Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am on the floor tonight for what is really the 10th time in recent days to talk about the need for decent prescription drug coverage for the Nation's elderly citizens. There is one bipartisan bill now before the Senate. It is the Snowe-Wyden bill. I believe so strongly in this issue because of what I am hearing from senior citizens in my home State and now, frankly, from across the United States. What I have decided to do, as part of the effort to advance the prospect of dealing with this issue and dealing with it on a bipartisan basis, is to come to the floor as frequently as I can in the hectic Senate schedule to read from some of these bills I am getting from the Nation's senior citizens. As you can see in the poster next to us, on behalf of the Snowe-Wyden legislation, I am urging seniors to send in copies of their prescription drug bills directly to us at the United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510, because I would like to see the Senate deal with this issue and not just put it off because some are saying it is too difficult and too hard to deal with in this contentious climate. I believe Members of the Senate are sent here to deal with tough issues. This is one that would meet an enormous need. For a number of years before I was elected to the Congress, I served as director of the Oregon Gray Panthers. The need for coverage of prescription drugs was extremely important back then. It was always a big priority for senior citizens. Frankly, it is much more important today because so many of the drugs that are available now are preventive in nature. They help keep seniors well. They help us to hold down the cost of medical care in America. A lot of these drugs today, the blood pressure medicine, the cholesterol medicine, keep seniors well and keep us from needing much greater sums of money to pick up the cost of tragic illnesses. Last week, I cited as one example an important anticoagulant drug. This is a drug that can be available to the Nation's seniors for somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000 a year. But if a senior gets sick, if a senior suffers a debilitating stroke, the expenses associated with that treatment can be more than $100,000. Just think about that--a modest investment in decent prescription drug coverage for the Nation's elderly people, an anticoagulant drug that costs $1,000 a year can help save $100,000 in much more significant medical expenses. As the President knows, we have a real challenge in terms of ensuring the stability of the Medicare program. The Part A program, the institutional program, is the one that is going to escalate in cost if we can't do more to make prescription drug coverage a significant part of outpatient benefits for the Nation's seniors. I am very hopeful this Senate will act on this issue. I believe this is the kind of issue that could be a legacy for this session of Congress. All over the Nation, seniors are telling us now they cannot afford their prescription medicine. I am going to read from three more letters I have recently received from folks at home. The first is from an elderly woman in Toledo, OR. She writes: Dear Senator Wyden, I am an 81-year-old widow. My only income, Social Security, allows me to pay for glaucoma, angina, high blood pressure, all of which I have problems. I am taking eight prescription medications daily. My Medicare supplement insurance doesn't cover medication. For just 1 month for those medicines, she has to spend $166. On top of that, she reports that every other month she has to spend a little over $62 for a small bottle of eye drops. As she says: That adds up to a lot. If I don't use the eye drops, I go blind. And if I don't use the other medications, I will have a stroke, a heart attack or both. Myself, and I am sure many others, are in exactly the same boat. She, as part of her letter, encloses a copy of her bills. Now, this isn't the kind of thing we might hear from some Washington, DC, think tank that is putting out reports about whether or not this is a serious problem and whether or not seniors really need this prescription drug coverage. This is a real live case. This isn't an abstract kind of matter. This is an 81-year-old widow in the State of Oregon who is taking eight prescriptions a day, spending from a modest fixed income $166 a month for those eight prescriptions. Every other month, on top of that, she has to pay for her eye drops. It is very clear that if she doesn't get those medicines, she is going to have the much more serious problems--heart attacks and strokes--that are so debilitating to older people. Another letter that I got in the last couple of days comes from Medford, OR, from seniors there who discussed the question of prescription drug coverage there at the senior citizens center. They said: We are glad you are launching a movement to gain support for prescription drug coverage for seniors. They hope it goes through. Enclosed you will find a computer printout of the amounts I spend on prescriptions and drugs. More than 10 percent of our annual budget is used to defray prescription costs. That does not include the miscellaneous items related to drug purchases. She sent me this, and I will hold up a copy of it. It is an example of the kind of information we are getting. She actually sent us an enumerated copy of the prescription bills that she is paying at home in Medford, OR. These are not isolated cases. I have been on the floor now, this is the tenth occasion, taking three or four of these cases every single time. I hope seniors and families who are listening tonight will look at this poster and see we are urging that they send in copies of their prescription drug bills to their Senators here in the U.S. Senate in Washington, DC, because I am hopeful that this can prick the conscience of the Senate and bring about constructive action before this session is over. The Snowe-Wyden legislation is bipartisan. Fifty-four Members of this body have already voted for this bill. We have a majority in the Senate on record on behalf of the funding mechanism that we envisage in our legislation. We use marketplace forces. I am not talking about a price control regime or about a one-size-fits-all approach to Federal health care; it is one that is very familiar to the Presiding Officer and to all our colleagues. It is really a model based on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. The Snowe-Wyden legislation is called SPICE. It stands for the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act. It is bipartisan. We do think it would help create choices, options, and alternatives for the Nation's older people. I am very hopeful this Senate will say we cannot afford to duck this issue. I am often asked whether we can afford to cover prescription medicine for the Nation's older people. I am of the view that we cannot afford not to cover prescriptions, because what we are going to save as a result of these medicines of the future, and the breakthroughs that we are achieving in terms of preventive care and wellness, is going to far exceed the costs that might be incurred as a result of debilitating illnesses that seniors will suffer if they can't get the medicine. As part of this effort to get bipartisan support for the Snowe-Wyden legislation, I intend to keep coming to the floor of the Senate and reading from these letters. Before I wrap up tonight, I wish to bring up one other case that I thought was particularly poignant. This also was a letter from an elderly person in Medford. Her Social Security monthly income was $582. Over the last few months, she spent over $700 on her prescription medicine, and every 3 months, in addition, she has to pay for her health insurance plan, which doesn't seem to cover many of the health care needs that she has. Just think about that. With a monthly Social Security income of $582, over recent months she spent more than $700 on prescription drugs. Her private policy doesn't cover many of her health care needs. She also is sending me copies of her bills in an effort to get the Senate to see how important this issue is. Members of the Senate, I know, care about older people; a number of them have come up to me while I have been on the floor these last couple of weeks talking about this issue and said: You are right; we need to act on it. It is hard to see what is actually holding up the effort to go forward in the Senate. This is the last period before the year is out. Certainly we can come together as a body and get ready to address this issue early next year. We have a majority in the Senate on record and voting for a specific plan to fund this benefit. It is based on a model that uses marketplace forces that ought to be appealing to both sides of the aisle. It is a model with which Members of Congress are familiar because of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. It is the basis of the Snowe- Wyden legislation. It is hard to see what is really holding up the effort to win passage of this important legislation. I guess part of the problem is that some of the political prognosticators say it is a difficult issue, that both sides are just going to fight it out on the campaign trail, and we can just wait until 2001 to actually take action on it. When I hear from seniors at home, such as the letter I raised first from the elderly widow in Toledo who has eight prescriptions and pays more than $165 a month for her prescriptions, and folks in Medford who are on a small monthly income and spending a significant portion of it on prescription drugs, I don't think those people can afford to wait until after the 2001 election. Frankly, I think they expect us to deal with the concerns they have, and to deal with them now. It is essentially one full year before there is another election. There is plenty of time to go out and campaign and have the vigorous discussion of the issues in the fall of 2000. But what we ought to do now is to act in a bipartisan way. The Snowe-Wyden legislation is that kind of effort. Senator Snowe and I have said we are going to set aside some of the partisan bickering that has surrounded health care in this session of the Senate in years past; we are going to move forward and try to make sure seniors get some help. I hope families and seniors who are listening tonight will look at this poster. We are urging that seniors send copies of their prescription drug bills directly to each of us in the Senate here in Washington, DC, and help us in the Senate to come together and deal with the issue that is of such extraordinary importance to our families. There are a variety of ways this issue could be addressed. I think personally the Snowe-Wyden legislation, because it is bipartisan and because more than half of the Senate has voted for a plan to fund it, is the way to go. But I am sure there are other kinds of ideas. When seniors send in copies of their prescription drug bills as we try to get action on this issue, I hope they will also let us know their ideas about legislative approaches, be it support for Senator Snowe, the Snowe-Wyden legislation, or other kinds of approaches. But what to me is unacceptable is just ducking. I do not think there is any excuse for inertia on this issue. I think it is time for the Senate to say we cannot afford, as a nation, to see seniors suffer the way they do when they cannot get prescription drug coverage. Just as important as the questions of fairness for seniors, it seems to me, are the questions of economics. From an economic standpoint, the need to cover some of these prescription drugs for seniors looks to me like a pretty easy call. With a modest investment, we can save a whole lot of expense that comes about when they suffer strokes and heart attacks and the like when they cannot get their medicine. So I hope in the days ahead, Members of the Senate, in senior centers and medical facilities and other places where we all go to visit, will take the time to talk to some of the folks at home about the need for prescription drug coverage and discuss ways we can actually get this benefit added in this session of the Senate. Too many of our seniors now cannot afford their medicine. That is what these bills are all about. What these bills and these letters I am getting from seniors at home in Oregon are all about is that they cannot afford their medicine. These are the people who are told by their doctors to take three prescriptions; they cannot afford to do that and they end up taking two prescriptions. Then they cannot afford to do that; then it is one. Pretty soon, sure as the night follows day, they get sicker and they need institutional care. That is, obviously, bad for their health and it is also bad for the Nation's fiscal health. So I intend to keep coming back to the floor of the Senate. Since my days with the Gray Panthers at home in Oregon, I felt this was an important benefit for the Nation's older people. All these letters I am receiving as a result of folks sending in copies of their prescription drug bills, if anything, just reaffirms to me how important it is that the Senate act on this issue, and do it in a bipartisan way. Let's show seniors, let's show the skeptics we can come together around this important priority. This is not a trifling matter. This is, for many, many seniors, their big out-of-pocket expense. Many of them do not have private health insurance that covers it. Many of them are simply falling between the cracks in terms of meeting their health care expenses. For many elderly people, as a result of escalating health costs, they are paying more proportionally out of their own pocket today than they were back when Medicare began in 1965. That should not be acceptable to any Member of the Senate. I intend to come back to the floor again and again and again until this Senate, on a bipartisan basis, looks to addressing this prescription drug coverage. The Snowe-Wyden legislation is bipartisan. It uses marketplace forces. We reject the kind of price control regimes others may wish to pursue. I am hopeful we can get action on this issue because, for the millions of seniors who cannot afford their prescriptions, the Senate's willingness to tackle this issue, and do it on a bipartisan basis and get some relief for the seniors, will help instill a sense of confidence, a sense that the Senate is listening to them, hearing them, and is willing to respond to their most significant needs. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this is the ninth time I have come to the floor of the Senate to talk about the issue of Medicare coverage for prescription drugs. As the Senate can see, I am urging seniors to send in copies of their prescription drug bills, as this poster instructs, to your Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510. I am doing this because it is critically important that Congress move on this issue and address it in a bipartisan way. With the counsel and input of Senator Snowe of Maine, there is one bipartisan bill now before the Senate to cover the issue of prescription drugs for the Nation's elderly. I am sure other Members of the Senate are getting the kind of mail I am. What I will do this morning, as I have done on eight previous occasions, is talk specifically about some of the bills I am getting from senior citizens in Oregon in an effort to pull together a bipartisan coalition for action in this session. We have heard, again and again, experts on the health care issue say the prescription drug question is too complicated for the Senate to act on at this time. That is a view I do not share. It is not shared by Senator Snowe. In fact, 54 Members of the Senate have already voted for the funding plan the two of us have developed. We have already laid the foundation for the Senate to move on this issue in a bipartisan way. I will talk for a few minutes this afternoon about our legislation and about some copies of bills I have received from senior citizens. I have a whole sheaf of them to go through. What our bill is all about is trying to give senior citizens who are on Medicare the same kind of bargaining power in the marketplace that a health maintenance organization has. The sad part about this issue is that the senior citizens get shellacked on their prescription bills twice. Medicare doesn't cover prescription drugs. When the program began in 1965, it didn't cover prescriptions. Maybe back then there was a feeling they weren't that important. If anybody thought that then, they certainly would not believe that now, because we have more than 20 percent of the Nation's senior citizens spending over $1,000 a year out of pocket for their prescription medicine. They can't afford these prescriptions. The doctors tell them to take three prescriptions. They start off taking two, and then they take one, and eventually they can't afford their medicine, and they get sicker and they need perhaps institutional care, which is far more expensive. What is so sad is that the seniors, of course, with Medicare not covering prescriptions, have to pay out of pocket. On top of that, they have to subsidize the big buyers, the health maintenance organizations, the health plans, and other big buyers that are in a position to get a discount on their prescription medicine. So Senator Snowe and I, in support of the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill, are urging seniors to send copies of their prescription drug bills to the Senate, to your Senators, in Washington, DC, in the hopes that we can deal with this in this session of the Senate. I have been concerned about this issue since back in the days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers. I ran the legal aid office for senior citizens then, and prescriptions were awfully important even then. But the fact is they are much more important to the Nation's older people today than they were then because, today, so many of these prescriptions can, in effect, help to keep seniors well and healthy and physically fit. So many of the drugs today can help to lower blood pressure, or deal with cholesterol problems, or a wide variety of conditions, and can keep our seniors healthy. The savings associated with these kinds of drugs are absolutely staggering. I reported last week, when we talked about the question of prescriptions for seniors on the floor of the Senate, about one anticoagulant drug seniors often take today. It costs a little over $1,000 a year for a senior citizen to take that anticoagulant drug. By taking that drug, very often it is possible to prevent a debilitating stroke that can cost a senior more than $100,000, in terms of expenses. Just think of that. An anticoagulant drug helps our seniors stay healthy for about $1,000 a year. As a result of spending $1,000 a year on this particular medicine, we can keep that person from having a debilitating stroke, which could cost more than $100,000 a year. So, very often, I am asked by colleagues and others in the Congress whether our Nation can afford to cover prescription drugs for the elderly. My answer is that our Nation cannot afford not to cover prescription drugs, when you look at the kind of savings that would be associated with this coverage. Now, in the Snowe-Wyden bill, we seek to do a number of things beyond giving senior citizens the same kind of bargaining power that a health maintenance organization does. We focus on the principles of the private marketplace, trying to create choices and options and a wide variety of alternatives for the Nation's seniors, and we do it through a concept the President of the Senate and all of us understand very well, and that is, we use the model of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. We don't go out and set up a whole new bureaucracy. We don't set up a lot of price controls and get the Government intervening in the marketplace. I have great reservations about that kind of approach because, if you go with price controls, say, on Medicare, the only thing that will happen is you will shift all the costs onto the backs of other vulnerable people. I don't think there is a Member of the Senate who would like to see us take action with respect to prescription drugs for the Nation's senior citizens, and then have a lot of costs shifted onto, say, a 27-year-old woman who is divorced and has two kids and is working hard and playing by the rules and suddenly is seeing the prescription drug costs for her children go up very dramatically. So we ought to unleash the forces of the marketplace. That is what is in the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden prescription drug bill. What I am going to do for a few moments is talk about some of the bills and documents that I have been sent by seniors since we came to the floor and began to urge them, as this poster says, to send in copies of their prescription drug bills to us in the Senate. The first case I want to talk about this morning involves a senior citizen who is 73 years old and lives in my home State, in Hillsboro. She has a monthly income of $1,000, and she is spending 25 percent of it on her prescription drugs. She doesn't have any of these bills covered by her health insurance--not any of them. She has to take a wide variety of drugs, such as Relafen and Prilosec--a whole host of prescription drugs--primarily due to hypertension and a variety of problems. Her Prilosec alone is one she has to take on a regular basis; yet, as a result of the expenses associated with her prescription medicine, this senior citizen at home in Hillsboro, OR, is not able to take all of the medication she needs. She reports that when she does take her Prilosec as her doctor tells her, she has had to give up other kinds of necessities. She is eating cheaper foods and is particularly concerned that if something isn't done about prescription drugs in the Senate, she is going to have a whole host of other problems. She is not able to afford other essentials, such as being able to take care of expenses for her house. This is a real case, not some government report from some think tank in Washington, DC, hypothesizing about what the senior citizens need. This is a real, live case from my home State, in Hillsboro, OR. She heard I am urging senior citizens, as this poster says, to send in copies of their prescription drug bills to their Senators. She sent me her case. Very clearly, these are heartrending cases--to think people with a $1,000-a-month income trying to get by on that alone is hard enough. Having to spend 25 percent of her income on prescription drugs, having to be part of a drug regime where she can't even take all that her doctor is telling her to take--this is what is going on in the United States of America. A country as rich and powerful and as good as ours has not yet figured out a way to help people such as this. It is a tragedy that we cannot come together on a bipartisan basis, the way the Snowe-Wyden bill envisages. There are other approaches that certainly would be appealing as well. But we need to get this done. What everybody says is that this Congress is so polarized, they can't deal with big issues. Well, I believe the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill, which has gotten 54 votes in terms of a funding plan and is based on models that every Member of the Senate knows about, is a very appealing kind of concept. But if our colleagues have different approaches--and certainly in this body we have strong views, and there are a variety of different ideas on this--have them come forward. But let's not duck this issue. Let us not duck it and say, oh, this is a matter for the 2000 campaign, and we don't need to deal with it today. We need to deal with it now. I am going to go through a couple of other cases. Here is another one from a couple in Cornelius, OR, a home in my State. They have a monthly income of about $1,000. They are spending between $200 and $400 every month on their prescription drugs. They have to take drugs for arthritis, for cholesterol problems, and antibiotics on a fixed income. Clearly, this kind of case where month after month they are seeing between 20 percent and 40 percent of their monthly income going for prescription drugs ought to make it clear to Members of this body that we have to move and move on a bipartisan basis. There isn't anything that is important in Washington, DC, that isn't bipartisan. I don't know of a single issue that can be addressed in a significant way without Democrats and Republicans coming together. The Snowe-Wyden bipartisan approach is one way. There may be others. But the important thing is we ought to move and we ought to move in this session of Congress. A third case I would like to go through involves an elderly woman in Forest Grove, OR. Recently, in effect, in the last few weeks, she spent $294 on her prescription medicine. She has had to take a variety of different medicines. That is one example of what we are getting now from the seniors across this country. This particular senior is in Forest Grove, OR, taking a whole host of medications. A lot of our seniors average 15 prescriptions a year. The third case I have gone through this morning with seniors spending $294 in just a few weeks on her prescription medicines in Forest Grove is pretty representative of what we are hearing. I hope that as a result of my coming to the floor over these last days before we wrap up for the year that we can see Democrats and Republicans in the Senate coming together to try to deal with this question. I want to bring up one last case. It is a particularly poignant one. It is from an older person who is now taking 15 prescription drugs. She is on a fixed income with nothing but her Social Security. She is spending $600 a month--$600 a month--on her prescription medicine. None of it is covered by her health insurance. She writes to tell me that she is spending almost her entire monthly income on prescription drugs. Think of that. A senior citizen, again, at home in Oregon spending almost her entire monthly income on prescription drugs. We asked: What happens when you can't afford the prescription drugs you need? She said borrow. That is what she tries to do. A senior citizen with only Social Security spending virtually all of her monthly income on prescription drugs is now having to borrow from friends and family. I have a list of these prescriptions. Again, the list goes on and on. This is an example of the kind of bills that senior citizens are now sending in as a result of our efforts to try to get bipartisan action on this issue. I hope as a result of my remarks other seniors will, as this poster says, send in copies of their prescription drug bills. I hope they will be interested in the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden prescription drug bill. But, frankly, I would like to make sure they are in contact with all of us in the Senate because this is not an issue that should be allowed to be put off until after the 2000 election. We are given an election certificate. Mr. President, I know you feel very strongly about important issues such as campaign finance reform where it is important to come together. We are giving election certificates to deal with these issues. I have not been given an election certificate to put this off until after another election. We are all sent here to deal with these important issues such as campaign finance reform and prescription drugs because these are important to the American people. I am very proud to have been able to work with Senator Olympia Snowe on this issue. I think when you are dealing with important questions such as prescription drugs and campaign finance reform it has to be bipartisan. My plan is to keep coming to the floor of the Senate day, after day, after day, bringing up these examples of what I am hearing from the Nation's senior citizens and hope that we can come together. Senator Snowe and I got 54 votes on the floor of the Senate for the funding approach we are taking. More than $10 billion goes from the Medicare program each year to cover tobacco-related illnesses. We know we have to act. We have to act responsibly to address these concerns of seniors. There is a marketplace-oriented approach to this problem. We don't need a lot of price controls. We don't need a ``one-size-fits-all'' run from a Washington, DC, program. The Snowe-Wyden bill will give seniors the same kind of bargaining power that a health maintenance organization has to negotiate prices, not through a government regime but through the power of marketplace forces. I am going to keep coming back to the floor of the Senate until we get action on this issue. I will keep reading from these letters. I hope seniors will continue, as this poster says, to send in copies of their prescription drug bills. I know that seniors at home have made it clear they are going to keep sending them to me, and I am very hopeful that we can get action on this issue in this session. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this is the eighth time in recent days I have come to the floor to talk about the issue of prescription drugs because, frankly, I think this is a priority for this session of the Congress and one we can tackle in a bipartisan way. Senator Olympia Snowe and I have teamed up on a bipartisan bill. We were able to get 54 votes on the floor of the Senate for a concrete funding plan for our approach. What I have been doing, as folks can see in the poster right next to me, is urging seniors to send in copies of their prescription drug bills. The poster is very clear. We would like seniors to send copies of their prescription drug bills directly to each of us in the Senate so we can emphasize how important it is that this be tackled in a bipartisan way. Senator Snowe and I have heard again and again that this is an issue that just has to be put off until after the 2000 election. The Republicans and Democrats are going to just bicker about it and sort of have an ongoing finger-pointing exercise and nothing will get done. I happen to think there are a lot of Members of the Senate who want to tackle this issue and want to tackle it in this session of Congress. Since I have come to the floor of the Senate and brought this poster urging seniors to send their prescription drug bills in, I have heard from a number of our colleagues in the Senate. They have said we need bipartisan action. A number of them have asked for copies of the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill. They want to know more about it. I am going to continue tonight to read from some of these letters, particularly from folks I am hearing from in Oregon. But I want to take a few minutes tonight to talk about some important issues relating to this question of prescription drug coverage for senior citizens and particularly ask about this issue of whether we can afford, as a nation, to cover prescription medicine. Mr. President and colleagues, I believe America cannot afford to not cover prescription drugs. The reason that is the case is that drugs in the 21st century are going to be preventive. They are going to allow for patients to be treated on an outpatient basis and it will make part A of Medicare, the hospitalization part of Medicare, less expensive. I mentioned a drug the other night, an important anticoagulant that helps to prevent strokes. It is a drug that would cost perhaps $1,000 a year to assist seniors. If we can prevent those strokes through the anticoagulant drugs, we can save $100,000 that might be incurred as a result of expenses associated with a disability. There is one bipartisan bill before the Senate dealing with this prescription drug issue. It is the Snowe-Wyden legislation. My view is we can't afford to continue to pass up the opportunity to address these health care issues in a preventive way rather than incurring the extraordinary expenses for more institutional care. I will mention a few of the drugs that will be particularly important to older people. One is Neupogen, which helps cancer patients and others with compromised immune systems boost their white blood cell counts and avoid hospital stays. Another is Glucophage, which is now being used to help those at risk for diabetes from getting that disease which causes so many other serious health problems. My mom has had diabetes for a long time. I have seen the costs of these medicines. To think there is an opportunity with a particular drug to cover these seniors with their prescription drug bills seems to me to be an option as a nation we cannot afford to pass up. Another drug is Vasotec, which treats high blood pressure and helps to stave off strokes and heart disease and other major problems. These are all important medications. They do cost money, but the bottom line is we can use these medicines. When seniors receive these medicines, they are in a position to stave off much more serious and much more expensive problems. It is sensible, in my view, to make sure seniors who need these medications--that are preventive in nature--can get them. Under the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill, that would be done. As far as I am concerned, in my reading of history, there is pretty much nothing that can get accomplished in the Senate that is truly important that isn't bipartisan. Our proposal gives each senior a chance at affordable prescription medicine. It ought to be recognizable to Members of Congress because a version of this model is what ensures good health for the families of Members of this body and the Congress. Since my days with the Gray Panthers--I have been working on this prescription drug issue for many years now--I have seen how many seniors have to walk an economic tightrope, balancing their food against their fuel costs and their fuel costs against their medical bills. We have now more than 20 percent of the Nation's older people paying more than $1,000 per year for prescription drugs. The typical senior is using 18 prescriptions a year. One constituent from Medford, OR, wrote that from a modest income he spent more than $1,230 so far this year on prescription medicines. The typical senior is taking 18 different prescriptions. I hope, as a result of this effort to collect these drug bills from seniors, we can actually get some relief for people in this country who are facing such serious and urgent health care needs. Some have said we ought to wait until after the next election, we ought to wait for comprehensive Medicare reform. I know the Presiding Officer believes strongly in this. There are a lot of Members who want to see broader, more comprehensive Medicare reform. Under the Snowe- Wyden prescription drug proposal, we are using the kind of principles that make sense for Medicare in the 21st century. It is choice- oriented. It gives a lot of options to older people. We use marketplace forces to contain costs. It has worked for Members of Congress and their families. I think it can work for my constituents at home in Oregon. I think it can work for the older people of this country. I am hopeful in the days ahead we can make the case for why it is important the Senate Act in this session. The question of prescription drugs and will Congress tackle it now-- all of the political prognosticators have said this is an issue the Congress is going to punt on. They have said this is an issue that is going to have to be put off. I don't see how, when seniors are sending copies of their prescription drug bills, a Member of this body, a Member of this Congress, can say we ought to put this issue off when there is a model that 54 Members of the Senate have voted for, that has strong bipartisan support, that uses marketplace forces as a model. Let's not say this is something that ought to be put off. I think we know what needs to be done. I think we can do it in a cost-effective fashion. Our bill doesn't involve price controls. Some seem to think that is the way to go. What troubles me about plans to deal with prescription drug costs that involve price controls, we will have massive cost-shifting. If we have Medicare acting as the buyer for all the medicine, it may be possible for the Government to negotiate a discount. I have always said that might be possible. What troubles me about that approach is we will have the cost passed on to someone else who might be 26 or 27--maybe a divorced mom who has a couple of kids-- working as hard as they can, and all of a sudden they find out their prescription drug bill shoots up because Congress adopted an approach in this area that doesn't use marketplace forces. Under the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden plan, the only bipartisan prescription drug bill now before the Senate, we reject those cost controls. We don't advocate a one-size-fits-all Federal approach. We use marketplace forces, the kind of forces that help deliver decent and affordable care to Members of this body and our families. I want to read briefly from a couple of the other letters I have received from Oregon. I will keep coming back to the floor of the Senate again and again until we get bipartisan action on this prescription drug issue. I think the question of prescription drugs is the kind of issue that can leave a legacy for this session. It is the kind of important question that will help folks and help families at a time when a lot have fallen between the cracks. We know the economy is strong. We know a lot of people are doing well. If they happen to be in the stock market, most of the time they are doing very well. But there are a lot of folks who don't have the stocks in the technology companies, a lot of folks are on modest incomes. A lot of the seniors I have worked with since my days with the Gray Panthers are telling me and telling other Members of the Senate they just can't afford their prescriptions. That is what this is about. They can't afford their prescriptions. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with that issue. The wrong way, in my view, is to have a price control regime and produce cost-shifting with intervention by Government. I don't think that will work. I think a lot of people will end up getting hurt by that approach. I think there would be a lot of unintended consequences. The right kind of approach, the one advocated in the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden prescription drug bill, uses marketplace forces. It gives seniors the kind of bargaining power that health maintenance organizations would have. Those big organizations, the health maintenance organizations, can go out and negotiate deep discounts. They use their bargaining power in the marketplace to get discounts. What happens is seniors get shellacked twice. They get hit once because Medicare doesn't cover prescription drugs. Medicare started out as half a loaf back in 1965. It did not cover prescriptions and eyeglasses and hearing aids and a variety of needs older people have. But as a result of the escalating costs of health care, a lot of seniors are paying more proportionately out of pocket today than when Medicare began in 1965. So seniors are not able to afford their prescriptions, and that senior purchaser, a low-income elderly widow, in effect has to subsidize the big purchasers, the health maintenance organizations that can negotiate discounts. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with the issue of affordable medication. The wrong way is to create a one-size-fits-all Federal regime and put the Government in the business of trying to orchestrate this entire program. The other is to use a model that we know works. Under our proposal--we call it SPICE, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act--Senator Snowe and I, we reject this Government model. We use an approach that has private sector options and choices and gives seniors bargaining power. We hope more older people will send us copies of their prescription drug bills. This poster really says it all to seniors and their families: Send us copies of your prescription drug bills. Send them to your Senator. Write to: Your Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. I am going to wrap up tonight--because I know several of our colleagues would like to discuss matters important to them--with just a couple of other letters. From the Oregon coast in the last few days, I received a particularly poignant letter. It is from an individual with an income of about $1,000 per month. She has to take prescription medicine, a number of prescriptions. Over the last few months, out of her $1,000-a-month income, she has had to spend almost $700. That is just over the last few months, from somebody who is on a very modest income. Picture any one of us, or our relatives, trying to get by on an income of $1,000 a month and having to spend a significant portion of it, around $700 just in recent days, on prescriptions. We know they would not be able to do it. But that is the reality of what seniors on the Oregon coast are facing. That is the reality of what seniors all over this country are facing. That is what the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden prescription drug bill seeks to deal with. We want that person to get some real relief. We think it is time for the Senate to act on a bipartisan basis. One other letter I received from the Willamette Valley, not far from my hometown, I thought was also particularly poignant. This was from a senior who sent me, really, all of his prescriptions. Just as we said in our poster, send us copies of your prescription drug bills, I think a lot of the seniors are doing it in a pretty detailed fashion. This is just an example of what I received from one older person in the Willamette Valley. She reports, on a very modest income, she is spending $236 a month on her prescription drugs. As she reports, that is without the over-the-counter medication she also has to take. She is 78 years old. She is concerned about whether or not the Senate is going to act. She is pretty skeptical, just the way a lot of other seniors are in our country. What we need to show is this Senate is willing to tackle these issues and do it on a bipartisan basis. The time for finger pointing and scapegoating on this issue is over. We cannot wait for another year, another full year, for action on this matter. We ought to move now. There is one bipartisan bill before the Senate, one which I believe can bring Democrats and Republicans together. I am going to keep coming back to the floor of the Senate to talk about the SPICE Program, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act. It is voluntary in nature. Nobody is required to change anything. No senior, no family, would be required to change anything in their buying practices should they choose to continue doing exactly what they are doing. But for millions of older people, the SPICE Program, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act, will be a bargain. It will be a winner because it will give seniors the kind of bargaining power the big health maintenance organizations have had. It is not right, in my view, to give those buyers significant power in the marketplace and just say seniors and families do not matter. In effect, that is what we are doing. We are telling them: You go on out and do your best, walk into a pharmacy, and even though you are subsidizing the big buyers, this Senate will not do anything about it. I believe it is time for bipartisan action on this. I believe it is time to create an approach to cover prescription drugs under Medicare that uses the forces of the marketplace, that is bipartisan, and that helps hold costs down. I believe a lot of seniors cannot afford their prescriptions. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with it. The bipartisan Snowe-Wyden legislation is what we think is the appropriate way to go. We are going to continue to come to this floor and talk about the need for action on it. As this poster says, what will help is if seniors send in copies of their prescription drug bills. We urge seniors to send them to us and send them to their Senator here in the U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510, because that will help Members of the Senate to see how urgent is this need. The need was great years ago, but it is getting even greater. Too many older people every week are having to make a choice between their food costs and their fuel costs and their fuel costs and their medical bills. Let us show we can deliver on this important issue. There is a bipartisan bill now before the Senate. We hope seniors, as this poster says, will be in touch with us to let us know their feelings on this important matter. I intend to keep coming back to the floor of the Senate until we get action on this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, and colleagues, this is the seventh time I have come to the floor of the Senate in recent days to talk about the issue of Medicare coverage for prescription drugs. The reason I do so is I think it is so important that before we wrap up our work in this session of Congress, we take action on this matter, given how many vulnerable senior citizens there are in this country who simply cannot afford their prescriptions. There is just one bipartisan bill with respect to prescription drug coverage now before the Senate. It is a piece of legislation known as the SPICE Act, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act. It is a bipartisan bill on which I have teamed with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine; and it is one that the two of us are very hopeful this Congress will act on before we conclude our work. There are some who think this issue is too controversial and too difficult to tackle before the next election. I would note that it is going to be more than a year until the next election. We are going to have a lot of senior citizens who are walking on an economic tightrope, every week balancing their food costs against their fuel costs, and their fuel costs against their medical bills, who are not going to be able to pay for their prescriptions and their necessities if the Senate decides to duck this issue and put it off until after the next election. I think the reason we are sent here is to tackle issues and not just put them off until after the election. Over the last few months, Senator Snowe and I have worked with senior citizen groups; we have worked with people in the pharmaceutical sector, in the insurance sector, various public- and private-sector organizations; and we believe the SPICE legislation that we have crafted is the kind of bill that Members of the Senate can support. In fact, as part of the budget, Senator Snowe and I teamed up, and we offered a specific funding plan. And 54 Members of the Senate are now on record--they are now specifically on record--with respect to the Snowe-Wyden funding plan for paying for prescription drug benefits. So we are now in a position, it seems to me, colleagues, to take specific action. One of the reasons I have come to the floor tonight is my hope that we can really show how urgent this need is. What I have done, as the poster next to me says, is urge senior citizens to send in copies of their prescription drug bills, directly to their Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. I have decided I am going to, in my discussions on the floor each evening, read a portion of the letters I am receiving from seniors at home in Oregon. I read about one group in the newspaper the other day who said it is not really that urgent a need. More than 20 percent of the Nation's senior citizens are spending over $1,000 a year out of pocket for their prescription medicine. I read a couple of nights ago about an elderly woman from southern Oregon whose income is just over $1,000 a month in Social Security. She spends more than half of it on her prescriptions. Those are the kinds of accounts we are hearing again and again and again. The fact is, our senior citizens are getting shellacked twice. First, Medicare doesn't cover prescriptions. That is the way the program began in 1965. I was director of the Gray Panthers at home for about 7 years before I was elected to Congress. The need was very acute back then for prescription drug coverage. But today it is even more important, for two reasons. First, the senior citizen, who not only gets no Medicare coverage for their prescriptions, is now subsidizing the big buyers such as the health maintenance organizations that are in a position to negotiate big discounts. These big buyers, the health maintenance organizations, have real bargaining power and clout. They go out and negotiate a discount; they get a break. If you are a senior citizen, for example, in Myrtle Creek, OR, or Philomath--I will read from those letters in a moment--you end up subsidizing those big buyers. I don't think that is right. In addition, since the days when we began to push, with the Gray Panthers, for prescription drug coverage, a lot of the new, important prescriptions are preventive in nature. I described several days ago an important anticoagulant drug that can help with a variety of ailments relating to strokes. The cost of that anticoagulant drug is in the vicinity of about $1,000 a year. You have a full-scale stroke that can come about if you don't get the medicine, and the cost can be $100,000 a year. When people ask me, can this country afford to cover prescription drugs under Medicare, my view is, our country cannot afford not to do it. As part of this campaign we have launched in the Senate to have seniors send in, as this poster says, copies of their prescription drug bills, Senator Snowe and I have teamed up on a bipartisan kind of plan. I am going to read from these letters. I will take just a couple of minutes for that tonight. Just a couple of days ago, I heard from a woman in Philomath, OR, who wrote me about her mother. Her mother had recently spent more than $2,220 on prescription drugs. The daughter said--this was particularly poignant, in my view--the only way her mother was able to, in effect, cover her prescription needs was that her mother was getting samples from the doctor. The fact that she spent more than $2,220 on prescription drugs and the year isn't even over yet is dramatized by the fact that the cost would be much greater were it not for the fact that she was getting samples to supplement what she was paying for. That is the kind of account we are hearing from seniors in Oregon, as they, as this poster says, send in copies of their prescription drug bills. I hope we will get more of that. We need to deal with this issue on a bipartisan basis. Senator Snowe and I have chosen to model our program after the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. The SPICE proposal we introduced is sort of a senior citizens version of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. The elderly population, of course, is different from that of the Federal workforce, but the model of trying to offer choices and options and alternatives to make sure there is competition in health care of the kind Senator Graham has advocated in the past is very sensible. If it is good enough for Members of Congress, it certainly ought to be the kind of thing we look at to cover older people. It is especially important because it can be a model that prevents cost shifting on to other groups of citizens. There are other proposals, for example, that in effect have Medicare sort of buying up all the prescription drugs and taking the lead as the purchaser. What concerns me about that approach is, I think you will have massive cost shifting on to other groups of individuals. Nobody in the Congress intentionally would want to see a proposal developed that would, in effect, give a discount to folks on Medicare and then just have the cost shifted over to somebody who was 27 years old and had a couple of kids and was working hard and doing their best to get ahead in life. We have to use marketplace forces to develop and implement this benefit. The proposal I have introduced with Senator Snowe is one that uses those marketplace forces. It would give seniors the kind of bargaining power a health maintenance organization and a big buying group would have, but it wouldn't involve a lot of price controls. It wouldn't involve a lot of micromanagement. It wouldn't be sort of one-size-fits- all health care. As we go ahead with this bipartisan campaign, the bill on which Senator Snowe and I have teamed up is, in fact, the only bipartisan measure now before the Senate. I am going to come to this floor as often as I can and urge seniors to send in copies of their prescription drug bills directly to their Senator and just keep bringing to our colleagues' attention the need for action on this issue. The second letter I want to describe tonight comes from an elderly couple from my hometown in Portland who said they have already spent $1,750-plus on their prescription drug costs so far this year. They wrote: We have saved all our life, never knowing what health problems would befall us. We are glad to pay our fair share, but the cost of prescription drugs is eating up our savings. Finally, a constituent from Myrtle Creek has written that recently they spent $700 on prescription medicines. This exceeds the so-called average many of the experts in the beltway are talking about as not being that big a deal for senior citizens. This is a bill incurred by an older person from Myrtle Creek. We hear the same thing from Portland, OR. We hear the same thing from Philomath, OR. This is what we are hearing all across this country. It would be a terrible shame, in my view, for the Senate to say we are not going to act, we are going to let this become a big campaign issue in the 2000 election, and Democrats and Republicans can engage in a lot of finger pointing and, in effect, sort of put out that the other side doesn't care, the other side isn't interested. We will end up seeing this issue drag on well into the next century. I believe the Snowe-Wyden legislation, the only bipartisan bill now before the Senate on prescription drugs, may not be the last word on this issue. It is not going to be enacted into law with every I dotted and every T crossed, as it has been proposed thus far, but I do believe it can serve as a model. It is bipartisan. Fifty-four Members in the Senate are already on record as having cast a vote for the specific plan we have to fund this program. And so the opportunity to make the lives of older people in this country better, to help those who are scrimping and not taking their drugs the way they ought to, to be able to do it in a way that uses marketplace kinds of forces and provides choices and options, just the way our families get, seems to be an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up. I know Senator Graham, who has done good work on the health care issue and the prescription issue as a member of the Finance Committee, is here to talk. The hour is late. But I intend to keep coming to the floor of the U.S. Senate and pushing for action on this issue. There is a bipartisan bill before the Senate now. This would be the kind of issue that could be a legacy for this session of the Congress. I intend to keep coming to the floor of the U.S. Senate, reading from the letters I am getting from home, urging seniors to do as this poster says: Send in copies of your prescription drug bills. I intend to come back to this floor again and again and again, until we get action on this matter. For years, since the days when I was director of the Oregon Gray Panthers at home, I have had a dream that the U.S. Congress would make sure that older people who aren't taking their medicines because they can't afford it would be able to get this coverage. The opportunity to team up with Senator Snowe has been a real pleasure for me. She has been speaking out on this issue. I will continue to speak out on it, and we are going to do everything we can to make sure the U.S. Senate acts on this question and does it in this session of the Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I have informed the Minority Leader in writing that I will object to any motion to proceed or to seek unanimous consent to take up and pass H.R. 2260, the Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999, when it is received from the House.