targeting those with the least amount of political clout. Second, and maybe last point, because I only have 15 minutes today. When I heard my colleague from Missouri--and I am sorry he is not here now for purposes of debate--talk about some of the comments that the First Lady made and Ira Magaziner made about how we could reduce Medicare costs, that is true. But that was in the context of overall health care reform and cost containment systemwide. I say to my colleagues, there are not only consequences to the words that we utter, the words that we speak, there are also consequences to the proposals that we lay out here on the floor of the Senate. I can explain very briefly why in fact the Medicare Program, which is a benefits program passed in 1965, which has made the United States of America a better country, and not just for the senior citizens but for all of their children and their grandchildren, has had increasing costs. I can explain why. We have to invest a significant amount of resources into financing Medicare because a larger and larger percentage of our population are over 65, and a larger and larger percentage of the over-65 population are in their eighties. With that comes more illness and higher health care costs. That's why it is important to look at per capita numbers when we are talking about cuts. We finance it as a nation because it says a lot about who we are. That is what Senator Humphrey from Minnesota meant when he said the test of our country and our society and our Government is how we treat people in the dawn of their lives, the children; the twilight of their lives, the elderly; and those in the shadow of their lives, disabled people struggling with illness, and of course the poor people. I do not think this budget meets that standard laid out by the late, great Senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey. Mr. President, I heard some reference to comments of the President and others about health care reform. But the first thing I would say to my colleagues is this will not work. If you single out one sector, one group of people, you can talk to any of your providers and they will tell you out front and up front that they will shift the cost. They have to. It is a shell game. We should have learned this in the debate on health care last time. And by the way, I say to my colleague who is now presiding, that in Kings County, NY, Medicare pays $646 per month per enrollee to an HMO, whereas in Hennepin County, MN, HMO's get $362 per month per enrollee. What will happen is, if our reimbursement is already rock bottom low, especially for those States that have done a good job of keeping the costs down, then the providers have no other choice but to shift the cost. They then shift the cost to the employers and the private insurance companies that then raise the costs, and then it gets shifted back to the employees, and more people are forced to drop their coverage because it's unaffordable. Mr. President, it will not work if we just shift costs. Talk to people in rural America, not just senior citizens. Talk to the care providers, talk to the nurses, talk to the doctors, talk to the public health people. It will not work. Mr. President, the essential problem with some of these proposals is, A, they do not meet the standard of fairness; B, I do not believe that they are fair just in terms of where the most vulnerable citizens fit in or do not fit in to this equation, and on the Medicare front and the Medicaid front, as public policy, they do not work. Welcome to health care reform. Tomorrow, when we have our amendment out on Medicare, we will have an opportunity to really debate this at great length. Finally, Mr. President, as a former teacher, I really do believe it is extremely shortsighted to make a lot of these cuts. As a matter of fact, I think what I might do in the course of the debate is bring out the Kasich budget which was passed by the House of Representatives so we could have a vote on that on the floor of the Senate since I think it does an even more draconian job when it comes to cutting higher education. But I would just argue today that it is myopic, it is shortsighted not to invest in young people and not to invest in their education. I could boil it down to the following kind of analysis in less than 2 minutes, I hope. If you want to have real welfare reform: A good education, a good job, and decent health care. If you want to reduce poverty: A good education, a good job, and decent health care. If you want to reduce violence: A good education, a good job, and decent health care. If you want to have a stable middle class: A good education, a good job, and decent health care. If you want to compete in the international economic arena: A good education, a good job, and decent health care. And if you want to have a representative democracy with men and women who can think on their own two feet and understand the world, the country, and the community that they live in, what they can do to make it a better world and a better country and a better community, keep your focus on a good education, a good job, and decent health care. This budget moves us precisely in the opposite direction. It is profoundly mistaken for our Nation. I yield the floor. Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. OK. I ask my colleague, at some point in time during the debate it would be helpful to get those numbers.

Mr. WELLSTONE. The per capita growth rate for Medicaid expenditures-- after the proposed cuts--would be about 1.4 percent.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, when I come to the floor sometimes I just like to respond to what my colleagues have said. Sometimes that ends up being debate. And then sometimes we come back to it later on. My colleague from Missouri is a friend. I think I enjoy working on the Small Business Committee about as much as I enjoy working on any committee. But when my colleague said the attitude in Missouri is, ``Show me,'' and he talked about children, I would remind him and I would remind my good friend from New Mexico that we have not had a lot of discussion about children yet. I am going to have several amendments on the floor eventually. But in talking about the health care cuts, there has been more of a focus on Medicare and less of a focus on Medicaid. My understanding--and maybe these numbers are a little bit off--but my understanding is that with the proposed Medicaid cuts, we would be capping the per capita growth rate for expenditures under that program at about 1.4 percent. That is compared to a growth rate of about 7 percent projected for private expenditures? Am I wrong about these figures?