Bill Clinton: “I am proud that the House and the Senate have worked out the differences between the two versions of the Nurse…”

“I am proud that the House and the Senate have worked out the differences between the two versions of the Nurse Reinvestment Act that we passed last year. I am also proud that today, the Senate will pass this agreed-upon legislation with unanimous support, and I look forward to subsequent action by the House so that this bill can be swiftly signed into law. I thank Senators Mikulski, Hutchinson, Kerry, Jeffords, and Kennedy for their leadership. Many on the House side have also worked hard on this legislation, including Representatives Bilirakis, Capps, and others. We have all heard a great deal about the workforce shortage from nurses in New York and across the Nation. Around the country, nurses are facing an emergency of their own. The number of undergraduate nursing program graduates in New York State has dropped each academic year since 1996, and this pattern is evident everywhere. The Nurse Reinvestment Act we are passing today contains scholarships, public service announcements, and other provisions to encourage people to enter the profession, as well as nurse faculty provisions too, so that colleges of nursing have the personnel equipped to help train new nurses entering the pipeline.”