Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, July 31, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in order to conduct a business meeting. The meeting will consider the following agenda: Bill to reauthorize the provision of technical assistance to small public water systems, S. 1429; Ban Asbestos in America Act, S. 742; Toxic Right to Know Protection Act, S. 595; California waiver decision deadline bill, S. 1785; National Infrastructure Improvement Act, S. 775; The Multinational Species Conservation Funds reauthorizations, HR 5O and HR 465; The Captive Primate Safety Act, S. 1498; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Resolutions; Nomination of Robert Lyle Laverty to be Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, U.S. Department of the Interior; Nomination of Robert Lance Boldrey nominee for reappointment to the Board of Trustees for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, since the Senator from Iowa has been talking about the efforts of Senator Bennett and I and how it relates to the children's health program, I wish to take a few minutes to discuss that relationship. First, I think Senator Baucus, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Grassley, and Senator Hatch--through the hours and hours of effort they have put into making the children's health proposal ready for floor action--have done a great service. They have done a great service, first and foremost, to the country's kids. It seems to me every single Member of the Senate can say today we cannot afford, in a country as good and strong and rich as ours, to have so many kids go to bed at night without decent health care. As a result of the bipartisan work of four Members of the Senate--two Democrats and two Republicans--we have laid the foundation to take steps immediately to help youngsters who are falling between the cracks. I have long felt the challenge with respect to health care today is twofold. First, you act immediately to help those who are the most vulnerable in our society. That is, in fact, what four members of the Senate Finance Committee have helped the Senate to promote today. Second, we ought to be taking steps on a broader basis to fix health care in our country. We are spending enough money on health care today. We are not spending it in the right places. We are spending enough money today on American health care to be able to go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States. That doctor would do nothing except take care of seven families. Pay the doctor $200,000 a year, and my guess is, the distinguished Presiding Officer would probably have physicians in the State of Delaware come to him and say, ``Where do you go to get your seven families?'' because they would all like to be practicing physicians again. So we are spending enough money on health care today. We are not spending it in the right places. At a time when our population is growing so rapidly, when costs are skyrocketing out of control, we need to fix American health care. But in order to get to the broader health reform effort--an effort that is bipartisan, with Senator Bennett joining me in the first bipartisan health reform bill in 13 years--you have to take steps to meet the needs of youngsters today. The Senate has already said that on multiple occasions. We said it first by passing the children's health program, and now, through the reauthorization effort, we say kids will come first. We also said it, in fact, through the budget resolution, where there was an effort to look at the relationship between broader health reform and care for kids, and the Senate, again, said children will come first. So I am very hopeful. I believe consideration of the children's health program is, essentially, the opening bell of round one in the fight to fix health care. If we can tackle the issue of children's health in a bipartisan way--the way the Senate Finance Committee has done--it ought to be possible, even in this session of Congress, to move on to broader health reform. Now, I am very hopeful the Administration will join in this bipartisan effort. We have all read about discussions about a possible veto message. I am very hopeful the Administration will join discussions in the Senate, join discussions in the other body, and help us to move quickly on the issue of children's health. If we do that, it ought to be possible, as the distinguished Senator from Iowa has indicated, to move on to something the Administration feels strongly about, where I happen to think, by and large, they are correct. The Federal tax rules, as it relates to health care, are a mess. Essentially, they reward inefficiency. They disproportionately favor the most affluent. If you are a ``high flier'' in our country, you can go out and get every manner of deluxe kind of health service and write it off on your taxes; but if you are a hard-working woman in Delaware or Oregon or around the country and your company does not have a health plan, you get virtually nothing. So I come to the floor today to say what Democratic economists have said, what Republican economists have said, what the administration officials have said: There ought to be an effort to fix the Tax Code as it relates to health care, and I and Senator Bennett and others want to; and we want to fix it in this session of the Congress. But to get at that issue you are going to, first, have to meet the needs of children. I was asked today what the implications of the children's health program are for bipartisanship. I think if this body can pick up on the bipartisan work of the Senate Finance Committee, there are extraordinary opportunities for broader health reform in this session of Congress. I do not think the country wants to wait 3 or 4 or 5 more years to fix American health care. I have heard the discussion about how there is a Presidential campaign coming up, and let's wait another 2, 3, 4 years to talk about a more comprehensive effort to fix American health care. I do not think any of us got sent here to tell businesses that are trying to compete in tough global markets, to tell those who cannot afford the skyrocketing premiums: Well, we are not going to work on broader health care reform for another 3 or 4 years. I think they want to hear how we are going to deal, in a bipartisan way, with the premier domestic issue of our time. Senators Baucus and Grassley and Hatch and Rockefeller have given us an initial dose of bipartisanship, an initial dose of bipartisanship in an area the country cares about, and cares about strongly, and that is meeting the needs of our children. But in the spirit that Senate Finance Committee quartet has worked, I and Senator Bennett and others would like to pick up on that kind of bipartisan theme and move aggressively to looking at the health care system as a whole and taking steps to transform it. I will say, I am struck again by how every single day it seems to me opportunities for bipartisanship on health care abound. I was very pleased that the nominee to head CMS, the agency that deals with Medicare and Medicaid, reacted very positively to our ideas on preventive health care. The fact is, in this country, we really don't have health care at all. We have sick care. We wait until somebody is flat on their back in a hospital--and the Medicare Program shows this clearly by paying those bills under Part A of Medicare. Part B of Medicare, on the other hand, the outpatient part of Medicare, pays virtually nothing for prevention, virtually nothing to keep people well. We have known about the value of prevention for quite some time. The distinguished Senator from Iowa, Mr. Harkin, has been talking about the value of health care prevention for years and years. What I and Senator Bennett have proposed for the first time under Federal law is that Medicare would be given the legal authority to go out and lower premiums for seniors who reduce their blood pressure and reduce their cholesterol and take the kind of preventive steps that everyone understands makes sense and helps to prolong an individual's good health and also saves money for the Medicare Program. We were very pleased that the nominee to head the agency that deals with Medicare and Medicaid was supportive of those changes and indicated he wanted to work, if confirmed, in a bipartisan way. So the fact is, there are great opportunities for bipartisanship on health care in this Congress if we can get past this initial effort at addressing American health care. The Senate has indicated, through the initial authorization of the children's health program and through the budget resolution, that this is the program with which it wants to begin the debate on health care. In the discussions in the Finance Committee, I followed very closely all of the different alternatives. It was a big bipartisan lift to get a 17-to-4 vote in the Senate Finance Committee. A lot of colleagues wanted to spend more. A lot of colleagues thought the program ought to be available to other groups of citizens. Some felt there wasn't much of a role for Government at all and that even the existing children's health program was too expansive. But the committee came together on a 17-to-4 basis. I see the distinguished Senator from Iowa has returned. If we can pass this legislation with the kind of bipartisan support that was initially demonstrated in the Senate Finance Committee, I think it is very possible, in spite of all of the popular wisdom to the contrary, this Senate can achieve broader health care reform in this session of Congress. I see one poll after another which indicates that health care is the premier domestic issue of our time; that it is the most important issue to our citizens--in many polls by something like a 2- to-1 margin. So I think in addressing this issue today--health care for children--the Senate can lay a bipartisan foundation for broader reforms. I think Senator Bennett and I have provided some direction for the Senate to go from here, but we would be the first to acknowledge there are many Senators with ideas on these issues, and many of them are good. I have already indicated I think the Administration has a valid point with respect to these tax rules on health care. The distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee is back, and he and I have listened to one economist after another testify before the Finance Committee-- Democrats and Republicans--talking about how the Tax Code on health care makes no sense and largely comes out of the 1940s. So we have Senators of both political parties who would like to work on broader health care reform, but first we have to pass this legislation. I hope we will pass it with a resounding bipartisan majority vote so that we could truly lay the foundation for significant and comprehensive health reform to be considered by this body. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 2538 to Amendment No. 2530