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from New Mexico, might I first congratulate, if you will, sing praise of my colleague from Oregon. First of all, I very much appreciate his remarks and want to be a part of this effort. I know last night my colleague from Oregon was given recognition that he richly deserves from the Parkinson's community for his work in introducing the Morris Udall legislation, and as the son of two parents who had Parkinson's disease, I would like to thank my colleague from Oregon for his work and also for, I think, a very eloquent statement. We want to make sure one group of people struggling with a disease is not pitted against another group. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after my colleague from Missouri is finished with his remarks, that I then be able to speak for 15 minutes, followed by my colleague from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, for 15 minutes as well, and then I understand we will rotate back.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, might I inquire--I am not trying to get the floor--are we rotating, I ask my friend from New Mexico?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want the majority leader to know--and I will share this amendment--I have one amendment which I think may be noncontroversial. I can limit it to 10 minutes. I would like to at least show it to colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is on the Medicare Select. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern--my profound concern and disquiet--about what appears to be a campaign to rush a bill through the Senate, and by so doing deprive this body--and the American people--of a full and sober accounting of what this bill would do. Of course, I am referring to Senate bill 395, the Alaska Power Administration Asset Sale and Termination Act. And right there in the title--``Asset Sale''--we have what this bill is all about. Let me be blunt; this bill is about one thing: Selling off as much of America's strategic natural resources as fast as we can in the interest of chasing a quick buck. I understand there are important issues in this bill that deserve discussion--and I have been prepared to have that discussion here on the Senate floor. It should be a complete and thorough discussion and clearly we are not in a position to do that now. Mr. President, the Senate is about to begin work on one of the most critically important tasks that it has--that is the debate over the budget. The Sunday talk shows and newspaper opinion columns recently have been filled with news about the budget--the programs that may get cut, the poor and underserved who will suffer under those cuts, how much the rich would get even richer under certain tax-cut proposals. I am reasonably sure that all my colleagues, like myself, are spending most of their time these days in preparation for the budget debate--and well they should. That is precisely why, Mr. President, I am puzzled--and troubled-- that the majority leader should at this particular moment have brought Senate bill 395 up for consideration. It is not like the Senate has not been working steadily--for example, as soon as we finished up what was a rigorous debate on product liability reform, we turned to the important matter of interstate waste disposal which we have just reached agreement on. And its not as if this bill were one that could be easily or quickly disposed of--for it should not. Mr. President, I may wonder out loud about the timing of bringing this bill up at this time. With the media and most Member's attention focused on more important matters--the Nation's budget--is now the time to move on a bill that will send American oil overseas? Because that is exactly what this bill will do--by lifting the long held ban on exporting Alaskan oil, it will allow the oil companies to take American oil and sell it to the highest bidder overseas. Is now the time to move on a bill that will increase pressure to open up one of the only remaining pristine wilderness areas in the United States--the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--to big oil and gas drilling? Because that is exactly what this bill will do--it will deplete our national oil reserves by sending American oil to other countries, and increase the pressure to open up the ANWR. The distinguished Senator from Alaska and bill author Senator Murkowski admitted as much when he told the Anchorage Daily News on February 20 of this year that if we do not open up the ANWR, ``the oil on the West Coast is going to come from Colombia and it is going to come in on foreign vessels.'' And even yesterday on the floor, my distinguished colleague again said that lifting the export ban will increase pressure to open up new potential fields for drilling. Mr. President, is now the time to move on a bill that could make the United States even more dependent on foreign oil? At time when this country is importing record amounts of oil, is now the time to move on a bill that would likely increase our oil imports? Does that sound like a long-term strategy to make the United States more secure, more prepared, more energy-independent? I do not think so. Mr. President, what is being asked for here is a special exemption just for the state of Alaska. By law, no State--let me repeat, no State--may export oil unless it is found to be in the national interest to do so. Is exporting Alaskan oil in the Nation's best interest? On this matter I prefer to recall the words of my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens]. In response to a question, Senator Stevens on the floor of this body on July 12, 1973, said: ``I will assure the Senator from New Hampshire that so long as I am in the Senate, I will oppose the sale of Alaska's oil to Japan.'' The position of the distinguished Senator from Alaska was correct then, and it is correct now.