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this is the sixth time I have come to the floor in recent days to talk about Medicare coverage for prescription medicine and particularly to talk about bipartisanship. I want to talk about this issue of prescriptions for senior citizens. I am very pleased to see my good friend and colleague from Oregon in the chair. He has been extremely supportive of the effort Senator Snowe and I have been making over these last few months to try to show that we can deal in a bipartisan manner with this issue of prescription drugs for the Nation's elderly. I think a lot of people have pretty much consigned this issue to part of the campaign trail in the fall of 2000 and that Republicans and Democrats are just going to fight about it and nothing is going to get done. But what Senator Snowe and I have been talking about for the last few weeks is that we ought to act on this now; we ought to deal with it in this session of Congress. I thank the Chair, my friend and colleague from Oregon, because he has been very supportive. I am going to read this afternoon, as I have done on five previous occasions, from some of the letters we are getting from seniors across the State of Oregon who are concerned about this issue. In fact, this is part of a campaign Senator Snowe and I are making to urge seniors across the Nation, as we say in the poster, to send in their prescription drug bills. We hope they do send them to their Senators, in the hopes that we can galvanize bipartisan action in this session. It is more than a year until the next election. It would be a shame, with all of the suffering and hardship we are seeing in these letters, to have the Senate just take a pass on this issue and say, well, we will deal with it some other time and on some other day. So I am going to, as I have on five previous occasions, read from some of these letters in an effort to try to make the case for bipartisanship and action in this session. One senior from Lebanon wrote recently that she has about $990 per month in income. This senior spends about $175 of that for just one prescription each month. That leaves this older person a little over $700 a month on which to live. Think about what it is actually like for a senior citizen on a $990-a-month income to spend $175 of that for just one prescription each month. It is pretty clear that you just can't pay for necessities if you have to pay out of your monthly income that very large prescription drug bill. It would be one thing if that letter were a rarity, but here is another letter I got recently from a couple in The Dalles, OR--the Chair and I have been in that community often--who has to spend something like $1,500 a year for tamoxifen, a drug used to fight cancer. It is very clear that with their other health expenses, their dental work, eyeglasses, a variety of things that Medicare doesn't cover, this couple in The Dalles, OR, is walking on an economic tightrope, having to balance food costs against fuel costs, their fuel costs against their medical bills. So I am very hopeful that, as a result of this campaign Senator Snowe and I are making to urge seniors to send in their prescription drug bills, we are going to have a chance to respond in this session. I see our good friend, Senator Moynihan. He has really led in the area of health research and prevention. We talked a little bit about it on Friday last. What is so important about this issue and dealing with it in this session of Congress and not in 2001--by the way, we won't have the good fortune of having Senator Moynihan as a Member of this body then. The reason we ought to deal with it now is that the drugs seniors need most are preventive in nature. Back when I was director of the Gray Panthers, which was for about 7 years before I was elected to the Congress--and I think the Chair was still practicing law at that time. It is clear that these new drugs can make a tangible, significant difference in the lives of our elderly people. I talked about a drug last week, an anticoagulant that a senior could get for just over $1,000 a year; and if they take that medicine, it can prevent strokes and debilitating illnesses that can cost more than $100,000 a year. Think of it--a modest, preventive investment in an anticoagulant drug, helping us to save $100,000 that seniors might need to treat a debilitating stroke. I am going to be brief this afternoon. I am going to wrap up with a few additional cases. In Portland, I was told by a constituent about her mother and father. They are 83 and 79 years old. Right now at their home in Portland, OR, they are being treated for diabetes, hypertension, and a variety of illnesses relating to arthritis. They have a monthly income of $1,600 a month. They are spending more than $400 of it on prescription medicine--25 percent of their monthly income for an older couple 83 and 79 in our home State of Oregon just for prescription medicine. From Silverton, OR, a senior sent me a copy of all of her prescription drugs for 1 year. She spent more than $1,000. Her annual income that year was $868 a month. She is spending more than 10 percent of her income on prescription drugs. From Astoria, OR, a couple on a modest income wrote that for the first 10 months of 1999 they spent over $5,000 on their prescription drug costs. What Senator Snowe and I have said is that we have an opportunity to deal with this on a bipartisan basis. We can steer clear of price controls and one-size-fits-all Federal policy. We can use a model that we know works. It is based on the Federal Employee Health Plan, one that serves all of us and our families here in the Senate. Our bill is called the SPICE Program, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act. Our legislation now is the only bipartisan prescription drug bill now before the Senate. Frankly, I am very confident in the bipartisan team I see assembled from the Finance Committee with Chairman Roth and Senator Moynihan. I would like to see as a result of seniors sending in to all the Senators--as this poster says, ``Send in your prescription drug bills''--I would like to see the Senate Finance Committee have the opportunity under Chairman Roth and Senator Moynihan to devise a good bipartisan proposal in this area. Senator Snowe and I have an approach that we think works. More than 54 Members in the Senate have voted for the funding mechanism we have proposed. We have a majority in the Senate already on record supporting the funding approach that we would take. Frankly, when Chairman Roth and Senator Moynihan sit down, they may well have better ideas for dealing with it. It is not as if Senator Snowe and I are saying we have the last word in terms of dealing with this issue. What we are saying is given the severity of the problem, given the stakes and the chance to do some real good with anticoagulant drugs where $1,000 a year worth of help can save $100,000 in terms of the cost of a stroke, let's go forward, and let's not let this issue become fodder for the 2000 election. I am going to wrap up because the chairman and Senator Moynihan are here. They want to talk about this important trade bill, which I also happen to support. But I hope seniors will keep sending me copies of these bills. Just as the poster says, ``Send your prescription drug bills'' to your Senator. Senator Snowe and I are collecting these. We are going to talk again and again on the floor of the Senate about the importance of this issue. I think we can do this with market forces. We can use an approach that gives senior citizens the kind of bargaining power that a health maintenance organization has. What is so sad about this is these vulnerable older people, such as the ones I have described in these letters, are getting hit twice. First, Medicare doesn't cover their prescriptions. When the program began in 1965, it didn't cover the cost of prescriptions. So there is no coverage either under Part A or Part B of Medicare for most of the Nation's seniors. Second, the seniors end up subsidizing the big business. Big buyers can get discounts. So you have big buyers, health plans, and a variety of big purchasers using their marketplace clout in order to get a good price, and the senior citizen in Silverton or Pendleton, the Presiding Officer's hometown, who walks in and buys their prescription off the street ends up subsidizing those big buyers. That is not right. Senator Snowe and I are going to continue to try as a result of our conversation with colleagues to catalyze a bipartisan effort to address this issue. I think the question of adding prescription drugs to Medicare would be a real legacy for this session of the Senate. I think about all of the accomplishments of Senator Moynihan in this health care field over the years, what he has done in terms of graduate medical education, and what he has done in research is extraordinary. I would like to see as part of the great legacy that he leaves for his career in the Senate action on this bipartisan issue before he retires at the conclusion of this session of Congress. Mr. President, I will be back on the floor--I know Senator Snowe intends to as well--talking about this issue. We hope seniors send us a copy of their prescription drug bills. We are going to address this issue in a bipartisan way. I will be back on the floor soon to talk about this issue and bring other real, live, concrete cases to the Senate in hopes, as the Presiding Officer of the Senate and I have done at home in Oregon, we can work on this in a bipartisan kind of way. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, in this era of partisanship, harsh sound bites and bitter politics, John Chafee wanted to have none of that. He was, in my view, the gold standard as far as public service is concerned. He wasn't full of himself, always humble and low key, always bipartisan. I especially admired that he was always standing up for people without power and without clout. I think of all the times over the years I had a chance to serve with him--close to 20 years-- that John Chafee stood up for children, stood up for the disabled, stood up for folks who are always falling between the cracks in the health care system, people who never had a voice. Reflecting on his background--a family of means, Ivy League education--one would not think a person with those roots would be there for the kind of causes and the kind of people John Chafee was for again and again during these years in public service. His contributions are going to be documented in many areas but especially in the areas of health care and the environment. We all ought to take some time and reflect on what John Chafee contributed to our country. His fingerprints are on every hallmark piece of environmental legislation, going through two decades, in terms of clean air and clean water. John Chafee, in his low-key, dignified way, always made it clear we should push to do better. In debates where various interest groups said, it isn't possible, Mr. Chairman, to get as far as you would like; we can't do it without wrecking the economy, John Chafee would always point out time and time again when we pushed ourselves we could make these huge strides in terms of cleaning up the environment. One of the measures of an individual and an individual's work on Capitol Hill is what his staff thinks of him. I don't know of any staff on either the House or the Senate side who stayed with a Member of Congress longer than John Chafee. Those were the most loyal people in Washington. It was because they were working for an individual who they knew was in public service for only honorable reasons. I hope in the days ahead we think about what John Chafee contributed, think about his approach to solving problems, always trying to find the common ground, always trying to bring people together in a bipartisan way for the kind of government people have a right to expect in the 21st century. That is the kind of government Americans believe will help solve the intractable challenges of the day. I hope when the rhetoric next gets a bit shrill in this body--it happens from time to time--we remember that great Senator who sat just a few feet from the dividing line between Democrats and Republicans in this Chamber, and that all Members remember John Chafee's contributions which were so extraordinary in areas including health and the environment but were especially significant because of the way he brought Members together. Personally, I was involved in half a dozen conferences where tempers got short and late at night everybody was ready to throw in the towel and wrap it up for the day. John Chafee would have put in longer hours than anybody and he would keep people at it, trying to almost breed that kind of good will and bipartisanship that were his trademark. This is a sad day for our country. It is a sad day for the Senate. I hope all Members remember that very special John Chafee style in the days ahead. That will be the Senate at its very best. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I want to tell the majority leader I very much share his view about this threat of narcoterrorism, and also to express my appreciation to the majority leader for the work he is doing with several of us on this matter of secret holds, which are so relevant at the end of a session. We have made a lot of progress already with the work done by the majority leader and with Senator Daschle. The majority leader knows we are trying to work out some of the last kinds of questions. I want the majority leader to know I think we have already made a real difference in this area. I express my support to him and look forward to wrapping up the last remaining issues. I think we all know, as we go into the last few days of the session, we can have 100 of these secret holds and Senators rushing about trying to figure out what is going on. Senator Moynihan, in his landmark study on secrecy, has really made the case that secrecy is the most expensive kind of regulation we could have. Before the majority leader leaves the floor, I want him to know I really appreciate all the progress we have made in working with his staff, Mr. Wilkie doing yeomen work on this, and I look forward to wrapping it up.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, rare is it to have an opportunity to talk about health care policy when the chairman of the Health Care Subcommittee is on the floor with Mr. Moynihan, a long time expert, and Dr. Frist is in the chair. So you have three of the most influential people in the health care policy field before you. I will not abuse this opportunity. But I wanted to take just a few minutes to talk about this prescription drug issue and its importance, in terms of coverage under Medicare. There is now one bipartisan bill before the Senate on this issue, and that is the legislation that Senator Olympia Snowe and I have proposed. What I have said--this is the fifth time I have come to the floor in recent weeks--is I am actually going to, as this poster says, ``Urge Senior Citizens To Send In Copies Of Their Prescription Drug Bills,'' so we can show just how critical this issue is and come together on a bipartisan basis before the end of this session and get prescription drug coverage added to Medicare. What Senator Snowe and I have proposed, on a bipartisan basis, uses marketplace forces to hold down the cost of these prescriptions. We have an ``ability to pay'' feature in the program. That is something I have heard Senator Moynihan and Dr. Frist talk about. My sense is, it is critically important that we get this coverage, not just because senior citizens suffer so, but because this is the next breakthrough in preventive health care. The drugs we are seeing today help to lower blood pressure; they help to lower the cholesterol level. I have heard Senator Moynihan and Chairman Roth talk, for example, about how costs are exploding in Medicare, particularly under Part A, the hospital portion of Medicare. It seems to me if we can come together on a bipartisan basis and address this prescription drug issue, a lot of these new drugs, these preventive drugs, will help us save money and hold down some of the costs in Part A of Medicare, the hospital and institutional portion of the program. The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, again, how staggering some of these costs are and how we might prevent them with thoughtful policy work in the health care area. For example, yesterday in the Wall Street Journal they noted that one-third of all stroke survivors are permanently disabled. But doctors can now prescribe anticoagulants to protect the high-risk patients from stroke. The Journal goes on to say: The lifetime cost of a severe stroke is $100,000, while treatment with anticoagulants costs $1,095. This is a chance to get good coverage for vulnerable people in our country and save taxpayers' money at the same time. I am just very hopeful; Senator Roth's staff and Senator Moynihan's staff have spent a lot of time with us already. Senator Snowe and I want to do this in a bipartisan way. We want to act in this session of Congress, not put it off until after yet another round of electioneering and more slugging back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. I am hopeful seniors, by sending in copies of their prescription drug bills, as Senator Snowe and I advocate, will help us come together in a bipartisan way. In wrapping up, as I have indicated to the Senate before, I am going to bring to the floor each time I come three cases of what I am hearing from seniors at home in Oregon, to dramatize how important it is we act on this matter. I just heard yesterday from a 75-year-old widow from Salem, OR. She wrote me that her income is $8,218 a year; her prescription drug bill is $2,289. She spent that on three drugs--Fosamax, Relafen, and Paxil. Three drugs, $2,289 from her $8,118 income. That is an elderly woman in Salem. A woman in Portland wrote me: My mother is 97 years old and will soon be required to file for Medicaid because the ever-increasing cost of her care and medications have depleted her savings. Currently, her expenses exceed income by over $1,000 per month. In some months, her medication costs over $300. Last year, her prescription drug bill was $2,746. As we saw in a recent study, more than 20 percent of the Nation's elderly are spending over $1,000 a year out of pocket on their prescription medicines. This story was not at all something we found to be rare or out of the ordinary. Finally, the third case I want to mention this morning comes from a woman in Seaside, OR. She has an income of just over $1,000 a month. She wrote me yesterday: I am supposed to take 20 milligrams of Lipitor, but I do not have enough money to buy it. These are the kinds of cases I know we are going to hear when seniors send in copies of their prescription drug bills. The question is, Can we come together in a bipartisan way to address this issue? Senator Snowe and I used the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan as our model. There are other good ideas out there. Our bill is called SPICE, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act. We are not saying this is the last word on how to address this issue, but I would like to see the Senate look at an approach that utilizes marketplace forces, along the lines of what we do in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan and one that will not produce a lot of cost shifting on to other groups of vulnerable people. For example, there is one proposal going around, certainly well- meaning, which has Medicare buying up all the drugs for the Nation's senior citizens. I am very fearful what will happen under that approach is we may control prices for the elderly, but you could have a divorced woman, a 27-year-old, say, African American women in my State or the Presiding Officer's State. She could see her drug bill go through the roof because prices would be controlled in just one segment of the pharmaceutical area, the Medicare area, and the costs would be shifted on to somebody else's back. I know the Senate has a lot of important business. By the way, I am with Senator Moynihan and Chairman Roth on this great bill as well. I know they want to go on to that important matter. I intend to keep coming to the floor. Senator Snowe had to be in Maine today and could not be here. We have already done this together. We urge seniors to send in copies of their prescription drug bills. We hope they will back the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill. Frankly, I would rather hear from them so as to bring this Senate together in a bipartisan way and deal with this issue. Let's not let it become fodder for the 2000 election. Let's make this issue a legacy of this Congress where we really came together to do something important, something that is the wave of the future in American health care, which is to give good preventive approaches, wellness-oriented approaches as part of our American health system. I thank Chairman Roth and Senator Moynihan and my friend, Senator Akaka, for indulging me this morning. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for yielding the floor. I know he waited a long time yesterday to speak, and I have waited as well. I thank the Senator for his courtesy. I take the opportunity for a few minutes this afternoon to talk about an issue of enormous importance to millions of older people and their families. Specifically, it is the question of including prescription drug coverage under Medicare for the Nation's older people. There is one, just one, bipartisan bill before the Senate to offer this vital coverage to the Nation's elderly. I have teamed up on this bill with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine because the two of us believe it is critical that the Congress address this issue now and address it on a bipartisan basis. So Senator Snowe and I, in an effort to get this issue out of the beltway, beyond Washington, DC, as you can see in the poster next to me, are urging that seniors send in copies of their prescription drug bills. Just as this poster says, send copies of their prescription drug bills to their Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510. What we are going to do, in an effort to get bipartisan support for our legislation, is come to the floor every few days--this is the fourth time I have come to the floor of the Senate--and read directly from letters we are receiving from the Nation's elderly people. Here is one I just received yesterday from an elderly person in Central Point, OR. She wrote: Dear Senator Wyden, I write to ask for your support for Medicare coverage of prescription medicine. In my case such coverage is a financial necessity. I suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. My physician recommends that I use medicine to combat it. The only problem I have is that the dosage I require would require an annual outlay in excess of $1,000 a month. I desperately wish I could have the relief Enbrel could give me. Please champion coverage. Another letter I received from my home community, from an elderly widow, states that her Social Security is $1,179 a month. Each month, from that $1,179 check, she spends $179 on the medicine Fosamax, $209 a month on Prilosec, $112 on Lescol; that is $500 a month, each month, for her prescription medicine from her monthly Social Security check, which is the only income she has. Almost half of her income goes to pay for her prescription drug bills. Here is a letter I have just received from King City, OR. The writer says: I am a constant user of Lovenox inhaler. Two uses per day come to $839. Fortunately, I drove a Chevrolet when my friends were driving Cadillacs, and our family vacation was spent in the U.S. not the South Seas, so I may be able to carry the load at least for a while. My annual cost for this one medicine is $30,600, just about what it would equal to stay in a nursing home. These are just a few of the bills that are coming into my office, coming into Senator Snowe's office, and our colleagues' here in the Senate as a result of the concern among the Nation's senior citizens that this issue be addressed. I hope we will see that more senior citizens follow just as we say in this poster: ``Send in your prescription drug bills.'' The Snowe-Wyden legislation is bipartisan. It uses market forces to hold down the cost of medicine. That is the biggest problem, holding down the enormous cost of these medicines. More than 20 percent of the Nation's senior citizens spend over $1,000 a year out of pocket on their prescription medicine, and the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill would use a market-oriented approach to address this issue. It is modeled on the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. Our view is, if health care is good enough for Members of Congress, we certainly ought to look at using that kind of approach for the Nation's seniors. We call it the SPICE bill, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act, because we would cover all of the Nation's older people eligible for Medicare. It is absolutely key that we do this now. When people ask, ``Can we afford to cover prescription drugs under Medicare?'' my response is: ``We cannot afford not to cover prescriptions any longer.'' The reason for that--and I know my colleague currently in the Chair was involved in aging issues when he was in the House and was involved with Social Security, so he is familiar with this. We know the most important drugs that would