The Public Record
I, for one, am disappointed that we had to file cloture on a motion to proceed to take up this bill. That took a long time. I am disappointed to see that now we may have a list of 10 amendments on each side, most of which have very little…
The way I look at the Tax Code, I think it should be fair; it should be uniform. It is interesting to hear people say: This tax only applies to 2 percent, so let's sock it to them. They have been enormously successful. So what is the right…
This amendment and the Vice President's proposal is one of the riskiest, maybe one of the most deceitful I have seen in my years in Congress. It basically says we should have double accounting of interest. It says we are going to take the…
The facts are, the cost over 10 years, which is the most we ever use, is $104 billion. I heard them say it is $750 billion. I do not know from where they are grabbing these figures. If we use that kind of analogy, it would be fun to see…
I have a list of amendments on prescription drugs, long-term health care, Medicare, retirement--in other words, a lot of things on the Democrats' agenda that have not been accomplished. I said relevant amendments pertaining to the death…
What about scope? The scope proposal in our bill applies to every single ERISA-covered plan. Every employer-sponsored plan would have an external appeal because that is ERISA. It has Federal remedies. We also included in this proposal a…
Instead of waiting for the conference to work, my colleague from Massachusetts put the Patients' Bill of Rights on either the Department of Defense authorization bill or the Defense appropriations bill. There is no way in the world that…
The total coverage is, on scope, every single employer-sponsored plan in America would have the right to internal-external appeals.
I regret our colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle have decided to once again try to turn an issue, an important issue, Patients' Bill of Rights, into a political theater and not legislate, not come up with reasonable compromise…
The original rule came out, I believe, in 1995, and it made very little sense. The latest proposal had over 600 pages. The business community and others who looked at it said it was not workable. The Department of Labor has come back and…
I think he asked me. They may have been working on this Department of Labor takeover of, I don't know what--workers involvement. But they issued the rule on November 23 of last year--a rule that has 600 pages. They may have been working on…
If we adopt the Murray-Snowe amendment, we will be turning military hospitals worldwide into abortion clinics. That is what it is about. I heard somebody else say: We have to protect the constitutional right to choose. It is not the right…
I wish to respond to my colleague, first to say I very much regret our colleague from Massachusetts is bringing this amendment to the DOD authorization bill. I heard the minority leader say we want to pass the DOD bill, but there is…
If we don't table the Kennedy amendment, there will be millions of people who will be without health insurance. That is because it will dramatically increase the price of health care. There are results from actions. If we act to open up…
I wish to compliment Senator Roth, in his leadership, and the Finance Committee, for reporting out a good bill. It is my hope we will be able to pass this bill in the next couple of days to provide relief from the so-called marriage tax…
This is the same amendment we passed in November. This is an amendment that says we should have 100 percent deductibility for self-employed individuals. Right now they only get 60 percent. This is an amendment that says we should give an…
We voted on this amendment in November. It didn't pass. What we did pass on November 9 was the Domenici amendment. It passed 54-44. It was an amendment that would increase the minimum wage not over 13 months, as proposed by Senator…
I hope my colleagues vote no. If the Senator from Massachusetts wants to support minimum wage, he should support the unanimous consent request Majority Leader Lott has made twice, saying let's break it apart from bankruptcy and go to…
Sadly this week the Senate has lost another member of our family. On Monday, Larry Harrison, a retired Senate staffer, passed away in Washington, DC. Before his retirement in June of 1997, Larry had over 36 years of Federal service. Most…
I am going to speak in a moment on the trade bill, but first I want to repudiate, or at least take issue with, some of the comments that have been made by the President and those of his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, when he made…
Mr. President, the Gorton amendment is a pro-education amendment, if you believe people in the local school districts know what they need. Maybe they need more teachers. Maybe they need more computers. Maybe they need to enhance the…
I do not need to repeat their statements, but I think it is vitally important that they prevail in beating this amendment. This is not an esoteric amendment. As the Senator from Ohio said, there are lives at stake. Do we really think we…
That investigation is pending. Supposedly, the Justice Department is reviewing that case. I urge all of our colleagues, to think about that. There are two federal employees involved in developing these MMS regulations who were paid…
Yesterday, Senator Inhofe and myself, Congressmen J.C. Watts, Frank Lucas and Steve Largent, as well as the Governor of Oklahoma, and James Lee Witt, Director of FEMA, toured the Oklahoma tornado disaster. I have been in the Senate, I…
I want to go through a little bit of the chronology to show, at least in my opinion, how we got into the bombing campaign, because what this resolution is kind of implying is, well, the bombing campaign is not working. And we call it a…
Politicians like Don Nickles