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I just had a chance to come to the floor now, and I had anticipated that this debate could go on through tomorrow. I understand that, for a variety of different reasons, we are going to go to final vote. I want to go on record--and I will have a more complete statement--I believe that this piece of legislation is misguided. I am in profound disagreement with it. The particular problem I have is that now when we open up the exporting of the oil, I think we get back to all of the ways in which we as a nation still are so dependent upon the imports. I worry about this being essentially the first step toward opening up oil drilling at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I want to simply say that I think, for some very basic important environmental reasons, this piece of legislation is mistaken. I also have some concerns about the basic environmental safety reasons that have to do with the shipping of this oil across the sea. I do not know exactly what protection has been built in. All in all, I think it is a mistake. I have to say to you, Mr. President, that my only regret is that I was at another meeting dealing with a piece of legislation that I have been working on for a couple of years. So I was not able to be here during some of the debate and now do not really have time to lay out on the floor a full statement or be involved in a full debate. I hope colleagues will vote against this. I hope colleagues will vote against this, I think, on very solid environmental grounds. I hope colleagues will vote against this understanding that I think this is the first step toward opening up ANWR. We went through this last Congress. It was very contentious. Maybe it was the Congress before, when I first came to the Senate. We actually had a filibuster against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I think that is where we are heading with this legislation. I think it is part of the effort to get there. I have appreciation for my colleague from Alaska on a personal level. I know him to be incredibly hard working, and he cares fiercely about his State. I am in profound disagreement with this. I hope we will have some strong ``no'' votes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wonder whether I might ask my colleague from Alaska a question. I am assuming that my colleague intends to go to a vote very soon, is that correct?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I wonder whether I could simply take a minute to speak before the final vote. My colleague has the floor, so I will wait until he is done.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, I thought I might just respond very briefly to my colleagues about the budget and specifically about Medicare. Mr. President, let me just simply say that the most fundamental problem about the proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, up to about $400 billion between now and 2002, is that these cuts reflect, I fear, a real lack of knowledge about health care policy. That is what bothers me more than anything else, Mr. President. Mr. President, no one should be surprised about the increase in the cost of Medicare, which, by the way, is a benefits program. It is not an actuarial program. It is a commitment we made in 1965; by no means perfect. Catastrophic expenses are not covered, prescription drug costs are not covered. There are many gaps. But, Mr. President, the reason that this is an expensive program and the reason the expense increases is because more and more of our population are aging and more and more of the aged population are now in their eighties. Obviously, we are not going to be able to do anything about that, and I do not think we want to do anything about that. The second reason is general inflation. The third is medical inflation. Mr. President, the problem with this proposal is you cannot single out one part of the health care costs, one segment of the population and cut there without very serious consequences. Let me spell out a couple. First of all, you do ration. This time we really do ration. Last year, last Congress, there was a hue and cry about rationing when we wanted to have universal coverage. You are going to ration by age, you are going to ration by income, and you are going to ration by disability. Mr. President, that is what happens when you just pick out one part of the health care costs and you target the elderly and you target low income, and I want to talk about Medicaid as well. Second of all, the reason the business community, the larger businesses--and I think they are going to get joined by other businesses as well--are going to be uniformly opposed to this--and we are already hearing from the business community--is because it is just going to get shifted to them. This is the problem of charge shifting, I say to my colleague, of cost shifting. This is the shell game to this whole proposition. When you pay less than what the providers need, when you do not have adequate reimbursement, which is already too low in rural America, those providers have no other choice but to shift it to those who can pay. That is private health insurance. Then businesses are hurt more. Then employees are hurt more. That is what is going to happen. And more people get dropped. You are going to have a huge amount of cost shifting. You cannot single out one segment of the population. You cannot do it. Welcome to health care reform. That is what we have to get back to. Mr. President, third of all, in rural America, in rural Minnesota, many of our hospitals and clinics have 75 percent of their patient mix financed by Medicare payments. These hospitals are already having a difficult time. They are going to go under. It is not crying wolf; that is what is going to happen. That is exactly what is going to happen, Mr. President. Fourth of all, and there are a lot of ``alls,'' but there is another issue I want to talk about as well. But fourth of all, I smile when I hear some of my colleagues make these proposals about vouchers; people can go out and purchase their own health insurance and people have the freedom to do so. Has anybody ever heard of preexisting condition? Do you think that these health insurance companies are going to grant coverage to people who are old and sick? They do not do that. It is called preexisting condition. By the way, managed care plans, by and large, have been most interested in people that are healthier. I am telling you right now, these cuts--they say they are not cuts--are in