be covered under the Snowe-Wyden legislation are preventive drugs. They help to deal with blood pressure problems and cholesterol problems. They keep people healthy and well, and they keep them fit. That helps hold down the cost for what is called Medicare Part A, the acute care portion of Medicare that covers hospitals and institutional services. Under the Snowe-Wyden approach, we contain costs without shifting them onto the backs of somebody else. One of the things that concerns me, there is a well-meaning bill that has been introduced that suggests we ought to have Medicare buy up all the drugs and act as a buyer for everybody. The problem with that approach is that it will result in tremendous cost-shifting onto the backs of other Americans who are having difficulty paying for their prescription drug bills. I don't want to see a 27-year-old divorced African American woman with two kids, who is working hard, playing by the rules and doing everything she can to get ahead, have to see a big increase in her prescription drug bill because the costs are shifted onto her when somebody doesn't think about the implications of trying to do this through approaches that don't involve marketplace forces. So these are letters I am receiving from seniors across the country. Here is another one from Myrtle Creek, OR. This is a senior citizen who has to take a variety of medicines, including Albuterol, Dulcolax, and other drugs. She writes me that she spent $370 recently on prescription drugs from a Social Security check of $1,152. She went to a small drugstore in Myrtle Creek, OR--a terrific small community--and spent $370 from a Social Security check of $1,152 on her medicines. I think a lot of these seniors are asking themselves, what is it that the Senate is so busy doing that it cannot work in a bipartisan way to be responsive to older people and families on this issue? I am very hopeful that if seniors just read what it says in this poster: ``Send in your prescription drug bills'' to Senators--Senator Snowe and I are particularly interested in hearing from older people because we want to do this in a bipartisan way. A lot of people think the prescription drug issue is just going to be fodder for the campaign in the year 2000 and in the fall of 2000 we will just have the Democrats and Republicans slugging it out on the issue. The last time I looked, it was more than a year until that election comes up. I don't want to see seniors such as the ones I am hearing from in Myrtle Creek and King City, and all over the Willamette Valley in my home State--I don't want to see them suffer. I know the Chair doesn't want to see people suffer in Kentucky. Other colleagues feel the same way. If we can put down the partisanship for a little while and work together in an effort to get the vulnerable seniors across this country the coverage they need, we will have a truly lasting legacy from this session of the Senate. I was codirector of the Gray Panthers, a great senior citizens group, for about 7 years before I was elected to the Congress. Some of my most joyous memories are working with older people back then. We talked about how important it was to cover prescriptions. Well, what has happened with the evolution of the pharmaceutical sector over those 20 years is, prescription drugs have become even more important since those days when I was codirector of the Gray Panthers; the drugs are even more important now because they do so much to promote wellness. We needed them before because you do need medications for so many who are acutely ill. But today, this could result in keeping people healthy and save Medicare, particularly the institutional part of the program, Part A, that it could save Medicare Part A money and we could do it through marketplace forces. Snowe-Wyden doesn't go out and set up a price control regime. We give senior citizens the kind of bargaining power a health maintenance organization would have through the marketplace. Seniors would get to choose the various kinds of coverages that are available to Members of Congress, such as the President of the Senate and myself. It would not be bureaucratic. We know our health care doesn't create a whole lot of new redtape and bureaucracy. We know it works. So that is what Senator Snowe and I are trying to do. This is the fourth time I have come to the floor of the Senate to urge seniors, as this poster says, to send in their prescription drug bills. I intend now to come back to the floor of this Senate every few days until this session ends and read, as I have, directly from copies of these prescription drug bills I am receiving. I know that so many Senators care about the needs of the elderly. I see Senator Chafee, who has long been an expert in health and a member of the Finance Committee; our friend, Senator Mikulski, who has championed the Older Americans Act issue so passionately for so many years in the Appropriations Committee. When we have these colleagues who have expertise in these issues and we know how acute the need is and we know we can do it in a bipartisan way, as Senator Snowe and I have been trying to do, it would be a tragedy for the Senate to pass on this issue and say: Well, let's just put it off until after the year 2000. We have consulted with senior groups. We have consulted with the insurance industry. We have consulted with those in the pharmaceutical sector. All of them have told us that our bill, while perhaps not their first choice for how to ensure that seniors get their coverage, will work. It will get seniors the help they need, and it will be something that we can do and do now--not after the 2000 election, not after some other period of campaign activity, but it is something we can do now. The Nation's seniors and our families can see as a result of my reading from these bills and what I am receiving from Oregon that I am very serious about their input. I hope that seniors and their families, as this poster says, will send in their prescription drug bill to their Senator. I hope they will be for the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill. Frankly, I am much more interested in hearing from them about the need for Congress to act. We can act. We can do it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased today to recognize the 55th anniversary of Electro Scientific Industries, Incorporated, ESI, and to honor the accomplishments of Mr. Douglas C. Strain, ESI's founder and first president and chairman of ESI's board. Established in Portland in 1944, ESI was among the first high- technology companies in Oregon. Since that time, ESI has grown into a global leader in the manufacturer of precision laser trimmers and memory repair equipment, as well as a worldwide supplier of electronic production equipment. From humble beginnings, ESI has become a $200 million company, employing more than 900 individuals in Oregon and around the world, and helping to establish Oregon as one of this country's high-tech capitals. Accomplishments such as these are often born of tough challenges. Having overcome a devastating fire in the 1950's, ESI had to rebuild itself from the ground up, and has had to re-invent itself on a number of occasions since that time. The company has proven itself adept at adapting to the fast-pace that characterizes the high-technology sector. From test and calibration equipment, electron microscopy, and analog computing to laser trimming, memory repair and vision, handling, packaging, and drilling technologies, ESI products have always been at the leading edge of technology developments. I especially pay tribute to a remarkable Oregonian, Electro Scientific's founder, Mr. Douglas C. Strain. On October 24, Doug will celebrate both his 80th birthday and his retirement from ESI's board of directors. Mr. Strain's vision and perseverance have brought the company successfully to the end of this century, and I believe that ESI will continue on with equal success well into the next century. I congratulate Doug on his accomplishments and wish him the very best as he undertakes new challenges in his life.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. We have a proposal the law division of the Library of Congress believes is constitutional which has been introduced by broadcaster Gregg Walden, a conservative Republican serving in the other body. It is a chance to take a practical step to deal with these negative ads. I believe it is possible to have a real debate about public issues without taking an approach that coarsens the public dialog and alienates so many people from the political process. I am very proud that Senator Smith and I put out a bipartisan agenda for the people of our State. We said, on important things for our State, that politics is going to stop at the State's borders. We said we do not want a part of the negative politics practiced in that special election to replace Bob Packwood. Frankly, Senator Gordon Smith summed it up pretty well when we talked about those negative ads after he was elected to the Senate and people were talking about our working together. He asked me how I felt when he ran his ads; how my kids looked at those ads? I said: Well, Gordon, they were pretty upset by those ads. He said: What did you tell your daughter? I said: Gordon, I said when you ran those ads, me looking like I hadn't shaved for a couple of weeks, like a convict who had just gotten out of prison, I told my daughter Lilly, ``Gordon Smith doesn't mean those things. He's just kidding, Lilly. He doesn't mean those negative ads.'' Gordon, to his credit, said on television to the people of Oregon: I want to tell Lilly Wyden she's right. I didn't really mean those things I was saying about her dad. Madam President, colleagues, we all know that this system is out of kilter. We all know that. Clearly we are going to have to take some bold steps in a bipartisan way to put it back on track. But I ask my colleagues to look seriously at the proposal that Senator Bingaman and I will bring to the floor later this week. It is a practical step that we could take against the virus of negative ads, negative ads that produce this spiraling effect where each side runs one that is more negative than the previous one, and the public is alienated. Our proposal, based on the analysis done by the law division of the Congressional Research Service, is constitutional. Frankly, it is a lot less intrusive than a variety of requirements imposed on broadcasters right now. Broadcast licensees have to comply with equal time and reasonable access provisions. The Supreme Court has upheld them. The proposal we made that broadcast licensees providing the lowest unit rate available to candidates actually make the candidates offer their statements in person is one I am absolutely convinced the Supreme Court will uphold. They upheld the equal time and reasonable access provision. They will uphold this one as well. It is time to change the current communications law and require, when candidates reference their opponent in a radio or television ad, that they have to appear in order to qualify for the lowest unit rate. If they do not want the lowest unit rate, they can go about the business of having various anonymous groups and sources continue to attack their opponent. But I do not think there ought to be a constitutional right to a broadcasters subsidy--that is what we have today--and, fortunately, the Library of Congress agrees with me. I think candidates ought to stand by their ads. Candidates for public office in the future ought to have greater direct responsibility for their ads. The amendment Senator Bingaman and I have prepared would do just that. It is a complement to the proposal offered by Republican Congressman Gregg Walden in the other body. I hope my colleagues will look favorably on it. As one who comes to the floor today to talk about this negative ad question with personal experience, I will tell you I believe this issue, this question of the corrosive, ugly pettiness that has dominated so much of television advertising, ought to be at the top of the list of the reforms we pursue in this body. It ought to be at the top of our priority list, to look at ways to root out of American politics the negative nature of so much of this debate. We can have profound differences of opinion. We can have sharp and profound differences of opinion without letting politics fall into the gutter of the negative, petty, ugly kind of politicking, as we have seen so many good people--good people--get caught up in across this country. My colleague, Senator Bingaman, will have more to say about our joint proposal when he comes to the floor. I ask, again, when we get to this issue later in the debate, our colleagues look favorably on a proposal that I think will make a real difference in American politics and will begin to drain the swamp that has contaminated so much of our public dialog. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank our colleague from Nebraska for his thoughtfulness. He has been waiting a long time, as well. I am a supporter of the McCain-Feingold bill, this iteration, as with all others. It is an important step in the right direction. However, I believe the biggest problem is that campaigning in America has become a never-ending money chase. There is an election the first Tuesday in November. People sleep in on Wednesday and all the fundraising starts all over again on Thursday. It is truly a permanent campaign. If I had my way, if I could write my version of what the Senate ought to do on campaign finance, we would look at some sort of approach along the lines of what is used in several countries in Europe. They confine their elections to several months over a period of a couple of years. Money can be raised. It has to be disclosed. It is spent. They have their election, and, heaven forbid, after a few months of campaigning, they go back to tackling the issues that all Members get an election certificate for--to improve health care, education, to try to stuff the nuclear genie back into the bottle, to create an opportunity for people who work hard and play by the rules. We are, obviously, not going to get that kind of reform, although I have been amazed in the last few days when I have colleagues on both sides of the aisle say they like that and wish there was a bipartisan Senate task force to look at something similar. That really would be reform. We could spend most of our time doing a job for which we were elected. For now, we are limited to steps that can be taken immediately that are effective. I have come to the floor this afternoon to talk about a step that Senator Jeff Bingaman and I have developed. It is an important step in the view of Senator Bingaman and myself. It limits negative campaigning. My view from personal experience is negative ads are similar to a virus. They infect everyone with whom they come in contact. In the special election to replace Bob Packwood in the Senate, unfortunately I didn't say no to some of those media consultants who told me to win, I had to just rip in to our colleague, my friend, Senator Gordon Smith, with negative ads. I should have known immediately that all those negative ads run contrary to everything I got involved with when I began the Gray Panthers in Oregon to try to practice good government, but I didn't step in when I should have on the negative ads, and I regret it to this day. With a month to go before that special election, I did tell my consultants I could not stand any longer the stench of the negative ads, and I told them to take them off the air. Moreover, I apologized to the people of Oregon. I said I made an error in judgment and it would not happen again. I ran my 1998 campaign, I am proud to be able to say, without mentioning my opponent at all. I believe candidates ought to stand by their ads. They ought to be directly responsible for their ads. What Senator Bingaman and I will propose later this week is an approach we call ``stand by your ad.'' Specifically, the Bingaman-Wyden proposal says a candidate who mentions his or her opponent in a campaign ad must do so in person in order to get the lowest unit rate for advertising. Under current Federal communications law, broadcasters are required to sell commercial air time to candidates for Federal office at the lowest available price, known as the lowest unit broadcast rate. That means for 45 days prior to a primary or primary runoff, for 60 days prior to a general election. In effect, everybody else in town--the car dealership, the restaurant, the tire manufacturer--has to subsidize politics. Their ad costs are greater because broadcasters have to give these cheaper rates during the election cycle. I think it is time to hold candidates personally responsible for their ads. I am amazed to find that all across the political spectrum I am joined in support of this idea. For example, in the House of Representatives, my Oregon colleague, Greg Walden, is a broadcaster by profession. He doesn't think this is bureaucratic or hard to comply with. He introduced in the House, as I did in the Senate, the ``stand by your ad'' approach that says candidates who mention their opponent have to do it in person to get the lowest unit rate. No first amendment violation here. I recently received from the Library of Congress a legal opinion stating it would be constitutional to put in place the Bingaman-Wyden amendment, and I ask unanimous consent that legal opinion be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think what the Senator from Massachusetts said is very important for our colleagues to focus on as we go to this conference, which I think will be starting in a few minutes. My understanding is that the bipartisan proposal of the Senator from Massachusetts and Senator Specter does not, in any way, preempt State and local authority in this area. My understanding is that it is only if and when State and local authorities don't act against these morally repugnant crimes that the Senator from Massachusetts has described-- that only then would the Federal Government come in. I will say, from my standpoint, what the Senator from Massachusetts is talking about certainly meets my definition of what ought to constitute compassionate conservatism. I am very pleased that my colleague from Oregon, Senator Smith, has joined with Senator Specter and others on the other side of the aisle. I so appreciate the leadership of the Senator from Massachusetts. I want him to know that I plan to stand shoulder to shoulder with him until we get this law passed. This is unacceptable. It is grotesque that this Congress would not take up this issue, and we cannot allow this issue to be ducked any further. I thank my friend for yielding.

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

Mr. WYDEN. Will the Senator yield for one last point?

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think the distinguished Senator has made a very eloquent statement on this matter of hate crimes. As we have seen so often on these issues of justice for gay folks, and when we are talking about issues relating to race, the issue always is brought out that in some way we are advocating ``special rights,'' or ``preferences,'' or something of this nature. I think what the Senator from Massachusetts is asking for--and perhaps he can speak to this--is simply to make it clear the U.S. Congress is going to draw a line in the sand against violence borne out of bigotry and prejudice. We are not talking about special rights. We are not talking about preferences for one group because of their sexual orientation or race; we are talking about Americans' right to be free from violence borne out of prejudice and hatred. Is that what the Senator from Massachusetts is talking about?

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the effort I have launched with the other Senator from Maine, Ms. Olympia Snowe, around the only bipartisan effort now before the Senate to get Medicare coverage for prescription drugs for the Nation's senior citizens. As my colleagues can see in this poster next to me, Senator Snowe and I are urging that senior citizens send in their prescription drug bills to Members of the Senate in Washington, DC, to help show how important it is we address this issue in a bipartisan way for the millions of vulnerable elderly people. Here are a few of the prescription drug bills I have received from senior citizens from my home area in the Pacific Northwest. I will take a few minutes this afternoon on behalf of Senator Snowe and myself to talk about why this bipartisan issue is so very important. Let me read from a letter sent October 1 from an elderly women in Lebanon, OR. She said: Please find enclosed a copy of the prescription costs for the past 6 months. As you will note, the average cost each month is $236.92 without the over-the-counter medications I must take. Please make use of these figures any way you can in your effort to obtain prescription coverage for those of us receiving Medicare. I'm 78 years old and doubt if I will see the time prescriptions are a covered item. However, keep fighting for the next generation. I want to tell this older person in Lebanon, at home in Oregon, that we are going to be fighting for her. We are not going to wait until the next generation to get older people the coverage they need. To think that this Congress would say it is not critical to help this kind of vulnerable, elderly woman isn't acceptable to Senator Snowe and me. We have a market-oriented approach, one that can hold down the costs of prescription medicine for the Nation's senior citizens. On the basis of these bills that are being sent now to Senator Snowe and me, I think we can show this Congress that the time to act, in a bipartisan fashion, is now and not after the next election or the next election after that. Let me read from another letter I received on September 29 of this year from a gentleman, an elderly gentleman, in King City, OR. He said: I am a constant user of inhalant. Two uses per day come to $839.80. Imagine that, two uses a day: $839.80. And he says: Fortunately, I drove a Chevrolet when my friends were driving Cadillacs and our family vacations were spent in the United States, not the South Seas, so I'm able to carry the load, at least for a while. The annual cost of this prescription medication for this older person in King City, at home, is $30,600. It equals what it would cost to stay in a nursing home. I am just hopeful that with more examples like this, where senior citizens send to Senator Snowe and me copies of their prescription drug bills, we can win bipartisan support for this legislation before the end of this session. Let me cite a third letter I received at the beginning of October. This is from an elderly woman--it came just a few days ago--whose Social Security income is $1,179 a month. She spends $500 of her monthly income of $1,179 on prescription drugs. She is taking Fosamax. That is a drug that costs $179 a month. She is taking Prilosec. It costs $209 a month. And she is taking Lescol, which costs $112 a month. So it takes $500 a month from the monthly income of $1,179 of an elderly woman in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. President and colleagues, these bills that are being sent to Senator Snowe and me do not lie; they tell the whole story. We are going to do everything we can to ensure that Congress acts on this matter, in a bipartisan way, in this session of Congress. Just this week, I saw a story in one of the publications saying there was not a consensus around this issue. Senator Snowe and I got 54 votes--a majority in the Senate--to join us in a funding plan for a prescription drug program. I am of the view that we cannot afford not to cover prescription drugs because so many of these prescription drugs today help to lower blood pressure and cholesterol and keep folks well. What Senator Snowe and I are proposing is a market-oriented approach. It is based on the model that is used for Federal employees. It is market driven. It has choices. We would not see the kind of price- control approach that is being advocated by some. I am very opposed to that kind of price-control orientation because what will happen is, if you just try to control prices for Medicare drugs, the costs will all be shifted to somebody else. Senator Snowe and I do not want to see a divorced mom at the age of 27, with a modest income and two kids, have to pick up all the extra costs. So we are going with a market-oriented approach. I hope that in the days ahead, as a result of bills such as this, and others that I know are being sent to our colleagues--and the campaign we have launched here on the floor so that seniors will, as this poster says, send in copies of their prescription drug bills--we can show the people of this country that we are not going to wait until the next election or the election after that; we are going to find a way to come together now to do the job we were elected to do, which is to work in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, that did not happen this week on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I wish it had. I am anxious to work with the Presiding Officer and my colleagues on the other side of aisle. We can do it on prescription drugs. We can do it on an issue that is foremost in the minds of millions of our families and our seniors. We have 20 percent of the Nation's older people spending more than $1,000 a year out of pocket on their prescription medicine. I described this afternoon an elderly woman with a monthly income of $1,179, who every month spends more than $500 on prescriptions. Let's show seniors such as that elderly woman who wrote from the Willamette Valley in my home State of Oregon that we can act now. She was skeptical. She has heard all the oratory and all the partisan rhetoric on this issue, and she is understandably skeptical. Senator Snowe and I are trying to mobilize a bipartisan coalition in this Senate to act in this session so that older people can get decent prescription drug coverage under Medicare. We should not wait until the next election. We were elected to act now and to act in a bipartisan way. I hope, as a result of this short statement today, that additional older people, as this poster says, will send us copies of the prescription drug bills with which they are faced. Senator Snowe and I intend to be back on this floor again and again and again through this session of Congress until we get action. We will be talking about it next week, and we are going to talk about it the following week and the week after that. It is not right to wait on an issue such as this that is so pressing to vulnerable older people such as those who have written me the letters I have described today. I am very grateful to my colleague, the other Senator from Maine, who, by the way, has a long record of being an advocate for consumer issues as well. And she knows how much I enjoy working with her. I thank her for this courtesy this afternoon. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Ms. COLLINS addressed the Chair.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. If the Senator will yield, I have about 10 minutes. I appreciate her thoughtfulness. Perhaps we can go into a quorum call and work all this out.