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, before she leaves the floor, let me thank my seatmate on the Senate Finance Committee for a passionate and eloquent address on behalf of this country's children. I commend her for it. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time between now and 12:30 be divided equally between the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, and the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Lautenberg.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I just want to use it to thank our colleagues who are the principal architects of the children's health program. Because of those of us who would like to go further in this Congress, the bipartisanship the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have shown is going to give us that kind of opportunity, if the administration will join this bipartisan effort as it goes through this body and the other body. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank you and all four of you for your efforts. Mr. President, it seems to me this is the opening bell of round one in the fight to fix health care in America. Fixing health care is the premier domestic issue of our time. Suffice it to say we heard in the Senate Finance Committee and we hear on the floor of the Senate every day that the current health care system cannot be sustained. The costs are going up too dramatically. The rapid growth of the elderly population is, of course, relentless, and the disadvantage our employers face every day competing in tough global markets cannot be sustained. My sense is the challenge for the United States is twofold. One--and this is embodied by what Senator Rockefeller, Senator Baucus, Senator Hatch, and Senator Grassley are doing--is to meet the immediate needs of the most vulnerable Americans, immediately. It is obscene that millions of youngsters, in a country as rich and strong and prosperous as ours, go to bed at night without decent health care. The bipartisan effort of these four Senators is moving to erase this moral blot on our country. I am proud to be supporting the four of them in this effort. But as we move to tackle these immediate needs of the most vulnerable Americans, let us also set about the task of trying to transform American health care. Senator Bennett, a member of the Republican leadership, has joined me in this effort. We brought to the floor of the Senate the first bipartisan health reform bill in more than 13 years. As Senator Rockefeller knows, as we are both admirers of the late John Chafee, his was the last, and Senator Bennett and I want to work with colleagues to pick up on this effort. Senator Bennett and I have tried to build on the bipartisanship embodied by Senator Rockefeller, Senator Hatch, Senator Baucus, and Senator Grassley. What we are saying is that you need something of an ideological truce on health care in our country. I think my party has been right in saying you have to get everybody covered. It is the moral thing to do. If you don't do it, the people who are uninsured shift their bills to the insured. But I think colleagues on the other side of the aisle have had a point as well in saying that you just can't turn everything over to Government, that there is a role for the private sector. So Senator Bennett and I are trying to pick up on the prospect of an ideological truce, just as Senators Rockefeller, Baucus, Grassley and Hatch have tried to do on the children's health program. I can tell my colleagues, having served on the Senate Finance Committee through the markup, and through those weeks and weeks of discussion, that what Senator Rockefeller and the other leaders of the Finance Committee had to do was a heavy lift. There are a lot of colleagues on our side of the aisle who wanted to spend more. They were interested in covering other groups of citizens. That was unacceptable to colleagues on the other side. So Senator Rockefeller and Senator Baucus had to swallow hard; they had to make concessions on points that were important to them. That is what Senator Bennett and I are trying to do in terms of transforming American health care. So I am glad Senator Rockefeller and the group on the Finance Committee have brought us a bipartisan piece of legislation because it lays the groundwork, in my view, for going further. I have a word for the administration on this point in particular: I am very hopeful they will join the bipartisan effort here in the Senate to find common ground. We know this bill has a long way to go. It will be considered by this body. The other body has other ideas with respect to how to tackle this issue. I would say to the administration that there are a number of us on both sides of the aisle who want to work with them on a broader piece of health legislation. But to get to that broader piece of health legislation, you first have to deal with the needs of the children. In fact, in the budget resolution--and this has not been widely noticed-- it specifically stipulates that the children's health program would come first, before there was an effort to deal with heath issues in a broader way. Now, I share the view of the administration with respect to the Tax Code in health care. It is a mess. It is regressive. It disproportionately rewards the most affluent in our society and promotes inefficiency at the same time. If you are a high-flying CEO, with today's Tax Code, you can go out and get a designer smile put on your face and write off the cost of every dime of that operation on your taxes. But if you are a hard-working woman in West Virginia or Oregon or elsewhere and your company doesn't have a health plan, you don't get anything out of the Tax Code. So I am supportive of working with the administration in a bipartisan way to fix the Tax Code as it relates to health care and to fix the private marketplace. But you don't get there until you first deal with the needs of our children. So I want to be conciliatory, both with respect to the administration and with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We have a big opportunity with this issue. With respect to domestic issues, one of the biggest ones--the immigration legislation--obviously reached something of a standstill. If we can sustain this bipartisan effort for the country's most vulnerable--and I know of no one in the Senate--no one--who doesn't care about the well-being of our kids--if this effort can be sustained, there will be a broad berth for another effort to move significantly to transform American health care. Seven members of the Senate Finance Committee, during our discussion of the children's health program, specifically talked about the need to fix American health care. Senator Conrad, the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, pointed out that over the next 5 years--the life of this program--there will be plenty of opportunities to transform American health care. Senator Bennett and I are saying we want to do it in this session. We don't think we got elected to wait around for another 2, 3, 4 years to fix health care; we want to do it in this session. We had a very promising hearing in the Senate Budget Committee where support for our efforts was demonstrated by both the chairman of the committee and the ranking minority member. I wish to underscore that even the Senate budget resolution makes clear that this program for children will be done first. As Senator Baucus and Senator Rockefeller pointed out earlier, this is a question of reauthorizing existing Federal law. The country has already made the judgment that the needs of children are going to come first. But a lot of us are not going to say the job is done by passing one extremely important bill; that there will be more to do, there will be an opportunity to do it in a bipartisan way. While he is on the floor, I want to thank Senator Rockefeller, Senator Baucus, Senator Grassley, and Senator Hatch.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I don't want to turn this into a bouquet- tossing contest, but I do want to single out the bipartisan quartet: Chairman Baucus, Senator Rockefeller, who is here, Senator Grassley, and Senator Hatch. To carve out hours and hours, as the four of them have day after day, is evidence of their commitment. I just want them to know I am very much aware we would not be here today advocating for America's kids without their work and their effort to find common ground. I wish to start the day by praising the four of them.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, on a matter of personal privilege, I associate myself with the remarks of Senator Conrad. I will be very brief. We were in the middle of critical issues. I was asking about a program that is a lifeline to the rural West, the county payments program where the administration is trying to change 100 years of history, and on a bipartisan basis the Senate indicated it wants to oppose that program. Had I been here, I would have, as Senator Conrad, voted for that measure, strongly supporting efforts to strengthen border security.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Wyoming for their thoughtfulness. This is especially appropriate, since Chairman Kennedy and the distinguished ranking minority member are on the floor. Both of them have great interest and involvement in health care. I thought it would be appropriate to talk for a few minutes about the upcoming CHIP legislation, the legislation that deals with the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is so important to America's youngsters. There was a markup in the Senate Finance Committee last week and it passed out overwhelmingly, to a great extent because of the very important and laborious work done by Chairman Baucus, Senator Rockefeller, and also the senior Republicans on the committee, Senators Grassley and Hatch. I commend them greatly for their toil. I wish to take a couple of minutes today to talk about the issue because the administration has indicated that at this point they would veto the legislation, which came from the Senate Finance Committee by a 17-to-4 vote. I am very hopeful they will choose not to veto this legislation because I felt it was striking in the Finance Committee last week that Senator after Senator on both sides of the aisle, including Senator Conrad and Senator Lott, for example--leaders of their respective parties on economic issues--they concurred that the system in this country is broken. The health care system cannot control the costs. Millions fall between the cracks. Administrative expenses are soaring. We have largely sick care rather than health care. This is something Democrats and Republicans alike agree on. The administration has the view that one of the key changes that needs to be made is the Federal tax rules as they relate to health care. I share their view that these rules are a mess. But it is not going to be possible to get to the question of broader reform until you first get bipartisan cooperation on the urgent and immediate needs of this country's youngsters. Frankly, I came out of the markup last week very encouraged about the Senate's interest and desire, on a bipartisan basis, to move ahead to fix health care. I think the clear feeling in the Senate Finance Committee is that this country cannot afford to wait to fix health care. I know there are a lot of people, particularly in the media, think tanks, and others who think: Let's wait a couple of years for another Presidential election. Let's wait 2, 3 more years. That is sort of the way it goes for the political class. But for people who are hurting in this country and businesses that are struggling to meet the health needs of their workers and are dying to offer them coverage and cannot afford it, I don't think it is acceptable to say let's wait around a couple more years. It strikes me as pretty callous to say let's wait for another election, when we have all those needs of workers and businesses in parts of the country where there have been tremendous layoffs. They say: Well, they can wait a couple more years before anybody talks about fixing health care. That is not what I heard in the Senate Finance Committee last week. I heard Senator after Senator--not just Senators Conrad and Lott but Senators Crapo, Salazar, and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle--making it clear they share my view that the health care system is broken. Now, for the first time in more than 13 years, the Senate has an opportunity to work in a bipartisan way to fix health care. Senator Bennett, a member of the Republican leadership, has joined me in legislation--the Healthy Americans Act--that has been able to pick up support of labor and business. We have structured it so all our citizens can get health care coverage, such as their Member of Congress does, through the private sector, at no greater cost than we are spending as a nation today. The bill has been put together so workers and employers win with the very first paychecks that are offered. I don't see why America should wait any longer to fix health care. What we should be doing is building on the important work of Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley, Senators Hatch and Rockefeller and move to get CHIP passed in a bipartisan way and meet the immediate needs of this country's youngsters and then move on to do what I have heard members on both sides of the aisle on the Finance Committee call for last week and that is to fix American health care. The reality is--and you and I have had a chance to talk a bit about it, Mr. President--the system we have today was largely designed more than 70 years ago. It was set up after World War II. There were wage and price controls. Our troops were coming home. We wanted them to