relation to an ever- growing percentage of the population who are aged, many who require ever more by way of medical care. I will tell you what, if it is my father and mother--both of them had Parkinson's disease--you better believe I want to make sure they get the best care. So do not tell me you are not going to seriously cut into the quality of care for older Americans. You certainly are. In addition, you are going to cause a lot of havoc in this whole health care system. Just ask doctors, hospitals, clinics, all sorts of consumer organizations, all sorts of other people whether or not that will not be the case. So, Mr. President, the irony is we get back to health care reform. There were some very interesting proposals about how to contain costs which we have to do if we are willing to have the courage to go forward. But this just picks out one segment of the population, and, in that sense, it is not intended but I think it will be very cruel in its effect. I do not think it is an intended effect. And it will create widespread havoc in the health care field. No question about it. From where do you think the teaching hospitals are going to get their funding?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, to shift, I want to talk about this 1995 farm bill, and I want to talk about what has come out of the Budget Committee. I thought we were going to have a farm bill as opposed to just drastic budget cuts. The document that comes out of the Senate proposes cuts of $28 billion over 5 years and $45 billion over 7 years. A fair percentage of these cuts, the majority of these cuts are in nutrition programs--food stamps, Women, Infants and Children Program, School Lunch Program. By the way, my colleagues in the Senate have gone on record that we will not take any action to create more hunger or homelessness among children. We had studies in the mid- and late 1960's about hunger in America, TV documentaries. That is when we expanded the Food Stamp Program. Guess what? You bet it was a program that worked. I am not going to let anybody get away with talking about fraud here and fraud there. Yes, there are examples of fraud, no question about it, which should be stopped, but on the whole, this Food Stamp Program has made a gigantic difference in reducing hunger and malnutrition in the United States of America. Now we want to have drastic cuts in the Food Stamp Program, Women, Infants, and Children Program, and, in addition, you go after the deficiency payments, the target prices, I say to the Chair, for farmers. The farmers in Minnesota are real clear. We took a big hit last time around on deficit reduction, and people in agriculture in my State are not opposed to deficit reduction, but they want to see some standard of fairness. What family farmers say in Minnesota is, ``If you give us a price in the marketplace, you can eliminate the target prices, you can eliminate the deficiency payments.'' But if we do not have a fair price in the marketplace and you have drastic cuts in deficiency payments, you will erode family farm income, you will erode the value of the land and just as sure as that happens, we will see family farmers go under. This is simply unacceptable. If you want to raise the loan rate to a higher level, if you want to give us a fair price in the marketplace, great, that is what people want. But instead what we have had is a policy of low prices which, by definition--correct me--means target price deficiency payments are higher, then that is now used as an excuse for cutting these programs, when we have already taken one hit after another. The future for agriculture in this country is a fair price in the marketplace. The future for agriculture is let us put value to our products. In Minnesota, we lead the Nation with farmer-owned value- added farm co-ops. That is a big part of what people want to do. But we are not interested in not getting the fair price in the marketplace, not having access to capital to move forward with our own cooperatives, not being able to keep the value of what we produce in our communities and, in addition, seeing severe cuts in programs that provide needed income to family farms. That is what these budget cuts do, Mr. President. That is what these budget cuts do. most difficult to bear? Why ask the very people who cannot tighten their belts to tighten their belts? Where is the Minnesota standard of fairness? I do not see a focus on cutting more unneeded military and corporate welfare spending. I do not see a focus on eliminating lucrative tax breaks for special interests. I do not see a focus on moving away on the House side, and it seems to be that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have split on this, on dealing with the problem of tax cuts for wealthy people. What are we talking about? We are talking about $370-some billion, the vast amount of which flows to people on the top. If you have an income of $200,000 a year, it is a break of about $30,000. If you have a family income of under $30,000 a year, it is a break of about $100 a year. What are we talking about here? Where is the standard of fairness? Mr. President, over and over and over again, through the time of this 104th Congress, I have been on the floor. I remember when I first uttered these words, I thought to myself, ``Are you just giving a speech or is it going to happen?'' I had to believe it was going to happen to say it. I said that my fear is the deficit reduction is going to be based on the path of least political resistance. That is exactly what is going on. I remember David Stockman's book about the early eighties. He said what we should have done was go after the weak claims, not the weak claimants. We are not going after the weak claims, we are not going after the corporate welfare, we are not going after the military contracts, we are not going after the tax breaks, but we are going after the family farmers, we are going after the children, we are going after senior citizens, we are going after education. There is no standard of fairness whatsoever. It is all based upon who are the folks who have the financial and the political clout to get their voice heard here and who are the vast majority of the people who are shut out of the process. We are going to have one sharp budget debate. When it gets to Medicare and Medicaid, I am going to insist that my colleagues know this policy well and understand exactly what the consequences are of what they are doing. When it comes to the cuts in agriculture--disproportionate cuts--I want to make sure that people know that we are talking about farmers not out of sight out of mind, but the producers in this country, and what this is going to do to family farmers. When it comes to education, I want people to understand the consequences of what it means when we do not invest in education and young people. When it comes to children and child nutrition programs, I want to make this argument: Do not go after the most vulnerable citizens in this country. When it comes to alternatives, I want to talk about the corporate welfare, I want to talk about the tax dodgers, I want to talk about the military contract, and I want to talk about how we really can contain health care costs. I look forward to this debate. I hope all of the people in the United States of America are engaged in it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to a subject that is of the greatest importance to many communities in my State of Minnesota, and indeed to communities across the country. The topic is flow control, and particularly as it relates to S. 534, the Interstate Transportation of Municipal Solid Waste Act of 1995. For those Senators who may not be familiar with the subject of flow control--although you are likely to be very familiar with it once we all finish with this bill--you should take a moment and talk to the people in your communities who are responsible every day of the week for picking up the trash, finding a way to dispose of it, and doing so in an affordable and ecologically sound manner. People like Mr. Rob Dunnette, the plant manager at the Olmstead County Waste-To-Energy facility in Rochester, MN. Mr. President, in 1980 my State of Minnesota, the cost of disposing of solid wastes in municipal landfills was on the rise * * * and the amount of available landfill space was on the decline. ``At that time,'' says Mr. Dunnette, ``our landfills were filling up, and there was a lot of material going into landfills that shouldn't have.'' The Minnesota State legislature responded by passing the Solid Waste Management Act of 1980, an act which sought to give local communities the tools they needed to deal with the landfill problem. One of those tools was the ability to take on for themselves the authority to control the flow of municipal solid waste. Says Mr. Dunnette, ``The Feds and the State told us to do something different, do something better * * * so we did.'' Mr. President, what Olmstead County did was to adopt flow control. It obtained $27 million in municipal bonds for the construction of three disposal facilities--one for hazardous waste, one for recyclables, and one to convert the remaining solid waste into steam, which was used to heat neighboring buildings and generate electricity. The entire plan was based on what the State and Federal Government had been encouraging communities to do for years--namely, to adopt flow control authority to integrate and consolidate the disposal of municipal solid wastes. And it worked. In fact because of the many counties--like Olmstead County--that began to engage in flow control, my State of Minnesota became a national example of how flow control could be an effective tool in managing our local solid waste streams in an economically and ecologically sound manner. That is until May 15, 1994, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that flow control authority was unconstitutional unless explicitly granted by Congress. This is largely why all of us are here on the floor today, talking about flow control. Mr. President, the issue is simple. The bill before us today, as it is written, excludes many Minnesota communities that have floated millions of dollars in municipal bonds to build facilities under the presumption that they could engage in flow control. But there is a solution to this problem. Mr. President, I have prepared an amendment, which would ensure that all of the Minnesota counties that had engaged in flow control and had invested money into facilities would be allowed to continue doing so. It clears up a possible misunderstanding, and I thank my colleagues for accepting it. Let us be clear: My amendment would not authorize flow control for any new communities. Some communities have had good experience with it; clearly, however, it is not right for everyone. What I am saying is that this is a decision that should not be made here in Washington, but rather in the communities directly affected. My amendment would not require anybody to use flow control. It would only allow those that had been encouraged to engage in flow control since 1980 by the State and Federal Governments, to continue to do so. However without my amendment, millions upon millions of dollars in municipal bonds in Minnesota could be put at risk. As Mr. Dunnette said, ``We're 8 years into our 20-year bond * * * without this fix, it is possible, if not probable, that we may default on those bonds.'' Mr. President, it is as simple as that. If ever there was a clear example of a States-rights issue, this is it. We need to address this issue now, but we need to do so in a manner that is responsive to our communities. Our communities are telling us loud and clear what they need. I hope my colleagues will listen to them. Mr. President, this is an amendment that really just clears up a possible misunderstanding. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island, the Senator from Montana, and the Senator from New Hampshire for accepting this amendment. This amendment makes it clear that when a county has gone forward with its own flow control, has bonded, and is implementing this, that they clearly will be covered by this bill. I believe the managers have accepted this amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent further reading be dispensed with.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia for being kind enough to defer to me. I am hoping that we will be able to go forward with an amendment, if we can do it in a very brief period of time. I asked the Senator from West Virginia for his permission to do so. I will wait for a moment, if the Senator would be patient. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wanted to say to the majority leader and to the managers that I appreciate wanting to move forward. We are trying to work out something on an amendment right now. I think it is an important piece of legislation. I hope we are close. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I again would like to thank my colleagues. This was, for a good many counties in Minnesota, a very, very important question. For all Senators, whether Democrats or Republicans, it always feels good to come through for people in your State. I worked hard at this. I thank my colleagues for their cooperation. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I want to speak about this legislation that is before the body, and I would like to talk about what I think is at stake in the vote that we just cast and what would be at stake in some votes that we will also be casting over the next day or day and a half. As I see it, we started out with a bill that was unfair, which I think tipped the scale of justice away from consumer protection and in favor of corporate wrongdoers. Then as we went along, there was an overreaching by some of the insurance companies and other big corporate defendants, and yet more amendments were attached onto this bill making it truly awful. Then as a result of several cloture votes--when it was clear that this piece of legislation with all of the additional awful amendments could not pass--it was stripped down to now being just profoundly wrong for people in this country, which is not what I would call much of an improvement. Mr. President, I am not a lawyer. But as I understand the features of this bill there is a tremendous amount of unfairness. I quite frankly cannot figure out why this body went ahead and invoked cloture. First of all, there is still a cap on punitive damages, as I understand it, of $250,000 or twice compensatory damages. Compensatory means both the economic and the noneconomic damages. So that, for example, if you were not an executive of a large company but a wage earner, if you did not make as much money, if you were a woman--women generally speaking make less than men in the work force--or if you were a senior citizen, and you were hurt by exactly the same behavior and received exactly the same harm from exactly the same defendant as some CEO, there would be differences in terms of what the award would be. The punishment would be greater for hurting the CEO. This is still an absurd result and still an indefensible one. When I spoke last week I asked my colleagues to consider the faces of people who will be hurt by this provision. LeeAnn Gryc from my State of Minnesota was 4 years old when the pajama she was wearing ignited leaving her with second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of her body. An official with the company that made the pajamas had written a memo 14 years earlier stating that because the material they used was so flammable the company was ``sitting on a powder keg''. This latest proposal, the Gorton-Rockefeller substitute, would cap the punishment the defendant receives. How would this affect LeeAnn? It is not clear. All of that would depend upon what kind of compensatory damages the jury awards. Are we really willing to sit here in Washington, DC, and change that and preempt Minnesota law and make that kind of determination? Mr. President, this proposed improvement has new language which would allow a judge to award higher punitive damages than the caps would otherwise provide if the judge thinks it is necessary to serve the twin purposes of punishment and deterrence. Again, first of all, what we do is set this cap and it is either $250,000 or twice a combination of economic and noneconomic damages which is discriminatory, by the way, toward low income, moderate income, middle income in terms of how that formula works out. Then we go on. When you think about the case of LeeAnn Gryc, or the case of a whole lot of other people who are hurt in this country, who is prepared to say that the cap ought to be $250,000 or a little above? Who is prepared to say that a defendant should be punished less because he or she hurt a wage earner as opposed to a CEO of some of the largest companies in this country? I do not see the Minnesota standard of fairness. The new language then, in what is apparently supposed to be an improvement, allows the judge to award more punitive damages than the caps would otherwise provide, if the judge thinks that it is necessary to serve the twin purposes of punishment and deterrence. But what happened to the jury? People on juries elect us to office. We have all juries to elect us to office. But all of a sudden we do not trust them to sit in judgment of their peers. They sit in judgment of us, do they not? Are not they usually the finders of fact? I would think that it would be difficult to find some standard of fairness where we essentially remove juries from this important process. Then I was surprised to find in what is apparently supposed to be an improvement a provision saying that if we are worried about the backlog of cases and paperwork reduction and all of the rest, we tell judges that it is OK to go above the caps whenever they think it is necessary, but we can also count on an additional court proceeding. On the bottom of page 22 in the Gorton-Rockefeller substitute, it says that if a defendant does not like the judge's decision to go above the caps, ``the court shall set aside the punitive damages award and order a new trial on the issue of punitive damages only.''