get good benefits. So we put it off essentially on the employer, and the Tax Code would change to make that possible. Well, a system designed for the 1940s surely doesn't make sense for 2007, when the typical worker changes jobs seven times by the time they are age 35. The current Tax Code is regressive and it promotes inefficiency. If you are a high-flying CEO, you can get a designer smile put on your face and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes. But if you are a hard-working woman in a furniture store and your company has no health plan, you get practically nothing. Now, my sense is, when the administration talks about changing the tax rules for health care and you look at what Senators were saying in the Senate Finance Committee about the system being broken, there is a pretty good opportunity to work in a cooperative way--not 2 or 3 years from now but to move forward in this session of Congress. To make that possible, it is going to be essential for the Bush administration to back off from this threat of vetoing the children's health program and to work with Members on both sides of the aisle so that this legislation can get passed, and it would be possible, on a bipartisan basis, to move on to fix our health care system. We have a lot to work with. Certainly, we have seen great interest at the State level. A number of States are already moving forward with innovative programs. Mr. President, as you and I have discussed, no State can fix problems they didn't cause. No State can deal with the regressivity and inefficiency of the Federal tax rules on health care. No State can deal with Medicare. No State can deal with what is called the ERISA Program, the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act, with respect to large employers and multiemployer programs. No State can deal with that. We are going to have to have bipartisan action at the Federal level. I have been very pleased that Senator Bennett has joined me in this bipartisan effort. My sense is there is something of an ideological truce coming on health care. We see a lot of bipartisan cooperation. Today, in fact, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, and Chairman Kennedy are cooperating on issue after issue. Senator Bennett and I have said on health care that Republicans have moved a long way on coverage. We recognized that to fix health care, the people who are uninsured cannot just keep passing the bills on to people who are insured. We have to cover everybody, and Republicans have acknowledged that fact. Democrats, on the other hand, have been making it clear that they do not think we can just turn it all over to Government. We cannot turn everything in health care over to Government and expect everything to come out well. We have to have some private choices, choices in a fixed market, where insurance companies cannot cherry-pick and just take healthy people and send sick people over to Government programs more fragile than they are. We have to fix the private marketplace, but there ought to be choices in the private sector. That, too, is an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to work with the Bush administration once we get beyond the question of the children's health program. I am convinced that we are right on the cusp of being able to move forward on health care in a bipartisan way. In the other body, the Healthy Americans Act that Senator Bennett and I have been working for in the Senate will be introduced this week on a bipartisan basis. So that would then mean the Healthy Americans Act would be the first bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation to fix American health care in more than 13 years. Colleagues are going home every time there is a recess and talking with folks at home about health care. People are saying we know the system is broken and it is not enough to try to just take one small part. We really need to step back and make changes, for example, in the employer-based system which is hurting the competitiveness of so many of our companies. We need to have some health care rather than sick care because the system is biased against prevention. We clearly need to help those who are falling between the cracks. Above all, we have to contain the costs. The costs are rising, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, at far in excess of inflation, estimated to be about 12 percent this year. There is no way that is sustainable. It is not sustainable when we look at today's population trends and costs and the disadvantages our employers face. I was very pleased last week that not only was the Senate Finance Committee able to pass the CHIP legislation on a 17-to-4 basis through the hard work of our bipartisan leadership, but I was impressed because so many Senators on both sides of the aisle said they want to go further and to fix a broken health care system. To do that, we are going to have to work in a bipartisan way. We are interested in working with the Bush administration on that issue. I and others have said we can have differences of opinion with respect to how we straighten out this mess of a Tax Code as it relates to health care, but by and large, the administration is onto the key issue. To do this, we are going to have to recognize, first, that America cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care. It is not enough to say let's just deal with it after the next election. That is not enough for people who are hurting in Virginia and Oregon and Wyoming. They want to see action in this session. That is what they give us an election certificate to do, to act on big issues and not just put them off for another 2 or 3 years. So let us work together, Democrats and Republicans, in this body with the administration to pass the children's health program and then to continue that spirit of bipartisanship and fix American health care in this Congress. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, there are two truly critical issues for our country. You hear it every time you have a town meeting, every time a Senator is home. One of those issues is changing course in Iraq. The second issue is fixing health care in America. The Senate is going to spend long hours on the floor of the Senate this week, hopefully, changing course in Iraq, making a fundamental shift of the policy, where the Senate would come together on a bipartisan basis. I wish to spend a bit of time this afternoon talking about the long hours that are ahead for members of the Senate Finance Committee in a critical part of the effort to fix American health care. Over the last several months, four members, a bipartisan group in the Senate Finance Committee--Senators Baucus and Grassley and Rockefeller and Hatch--have toiled hard to better meet the health care needs of this country's youngsters. It is a moral blot on our Nation that millions and millions of our kids go to bed at night without decent health care. This legislation is part of an effort to erase that moral blot--an unconscionable fact of American life that so many kids are scarred by the inability to get decent, good-quality, affordable health care. In recent days, the Bush Administration has indicated they are considering vetoing this legislation. As one who has worked very extensively with the Bush Administration on health care issues, it is my hope they will join the effort, the bipartisan effort in the Senate, to try to work this legislation out and to do it in a bipartisan way. In fact, I think it is absolutely critical that it be done if there is to be another bipartisan effort in this Congress that would attack health care needs in this country on a broader basis. Senator Bennett and I, as the distinguished Presiding Officer, the Senator from Colorado, is aware, have brought to the Senate the first bipartisan health care overhaul bill in more than 13 years. It has brought together business organizations and labor organizations. It has put us in a position, for the first time in more than a decade, to look on a bipartisan basis at overhauling American health care. But to do it, we are first going to have to address the immediate needs of this country's kids. In fact, as part of the budget process, I was able to add legislation to indicate that those critical needs of this country's children would be added first. Now, I would be the first to acknowledge there is a connection between the children's health care program and the broader health needs of our citizens. The fact is, most kids in America get health care through private coverage through their parents. Those who are on the CHIP program--the Children's Health Insurance Program--many of them get coverage through the private sector as well, through private policies. But we are going to have to find common ground if we are to fix American health care. Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee have tried to do that on the CHIP legislation. As the Presiding Officer, the distinguished Senator from Colorado, knows, there are a great many Democrats who would like to spend more than this compromise effort would allow. We would like to look at allocating $50 billion for the needs of America's youngsters. The bipartisan compromise--as part of the cooperative effort of Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hatch--is talking about $35 billion. That is pretty hard for some on our side of the aisle to swallow. Also, with respect to the extent of coverage, a number of Members on this side of the aisle had been concerned about other groups of citizens who have not been able to get good-quality, affordable coverage, and they have been able to get benefits under existing services offered by the children's health program because the Bush administration allowed for special waivers. So what the compromise is seeking to do is to say: All right, if it has been allowed under a waiver program, let's not point the finger at anybody. Let's say those waivers, in effect, would be grandfathered. They would be protected. But then we will move on, and we would move on in a bipartisan kind of way. I will tell my colleague, the Presiding Officer--because he and I have spoken about health care often--we know what needs to be done in American health care. We are spending enough money, certainly. This year, we will spend $2.3 trillion. There are 300 million of us. If you divide 300 million into $2.3 trillion, you could go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States. We are spending enough money on health care; we are just not spending it in the right places. We also know--because Senator Bennett and I have talked to a great many on both sides of the aisle--there is a real prospect for an ideological truce here on the health care issue in the Senate. A great many Republicans, to their credit, are acknowledging now, for the first time, that to fix American health care you have to cover everybody because if you do not cover everybody, those who are uninsured shift their bills to the insured. A great many Democrats, also to their credit, have been willing to acknowledge that just turning all this over to Government--having a Government-run health care program--is not going to work politically either, that it is going to be essential to have a private sector in American health care that works. It would be a reformed one. Private insurance companies could not cherry-pick any longer, they could not take just healthy people and send sick people over to Government programs more fragile than they are, but that there would be a real private sector. So in addition to spending enough money and in addition to something of an ideological truce now on health care between Democrats and Republicans, for the first time--I particularly want to credit my colleague from Utah, Senator Bennett, for working closely with me on this part of the effort--I think we can show people who have coverage why it is in their interest to be for reform. Certainly, here in the Senate we know that past efforts--particularly in 1993, during the debate about the Clinton plan, the single biggest barrier was convincing people who had coverage why it would be in their interest to support reform. What we have been able to do, on a bipartisan basis--Senator Bennett and I working together is to come up with an approach that will show people who have coverage--workers and