. So what we get back to is essentially a meaningless provision where we go to yet another trial if the defendant does not like the decision the judge has made. My colleague, Senator Levin from Michigan, I thought came out here with a lucid presentation of this problem. Joint liability I think is the thorniest issue. Actually in the Labor Committee, when we were talking about this question, I may or may not have said thinking out loud that I struggled with this question. But I do not think the substitute does anything to correct the problem. It eliminates joint liability for noneconomic damages. Some of my colleagues have referred to this as the ``deep pocket pays problem.'' But I think they are wrong. This is really a ``victim pays problem.'' I will tell you that it is really a difficult question. Suppose a company is responsible for only a portion of what it would take to restore a victim to whole, compensatory damage. Yet with joint liability that company might have to be responsible for more than its fair share. That does not make a lot of sense. It does not seem as if it is fair. But, Mr. President, now what we have is a provision which essentially says to the consumer, to the citizen that is hurt, to the citizen that is injured, maimed, that they will always have to assume some of those damages, if one of the responsible parties cannot pay. I do not see the standard of fairness. In my State of Minnesota we came up with what I think is a reasonable compromise; that is, we set a threshold. I think it was 15 percent. What we said was that, if you are responsible for less than 15 percent of the overall damage, then you would not have to be responsible for more than your fair share. But, Mr. President, it does not make any difference what Minnesota has done. We have struggled with the problem. We have come up with a middle ground. But that all is preempted by this piece of legislation. Mr. President, it just sounds like a clever political argument. But it really is not. So many people have talked about decentralization. So many people have talked about relying more on States and local governments being the decisionmakers. But in this particular case, we are preempting some of the good work that has been done in a good many States in this country, and I would put Minnesota at the very top. Mr. President, there are huge problems with this piece of legislation. It is a giveaway to corporate wrongdoers. I think it is a profound mistake. We did not really have that much debate on the whole question of the 20-year statute of repose. But, again, let me just simply say, that regardless of how you look at it, I think again this is arbitrary and indefensible. What possible justification is there for it? After all, if a product is defective and does not hurt anybody until it is over 20 years old, is the harm to the victim any less? Is the responsibility of the manufacturer any less? I talked about Patty Fritz from Minnesota. She is pretty well known in our State, and she is pretty well known in our country for her courage. In her particular case, her daughter, Katie, was crushed to death by a defective garage door opener. If it had been after 20 years, if the company had produced this product which was defective from the word go but she had only been hurt after 20 years, does that mean the damage to that family is any less? Does that mean the responsibility of the company is any less? Mr. President, we are closing the courthouse door to people who are hurt by products produced by some of the businesses--thank God, not many of the businesses--within our country. Some of my colleagues came out on the floor of the Senate with a bill last week. Then there were amendments, which, as I said before, made it a truly egregious piece of legislation. We were successful in opposing a good number of cloture motions. Now the bill has been stripped away of some of the worst provisions, but it is still a piece of legislation which is profoundly anti-consumer, profoundly antiordinary citizen, and I think it tips the scales of justice way too far in the direction of corporate wrongdoers and really denies people some of the redress for grievances that they currently have within our court system. Finally, I think there is a gigantic problem with this Federal preemption. If a State like the State of Minnesota has come up with some reasonable middle-ground proposals to deal with the problems of excessive litigation, to deal with some of the problems of joint liability, to try to have some fairness between the businesses and the consumers and the lawyers, it seems to me States ought to be able to hold on to some of the legislation they passed and not be preempted by this national legislation. So, Mr. President, I hope we will have further debate on this piece of legislation, and I hope my colleagues will oppose it. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, am I correct that we are now on the product liability bill?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. This editorial in the Washington Post yesterday challenged the new congressional majority to enact a number of tough, sweeping political reform measures that have been proposed by a number of us in Congress but that have been bogged down for a number of years. The Post observed in this editorial that the simplest and most straightforward of these reforms is legislation to impose a tough, sweeping ban on gifts, meals, vacation travel, and other perks--the same provisions that were killed at the end of the last Congress. This is legislation that I have worked on with Senators Levin, Feingold, Lautenberg, and others. Again, the simplest and most straightforward of the major items on the real reform agenda, if we are serious about not separating the lives we live from the words we speak, is legislation that would impose a tough sweeping ban on gifts, meals, vacation, travel, and other perks--the same provisions that were killed by a Republican-led filibuster in the waning days of the last Congress. Mr. President, the President called for lobbying reform and a gift ban in his State of the Union Message. But nothing has been put forward by my colleagues in the majority. Frozen like deer in the headlights, with the exception of the Chair, they refused to move forward on the gift ban. Enthusiastic about slashing free or reduced-price school lunches, and the Chair is an exception, and I know there are some other colleagues that are an exception, but I will hold true that statement I am about to make--enthusiastic about slashing free or reduced-price lunches for children, reform opponents wither when it comes to eliminating free lunches for Members of the Congress. I mean some of the same colleagues who do not hesitate to vote to scale back school lunch programs are also the ones who voted to continue to allow free lunches for themselves. I do not think this bitter irony will be lost on the American people. I intend to make sure, along with other colleagues, that in a very short period of time, as soon as appropriate, we will have this amendment out on the floor and we will have full-scale debate and every Senator will again be asked to vote on the simple proposition that there should be a ban on gifts, meals, vacation travel, and other perks from special interests to Members of Congress. Mr. President, it is long past time for enactment of the gift ban. This bill would significantly change the Washington culture. It is larger than just the piece of legislation. People want to believe in this political process, and when people read about or find out that Senators or Representatives have this interest or that interest pay for vacations trips to resorts for a weekend to play golf or tennis or do whatever, people find that to be inappropriate. And they are right. Mr. President, there is not a one of us that likes across-the-board indiscriminate bashing of public service. We would not be here if we did not believe in public service. But if you want people to have more confidence in the Congress, if you want people to have more confidence in this institution, and you want people to have more confidence in each individual Member, as a Senator representing our constituents back home, then we need to enact this tough gift ban legislation. We have delayed for far too long. Mr. President, let me go back to this Congress. This legislation was killed at the end of the last Congress in the very last days. We then brought back the same provisions at the beginning of this session in January when we had the Congressional Accountability Act before us and we had a vote on the gift ban legislation. At that time, the majority leader essentially said that he intended to take up a gift ban bill in the next few months, and to have it on the Senate floor in May. Mr. President, I remember this because, first of all, Senator Levin, myself, Senator Feingold, Senator Lautenberg, all came out to the floor and we argued that the congressional accountability bill provided a great opportunity for us to impose a comprehensive ban on these special interest gifts. That was, we believed, in keeping with the general theme of accountability to the citizenry, and not [[Page S6198]] to special interests. That was voted down, on a virtually party-line vote. At that time, the majority leader indicated that he intended to take up this legislation by the end of May, or sometime in May. Then I came back with a sense-of-the-Senate resolution which would have simply put the Senate on record saying that we will take this up by the end of May. That too was voted down. I said, wait a minute. The majority leader just said that he intended to do this, so let's put the whole Senate on record that by May we will have this legislation back on the floor for full consideration. Let us have a vote to affirm what the majority leader had just said was his intention, because I just had this sort of feeling that people were going to continue to delay and delay, as had been done in the past. Mr. President, let me just be clear. Now it is May and nothing has happened; zero, zippo, nada, nothing has happened. No hearings have been held. No bills have been introduced. Nothing to my knowledge on the gift ban legislation is scheduled for floor consideration any time soon. So the question is: Where is the majority party on this issue, where are the Republicans with their version of gift reform? Since 37 Republicans, including the majority leader, already cosponsored at the end of last year the same provisions that we offered in January and will offer again, as I said, as soon as we have an appropriate vehicle on the floor, what changes do they intend to make in this bill? Do they intend again, as some did last year--to try to gut the provisions of the charitable vacation travel to golf and tennis hot spots like Vail, Aspen, Florida, or the Bahamas where Members are wined and dined as guests of lobbyists and other special interests? Because, if they intend to try to gut those provisions, we intend for there to be a major debate. We cannot pass something saying we are not going to take gifts with these huge gaping holes and loopholes. Do they intend again to try to hollow out gift ban reforms by just slightly lowering the thresholds for expensive meals, sports tickets, and other gifts paid for by special interests here in Washington so that they can say they are for reform? That would be symbolic politics at its worst. Let me just simply say to you, Mr. President, this is an idea whose time has come, and come, and come again. I have been working on this for just over 2 years now, and the real standard for gift ban reform is a tightened-up bill that Senator Levin and I, Senator Feingold and Senator Lautenberg, put forth in January. We will come to the floor and we will offer tough gift ban legislation. I believe the overwhelming majority of Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, should support it. We really have had extensive bipartisan support in some overwhelming votes for this legislation. But each time along the way somebody or some group of Senators figures out a way of sidetracking it. The time is long past due for this reform. I think people in this country really are in a reform mood. And any Senator or Representative who believes that campaign finance reform or lobby disclosure or gift ban is just something that so-called good government groups are interested in, they are wrong. People want us to represent them well. They want this political process to be open and accountable. And many people, too many people, believe, and unfortunately I think they are right, that too few people have too much access to Senators and Representatives, and too many people, the vast majority of people, are left out of the decisionmaking loop, left out of the equation. It is really time to get back to this reform agenda and finish up our work in this area. There are three critical parts, all of which I intend to one way or another help bring to the floor of the Senate for debate. One is campaign finance reform. That is fundamental. Another is the lobby disclosure, on which Senator Levin has taken a key leadership role. The other is the gift ban, where I will continue to work with Senators Levin, Lautenberg, Feingold, and others. I look forward to that debate. We will have that amendment out here on the floor soon and I think people in the country, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, will hold us accountable. I look forward to this debate. I look forward to this vote. I urge my colleagues to support our tough, sweeping gift ban legislation. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.