employers--why it will work for them with the very first paychecks that are issued under our legislation, the Healthy Americans Act. Not in 5 years, not in 8 years, not sometime down the road, but it will work for those who have coverage--workers and employers--with the very first paychecks that are issued when this legislation becomes law. The reason it would benefit those workers and employers is they would have more cash in their pocket. The workers would have more choices for the health care that was available to them. They would certainly have more security--health care that could never ever be taken away. My hope is that we can have a cooperative, bipartisan effort on the CHIP legislation, starting tomorrow night. As my friend from Colorado, the Presiding Officer, knows, we will have a late markup. Democrats and Republicans on the committee want to work together. We want to work with the Administration. I hope the Administration will join us in that effort. I would also suggest that if that happens, we can go on to the broader health care issue, where there are a number of areas where the Administration seeks reform. I want to assure them I am interested in working with them. For example, the President has made the point--it is one that I share--that the Federal Tax Code as it relates to health care disproportionally favors the most wealthy and rewards inefficiency. Today, in America, if you are a high-flying CEO and you want to go out and get a designer smile plastered on your face, you can do it and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes--every dime. But if you are a hard-working woman in a furniture store in Colorado or Illinois or Oregon and your company has no plan, you get nothing out of the Tax Code. You get nothing. So what Senator Bennett and I seek to do is redirect those several hundred billion dollars in tax expenditures for health care to people in the middle-income brackets, the lower middle-income brackets. The Bush Administration has a different approach with respect to the Tax Code and health, but as I have said to the President personally, I think he is still onto the basic concept. This is an area where Democrats and Republicans can find common ground. But if we are going to get, in this session, to the broader issue of health care reform--of course, a lot of people think it cannot be done; they think it will be 2009 and we will have another Presidential election before there is real reform--if we are going to deal with it in this session--and Senator Bennett and I are pulling out all the stops to try to get broader health care reform out there this session in order to get to that broader debate--Democrats and Republicans have to come together on this crucial issue of meeting the health care needs of this country, of wiping out this moral blot on our Nation that millions of kids do not have decent health care. That effort will start tomorrow night. This is a key time for those of us who want to reform American health care. If we can come together in this Senate--starting tomorrow night under Senators Baucus and Grassley and Hatch and Rockefeller--my hope is we can keep that coalition together and then segue over to the broader reform where Senator Bennett and I have brought, for the first time in more than 13 years, colleagues, a bipartisan proposal to overall American health care. It has the support of business and labor. Consumer groups have been involved in the development of it. I am very hopeful that under the leadership of Senator Reid--and I see the distinguished leader from Illinois in the Chamber--we can change course with respect to the war in Iraq but we can also change course with respect to the most pressing domestic issue of our time; that is, fixing American health care. The effort starts tomorrow night. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today, along with my colleague, Senator Lott, I am introducing legislation to fix an unforeseen problem that unfairly affects the ability of physicians called up to duty in the National Guard and Reserve to maintain their practices while they are serving our country. Under the Medicare rules, a doctor who is absent from his practice can enter into a reciprocal billing arrangement with another doctor, who cares for the absent physician's patients and bills Medicare accordingly. However, these arrangements cannot last longer than 60 days. After 60 days, a second replacement must be found. Failure to find a replacement can mean losing patients to other doctors or providing care that won't be reimbursed by Medicare. For doctors called up to active National Guard or Reserve duty, finding physicians to cover their patients while they are gone is hard enough, especially if they have practices in remote and rural areas. Asking these doctors to find replacements every 60 days is just too much. These folks are already making tremendous sacrifices for all Americans, and there is no good reason to ask them to shoulder this additional burden, along with all the other challenges that they must confront while they are called up to active duty. The least Congress can do is ensure that these brave men and women aren't also asked to sacrifice their medical practices. In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill introduced by Congressman Mike Thompson, and Congressman Sam Johnson that temporarily suspended the 60 day rule through the end of the year. Senator Lott and I are introducing the same piece of legislation today. We are also introducing a bill that will provide a permanent fix to this problem; Congressman Thompson and Congressman Johnson are also introducing the permanent fix today in the House. I urge the Senate to pass both pieces of legislation as soon as possible. These doctors are making enormous sacrifices and are responsible for saving countless lives. We owe it to them to ensure that when they come home, their medical practices remain viable. Fixing this Medicare rule will help ensure this. I ask unanimous consent that the text of S. 1767 and S. 1768 be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today, along with my colleague, Senator Lott, I am introducing legislation to fix an unforeseen problem that unfairly affects the ability of physicians called up to duty in the National Guard and Reserve to maintain their practices while they are serving our country. Under the Medicare rules, a doctor who is absent from his practice can enter into a reciprocal billing arrangement with another doctor, who cares for the absent physician's patients and bills Medicare accordingly. However, these arrangements cannot last longer than 60 days. After 60 days, a second replacement must be found. Failure to find a replacement can mean losing patients to other doctors or providing care that won't be reimbursed by Medicare. For doctors called up to active National Guard or Reserve duty, finding physicians to cover their patients while they are gone is hard enough, especially if they have practices in remote and rural areas. Asking these doctors to find replacements every 60 days is just too much. These folks are already making tremendous sacrifices for all Americans, and there is no good reason to ask them to shoulder this additional burden, along with all the other challenges that they must confront while they are called up to active duty. The least Congress can do is ensure that these brave men and women aren't also asked to sacrifice their medical practices. In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill introduced by Congressman Mike Thompson, and Congressman Sam Johnson that temporarily suspended the 60 day rule through the end of the year. Senator Lott and I are introducing the same piece of legislation today. We are also introducing a bill that will provide a permanent fix to this problem; Congressman Thompson and Congressman Johnson are also introducing the permanent fix today in the House. I urge the Senate to pass both pieces of legislation as soon as possible. These doctors are making enormous sacrifices and are responsible for saving countless lives. We owe it to them to ensure that when they come home, their medical practices remain viable. Fixing this Medicare rule will help ensure this. I ask unanimous consent that the text of S. 1767 and S. 1768 be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I talked with our colleague about health care, and I know he has an interest in a bipartisan effort. If the Senate begins with the children's health insurance program and we make it clear this is not some kind of Trojan horse for a Government-run health plan, but something that secures the needs for children, I think we can do this in a bipartisan way and then, in effect, segue into another bipartisan effort to fix health care that would get all Americans under the tent for quality affordable coverage. Senator Bennett and I have brought before the Senate a proposal, particularly on the basis of the hearing in the Senate Budget Committee 2 weeks ago, that we think can bring the Senate together, go where no Congress has been able to go since 1945, when Harry Truman made an effort to do it, and that is a rational system so that all Americans have quality affordable coverage. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, like all of us in the Senate, I have just come back from a great week in Oregon. We own the summer. It is just wonderful to be home during these warm days and cool nights. Other parts of the country may have beautiful months other times in the year, but nobody can beat an Oregon summer. I want to talk a little bit about what I heard as I moved around the State. What I heard again and again is that folks at home want the Senate to change course in Iraq, and they want us to fix health care. We are going to start on the first item today in a few minutes when we go to the Defense authorization bill. I believe very strongly that we don't support our courageous troops in Iraq by forcing them to referee a civil war there. I think it will become clear this week that there is growing and bipartisan interest in the Senate to set a specific deadline to force the Iraqis to make the decisions for themselves about how they will govern their Nation. So what I want to do is talk for a few minutes about health care-- something I know the President pro tempore of the Senate has a great passion about as well, and certainly folks are talking about today-- because the need to fix health care is so great. Of course, many have flocked to the Michael Moore movie as well, generating additional debate about this issue. The first matter on the health care agenda to come up is going to be the Children's Health Insurance Program. In my view, passing a strong program for kids is about erasing a moral blot on our Nation. It is unconscionable that millions of kids, youngsters in Rhode Island and Oregon and across the country, go to bed at night without good, quality, affordable health care. In a country as rich and strong as ours, as the majority leader, Senator Reid, noted earlier this afternoon, clearly we can do this, and we can do it in a bipartisan way. The Senate Finance Committee is not going to pass a children's health program that becomes a Trojan horse for government-run health care. That is not going to happen in the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate Finance Committee is going to work in a bipartisan way under the leadership of Senator Baucus, working with Senator Grassley and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hatch, and I am very hopeful that there will be bipartisan agreement over the next few days that targets the desperately needy youngsters in our country and is responsibly funded. I am hopeful that will come together this week, and members of the Senate Finance Committee will be working throughout the week on a bipartisan basis to bring that about. But it is also very clear, in my view, that the State Children's Health Insurance Program was not created to solve our Nation's health care crisis. In fact, I think when we get on the floor debating the children's health program, the Senate will see and the country will see that this debate illustrates how broken our health care system is. We are clearly spending enough money; we are just not spending it in the right places. For example, for the amount of money we are spending this year, our country could go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States and pay that doctor $200,000 a year to care for seven families. Whenever I bring this up with the physicians, they always say: Ron, where do I go to get my seven families? So, clearly, we are spending enough money, and we are going to use the dollars even more efficiently, as the Senator from Rhode Island brings us his very constructive proposals as they relate to better use of health information technology. Second, I believe we have the possibility of a real ideological truce now in health care. As the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island knows from our hearing in the Senate Budget Committee, we saw a real consensus emerging just in the course of that hearing. I think it is very clear that Senators of both political parties understand that to fix health care, we must cover everybody. If we don't cover everybody, people who are uninsured shift their bills to folks who are insured. So colleagues on my side of the aisle who made the point about getting everybody coverage, in my view, have been accurate, and clearly the country and citizens of all political persuasions have come around to that point of view. But as we saw in our hearing in the Senate Budget Committee just recently, there is also strong support for something the Republicans have felt strongly about, and that is not having the Government run everything in health care. There ought to be a role for a healthy private sector, one where there is a fairer and more efficient market, and there ought to be more choices; in fact, a system much like Members of Congress enjoy today. I am very pleased that I could join with Senator Bennett of Utah, a member of the Republican leadership, in offering a bill based on just those principles. It is S. 334, the Healthy Americans Act, and it is the first bipartisan universal coverage bill in more than 13 years. The distinguished President pro tempore of the Senate might be interested in some history. The last bipartisan, universal coverage health bill was offered by the late Senator Chafee--not his son but the late Senator Chafee--more than 13 years ago. So now we do have the opportunity for the Senate to come together on a bipartisan basis and deal with the premier challenge at home, and that is fixing American health care. I and Senator Bennett also believe there are some key challenges to bringing this country together to fix health care, and we believe through our legislation we have been able to address it. The first is how do you make sure folks who do have coverage today--and that is the majority of the people of our country--have a system that works for them. So often in the past they have said: Well, we are not exactly pleased with what we have, but the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know, and those folks in Washington, we don't know if they can organize a two-car parade, let alone fix American health care. So the first thing Senator Bennett and I said is for people who have insurance today, in Rhode Island, in Oregon, and elsewhere, we are going to take several steps to assure them that as part of fixing health care, we understand their needs. The first is with the initial paychecks that are issued. If the Healthy Americans Act is adopted, workers win and employers win. Workers win because they will have more cash in their pocket, and they will have more private choices in a fixed marketplace where insurance companies can't cherry-pick. And they will have lifetime security where no one can ever take their coverage away. Employers will win with the first paychecks as well because they will get out from under the staggering rates of cost growth in American health care. We all know that employers in Rhode Island and Oregon and elsewhere see their premiums go up more than 13 percent annually--far in excess of the rate of inflation. We cannot have our employers compete in tough global markets when they sustain those kinds of premium hikes and the competition they are up against internationally has the benefit of government-run health care. I think Senator Bennett and I have been able to make the kinds of changes in our bill that show we have learned from some of the mistakes in the past--most recently in 1993 and 1994, when Congress last tried to fix health care. One area we focused on is to make sure we can get the savings through cost containment right at the outset. A group called the Lewin Group--considered the gold standard of health policy analysis--has looked at our legislation, and they found we generated savings through our legislation with the cost containment needed to fix health care. First, we redirect the money that is spent in the Federal Tax Code. Today, more than $200 billion is sent out through the Federal Tax Code so that if you are a high-flying CEO, you can go out and get a designer smile plastered on your face and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes. But if you are a hard- working woman who works at the corner furniture store in Rhode Island and your company doesn't have a health plan, you don't get anything. That is not right. So Senator Bennett and I redirect the money under the Federal Tax Code to give the bulk of the relief to people in the middle-income and lower middle-income brackets, and the Lewin organization found significant savings in our doing that. They also found significant savings on the administrative side because we have a one-stop sign-up process, and all of the essential transactions are done through technology transfers. Once you sign up, you are in the system forever. They found significant administrative savings through that. The third area they found specific savings in is what is called the disproportionate share program, where hospitals and the Government have to pick up the bills for folks who come to hospital emergency rooms and have no coverage. Clearly, it would be much better to have those folks having private coverage targeted at outpatient services so they can get their health care in a way that is better for them and better for their finances than to have them all flocking to hospital emergency rooms. The fourth area in which we generate savings is by redirecting dollars that are now spent on the poor. In Oregon, we have more than 30 categories of coverage for poor people under Medicaid, so that poor people literally have to find a way to squeeze themselves into one box or another in order to find coverage--wildly inefficient and, frankly, pretty dehumanizing to those who participate. The better way to go is to make coverage for low-income people automatic. Those who are of modest income would be eligible for a subsidy, but it would be for private coverage. Finally, we secure savings through significant reform of the private insurance sector. Today, private insurance companies can cherry pick and take healthy people and send sick people to Government programs that are more fragile than they are. That would be barred under our legislation. There would be guaranteed issue. They could not discriminate against people with illnesses, so that in the insurance sector, under our bipartisan legislation, private insurance companies would compete on the basis of price, benefits, and quality, rather than who can find the healthiest people. I see another colleague on the floor. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 60 seconds to wrap up. If my colleague will indulge me, I would appreciate it.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, just about a year ago, Senator Smith and I came down to the floor of the Senate to take a few moments to talk about the Oregon State University baseball team, which had just won its first College World Series national championship out in Omaha, NE. I can't tell you how happy I am to be standing here on the floor of the Senate 1 year later to applaud the team's defense of that title. This is a tough, determined baseball team. When most folks counted them out, they didn't give up. After finishing 6th in the Pac-10, they squeaked their way into the post-season and never looked back. On the road and at home, the Oregon State squad was virtually unstoppable, winning their last 10 games. In fact, the team trailed in just one of the 45 innings it played in Omaha and it was the first team to ever win 4 College World Series games by 6 or more runs. The Beavers are the first back-to-back champions since Louisiana State University accomplished the feat back in 1996-97 and the first ``cold-weather'' state repeat champions ever. It is a proud day for the players and coaches on the Oregon State team. It is a proud day for the University. And it is a proud day for all Oregonians. Today, with Senator Smith as my cosponsor, I have therefore submitted a resolution commending the Oregon State University baseball team for winning the 2007 College World Series.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, there will be a great deal of activity in the Senate this week, and I want to take a few minutes to talk about the fact that this is going to be a big week in American health care as well. There will be considerable effort devoted to the State Children's Health Insurance program. I see our friend Senator Hatch on the floor of the Senate. I commend Senator Hatch for his work on this program. The effort on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, in particular, has been a bipartisan one, involving Senator Baucus, Senator Grassley, Senator Rockefeller, and Senator Hatch. I commend their efforts on this legislation. Senator Hatch and I have talked about this in the context of health care reform many times. It is a moral blot on our country that so many youngsters do not have quality, affordable health care, do not have good coverage like the children of Members of Congress. So I want it understood that I am in strong support of the bipartisan efforts on the State Children's Health Insurance program that are ongoing in the Senate Finance Committee on which Senator Hatch and I serve. I particularly commend Senator Baucus, Senator Grassley, Senator Rockefeller, and Senator Hatch for the leadership they have shown. Also, this week there will be several other significant activities in health care. Tomorrow, the Senate Budget Committee will open hearings on comprehensive proposals to fix American health care. They will start by looking at the bipartisan legislation I have worked on with Senator Bennett of Utah. It is the first bipartisan proposal to overhaul American health care in almost 15 years. That and other approaches will be talked about in the Senate Budget Committee with the chair of our committee, Senator Conrad, and Senator Gregg, having a longstanding interest on the question of health care reform, realizing you cannot get on top of big budgetary challenges in the United States if you do not address health care. Then, finally, at the end of the week, my guess is there are going to be a lot of Americans flocking to the movie theaters to look at Mr. Michael Moore's movie. I will say, for purposes of the discussion this afternoon, since I am not in the movie business, I will spend my time this afternoon talking about health care legislation that is bipartisan in the Senate. Since I have mentioned the question of SCHIP, and how important it is, and how important it is that it be addressed quickly, let me turn now to the question of the Healthy Americans Act. After 60 years of debate, going back to the days of Harry Truman, I believe the cure for America's ailing health care system is now within reach. My view is we are seeing encouraging signs pop up everywhere. For example, the business community has done an about-face on the issue of health care reform. For example, in 1993--the last time Congress tackled this issue, during the Clinton administration--the business community said: We cannot afford health care reform. Now the business community is saying: We cannot afford the status quo. Previous adversaries, particularly business and labor, are now coming together to work for reform. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, from our discussions when I introduced my legislation, the bipartisan Healthy Americans Act, we had Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, standing right next to Steve Burd, the president of Safeway Company, and mid-size employers and small employers. So we are seeing the business community that so often has been at odds with labor and others coming together with them saying: We cannot afford the status quo. Finally, it seems to me we have had a coming together of Democrats and Republicans on this issue. I am very pleased, under the leadership of my lead co-sponsor, Senator Bennett, many Republicans have said they will go to a place they have had questions about in the past; that is, covering everybody. You say those words, ``covering everybody,'' and, of course, to some people that implies you are going to have a government-run plan, it is somehow going to be a socialistic kind of plan. Well, many conservatives, many Republicans have come to agree with Senator Bennett and me that you cannot fix American health care unless you cover everybody because if you do not cover everybody, what you have is people who are uninsured shifting their bills over to those who are insured. Families USA has done an analysis indicating, in their view, that those who have insurance may pay in the vicinity of $1,000 worth of their premium to cover people who do not have insurance. So my view is, with Republicans and Democrats coming together in an area saying, ``Let's make sure everybody is covered,'' we do have positive signs for reform. Now, of course, bumping up against these positive signs is the popular wisdom. The popular wisdom, of course, is: Oh, Government cannot possibly put something together. People say: Oh, Government cannot organize a two-car parade, let alone fix something that will be a seventh of the American economy: American health care. People say there are too many lobbyists--too many lobbyists--many more than legislators. They are going to block it. They say, of course, touching on the point I made earlier, that people who have coverage, they are going to say: Gosh, I would rather stay with the devil I know rather than that other guy, that other devil. But I will tell my colleagues, I think the public understands the system is broken, and if now the Congress comes forward with a step-by-step strategy to fix American health care, I think the public will be receptive. So let me outline, for purposes of a brief discussion, what goes into the diagnosis with respect to what is ailing American health care. I think, for the most part, people understand what is ailing our health care system, so I am going to make this diagnosis brief. First, for the amount of money we are spending in this country annually--$2.3 trillion--you could go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States. So let's talk about what that means for folks in Arkansas and what it means for folks in Utah. If you divide the number of people in this country--300 million--into $2.3 trillion, which is what we will be spending on health care this year, you could go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the State of Arkansas, pay the doctor $200,000 for the year and say, Doc, that is your job. You are going to take care of seven families. Whenever I am out and about speaking to physician groups, they always come up to me and say: Ron, where do I go to get my seven families? Because I like that idea of being able to be a physician again, to actually be an advocate for patients. So we are spending enough money. Now, despite these enormous sums and the fact that we have thousands of dedicated, caring, and talented health care professionals, the collective value we get for our health care dollar in America is shockingly small. For example, we are 31st in the world in life expectancy, having recently surged ahead of Albania but still lagging behind Jordan. On infant mortality, we are beating out Belarus, but we are still lagging behind Cuba. Part of our challenge is we don't have a lot of health care; we have mostly sick care. Medicare Part A and Part B show this better than anything else. In the State of Arkansas, under Part A of Medicare--or Utah or Oregon or anywhere else--Medicare will pay thousands of dollars for senior citizens' bills. It goes right from Medicare to a hospital in Arkansas and Oregon. Medicare Part B, however, the outpatient part of Medicare in our States, pays hardly anything for prevention, hardly anything to keep people well, and keep them from landing in the hospital and racking up those huge expenses in terms of health care. We ought to change that. We ought to change it, and I am going to talk a bit about how the Healthy Americans Act does it and does it with incentives. In addition to this bias against wellness and against preventive health care, we have a system where the biggest expenditure, which is the tax breaks for employer-based coverage, goes disproportionately to the wealthiest of us and encourages inefficiency to boot. Under the Tax Code today, if you are a high-flying CEO, you write off on your taxes the costs of getting a designer smile. But if you are a poor woman working at the corner furniture store, you get virtually nothing. The biggest reductions now in employer-based coverage--the biggest reductions, according to a new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation--comes in the area of low-income workers. So that is a bit about the diagnosis, and I already mentioned the fact that people who have insurance pay about $1,000 from their premium for folks who are uninsured. Now I wish to talk about what we are going to do about it. What is it we are actually going to do about the big challenges with respect to health care? When I have gone home and had town meetings, we have always had kind of a back and forth early on between folks who say they want a government-run health care system of some sort and folks who want a private sector-oriented system. The discussion goes back and forth, and I am sure my colleagues have had similar experiences when they are home talking about health care. But finally, after a little bit of back and forth, somebody in the audience stands up and says: Ron, we want health care like you people in Congress have. We want coverage like you people and your families have. Then everybody starts cheering. Everybody is cheering for that. Nobody knows exactly what it involves or what it constitutes, but they figure if Members of Congress have it, that is what they want as well. So I very often, at that point, reach into my back pocket and take out my wallet, take out my Blue Cross card and ask people if that is what they want. It is private insurance. It covers me. It covers the Wyden family. People say, yes, that is what they want. So I wrote a piece of legislation, the Healthy Americans Act, that gives folks across the country--in Oregon and Arkansas and Utah, across the country--guaranteed coverage such as Members of Congress get, delivered in a manner such as Members of Congress have, with choices and benefits such as Member of Congress have. Folks can get all the details about how this works at my Web site: Wyden.senate.gov. Now, the Lewin Group--they are an independent, nonpartisan health care consulting group; kind of the gold standard for health policy analysis--says you can make that pledge, the pledge that I made for coverage at least as good as Members of Congress get, for all Americans for the $2.3 trillion that is spent annually, and, according to the Lewin Group, you would reduce health care spending by almost $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Here is a bit of how the Healthy Americans Act works. Our country has about 300 million people, as I have mentioned. I don't alter the basic structure of care for Medicare, the military, and the small Government programs. The reforms I make to the Medicare program keep the basic structure of Medicare as is, but we do tackle the two biggest challenges facing the program. The first is we are seeing a huge increase--a huge increase--in chronic illness. These are folks with heart and stroke and diabetes, a variety of problems that are chronic in nature. In fact, the estimate is about 5 percent of those on Medicare use up about 60 percent of the Medicare expenses. So we create efficiencies for how to better manage the chronic care that this large group of people incur. I think it will help generate savings for the long term. As we do that, we attack the underlying reason so many Americans need chronic care; that is, prevention has been given short shrift. So under our legislation, we create incentives for parents to enroll children and their family in preventive programs. They get lower premiums if they do. With respect to Medicare specifically, for the first time we authorize the Government to lower Medicare Part B premiums, the outpatient premiums, so that if seniors lower their blood pressure, lower their cholesterol, and engage in sensible, preventive medicine, they would experience lower premiums. So we make improvements to Medicare, and Government programs clearly can be refined. But I am of the view that in the area of Medicare and the VA and some of the smaller Government health care programs, we basically ought to focus on keeping the basic structure as it is and making improvements as I have outlined in the chronic care and prevention care within that basic structure. So if you do that, if you set aside Medicare and the VA, you are left with about 250 million people. About 170 million of those folks get their coverage through employer-based health care. About 48 million are uninsured. They are often without any coverage at all. They may have some very modest coverage--charity care--and then we have folks in the individual market and Medicaid. So let me describe what we do for folks in that area where there are 250 million people, folks who aren't covered by Medicare or the VA. If a citizen does have employer coverage, the employer is required by law to cash out the worker. We do it in a way so that with the very first paychecks, the first paychecks issued under the Healthy Americans Act, the worker will win and the employer will win. Let's say, hypothetically, in Arkansas or Oregon, you have a worker who has a salary of $50,000, and the employer is purchasing $12,000 worth of health care benefits for them as well. Under the legislation, the employer is required by law to give the worker $62,000 in compensation--salary plus the value of their health care benefits. Then, we adjust the workers' tax bracket so they don't pay any additional tax on the additional compensation. That is important because, for all practical purposes, Senator Bennett and I have legislated the biggest pay raise in the country's history by putting that extra cash in the workers' pockets. So when the worker sees it--we spent a lot of time talking about it--the worker says: That is pretty cool getting all this extra money. What is the catch? There has to be a catch if I am getting all this extra compensation. There is a catch. The worker, under the Healthy Americans Act, has to buy a basic health insurance policy, including prevention, outpatient, inpatient, and catastrophic--a basic policy. The first thing the worker is going to say is: How in the world do I do that? How am I going to be able to buy my own coverage? So we set up something called Health Help to make it easy for people, and people could do it online, to purchase their own coverage. We fixed the private marketplace to make it easier. Private insurance companies can't cherry-pick. They can't take just the healthy people and send sick folks over to Government programs more fragile than they are. There is community rating. People go into big pools so you can spread the cost of the risk. There is guaranteed issue so you can't be turned down. We also prevent people from being hammered because they have a preexisting illness. So that is the way it works for folks who now have coverage, about 170 million of them. In the case of the worker I described in Oregon and Arkansas, $50,000 in salary, $12,000 in health care, $62,000 in compensation, if they can use that to go out, say, and buy a basic health insurance policy for $11,500 rather than the $12,000 they are now getting for health care, they can be on their way to Oregon for a great fishing trip in Central Oregon, because that is exactly what we are trying to do, is to create marketplace incentives for folks to try to hold their costs down. If the employer doesn't offer the coverage, employers make a contribution on the basis of their revenue per employee. We had three groups of employers we worked on with this: large employers, medium-sized employers, and small employers, and when we launched the whole effort, there were representatives from each of those three employer groups. So it is a bipartisan bill: Senator Bennett, a Republican, and myself, a Democrat. It is bipartisan, and it has the support of business and labor organizations. Where does the money come from to pay for the Healthy Americans Act? We can make substantial savings by redirecting the Tax Code away from the system today which disproportionately favors the most affluent and rewards inefficiency. We steer it more to the middle class and the working poor. There are substantial administrative savings. According to the Lewin Group, this consulting group for private insurance, we have the administrative costs down to under 5 percent. That means we are going to systematically drive out a lot of what is being spent on marketing and underwriting and various kinds of inefficiency, which is clearly unneeded. We make substantial savings in what is called the disproportionate share of funding that now goes to the hospitals when they have to pick up the bills for those who are uninsured. It makes so much more sense. Instead of a poor person who has no coverage going to a hospital emergency room in Arkansas or Oregon or Utah, it makes so much more sense to use the scarce dollars so that person can afford a private insurance policy. It would be targeted at outpatient care and inpatient care and prevention rather than frittering away so much of our scarce resources for hospital emergency room services. This legislation does that. The insurance companies compete not on the basis of cherry-picking but on the basis of price, benefit, and quality. Finally, we make care for the poor much more efficient and humane. Right now, if you are poor in America, you have to go out and try to squeeze yourself into one of perhaps 30 boxes in order to be able to get care as someone who is low income. I think that is degrading and inefficient. We can do better. Under the Healthy Americans Act, we say care for those individuals is automatic. They would get covered automatically. Once they are signed up, they are in forever. I know there are many who are saying that fixing health care is not possible in this Congress. I already mentioned the good work of Senator Rockefeller, Senator Hatch, Senator Baucus, and Senator Grassley on the children's health program. I will be with them all the way. They have done very good work. The fact that so many kids don't have decent health care is morally wrong and Congress ought to address it. I am going to do everything I can to help them. I think this Congress ought to go farther. I don't think we got an election certificate to sit around and wait for another Presidential campaign to get going. Fortunately, under the leadership of Senators Conrad and Gregg, the Senate Budget Committee will get going tomorrow, looking at a variety of options to fix health care. We are going to start with the Healthy Americans Act, but certainly a lot of colleagues have good ideas, and many are bipartisan. Certainly, Senators Feingold and Graham have good ideas. The American people don't want us to wait for 2 more years. They are not going to be tricked into comprehensive reform. The subject is too personal. They want to know what the benefits are going to be, what their costs are going to be; but they are ready. They know the current system cannot be sustained given our rapidly aging population, the huge increase in chronic illness, the disadvantages the employers face, and the tough global markets. The American people know the current system cannot be sustained. They understand it is broken and we are going to show them there is a better way, a bipartisan way. The hearing that will begin tomorrow, and the bill Senator Bennett and I have, will be the first bipartisan proposal to overhaul American health care in 15 years. I don't think we ought to wait 2 more years. That is not what we got an election certificate to do. Let's pass the SCHIP legislation. One of the key sponsors is on the floor this afternoon. Let us move on to address a new direction in American health care to finally make it possible for all of our citizens to get under the tent for basic, affordable, quality health coverage.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 30 minutes as in morning business, with the time taken from Senator Kennedy's time.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when oil was $55 a barrel, President Bush said oil companies don't need taxpayer subsidies to drill. Oil is now just under $70 a barrel, and certainly oil companies truly don't need taxpayer subsidies to drill for oil. The Finance Committee amendment begins to reverse decades of policies that equated what was good for the major oil companies was good for America, and that oil companies would get us cheap and plentiful energy supplies here in America. The reality is, if you go to the gas pump today, you see gas is not cheap. If you look at the impact of a refinery fire or a pipeline problem or a cold snap and the impact on heating oil prices, you see energy is not plentiful. If you look at the growing level of oil imports from countries around the world that don't have our best interests at heart, you will see that what has been good for the major oil companies has not been good for the well-being of the citizens of America. The Kyl amendment is just the latest in a long line of arguments that has been advanced on the theory that we ought to keep subsidizing the oil industry or energy prices will go up, oil imports will go up, and America will be less secure. The fact is our people and our country have now experienced the results of past policies based on the idea that we ought to send billions and billions of dollars of subsidies to the major companies. It is time to end those subsidies. It is time to stop the major oil companies from fleecing taxpayers when they drill for oil on public lands, and it is time to embrace the very different vision of a more positive energy future, largely constructed by the chairman of the Finance Committee and the chairman of the Energy Committee. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kyl amendment and to support the work of the Finance Committee.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this General Accounting Office report makes it very clear that relative to all the other countries in the world, our taxpayers are not getting a fair shake. So this is ultimately about cutting back on subsidies the President says are not needed in order to create markets and to prevent the taxpayers of this country from being fleeced. I thank my colleague. I know Senator Schumer has been patient.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. The Senator from Arizona makes the point that he always does eloquently about markets, and I come back to the fact that President Bush has said you don't need subsidies when the marketplace price is over $55 a barrel. So what we want to do is cut back on the subsidies and begin to create the kind of market that I know the Senator from Arizona favors. I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a Government Accountability Office report of May 1, 2007, which makes it very clear that taxpayers are being ripped off for the drilling by major companies on public lands.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I believe I have a couple of minutes, and then Senator Schumer has time reserved. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Klobuchar follow Senator Schumer.

Mr. WYDEN. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I wish to pick up on the comments of my friend from Arizona and my friend from Mississippi, two Senators whom I have worked with on many issues and must unfortunately disagree with them on this one. I want the Senate to understand exactly what the implications would be if the Kyl amendment were to pass. If the Kyl amendment were to pass, the major oil companies would receive billions and billions of dollars of subsidies that President Bush says the major oil companies do not need. I wish to be specific on this as we go to the debate with the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Mississippi. The President of the United States has said that when the price of oil is over $55 a barrel, the oil companies do not need incentives to develop and explore. Let me repeat that. President Bush has said when the price of oil is over $55 a barrel, the oil companies do not need incentives to explore and search for oil. The price of oil at this time is substantially over $55 a barrel. So if the Kyl amendment passes and we refuse to strip these incentives the President says aren't needed, we are going to continue business as usual. The Kyl amendment says, essentially: Let us continue these practices we have had for the last few years that have done nothing--nothing--to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What we have had in the past are billions of dollars of subsidies. For example, in section 199 of the Tax Code, not for investing in refinery capacity, not for investing in new production, not for investing in renewable fuels but essentially continuing the practices that have nothing--done nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I have always said we ought to target tax breaks and incentives where there is an opportunity for new production. That is why I have always favored looking at potential incentives for small companies. But that is not what this amendment is all about. This amendment is about continuing the giveaways for the big companies, the giveaways the President of the United States says are not needed. So where we are is oil is at almost $70 a barrel, gas is over $3, more imports than ever, and it seems to me continuing business as usual as the Kyl amendment would do is not a case you can make. The Finance Committee amendment changes our course. It ends the section 199 tax breaks for the major oil companies. It takes steps to end our addiction to oil. It takes steps to end our addiction to continuing billions of dollars of subsidies that the President says are not needed. Let us not continue these billions and billions of dollars in the name of a modern energy policy. It is not. The idea that shoveling all these breaks, these billions of dollars of breaks at the oil industry is somehow going to be good for America is not borne out by the record. It is not borne out by the record, and in my view, until we take these steps to protect taxpayers and protect consumers and protect the security of the country, I think what will happen is we will continue to increase our addiction to foreign oil, we will continue to have these prices, these staggeringly high prices of $70 a barrel and consumers will still get clobbered at the pump. I am going to have more to say about this in the course of tomorrow, but I would say in closing--and I see my good friend from Arizona on the floor of the Senate--that if the Senate supports this particular amendment, the Kyl amendment, what it will be doing is it will be continuing billions of dollars in tax breaks that if you use the test applied by the President of the United States, those major companies do not need. No one has been able to make a case, it seems to me, that the President of the United States is wrong. In fact, every time this topic has come up, I have said I think the discussion ought to begin with the comment of the President. I credit the President for his statement because I think it reflects modern reality. The President knows a lot about the oil business, and the President says you don't need these subsidies when the price is over $55 a barrel. But along comes the Kyl amendment, and the Kyl amendment says: No, I pretty much don't see it the way the President of the United States sees it. I am going to continue the billions and billions of dollars of subsidies when it is not needed. The last point I would like to make very quickly deals with the Bingaman language. We have heard again and again that this somehow retroactively sweeps in and unravels previous agreements. That is untrue. Yesterday, I asked in the Senate Finance Committee the counsel about this. The counsel was very clear it applies prospectively, it does not apply retroactively, and it applies to all of the activity going on in the gulf. The Government Accountability Office has said that in terms of our position in the world, we stand almost alone in terms of our position relative to getting a fair shake on revenue and protecting taxpayers. The reality--and the Bingaman amendment picks up on this--is taxpayers are getting fleeced by major oil companies when they drill on public land. We are talking about our land, the people's land. We are not talking about private lands. We are talking about our lands. And the Bingaman amendment takes steps to correct that situation. I hope my colleagues will reject the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. If I have made one point tonight, I want it understood, if the Kyl amendment is adopted, major oil companies would continue to receive billions of dollars of subsidies that the President of the United States has said they do not need. Mr. President, I note that my colleague from New York has not arrived. The Senator from Arizona, I am sure, wants to respond. I reserve the time that was propounded in the request by Senator Baucus for Senator Schumer when he arrives. Since he is not here, and Senator Kyl is, I yield the floor to him with the reservation for Senator Schumer when he arrives.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to take a few minutes this afternoon to discuss the tax provisions in this legislation because I think they are very much in the public interest and something I have been working on for many years. In the last Congress, for the first time in many years, the executives of the major oil companies--we are talking about Shell and BP and Exxon, the big five companies--were in front of the joint hearing I attended, a joint hearing of the Energy Committee and the Commerce Committee. With the executives there before this important hearing, I asked all of the oil CEOs if they agreed with a recent statement that President Bush had made. President Bush, of course, an oil man himself, hardly somebody who has any predisposition against the oil industry, recently said that: When oil is over $55 a barrel, the oil companies do not need incentives to explore and develop for oil. I asked each of the executives that day, the first time they had been asked the question in years and years, and to a person, the executives said they did not need those subsidies. Every single one of the executives said it. What was so stunning about it is that their admission was completely contrary to everything the Congress has been doing pretty much for the previous decade. For the previous decade, the Congress had just been throwing one subsidy after another at these major oil companies, amounting to billions and billions of dollars. Yet in the last Congress, when the executives were asked to go on record and publicly state their position, the executives admitted they did not need the money that the Congress has been throwing at them, the billions of dollars in subsidies the Congress has been throwing at them. So what we have is essentially a time now when the companies are making record profits, and they are charging record prices when clearly they do not need record subsidies. That is what the Senate Finance Committee legislation does with respect to the tax provisions. I have reviewed them. They are clearly targeted at the major companies. They are not targeted at the independents and the small companies, and we ought to be taking steps to help them. In fact, I particularly credit our friend and colleague, the late Senator Thomas, for doing extraordinary work over the years, some of which I was privileged to work on with him, to help those small independent companies. Our good friend, the late Senator Thomas, championed that work. This is not going to affect those small independents. This is targeted at the major companies, the companies that, when I asked them--the first time they had been asked in years--admitted they did not need the billions of dollars worth of subsidies they were getting. It ought to be put in the context of what it means for the consumer. Our friend from North Dakota began this discussion as well. The reality is, when somebody pulls up to a gasoline station in New Jersey or Oregon or anywhere else, they are paying what amounts to a ``terror tax.'' That is what we ought to call it. Our addiction to foreign oil is literally a terror tax because when you pull up to that filling station in Oregon or New Jersey or anywhere else, you pay this huge price. Eventually, some of that money gets into the coffers of a government in the Middle East, and they backdoor it to people who want to kill us. Our addiction to foreign oil ought to be put in a context that is appropriate. It is a terror tax. This legislation which has been put together by a number of committees helps us to move away from that addiction to foreign oil. That is why I support it. By taking away some of the subsidies to the major companies, subsidies they have now claimed they don't even need, it makes it possible for us to look at some opportunities for developing renewable energy sources at home. I was at a filling station not long ago in Oregon that hopes to get all its fuel from Oregon crops--not from oil from the Middle East-- waste oil and other products. That is our vision of an important part of our energy supply in the future. If we get out of the business of shoveling billions and billions of dollars worth of subsidies to the major oil companies, subsidies they have now made clear they don't need, we can begin to develop a very different energy future. One last point I wish to make relates to a debate I am sure we will have, and that is a quick comment about the provisions which were added yesterday, Senator Bingaman's provisions, to the legislation. We are going to hear a lot about how somehow this is taking illegal action with respect to oil royalties; it is taking action retroactively, and it is illegal. We are going to hear that probably many times in the course of discussion of the Bingaman legislation that was added yesterday. The first thing I wish to make clear--and we were told this yesterday by counsel, because I asked about it--is that the Bingaman provision would be applied prospectively on oil produced on Federal offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico. It would apply to future activity, all oil produced on Federal offshore leases in the gulf. As we go to this discussion and we are told repeatedly that this in some way unravels previous agreements, that this is illegal, this is retroactive, I hope colleagues will remember that we were told yesterday that it applies prospectively. It does not change the terms of any existing oil and gas lease. We are clear with respect to the Bingaman provision. It doesn't change the terms of any existing oil and gas lease, and it would be applied prospectively on oil produced on these Federal offshore leases and all oil produced on those leases in the gulf. One last point with respect to this issue is comments we have received from the Government Accountability Office with respect to the amount of revenue the Government receives from oil production from the gulf. What the Government Accountability Office has told us on this point is that the taxpayer receives revenue with respect to this production that is lower than virtually anywhere else in the world. They have done a comparison to take a look at all of the other countries where you have similar activity going on. Basically our take, the revenue for the taxpayer, hard-working taxpayers across the country, is lower than virtually anywhere in the world. The only place that is even close to us is where you have an oil company doing most of the production, essentially a government corporation. The reality is, with respect to drilling on our lands--and that is what I am talking about here, the people's lands, public lands, our lands--the taxpayer has been getting fleeced for years and years. The Bingaman provision begins to right the scale to get a fair shake for the taxpayers. I hope colleagues will support the work done by the Finance Committee with respect to the tax titles. It is important that they know the major oil companies have now admitted they don't need the subsidies, and the price per barrel is way over the amount the President said was the level when we ought to stop paying out subsidies. I hope colleagues will look at the facts with respect to the important provisions that were added yesterday by Senator Bingaman. I am of the view that taxpayers have been fleeced with respect to oil drilling on their lands, the people's lands. The Bingaman provision begins to right the scale. I will have more to say on this issue down the road. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, more than 30 months ago, prior to his confirmation as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff told me in my office that if confirmed he would move expeditiously to implement the National Emergency Technology Guard--NET Guard--Program. Unfortunately, Secretary Chertoff has failed to honor this pledge. The idea of NET Guard was born in the aftermath of 9/11, when a number of communications and technology companies told me they wanted to help New York City when it was attacked--and there was no system for using their volunteers. Then-Senator George Allen and I moved on a bipartisan basis to support a program, called NET Guard, that would ensure that volunteers with technology expertise could be fully utilized in future crises. These teams of local volunteers with science and technology expertise would be vital in assisting our communities in responding to attacks on communications networks or recovering from natural disasters. Congress authorized the establishment of NET Guard 5 years ago, in the Homeland Security Act of 2002. However, DHS has utterly failed to make any visible progress in implementing this critical program. DHS's failure to act in this critical area is inexcusable. Had the Department followed through and created NET Guard, I believe it could have played a significant role in alleviating the chaos, confusion, and suffering after Hurricane Katrina. Had NET Guard been properly implemented, there would have been teams of volunteers with expertise ready to mobilize instantly to tackle technical challenges in the wake of the storm. Indeed, on an ad hoc basis, companies and individuals with technology expertise did come forward to assist the suffering. I can only imagine how effective these efforts might have been had NET Guard been in place. Since my meeting with Secretary Chertoff in 2005, my staff and I have been given one excuse after another for delaying implementation of NET Guard. I have been promised briefings that never happen and reports that never materialize. At the outset, I was willing to accept some delay, but that time has passed. We know that it is only a matter of time before there is another crisis that will put American communities and their critical communication networks at risk. Further delay is unacceptable. Out of options, I reluctantly feel that I must put a hold on the nomination of Dennis Schrader who has been nominated by President Bush to serve as Deputy Administrator for National Preparedness, until the NET Guard Program is up and running nationwide. It gives me no pleasure to place this hold and I do so grudgingly. I recognize the importance of the position of Deputy Administrator for National Preparedness, but the position didn't even exist for the first 4 years after the Department of Homeland Security was created; it was just created in March. Since then, Mr. Corey Grouber has served as Acting Deputy Administrator, so delaying Mr. Schrader's confirmation while the long-overdue Net Guard Program is put in place will not leave the office leaderless. Mr. Corey Grouber has extensive experinace at FEMA, so he can manage for a little longer while the NET Guard Program is established. Unfortunately, I see no evidence that the Secretary intends to uphold his pledge to me, and until he does, I will keep my hold on Mr. Schrader's nomination. I hope DHS will quickly begin to take action so I can remove this hold and Mr. Schrader's nomination can move through the Senate.