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LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS
(Senate - November 09, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S14340-S14364] LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I wish to make a brief comment, if I may, on one of the items referred to in a statement by the majority leader about the appropriations process, which I think will be of interest to our colleagues and perhaps to others who may be watching on C-SPAN 2. We had negotiations beginning at 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon with officials from the White House, and we are trying to resolve those issues in a spirit of accommodation. With respect to the dollars involved, the bill which came out of the Appropriations Committee was $93.7 billion for the three Departments. That was $600 million more than the President's figure, and it was $300 million more than the President's figure on education. I worked on a bipartisan basis with my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin. The bill was crafted with what we thought was the right dollar amount--frankly, the maximum amount--to pass with votes in substantial numbers from Republicans and an amount which would be acceptable to Democrats and to the President because it was somewhat higher than his figure and we emphasized increased funding for the National Institutes of Health. The administration has come back with a figure of $2.3 billion additional, and Congressman Porter and I made an offer yesterday to add $228 million, provided we could find offsets because it is very important that we not go into the Social Security trust funds. So that whatever dollars we add to accommodate the President's priorities--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. We are prepared to meet him halfway on priorities on dollars--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. There is a much more difficult issue in this matter than the dollars, although the dollars are obviously of great importance, and the issue which is extremely contentious is what will be done on the President's demand to have $1.4 billion to reduce classroom size to have additional teachers. The Senate bill has appropriated $1.2 billion which maintains the high level of last year's funding. When it comes to the issue of the utilization of that money, we are prepared to acknowledge the President's first priority of reduction of classroom size for teachers. But if the local school board makes a factual determination that is not the real need of the local school board, then we propose that the second priority be teacher training. If the local school board decides that is not where the money ought to be spent, then we propose to give it to the school board the discretion as to the spending to local education, as opposed to a straitjacket out of Washington. The White House Press Secretary has issued a statement this morning saying that these funds could be used for vouchers, and that is not true. That is a red herring. To allay any concern, we will make it explicit in the bill that the President's concern about the use of these funds for vouchers will be allayed. We are prepared to make that accommodation, although there had never been any intent to use it for vouchers. However, we will make that intent explicit in the bill. Behind the issue of classroom size and the President's demand is a much greater constitutional issue. That is the constitutional issue of who controls the power of the purse. The Constitution gives the authority to the Congress to establish spending priorities, and we have seen a process evolve in the past few years which does not follow the constitutional format. The Constitution is very specific that each [[Page S14341]] House will decide on a bill, have a conference, and send that bill to the President for his signature or for his veto; and if he vetoes it, the bill then comes back to the Congress for reenactment. But what has happened in the immediate past has been that executive branch officials sit in with the appropriators and are a part of the legislative process, which is a violation of the principle of separation of powers. Now, I must say that I have been a party to those meetings because that is what is going on. But I want to identify it as a process which is not in conformity with the Constitution. It is something we ought to change. When it comes to the power and the control, what we have seen happen in the last 4 years is that the President has really made an effort, and to a substantial extent a successful effort, to take over the prerogative of the Congress on the power of the purse. When the Government was closed in late 1995 and early 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress was blamed for the closure. That, candidly, has made the Congress gun-shy to challenge the President on spending issues. Since that time there has been a concession to the President on whatever it is that he wants, sort of ``pay a price to get out of town'' when people are anxious to have the congressional session adjourn. Speaking for myself and I think quite a few others in the Congress are not going to put on the pressure to get out of town. We are going to do the job and do it right. Senator Lott held a news conference yesterday and was asked about the termination time. He said he thought it was possible to finish the public's business by the close of the legislative session on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, but it was more important, as Senator Lott articulated, to do it right than get it finished by any arbitrary deadline. I concur totally with Senator Lott. I think it is possible to get the business finished by the end of the working day tomorrow. But it is more important to get it right than to get it finished on any prescribed schedule. In modern times there is too much concern about getting out of town, than perhaps getting the job done right. But we are determined to get it done and to get it done right. If we can get it done by the end of business tomorrow, that is what our goal is. But we are not going to sacrifice getting it done right in order to be able to finish up by Wednesday afternoon to get out of town. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question? Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. SPECTER. No, I will not yield here, but I will in just a minute. What we have seen is the President's ultimatum. He says this issue on schoolteachers is nonnegotiable. That is hardly the way you get into a negotiation session. Then his Chief of Staff, John Podesta, said on Sunday that if the Congress wants to get out of town they are going to have to accede to the President's demands on teachers, to do it his way. I think that is not appropriate. Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution. It is our fundamental responsibility on appropriations. We are prepared to negotiate, but we are not prepared to deal with nonnegotiable demands. We are not prepared to deal with ultimatums. We are going back into a session--I don't know whether I should call it a negotiating session or not, because the President talks about nonnegotiable demands. Frankly, I am prepared to meet that with a nonnegotiable demand, not giving up on our prerogative to make a determination as to how the money is to be spent and getting local control over a Presidential straitjacket. Now I would be delighted to yield to my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. I wanted to inquire of the desk what the Senate business was supposed to be? I was under the impression we were supposed to be, at 9:30, on the minimum wage. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor? Mr. SPECTER. I have concluded. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask we extend the time. How much time did the Senator from Pennsylvania expend? Mr. DOMENICI. What was the question? Mr. KENNEDY. I asked how much time the Senator from Pennsylvania used? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican side has 19 minutes left. Mr. KENNEDY. Just as a matter of inquiry, were taken out of the time of the debate. Is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Taken out of the Republican time. Mr. KENNEDY. OK. Mr. President, I yield myself 12 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Pennsylvania's comments with great interest. I will mention very briefly in defense of the administration, although they can make the case quite well for themselves that if the Appropriations Committee had finished their business on time we would not be in this particular dilemma. Only four appropriations bills were actually completed on time for the fiscal year. So with all respect to our friend on the other side, if the appropriators had placed, particularly the HEW appropriations, first rather than last, I do not think we would be having these kinds of problems in the areas of negotiation between the President and the Congress. Second, the basic program which the President has been fighting for in this negotiation is almost identical to what the Republicans supported last year. With all respect to the comments we have just heard, the fact is if the classes reach the goals, the 15 percent set- aside for funding for smaller class sizes can be used to enhance the teacher training. If the school had already achieved the lower class size of 18, it would be used for special needs or other kinds of professional purposes. So it is difficult for me to understand the frustration of the Senator from Pennsylvania when the Republican leaders all effectively endorse what the President talked about last year. If their position is not sustained, there are going to be 30,000 teachers who are teaching in first, second, and third grades who are going to get pink slips. I don't think the problem in education is having fewer schoolteachers teach in the early grades but to have more. I want to make clear I am not a part of those negotiations this year, but I was last year. I know what the particular issue is. With all respect to those who are watching C-SPAN II, I want them to know the President is fighting for smaller class sizes as well as for better trained teachers. We have seen Senator Murray make that presentation and make it effectively time and again. I think it is something that parents support, teachers understand, and children have benefited from. No one makes that case more eloquently than the Senator from the State of Washington. But I certainly hope the President will continue that commitment. We have scarce Federal resources. They are targeted in areas of particular need. That is the purpose of these negotiations. I hope we can conclude a successful negotiation. Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield on my time? Mr. KENNEDY. On your time, yes. Mr. DOMENICI. Just for an observation. He might want to answer it. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the truth of the matter is if schools want the new teachers, under the proposal of the distinguished chairman who just took to the floor to explain the obstinacy of the President, they can have the money for teachers. That is what he is saying. It is up to them. If they want all the money that comes from this appropriation used for teachers, they can have it. If they say, we don't need them, we don't want them, he is saying there is a second priority. Frankly, I think that is excellent policy with reference to the schools of our country. I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania makes a good point. For the President to continue to say we are not going to get this bill unless we do it exactly his way leaves us with no alternative. We have some prerogatives, too. The fact is, if you read the Constitution, he doesn't appropriate; the Congress does. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. [[Page S14342]] Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just to respond, we have a need for 2 million teachers. We have scarce Federal resources. If the States or local communities want to do whatever the Senator from New Mexico says, all well and good. But we are talking about scarce Federal resources that are targeted in ways that have been proven effective in enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. I am again surprised. The Republicans were taking credit for this last year. I was in the negotiations. Mr. Goodling and Mr. Gingrich--as we were waiting to find out whether the powers that be, the Speaker, was going to endorse this, when we were waiting and having negotiations--went out and announced it and took credit for it. They took credit for this proposal of the President. I find it a little difficult to understand this kind of frustration that is being demonstrated here. But we will come back to this and Senator Murray can address these issues at a later time. I certainly hope the President will not flinch in his commitment to getting smaller class sizes and better trained teachers and after school programs. That is what this President has been fighting for. I hope he will not yield at this time in these final negotiations, after we have only had four appropriations that have met the deadline. Before we get all excited about these negotiations, if our appropriators had completed this work in time, we would not be here. Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. How much time do we have? I will be glad to yield. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Good. I am glad to yield. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, briefly, I ask my colleague, is it not true this appropriation for education was the last of the bills considered by the Appropriations Committee? Is it not true that we waited until the very last day to even bring up this issue of education, the highest priority for American families? Now we find ourselves trying to adjourn, stuck on an issue that could have been resolved months ago had we made education as high a priority on Capitol Hill as it is in family rooms across America. Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from California, and I know the Senator from Washington as well, had hoped--and I believe I can speak for our Democratic leader--this would be the No. 1 appropriation and not the last one. If we had this as the No. 1 appropriation on the issue of education, we would not have these little statements we have heard this morning. But it is the last one. That is not by accident; that is by choice of the Republican leadership. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 7 minutes. In a few moments, we will be voting on the minimum wage issue that is before the Senate. I want to review what the record has been over the last 2 years. In September of 1998, we brought up the minimum wage issue, and were unable to bring that to a vote on the basis of the merits. The Republican leadership said no. In March of 1999, we tried to bring up this issue. Again, we were denied an opportunity to vote on it. In April of 1999, we brought it up again as an amendment on Y2K. We were denied an opportunity to have a full debate. In July of 1999, we brought it up again, and again we were turned down. Now we have the minimum wage legislation before us, and in a cynical move, the Republican leadership said: Even if you get the passage of the minimum wage, it ``ain't'' going to go any further; the President isn't going to see it; it is going to end. It is a sham. Their effort is basically a sham. That is the position in which we find ourselves today. We know Americans are working longer and harder. The working poor are working longer and harder than at any time in the history of our country. We know that over the last 10 years, women are working 3 weeks longer a year in order to earn the minimum wage and men are averaging 50 hours a week. These are some of the hardest working men and women in the country. At the height of the minimum wage in the late 1960s, it had the purchasing power that $7.49 would have today. If we are not able to raise the minimum wage this year and next, its value will be at an all- time low--in a time of extraordinary prosperity in this country. That is fundamentally wrong. A vote for the Republican amendment will not help working families. It is, in fact, an insult to low-wage workers. It robs them of over $1,200 as compared to the Democratic proposal, and it drastically undermines the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act which has been the law for over 60 years. The Republican proposal jeopardizes the overtime pay of 73 million Americans. The Republicans did not water down their own pay increase of $4,600. They are now watering down the increase in the minimum wage, and they are watering down overtime. On the one hand, they are giving an inadequate increase in the minimum wage and taking it back by cutting back on overtime. That is a sham. That is a cynical attempt to try to win support for working families from those who are trying to do justice for those individuals. We can ask, What difference does an increase in the minimum wage make? Cathi Zeman, 52 years old, works at a Rite Aid in Canseburg, PA. She earns $5.68 an hour. She is the primary earner in the family because her husband has a heart condition and is only able to work sporadically. What difference would an increase in the minimum wage mean to Cathi and her family? It would cover 6 months of utility bills for Cathi's family. Kimberly Frazier, a full-time child care aide from Philadelphia testified her pay of $5.20 an hour barely covers her rent, utilities, and clothes for her children. Our proposal would mean over 4 months of groceries for Kimberly and her kids. The stories of these families remind us that it is long past time to raise the minimum wage by $1 over 2 years. We cannot delay it. We cannot stretch it out. We cannot use it to cut overtime. And we cannot use it as an excuse to give bloated tax breaks to the rich. Members of Congress did not blink in giving themselves a $4,600 pay raise. Yet they deny a modest increase for those workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. I do not know how Members who voted for their own pay increase but I do not know how Members who vote against our minimum wage proposal will be able to face their constituents and explain their actions. It is hypocritical and irresponsible to deny a fair pay raise to the country's lowest paid workers. Above all, raising the minimum wage $1 over 2 years and protecting overtime pay is about fairness and dignity. It is about fairness and dignity for men and women who are working 50 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year trying to provide for their children and their families. This is a women's issue because a great majority of the minimum-wage workers are women. It is a children's issue because the majority of these women have children. It is a civil rights issue because the majority of individuals who make the minimum wage are men and women of color. And it is a fairness issue. At a time of extraordinary prosperity this country ought to be willing to grant an increase to the hardest working Americans in the nation--the day-care workers, the teachers aides. They deserve this increase. Our amendment will provide it, and the Republican amendment will not. Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. I yield for a question. Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague for yielding. I say to the Senator from Massachusetts how much I appreciate him pushing this forward and how important it is to all of our States. I bring out an article that ran in the paper yesterday and today about the status of children in my home State of California, by far the largest State. I want my friend to respond to these numbers because they really say it. This is what it says: Despite a booming economy that has seen a tide of prosperity wash over California in [[Page S14343]] recent years, nearly 1 in 4 children under 18 in the Golden State lives in poverty. . . . Although the annual ``California Report Card 1999'' laments that so many children live in poverty, it paints an especially bleak portrait of a child's first four years of life. Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, says: Among all of California's children, our littlest ones . . . face the most stressful conditions of all. . . . At a time when a child's sense of self and security is influenced most powerfully, California deals them a [terrible] hand. I say to my friend, this issue he is raising is so critical. We all say how much we care about the children. Every one of us has made that speech. Today the rubber meets the road. If you care about children, you have to make sure their parents can support them. My last point is, and I will yield for the answer, I wonder if my friend has seen the New York Times editorial that says: The Senate will vote today on a Republican-sponsored amendment to raise the minimum wage and they say sadly the Republicans are not content to do this good deed and go home. They have loaded the amendment with tax cuts that are fiscally damaging and cynically focused on wealthy workers. Almost all of the Republican tax cuts go to the wealthy. One of the economists who looked at this said: It would encourage the reduction of contributions made by employers to the pensions of the lowest paid workers. Can my friend comment on the importance of this proposal to children and also this cynical proposal that our colleagues on the other side are presenting? Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator has raised an enormously important point. Americans who are working in poverty, which is at the highest level in 20 years, are working longer and harder than ever. The men work 50 hours a week or more on average and the women work an average of 3 weeks more a year. They have less time--22 hours less--to spend with their children than they did 10 years ago. That is why this is a children's issue, as the Senator has pointed out. On the issue the difference between the Republican and the Democratic proposals, the Republicans say that their proposal makes some difference for those individuals who are going to get an increase in the minimum wage over 3 years. This is a raw deal for them. On the one hand, they give them an increase in the minimum wage, and on the other hand they take back the overtime for 73 million Americans. It is a cynical sham, and it is a cynical sham because the majority leader has said even if it passes, it will never go out of this Chamber. That is the attitude toward hard- working men and women who are trying to play by the rules and get along at a time when they have the lowest purchasing power in the history of the minimum wage and we have the most extraordinary prosperity. And then they insult these workers even further by adding a $75 billion tax break over 10 years. And then we just heard about the difficulty we are having in conference about $1 billion on education because they say we cannot afford to do things, but the same side is suggesting a $75 billion tax break. Where are they getting their money? So it is a cynical play. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Who yields time? Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota off our time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my enthusiastic support for the package of tax proposals introduced by Senator Domenici. I'm enthusiastic, in part, because it contains a provision that is very important to me--above-the-line deductibility of health insurance for individuals. Over 40 million American workers didn't have health insurance in 1997. The number has increased in the last two years to 44 million. This is disturbing, but I believe there is something Congress can do to help without resorting to a national health care system. Mr. President, when employers purchase a health plan for their employees, he or she can fully deduct the costs of providing that insurance, effectively lowering the actual costs of providing coverage. However, when an employee purchases an individual policy on their own, they must do so with after tax-dollars. They don't have the ability or the advantage offered to employers to reduce the actual costs of the policy by deducting premiums from their taxes every year. Therefore, they often wind up without any health coverage at all. Earlier this year, I introduced the Health Care Access Act, which would have ended this discrimination within the Tax Code and make health care available for many more Americans by allowing the full deduction of health insurance for those without access to employer- subsidized health coverage. We have a tax code that discriminates against some, while favoring others. Clearly, this results in fewer people being covered. The amendment before us today takes a slightly different approach, but its goal is the same--to level the tax-playing field. By allowing individuals without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, or those whose employers do not cover more than 50 percent of the cost of coverage, to deduct those costs regardless of whether they itemize or not, we can address a growing segment of our uninsured population by doing this. Under this amendment, from 2002 to 2004, eligible employees can deduct 25 percent of costs, 35 percent in 2005, 65 percent in 2006, and 100 percent after that. If there are no changes in the health care system and no significant downturn of the economy, we can expect the number of uninsured to reach 53 million over the next ten years. This translates into 25 percent of non-elderly Americans without coverage. Forty-three percent of the uninsured are in families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-eight percent of the uninsured work for small firms and 18 percent of all uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 24. The question that comes to mind is, if we're experiencing record growth in our economy and the unemployment rate is declining, why is the number of uninsured continuing to rise? The answer is costs. In the event a small business can offer a health plan to its employees, many times it is at a higher cost to the employee than it would be if the employee were to have a job at a larger firm. In this instance, employees have to decide if they believe their health status is such that they can go without health insurance, or if they should spend after-tax dollars to pay for a larger portion of their health insurance. Here is where we have the difficulty. Individuals employed by small businesses which can't afford to pay more than 50 percent of the monthly premiums for their employees should be able to have the same tax advantage as the employer in paying for their health insurance. Under our plan today, they will. In fact, because the tax deduction is what we call ``above-the-line,'' meaning if would be available to everyone--even if they don't itemize their taxes--we attack the most significant barrier to health coverage again, which is its costs, and move closer to eliminating all barriers to health coverage. In other words, get more Americans covered by allowing them the deductibility of the costs. I am also pleased that this amendment includes many other important components such as pension reform and small business tax relief. We are talking about tax relief for small businesses, not the wealthiest as you hear from the other side of the aisle, but tax relief pinpointed at the hard-working Americans in this country who are also job providers. Retirement income security is crucial for millions of American workers. This amendment reforms and enhances current pension laws to ensure workers will achieve income security upon retirement. It repeals the unnecessary temporary FUTA surtax, which has become a burden to many small businesses. The amendment allows millions of self-employed Americans to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance costs. This is a critical provision because 61 percent of the uninsured in this country are from a family headed [[Page S14344]] by an entrepreneur or a small business employee. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Mr. GRAMS. I ask for 2 more minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the Senator 2 additional minutes. Mr. GRAMS. In wrapping up, the amendment increases small business expensing to $30,000. This change alone means an extra $3,850 in tax savings for each small business in new equipment next year. This amendment also allows small business to increase the meal and entertainment expense tax deduction. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit has helped millions of Americans leave welfare programs and become productive workers in our economy. This amendment makes the WOTC permanent, so small businesses and former welfare recipients will continue to benefit from the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It seems unfair to me that in a time of prosperity we hear our colleagues on the other side talking about tax increases. Again, in their plan, they would impose new, even higher taxes. They talk about minimum wage; they are taxing and taxing and taxing those people as they enter the job market. What we need is a plan that will reduce taxes, not increase taxes. America's small business is the key to our economic growth and prosperity. The health care, pension reform and tax relief measures included in this amendment will help small business continue to work for America and will allow millions of Americans to realize the American Dream. Again, that is why I rise today to enthusiastically offer my support for the tax package proposed by Senator Domenici. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does each side have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls 11 minutes 40 seconds; the Senator from Massachusetts controls 13 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. How much time would you like, I ask Senator Nickles? Mr. NICKLES. Four or 5 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 4 minutes to Senator Nickles. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized. Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague from New Mexico for the work that he has done in providing a more realistic substitute. But the first vote we are going to have today is voting on a motion to table the Kennedy amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment for a lot of different reasons, one of which is that it dramatically increases the minimum wage--about 20 percent over the next 13\1/2\ months. That is a big hit for a lot of small businesses. I am afraid it will prevent a lot of people, low- income people, who want to get their first jobs--they may not be able to get them. Estimates by some of the economists, CBO, and others, are that it could be 100,000 people; it could be 500,000 people that lose their jobs. It is a big hit. There are a lot of other reasons to oppose the Kennedy amendment. How many of our colleagues know it has a $29 billion tax increase, that it extends Superfund taxes? We do not reauthorize the Superfund Program, but we extend the taxes. Many of us agree we need to extend the taxes when we reauthorize the program, but not before and that is in there anyway. There is a tax increase on business. I received a letter from all the business groups opposing it. It is practically an IRS entitlement program, so they can go after anything they want. It deals with ``Noneconomic attributes,'' whatever that means, it is a $10 billion tax increase. It may sound good and some people say that it is just to close loopholes. But it is to give IRS carte blanche to go after anything and everything they want. We reformed IRS and curbed their appetite somewhat, and regardless of those efforts this would be saying: Hey, IRS, go after anybody and everybody. There is also a provision in the Democrat proposal that hits hospice organizations right between the eyes. I have put letters from outside organizations addressing this very issue on Members' desks so they may see it for themselves. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record three letters from various hospice organizations. There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: National Association for Home Care, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: The National Association for Home Care (NAHC) represents home health agencies and hospices nationwide. While generally speaking, NAHC is supportive of efforts to maintain a reasonable minimum wage, a proposed amendment to S. 625 creates serious concerns for hospices across the country. The proposed amendment would create a civil monetary penalty for false certification of eligibility for hospice care or partial hospitalization services. This proposal would impose a civil monetary penalty of the greater of $5,000 or three times the amount of payments under Medicare when a physician knowingly executes a false certification claiming that an individual Medicare beneficiary meets hospice coverage standards. On its face, this provision is addressed only to those physicians that intentionally and purposefully execute false certifications. However, the impact of a comparable provision on the access to home health services, as added to the law as Section 232 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, should caution Congress in expanding the provision to apply to hospice services. Immediately after the physician community became aware of the 1996 amendment, physicians expressed to home health agencies across the country great hesitancy to remain involved in certifying the homebound status of prospective home health patients. The vagueness of the homebound criteria and the stepped up antifraud efforts of the Health Care Financing Administration brought a chilling effect to physicians. As a result, home health agencies reported that physicians became less involved with homecare patients rather than increasing their involvement as had been recommended by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We believe that a comparable physician reaction will occur if this provision of law is extended to hospice services. A recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that many eligible people may be denied Medicare hospice benefits because the life expectancy of patients with a chronic illness is nearly impossible to predict with accuracy. Medicare requires that the patient's physician and the hospice medical director certify that the patient has no more than six months to live in order to secure entitlement to the Medicare hospice benefit. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. The existing scientific and clinical difficulties in accurately predicting the life expectancy of a patient combined with the threat of additional civil monetary penalties will adversely affect access to necessary hospice services. The experiences with home health services indicate that physicians distance themselves from the affected benefit. While the standard of applicability relates to a knowing and intentional false certification, physicians will react out of fear of inappropriate enforcement actions. There are already numerous antifraud provisions within federal law that apply to the exact circumstance subject to the proposed civil monetary penalties. These existing laws include even more serious penalties such as the potential for imprisonment for any false claim. We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a non-germane legislative effort to increase the federal minimum wage. There is no evidence that physicians engage in any widespread abuse of the Medicare hospice benefit. To the contrary, evidence is growing that hospice services are underutilized as an alternative to more expensive care. Thank you for all of your efforts to protect senior citizens in our country. Sincerely, Val J. Halamandaris. ____ Hospice Association of America, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: On behalf of the Hospice Association of America (HAA), a national association representing our member hospice programs, thousands of hospice professionals and volunteers, and those faced with terminal illness and their families, I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. It is often difficult to make the determination that a patient is terminally ill (life expectancy of six months or less if the terminal illness run its normal course), because the course of terminal is different for each patient and is not predictable. In some rare cases patients have been admitted to hospice care and have improved so as to be discharged from the program. The determination regarding the terminal status of a patient is not an exact science and should not be judged harshly in retrospect. In a recent edition of JAMA, The Journal of American Medical Association, researchers reported that the recommended clinical prediction criteria are not effective in a population with a survival prognosis of six [[Page S14345]] months or less. According to Medicare survival data, only 15 percent of patients receiving Medicare hospice survive longer than six months and the median survival of Medicare patients enrolled in hospices is under 40 days. This information demonstrates what has been well known by those working in the hospice community, the science of prognostication is in its infancy and physicians must use the tools that are available, medial guidelines and local medical review policies developed by the Health Care Financing Administration, as well as their best medical judgment. Physicians can not be punished for possible overestimation of a terminally ill patient's life expectancy. The only ones to be punished will be the patients in need of hospice services whose physicians will be denied from enrolling appropriate patients, thus denying access to this compassionate, humane, patient and family centered care at the end-of-their lives. Please reject the proposed amendment to S. 625. Sincerely, Karen Woods, Executive Director. ____ Federation of American Health Systems, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Hon. Don Nickles, Assistant Majority leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Assistant Majority Leader: The Federation of American Health Systems, representing 1700 privately-owned and managed community hospitals has generally not taken a position on the minimum wage bill. However, we find it necessary to object to an amendment that will be offered today during consideration of the bill. Specifically, we are concerned with an amendment that will apparently address ``partial hospitalization'' issues. While the Federation supports the goal of improving the integrity of the Medicare program by addressing concerns with partial hospitalization, we oppose its attachment to non-Medicare legislation. Clearly, any amendment that reduces Medicare trust fund spending should either be used to enhance the solvency of the trust fund, or for other Medicare trust fund purposes. We appreciate your consideration of our position. Sincerely, Thomas A. Scully, President and CEO. Mr. NICKLES. From the Hospice Association of America: . . . . I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 1625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. I have a letter from the Federation of American Health Systems urging opposition to the Kennedy amendment. I have a letter from the National Association for Home Care, also in opposition. It says: We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a nongermane legislative effort to increase the minimum wage. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. Do we want to do that? I don't think so. Certainly we shouldn't do it in this legislation. Let's have hearings to find out more about this. Let's do it in Medicare reform. Let's do it when we have a chance to know exactly what we are doing because this is strongly opposed by hospice organizations. I encourage my colleagues to oppose it for all the above reasons. I urge them to vote yes to table the Kennedy amendment. We will move to table it at the appropriate time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Washington. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Kennedy amendment that we will be voting on shortly. It is important to note that 59 percent of the over 11 million workers who would receive a pay increase as a result of this minimum wage are women--women, by and large, with children; women who, because the minimum wage is so low today, are working two, three, four jobs. Those losing out in the country today because of the lack of a minimum wage increase are our children. They are being left home alone. They aren't getting the attention they deserve. They are not getting the support they deserve. A vote for the Kennedy amendment is a vote for our children. While I have the floor, I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania came to the floor this morning to question the President's constitutional authority to insist on reducing class size. I remind our colleagues, reducing class size is something we as Democrats have fought for, stood behind, and we stand behind the President in the final budget negotiations. This is not about constitutional authority. It is about making sure young kids in first, second, and third grade get from a good teacher the attention they need in order to read and write and do arithmetic. That is a bipartisan agreement we all agreed upon a year ago, $1.2 billion to help our local schools reduce class size. To renege on that commitment 1 year later and to have language which takes that money and gives it to whatever else school districts want to use it for sounds good except we lose out. A block grant will not guarantee that one child will learn to read. A block grant will not guarantee that a child who needs attention will have it on the day he or she needs it. A block grant will not assure that our children get the attention they deserve and learn the skills they need. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 2 minutes have expired. Mrs. MURRAY. I ask for an additional 30 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Thirty seconds. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, what we as Democrats are going to stand strong for is a commitment we made a year ago to assure that every child in first, second, and third grade gets the attention they deserve. If our Republican colleagues want to add additional money to the budget for block grants, for needs in our schools that we agree are important, we are more than happy to talk to them about it. But we believe the commitment we made a year ago is a promise that should be kept. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. How much time, Mr. President? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts controls 10 minutes 34 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico controls 8 minutes 23 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 minutes. I again thank the Senators from California and Washington for illustrating in very powerful terms what this issue is all about. It is about working women and families. With all respect to my friend from Oklahoma, when we had an increase in the minimum wage a few years ago, the Republicans fought it. They said that it would harm the economy and adversely impact small business. In the measure I have introduced we have tried to provide some relief for small businesses and we have paid for it. Now we can't do that because we have some kind of offsets. Therefore, we can't do it. The fact is, the Republicans are opposed to any increase in the minimum wage. That is the fact. They have been opposed to it even at a time of extraordinary prosperity. This minimum wage affects real people in a very important way, and there is no group in our society it affects more powerfully than women and children. They are the great majority of the earners of the minimum wage, and increasingly so. These days parents are spending less and less time with their families. In the last 10 years, parents were able to spend 22 hours a week less with their families. Read the Family and Work Institute's report of interviews with small children who are in minimum-wage families. They are universal in what they say. They all say: We wish our mother--or our father--would be less fatigued. We wish they had more time to spend with us. We are tired of seeing our parents come home exhausted when they are working one or two minimum-wage jobs. That is what this is about. It is about the men and women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Are they real? Of course they are real. I have read the stories. We know who they are. They are out there today, this morning, as teacher's aides in our schools. These teacher's aides are working with young children, our future, and yet they don't earn enough to make ends meet. They are there in the day-care centers. We know that day-care center workers are often at the bottom of the pay scale, earning the minimum wage. As you can see from this graph the purchasing power of the minimum wage [[Page S14346]] has declined since the last increase. As their wages lose purchasing power, turnover in low paying jobs like child care attendants and those who are working in nursing homes, increases. When people are forced to leave these jobs, there is a deterioration in quality of the service day care centers and nursing homes can offer. This is about the most important element of our society. It is about fairness. It is about work. We hear all of these speeches on the other side of the aisle about the importance of work. We are honoring work. We are talking about men and women with dignity who have a sense of pride in what they do and are trying to do better and are trying to look out after their families. They are being given the back of the hand by the Republicans. Their proposal is a sham. It is a raw deal for these workers. On the one hand, they are dribbling out an increase in the minimum wage; on the other hand, they are taking away overtime for 73 million Americans, and in the meantime, they are giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals in our society. That is a sham. Beyond that, they say the minimum wage, if we are even fortunate enough to get it to pass the Senate, will never go to the President because the Republican leadership has made a commitment to whoever it might be that it will never go there. That is what we are up against. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 4 minutes have expired. Mr. KENNEDY. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts that I can yell as loud as he. But today I won't do that because I believe we have a great bill and a great position. The Republicans do support the minimum wage. In fact, they are going to vote for the minimum wage that I propose. That is, instead of a dollar coming in two installments, it will come in three, of 35 cents, 35 cents, and 30 cents. Frankly, there will be an overwhelming vote in favor of that. In addition, we took the opportunity to give small business and some other absolutely necessary situations that need it tax relief. We chose in this bill to do that. Those have been explained fairly well. I will take a minute at the end of my remarks to explain them one more time. I suggest that the Democrats are living in an era that has passed. If they were here on the floor in the 1930s, they would have a case. They would have a case that the minimum wage is going to affect poor families supporting their children. That was the issue in the 1930s. But I suggest the best research today says that day is gone in terms of who is impacted by the minimum wage. It is more likely to impact a teenager than it is the head of a household. The fact is, 55 percent of the minimum wage applies to people between the ages of 16 and 24. The overwhelming number of those are teenagers in part-time jobs, working in McDonald's-type restaurants across America. They need these jobs. They don't even stay in the minimum-wage position very long, according to the research we have seen. If they work well and choose to follow the rules and the orders and do an excellent job, they are raised above the minimum wage rather quickly. To put it another way, to show that the arguments about who benefits from the minimum wage are passe 1930 arguments, two-thirds of all minimum-wage people are part-time employees. The fact is, the argument that these are women heads of households is absolutely dispelled by reality. The best we can find out is that 8 percent of the minimum-wage employees in America today are women heads of households, not the numbers or the tenor and tone of the argument about the slap of the hand we are giving to those who work in America. Quite the contrary. Our minimum wage reflects a sufficient increase to match up with inflation, and we permit many people an opportunity to get into the job market. In fact, we make permanent one of the best taxes we have, which is now there on an interim basis. It says if you hire minimum-wage workers out of the welfare system, and you want to take a chance because they aren't capable of doing the jobs and you need to train them, you get a credit for that. That is a very good part of the Tax Code. We make that permanent so it costs something and it uses up some of our tax money. As to the argument of how big this tax cut is, it is 12.5 percent of the total tax package that the Republicans offered, which passed here and the President vetoed. It tries something very new and exciting. It says to Americans who want to buy their own insurance--because their employers don't furnish it--for the first time, they are going to be permitted to deduct the entirety of their health insurance. Heretofore, they were punished if they tried to buy it, penalized because they didn't get to deduct it while everybody else did. We also made permanent the allowance that the self-employed can take the insurance deduction. We raise that to 100 percent. Everybody knows that is good. Everybody knows that helps with the problem of the uninsured in America, and that is good. So, for all the talk, the Republicans have come forward with a very good bill. I am very pleased that I suggested to the Republicans the basics of this bill, that we ought to do it in three installments. Some wanted to make it longer. Actually, I think this is exactly the right length of time. Add to that the kind of tax relief we have provided versus the tax increases on that side, and it seems to me there is no choice. While everybody is clamoring to do something about the estate tax because it is a very onerous tax, as if to try to punish people, in a minimum-wage bill they raise death taxes and inheritance taxes. I don't care what kind of American they impose it on. We don't have to do that when we are reforming that system because it is somewhat confiscatory. I could go on, but if anybody has any doubt, the gross tax increase under the Democrat package is $12.5 billion over 5 years, and a $28.9 billion tax increase over 10 years. What in the world are we increasing taxes for at this point? To pay for a minimum-wage bill? Of course not. It is because they want other tax relief and they choose to raise taxes to give the benefit to someone else. There is sufficient surplus. This is a very small tax cut in our package--12.5 percent of what we perceived was adequate and what we could do about 4 months ago with the surpluses we have. The President proposed $250 billion, $300 billion in tax relief. In this bill, they raise taxes rather than take advantage of what we know is the right thing; that is, to reduce taxes in these economic times. I reserve my remaining time. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 6 minutes 49 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mrs. BOXER. The Senator from New Mexico said he wasn't going to yell. He got a little close to it. But when I hear the yells on that side of the aisle, it is usually related to their passion for helping the wealthiest among us. The Senator from New Mexico says that the Democrats are living in the past because we want to increase the minimum wage. Well, I have news for the Senator from New Mexico. Compassion for the poorest in our society, those at the bottom rung of the ladder, that is a timeless value; that is a moral value; that is a religious value; that is a value we ought to be proud to have around here. That is not living in the past. Come to Los Angeles, I say to my friend from New Mexico, or look around your big cities. What you will notice is that the people who are living on the minimum wage are adults. We know that to be the fact. A majority of minimum-wage workers are adults--70 percent of them. In the Democratic proposal, out of those who will benefit from this modest increase, 60 percent of them are women. So if you want to say that we are living in the past, you can say it all you want. But it isn't true. We saw in September a very chilling story in the L.A. Times about the working poor in Southern California. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition shows that given the high cost of a two-bedroom apartment in L.A., a minimum-wage earner must work 112 hours per week in order to make ends meet. [[Page S14347]] In San Francisco, it is even worse. A person would have to work 174 hours at minimum wage in order to pay their bills. According to a recent study of the Nation's food banks, 40 percent of all households seeking emergency food aid had at least one member who was working. That is up from 23 percent in 1994. Low-paying jobs, I say to my friend from New Mexico, are the most frequently cited cause of hunger today, according to this well- documented L.A. Times story. The L.A. Times, by the way, is now owned by Republicans. So this isn't a question of yesterday, I say to my friend. It is a question of living today. They have made the same arguments every time we raised the minimum wage. The last time they said it would bring the economy down. We have never seen such a strong economy. If the people at the bottom rung are left behind, it is morally wrong and it is economically wrong. It makes no sense. Those are the folks who go out and spend what they earn and they definitely stimulate the economy. So for anybody to say you are living in the past if you support a minimum-wage increase, they don't know what is going on today. I say that from my heart. I have respect for the Senator from New Mexico, but I think it is insulting to say one lives in the past for wanting to fight for those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder--those women and those children who are living in poverty. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 3\1/2\ minutes. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield a minute to the Senator from Connecticut. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized. Mr. DODD. Mr. President, to make a couple of quick points, I was terribly saddened to see as part of another bill that we have a further reduction in child care provisions, which is a major blow again to working families out there. We all know that quality child care makes a difference for these children. In the midst of all of this, we are obviously told you have to come up with some offsets to pay for the provisions in this bill, which we do. Offsets always attract opposition from one quarter or another. But these are modest offsets to pay for the provisions in the bill. What is going to happen later today we are going to vote on $75 billion in tax cuts and 56 percent of them go to the top 20 percent of income earners, and there are no offsets--none. One of the great contradictions is, we are being accused of not liking the offsets, the pays, from some of the provisions and simultaneously we ask our Members to vote for a provision in the bill or vote for the whole bill, including a $75 billion tax cut over 10 years with no offsets. Let me underscore, as this millennium date of 50 days away approaches, those at the bottom of the economic rung--working people, the majority who receive the minimum wage and are working full time; they are women, they are Hispanic, they are black--deserve to get a fair shake out of this Senate. In a few minutes, we will have an opportunity to give them that fair shake by providing an increase in the minimum wage, allowing them to enjoy the prosperity of the booming economy. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is important to understand exactly what the situation is for our working poor. The number of full-time, year-round workers living in poverty is at a 20-year high: 12.6 percent of the workforce, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of the last 3 days. That is the fact. People are working harder, and they are living in poverty. These are people who value work. Second, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, of those who will benefit from a minimum wage increase, 70 percent are adults over age 20, and about 30 percent will be teenagers. If Senators come to Boston and talk to the young people going to the University of Massachusetts, they will find 85 percent of their parents never went to college and 85 percent of them are working 25 hours a week or more. That is true in Boston, in Holyoke, in New Bedford, and Fall River, and cities across the country. I don't know what Members have against working young people who are trying to pay for their education. We have 6 million working in the workforce, and we have 2 million working at the minimum wage. Why are we complaining about that? The Republican proposal is a Thanksgiving turkey with three right wings. It has a watered-down increase in the minimum wage, it has a poison pill for overtime work, and it has juicy tax provisions for the rich. This Republican turkey is stuffed with tax breaks, and it does not deserve to be passed. Vote for the real increase in the minimum wage; vote for the Daschle increase. Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as the most prosperous nation in the world, our minimum wage should be a living wage, and it is not. When a father or mother works full-time, 40 hours a week, year-round, they should be able to lift their family out of poverty. $5.15 an hour will not do that. A full time minimum wage job should provide a minimum standard of living in addition to giving workers the dignity that comes with a paycheck. The current minimum wage does not pay a fair wage. I support the legislation introduced by Representative David Bonior in the House and Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate which increases the minimum wage. This legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act, will provide a 50 cent increase to the minimum wage on January 1, 2000, and a second 50 cent increase on January 1, 2001. This would raise the minimum wage to $6.15 per hour by the year 2001. The minimum wage increase passed in 1996 prevented the minimum wage from falling to its lowest inflation adjusted level in 40 years. The proposed minimum wage increase to $6.15 in 2001 would get the minimum wage back to the inflation adjusted level it was in 1982. In this era of economic growth, raising the minimum wage is a matter of fundamental fairness. We must look around and realize that we have the strongest economy in a generation. However, even with our strong economy, the benefits of prosperity have not flowed to low-wage workers. A full time minimum wage laborer working forty hours a week for 52 weeks earns $10,712 per year--more than $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. The pover

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LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS
(Senate - November 09, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S14340-S14364] LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I wish to make a brief comment, if I may, on one of the items referred to in a statement by the majority leader about the appropriations process, which I think will be of interest to our colleagues and perhaps to others who may be watching on C-SPAN 2. We had negotiations beginning at 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon with officials from the White House, and we are trying to resolve those issues in a spirit of accommodation. With respect to the dollars involved, the bill which came out of the Appropriations Committee was $93.7 billion for the three Departments. That was $600 million more than the President's figure, and it was $300 million more than the President's figure on education. I worked on a bipartisan basis with my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin. The bill was crafted with what we thought was the right dollar amount--frankly, the maximum amount--to pass with votes in substantial numbers from Republicans and an amount which would be acceptable to Democrats and to the President because it was somewhat higher than his figure and we emphasized increased funding for the National Institutes of Health. The administration has come back with a figure of $2.3 billion additional, and Congressman Porter and I made an offer yesterday to add $228 million, provided we could find offsets because it is very important that we not go into the Social Security trust funds. So that whatever dollars we add to accommodate the President's priorities--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. We are prepared to meet him halfway on priorities on dollars--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. There is a much more difficult issue in this matter than the dollars, although the dollars are obviously of great importance, and the issue which is extremely contentious is what will be done on the President's demand to have $1.4 billion to reduce classroom size to have additional teachers. The Senate bill has appropriated $1.2 billion which maintains the high level of last year's funding. When it comes to the issue of the utilization of that money, we are prepared to acknowledge the President's first priority of reduction of classroom size for teachers. But if the local school board makes a factual determination that is not the real need of the local school board, then we propose that the second priority be teacher training. If the local school board decides that is not where the money ought to be spent, then we propose to give it to the school board the discretion as to the spending to local education, as opposed to a straitjacket out of Washington. The White House Press Secretary has issued a statement this morning saying that these funds could be used for vouchers, and that is not true. That is a red herring. To allay any concern, we will make it explicit in the bill that the President's concern about the use of these funds for vouchers will be allayed. We are prepared to make that accommodation, although there had never been any intent to use it for vouchers. However, we will make that intent explicit in the bill. Behind the issue of classroom size and the President's demand is a much greater constitutional issue. That is the constitutional issue of who controls the power of the purse. The Constitution gives the authority to the Congress to establish spending priorities, and we have seen a process evolve in the past few years which does not follow the constitutional format. The Constitution is very specific that each [[Page S14341]] House will decide on a bill, have a conference, and send that bill to the President for his signature or for his veto; and if he vetoes it, the bill then comes back to the Congress for reenactment. But what has happened in the immediate past has been that executive branch officials sit in with the appropriators and are a part of the legislative process, which is a violation of the principle of separation of powers. Now, I must say that I have been a party to those meetings because that is what is going on. But I want to identify it as a process which is not in conformity with the Constitution. It is something we ought to change. When it comes to the power and the control, what we have seen happen in the last 4 years is that the President has really made an effort, and to a substantial extent a successful effort, to take over the prerogative of the Congress on the power of the purse. When the Government was closed in late 1995 and early 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress was blamed for the closure. That, candidly, has made the Congress gun-shy to challenge the President on spending issues. Since that time there has been a concession to the President on whatever it is that he wants, sort of ``pay a price to get out of town'' when people are anxious to have the congressional session adjourn. Speaking for myself and I think quite a few others in the Congress are not going to put on the pressure to get out of town. We are going to do the job and do it right. Senator Lott held a news conference yesterday and was asked about the termination time. He said he thought it was possible to finish the public's business by the close of the legislative session on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, but it was more important, as Senator Lott articulated, to do it right than get it finished by any arbitrary deadline. I concur totally with Senator Lott. I think it is possible to get the business finished by the end of the working day tomorrow. But it is more important to get it right than to get it finished on any prescribed schedule. In modern times there is too much concern about getting out of town, than perhaps getting the job done right. But we are determined to get it done and to get it done right. If we can get it done by the end of business tomorrow, that is what our goal is. But we are not going to sacrifice getting it done right in order to be able to finish up by Wednesday afternoon to get out of town. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question? Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. SPECTER. No, I will not yield here, but I will in just a minute. What we have seen is the President's ultimatum. He says this issue on schoolteachers is nonnegotiable. That is hardly the way you get into a negotiation session. Then his Chief of Staff, John Podesta, said on Sunday that if the Congress wants to get out of town they are going to have to accede to the President's demands on teachers, to do it his way. I think that is not appropriate. Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution. It is our fundamental responsibility on appropriations. We are prepared to negotiate, but we are not prepared to deal with nonnegotiable demands. We are not prepared to deal with ultimatums. We are going back into a session--I don't know whether I should call it a negotiating session or not, because the President talks about nonnegotiable demands. Frankly, I am prepared to meet that with a nonnegotiable demand, not giving up on our prerogative to make a determination as to how the money is to be spent and getting local control over a Presidential straitjacket. Now I would be delighted to yield to my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. I wanted to inquire of the desk what the Senate business was supposed to be? I was under the impression we were supposed to be, at 9:30, on the minimum wage. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor? Mr. SPECTER. I have concluded. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask we extend the time. How much time did the Senator from Pennsylvania expend? Mr. DOMENICI. What was the question? Mr. KENNEDY. I asked how much time the Senator from Pennsylvania used? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican side has 19 minutes left. Mr. KENNEDY. Just as a matter of inquiry, were taken out of the time of the debate. Is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Taken out of the Republican time. Mr. KENNEDY. OK. Mr. President, I yield myself 12 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Pennsylvania's comments with great interest. I will mention very briefly in defense of the administration, although they can make the case quite well for themselves that if the Appropriations Committee had finished their business on time we would not be in this particular dilemma. Only four appropriations bills were actually completed on time for the fiscal year. So with all respect to our friend on the other side, if the appropriators had placed, particularly the HEW appropriations, first rather than last, I do not think we would be having these kinds of problems in the areas of negotiation between the President and the Congress. Second, the basic program which the President has been fighting for in this negotiation is almost identical to what the Republicans supported last year. With all respect to the comments we have just heard, the fact is if the classes reach the goals, the 15 percent set- aside for funding for smaller class sizes can be used to enhance the teacher training. If the school had already achieved the lower class size of 18, it would be used for special needs or other kinds of professional purposes. So it is difficult for me to understand the frustration of the Senator from Pennsylvania when the Republican leaders all effectively endorse what the President talked about last year. If their position is not sustained, there are going to be 30,000 teachers who are teaching in first, second, and third grades who are going to get pink slips. I don't think the problem in education is having fewer schoolteachers teach in the early grades but to have more. I want to make clear I am not a part of those negotiations this year, but I was last year. I know what the particular issue is. With all respect to those who are watching C-SPAN II, I want them to know the President is fighting for smaller class sizes as well as for better trained teachers. We have seen Senator Murray make that presentation and make it effectively time and again. I think it is something that parents support, teachers understand, and children have benefited from. No one makes that case more eloquently than the Senator from the State of Washington. But I certainly hope the President will continue that commitment. We have scarce Federal resources. They are targeted in areas of particular need. That is the purpose of these negotiations. I hope we can conclude a successful negotiation. Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield on my time? Mr. KENNEDY. On your time, yes. Mr. DOMENICI. Just for an observation. He might want to answer it. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the truth of the matter is if schools want the new teachers, under the proposal of the distinguished chairman who just took to the floor to explain the obstinacy of the President, they can have the money for teachers. That is what he is saying. It is up to them. If they want all the money that comes from this appropriation used for teachers, they can have it. If they say, we don't need them, we don't want them, he is saying there is a second priority. Frankly, I think that is excellent policy with reference to the schools of our country. I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania makes a good point. For the President to continue to say we are not going to get this bill unless we do it exactly his way leaves us with no alternative. We have some prerogatives, too. The fact is, if you read the Constitution, he doesn't appropriate; the Congress does. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. [[Page S14342]] Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just to respond, we have a need for 2 million teachers. We have scarce Federal resources. If the States or local communities want to do whatever the Senator from New Mexico says, all well and good. But we are talking about scarce Federal resources that are targeted in ways that have been proven effective in enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. I am again surprised. The Republicans were taking credit for this last year. I was in the negotiations. Mr. Goodling and Mr. Gingrich--as we were waiting to find out whether the powers that be, the Speaker, was going to endorse this, when we were waiting and having negotiations--went out and announced it and took credit for it. They took credit for this proposal of the President. I find it a little difficult to understand this kind of frustration that is being demonstrated here. But we will come back to this and Senator Murray can address these issues at a later time. I certainly hope the President will not flinch in his commitment to getting smaller class sizes and better trained teachers and after school programs. That is what this President has been fighting for. I hope he will not yield at this time in these final negotiations, after we have only had four appropriations that have met the deadline. Before we get all excited about these negotiations, if our appropriators had completed this work in time, we would not be here. Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. How much time do we have? I will be glad to yield. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Good. I am glad to yield. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, briefly, I ask my colleague, is it not true this appropriation for education was the last of the bills considered by the Appropriations Committee? Is it not true that we waited until the very last day to even bring up this issue of education, the highest priority for American families? Now we find ourselves trying to adjourn, stuck on an issue that could have been resolved months ago had we made education as high a priority on Capitol Hill as it is in family rooms across America. Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from California, and I know the Senator from Washington as well, had hoped--and I believe I can speak for our Democratic leader--this would be the No. 1 appropriation and not the last one. If we had this as the No. 1 appropriation on the issue of education, we would not have these little statements we have heard this morning. But it is the last one. That is not by accident; that is by choice of the Republican leadership. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 7 minutes. In a few moments, we will be voting on the minimum wage issue that is before the Senate. I want to review what the record has been over the last 2 years. In September of 1998, we brought up the minimum wage issue, and were unable to bring that to a vote on the basis of the merits. The Republican leadership said no. In March of 1999, we tried to bring up this issue. Again, we were denied an opportunity to vote on it. In April of 1999, we brought it up again as an amendment on Y2K. We were denied an opportunity to have a full debate. In July of 1999, we brought it up again, and again we were turned down. Now we have the minimum wage legislation before us, and in a cynical move, the Republican leadership said: Even if you get the passage of the minimum wage, it ``ain't'' going to go any further; the President isn't going to see it; it is going to end. It is a sham. Their effort is basically a sham. That is the position in which we find ourselves today. We know Americans are working longer and harder. The working poor are working longer and harder than at any time in the history of our country. We know that over the last 10 years, women are working 3 weeks longer a year in order to earn the minimum wage and men are averaging 50 hours a week. These are some of the hardest working men and women in the country. At the height of the minimum wage in the late 1960s, it had the purchasing power that $7.49 would have today. If we are not able to raise the minimum wage this year and next, its value will be at an all- time low--in a time of extraordinary prosperity in this country. That is fundamentally wrong. A vote for the Republican amendment will not help working families. It is, in fact, an insult to low-wage workers. It robs them of over $1,200 as compared to the Democratic proposal, and it drastically undermines the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act which has been the law for over 60 years. The Republican proposal jeopardizes the overtime pay of 73 million Americans. The Republicans did not water down their own pay increase of $4,600. They are now watering down the increase in the minimum wage, and they are watering down overtime. On the one hand, they are giving an inadequate increase in the minimum wage and taking it back by cutting back on overtime. That is a sham. That is a cynical attempt to try to win support for working families from those who are trying to do justice for those individuals. We can ask, What difference does an increase in the minimum wage make? Cathi Zeman, 52 years old, works at a Rite Aid in Canseburg, PA. She earns $5.68 an hour. She is the primary earner in the family because her husband has a heart condition and is only able to work sporadically. What difference would an increase in the minimum wage mean to Cathi and her family? It would cover 6 months of utility bills for Cathi's family. Kimberly Frazier, a full-time child care aide from Philadelphia testified her pay of $5.20 an hour barely covers her rent, utilities, and clothes for her children. Our proposal would mean over 4 months of groceries for Kimberly and her kids. The stories of these families remind us that it is long past time to raise the minimum wage by $1 over 2 years. We cannot delay it. We cannot stretch it out. We cannot use it to cut overtime. And we cannot use it as an excuse to give bloated tax breaks to the rich. Members of Congress did not blink in giving themselves a $4,600 pay raise. Yet they deny a modest increase for those workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. I do not know how Members who voted for their own pay increase but I do not know how Members who vote against our minimum wage proposal will be able to face their constituents and explain their actions. It is hypocritical and irresponsible to deny a fair pay raise to the country's lowest paid workers. Above all, raising the minimum wage $1 over 2 years and protecting overtime pay is about fairness and dignity. It is about fairness and dignity for men and women who are working 50 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year trying to provide for their children and their families. This is a women's issue because a great majority of the minimum-wage workers are women. It is a children's issue because the majority of these women have children. It is a civil rights issue because the majority of individuals who make the minimum wage are men and women of color. And it is a fairness issue. At a time of extraordinary prosperity this country ought to be willing to grant an increase to the hardest working Americans in the nation--the day-care workers, the teachers aides. They deserve this increase. Our amendment will provide it, and the Republican amendment will not. Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. I yield for a question. Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague for yielding. I say to the Senator from Massachusetts how much I appreciate him pushing this forward and how important it is to all of our States. I bring out an article that ran in the paper yesterday and today about the status of children in my home State of California, by far the largest State. I want my friend to respond to these numbers because they really say it. This is what it says: Despite a booming economy that has seen a tide of prosperity wash over California in [[Page S14343]] recent years, nearly 1 in 4 children under 18 in the Golden State lives in poverty. . . . Although the annual ``California Report Card 1999'' laments that so many children live in poverty, it paints an especially bleak portrait of a child's first four years of life. Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, says: Among all of California's children, our littlest ones . . . face the most stressful conditions of all. . . . At a time when a child's sense of self and security is influenced most powerfully, California deals them a [terrible] hand. I say to my friend, this issue he is raising is so critical. We all say how much we care about the children. Every one of us has made that speech. Today the rubber meets the road. If you care about children, you have to make sure their parents can support them. My last point is, and I will yield for the answer, I wonder if my friend has seen the New York Times editorial that says: The Senate will vote today on a Republican-sponsored amendment to raise the minimum wage and they say sadly the Republicans are not content to do this good deed and go home. They have loaded the amendment with tax cuts that are fiscally damaging and cynically focused on wealthy workers. Almost all of the Republican tax cuts go to the wealthy. One of the economists who looked at this said: It would encourage the reduction of contributions made by employers to the pensions of the lowest paid workers. Can my friend comment on the importance of this proposal to children and also this cynical proposal that our colleagues on the other side are presenting? Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator has raised an enormously important point. Americans who are working in poverty, which is at the highest level in 20 years, are working longer and harder than ever. The men work 50 hours a week or more on average and the women work an average of 3 weeks more a year. They have less time--22 hours less--to spend with their children than they did 10 years ago. That is why this is a children's issue, as the Senator has pointed out. On the issue the difference between the Republican and the Democratic proposals, the Republicans say that their proposal makes some difference for those individuals who are going to get an increase in the minimum wage over 3 years. This is a raw deal for them. On the one hand, they give them an increase in the minimum wage, and on the other hand they take back the overtime for 73 million Americans. It is a cynical sham, and it is a cynical sham because the majority leader has said even if it passes, it will never go out of this Chamber. That is the attitude toward hard- working men and women who are trying to play by the rules and get along at a time when they have the lowest purchasing power in the history of the minimum wage and we have the most extraordinary prosperity. And then they insult these workers even further by adding a $75 billion tax break over 10 years. And then we just heard about the difficulty we are having in conference about $1 billion on education because they say we cannot afford to do things, but the same side is suggesting a $75 billion tax break. Where are they getting their money? So it is a cynical play. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Who yields time? Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota off our time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my enthusiastic support for the package of tax proposals introduced by Senator Domenici. I'm enthusiastic, in part, because it contains a provision that is very important to me--above-the-line deductibility of health insurance for individuals. Over 40 million American workers didn't have health insurance in 1997. The number has increased in the last two years to 44 million. This is disturbing, but I believe there is something Congress can do to help without resorting to a national health care system. Mr. President, when employers purchase a health plan for their employees, he or she can fully deduct the costs of providing that insurance, effectively lowering the actual costs of providing coverage. However, when an employee purchases an individual policy on their own, they must do so with after tax-dollars. They don't have the ability or the advantage offered to employers to reduce the actual costs of the policy by deducting premiums from their taxes every year. Therefore, they often wind up without any health coverage at all. Earlier this year, I introduced the Health Care Access Act, which would have ended this discrimination within the Tax Code and make health care available for many more Americans by allowing the full deduction of health insurance for those without access to employer- subsidized health coverage. We have a tax code that discriminates against some, while favoring others. Clearly, this results in fewer people being covered. The amendment before us today takes a slightly different approach, but its goal is the same--to level the tax-playing field. By allowing individuals without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, or those whose employers do not cover more than 50 percent of the cost of coverage, to deduct those costs regardless of whether they itemize or not, we can address a growing segment of our uninsured population by doing this. Under this amendment, from 2002 to 2004, eligible employees can deduct 25 percent of costs, 35 percent in 2005, 65 percent in 2006, and 100 percent after that. If there are no changes in the health care system and no significant downturn of the economy, we can expect the number of uninsured to reach 53 million over the next ten years. This translates into 25 percent of non-elderly Americans without coverage. Forty-three percent of the uninsured are in families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-eight percent of the uninsured work for small firms and 18 percent of all uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 24. The question that comes to mind is, if we're experiencing record growth in our economy and the unemployment rate is declining, why is the number of uninsured continuing to rise? The answer is costs. In the event a small business can offer a health plan to its employees, many times it is at a higher cost to the employee than it would be if the employee were to have a job at a larger firm. In this instance, employees have to decide if they believe their health status is such that they can go without health insurance, or if they should spend after-tax dollars to pay for a larger portion of their health insurance. Here is where we have the difficulty. Individuals employed by small businesses which can't afford to pay more than 50 percent of the monthly premiums for their employees should be able to have the same tax advantage as the employer in paying for their health insurance. Under our plan today, they will. In fact, because the tax deduction is what we call ``above-the-line,'' meaning if would be available to everyone--even if they don't itemize their taxes--we attack the most significant barrier to health coverage again, which is its costs, and move closer to eliminating all barriers to health coverage. In other words, get more Americans covered by allowing them the deductibility of the costs. I am also pleased that this amendment includes many other important components such as pension reform and small business tax relief. We are talking about tax relief for small businesses, not the wealthiest as you hear from the other side of the aisle, but tax relief pinpointed at the hard-working Americans in this country who are also job providers. Retirement income security is crucial for millions of American workers. This amendment reforms and enhances current pension laws to ensure workers will achieve income security upon retirement. It repeals the unnecessary temporary FUTA surtax, which has become a burden to many small businesses. The amendment allows millions of self-employed Americans to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance costs. This is a critical provision because 61 percent of the uninsured in this country are from a family headed [[Page S14344]] by an entrepreneur or a small business employee. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Mr. GRAMS. I ask for 2 more minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the Senator 2 additional minutes. Mr. GRAMS. In wrapping up, the amendment increases small business expensing to $30,000. This change alone means an extra $3,850 in tax savings for each small business in new equipment next year. This amendment also allows small business to increase the meal and entertainment expense tax deduction. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit has helped millions of Americans leave welfare programs and become productive workers in our economy. This amendment makes the WOTC permanent, so small businesses and former welfare recipients will continue to benefit from the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It seems unfair to me that in a time of prosperity we hear our colleagues on the other side talking about tax increases. Again, in their plan, they would impose new, even higher taxes. They talk about minimum wage; they are taxing and taxing and taxing those people as they enter the job market. What we need is a plan that will reduce taxes, not increase taxes. America's small business is the key to our economic growth and prosperity. The health care, pension reform and tax relief measures included in this amendment will help small business continue to work for America and will allow millions of Americans to realize the American Dream. Again, that is why I rise today to enthusiastically offer my support for the tax package proposed by Senator Domenici. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does each side have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls 11 minutes 40 seconds; the Senator from Massachusetts controls 13 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. How much time would you like, I ask Senator Nickles? Mr. NICKLES. Four or 5 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 4 minutes to Senator Nickles. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized. Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague from New Mexico for the work that he has done in providing a more realistic substitute. But the first vote we are going to have today is voting on a motion to table the Kennedy amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment for a lot of different reasons, one of which is that it dramatically increases the minimum wage--about 20 percent over the next 13\1/2\ months. That is a big hit for a lot of small businesses. I am afraid it will prevent a lot of people, low- income people, who want to get their first jobs--they may not be able to get them. Estimates by some of the economists, CBO, and others, are that it could be 100,000 people; it could be 500,000 people that lose their jobs. It is a big hit. There are a lot of other reasons to oppose the Kennedy amendment. How many of our colleagues know it has a $29 billion tax increase, that it extends Superfund taxes? We do not reauthorize the Superfund Program, but we extend the taxes. Many of us agree we need to extend the taxes when we reauthorize the program, but not before and that is in there anyway. There is a tax increase on business. I received a letter from all the business groups opposing it. It is practically an IRS entitlement program, so they can go after anything they want. It deals with ``Noneconomic attributes,'' whatever that means, it is a $10 billion tax increase. It may sound good and some people say that it is just to close loopholes. But it is to give IRS carte blanche to go after anything and everything they want. We reformed IRS and curbed their appetite somewhat, and regardless of those efforts this would be saying: Hey, IRS, go after anybody and everybody. There is also a provision in the Democrat proposal that hits hospice organizations right between the eyes. I have put letters from outside organizations addressing this very issue on Members' desks so they may see it for themselves. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record three letters from various hospice organizations. There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: National Association for Home Care, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: The National Association for Home Care (NAHC) represents home health agencies and hospices nationwide. While generally speaking, NAHC is supportive of efforts to maintain a reasonable minimum wage, a proposed amendment to S. 625 creates serious concerns for hospices across the country. The proposed amendment would create a civil monetary penalty for false certification of eligibility for hospice care or partial hospitalization services. This proposal would impose a civil monetary penalty of the greater of $5,000 or three times the amount of payments under Medicare when a physician knowingly executes a false certification claiming that an individual Medicare beneficiary meets hospice coverage standards. On its face, this provision is addressed only to those physicians that intentionally and purposefully execute false certifications. However, the impact of a comparable provision on the access to home health services, as added to the law as Section 232 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, should caution Congress in expanding the provision to apply to hospice services. Immediately after the physician community became aware of the 1996 amendment, physicians expressed to home health agencies across the country great hesitancy to remain involved in certifying the homebound status of prospective home health patients. The vagueness of the homebound criteria and the stepped up antifraud efforts of the Health Care Financing Administration brought a chilling effect to physicians. As a result, home health agencies reported that physicians became less involved with homecare patients rather than increasing their involvement as had been recommended by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We believe that a comparable physician reaction will occur if this provision of law is extended to hospice services. A recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that many eligible people may be denied Medicare hospice benefits because the life expectancy of patients with a chronic illness is nearly impossible to predict with accuracy. Medicare requires that the patient's physician and the hospice medical director certify that the patient has no more than six months to live in order to secure entitlement to the Medicare hospice benefit. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. The existing scientific and clinical difficulties in accurately predicting the life expectancy of a patient combined with the threat of additional civil monetary penalties will adversely affect access to necessary hospice services. The experiences with home health services indicate that physicians distance themselves from the affected benefit. While the standard of applicability relates to a knowing and intentional false certification, physicians will react out of fear of inappropriate enforcement actions. There are already numerous antifraud provisions within federal law that apply to the exact circumstance subject to the proposed civil monetary penalties. These existing laws include even more serious penalties such as the potential for imprisonment for any false claim. We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a non-germane legislative effort to increase the federal minimum wage. There is no evidence that physicians engage in any widespread abuse of the Medicare hospice benefit. To the contrary, evidence is growing that hospice services are underutilized as an alternative to more expensive care. Thank you for all of your efforts to protect senior citizens in our country. Sincerely, Val J. Halamandaris. ____ Hospice Association of America, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: On behalf of the Hospice Association of America (HAA), a national association representing our member hospice programs, thousands of hospice professionals and volunteers, and those faced with terminal illness and their families, I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. It is often difficult to make the determination that a patient is terminally ill (life expectancy of six months or less if the terminal illness run its normal course), because the course of terminal is different for each patient and is not predictable. In some rare cases patients have been admitted to hospice care and have improved so as to be discharged from the program. The determination regarding the terminal status of a patient is not an exact science and should not be judged harshly in retrospect. In a recent edition of JAMA, The Journal of American Medical Association, researchers reported that the recommended clinical prediction criteria are not effective in a population with a survival prognosis of six [[Page S14345]] months or less. According to Medicare survival data, only 15 percent of patients receiving Medicare hospice survive longer than six months and the median survival of Medicare patients enrolled in hospices is under 40 days. This information demonstrates what has been well known by those working in the hospice community, the science of prognostication is in its infancy and physicians must use the tools that are available, medial guidelines and local medical review policies developed by the Health Care Financing Administration, as well as their best medical judgment. Physicians can not be punished for possible overestimation of a terminally ill patient's life expectancy. The only ones to be punished will be the patients in need of hospice services whose physicians will be denied from enrolling appropriate patients, thus denying access to this compassionate, humane, patient and family centered care at the end-of-their lives. Please reject the proposed amendment to S. 625. Sincerely, Karen Woods, Executive Director. ____ Federation of American Health Systems, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Hon. Don Nickles, Assistant Majority leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Assistant Majority Leader: The Federation of American Health Systems, representing 1700 privately-owned and managed community hospitals has generally not taken a position on the minimum wage bill. However, we find it necessary to object to an amendment that will be offered today during consideration of the bill. Specifically, we are concerned with an amendment that will apparently address ``partial hospitalization'' issues. While the Federation supports the goal of improving the integrity of the Medicare program by addressing concerns with partial hospitalization, we oppose its attachment to non-Medicare legislation. Clearly, any amendment that reduces Medicare trust fund spending should either be used to enhance the solvency of the trust fund, or for other Medicare trust fund purposes. We appreciate your consideration of our position. Sincerely, Thomas A. Scully, President and CEO. Mr. NICKLES. From the Hospice Association of America: . . . . I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 1625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. I have a letter from the Federation of American Health Systems urging opposition to the Kennedy amendment. I have a letter from the National Association for Home Care, also in opposition. It says: We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a nongermane legislative effort to increase the minimum wage. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. Do we want to do that? I don't think so. Certainly we shouldn't do it in this legislation. Let's have hearings to find out more about this. Let's do it in Medicare reform. Let's do it when we have a chance to know exactly what we are doing because this is strongly opposed by hospice organizations. I encourage my colleagues to oppose it for all the above reasons. I urge them to vote yes to table the Kennedy amendment. We will move to table it at the appropriate time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Washington. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Kennedy amendment that we will be voting on shortly. It is important to note that 59 percent of the over 11 million workers who would receive a pay increase as a result of this minimum wage are women--women, by and large, with children; women who, because the minimum wage is so low today, are working two, three, four jobs. Those losing out in the country today because of the lack of a minimum wage increase are our children. They are being left home alone. They aren't getting the attention they deserve. They are not getting the support they deserve. A vote for the Kennedy amendment is a vote for our children. While I have the floor, I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania came to the floor this morning to question the President's constitutional authority to insist on reducing class size. I remind our colleagues, reducing class size is something we as Democrats have fought for, stood behind, and we stand behind the President in the final budget negotiations. This is not about constitutional authority. It is about making sure young kids in first, second, and third grade get from a good teacher the attention they need in order to read and write and do arithmetic. That is a bipartisan agreement we all agreed upon a year ago, $1.2 billion to help our local schools reduce class size. To renege on that commitment 1 year later and to have language which takes that money and gives it to whatever else school districts want to use it for sounds good except we lose out. A block grant will not guarantee that one child will learn to read. A block grant will not guarantee that a child who needs attention will have it on the day he or she needs it. A block grant will not assure that our children get the attention they deserve and learn the skills they need. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 2 minutes have expired. Mrs. MURRAY. I ask for an additional 30 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Thirty seconds. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, what we as Democrats are going to stand strong for is a commitment we made a year ago to assure that every child in first, second, and third grade gets the attention they deserve. If our Republican colleagues want to add additional money to the budget for block grants, for needs in our schools that we agree are important, we are more than happy to talk to them about it. But we believe the commitment we made a year ago is a promise that should be kept. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. How much time, Mr. President? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts controls 10 minutes 34 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico controls 8 minutes 23 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 minutes. I again thank the Senators from California and Washington for illustrating in very powerful terms what this issue is all about. It is about working women and families. With all respect to my friend from Oklahoma, when we had an increase in the minimum wage a few years ago, the Republicans fought it. They said that it would harm the economy and adversely impact small business. In the measure I have introduced we have tried to provide some relief for small businesses and we have paid for it. Now we can't do that because we have some kind of offsets. Therefore, we can't do it. The fact is, the Republicans are opposed to any increase in the minimum wage. That is the fact. They have been opposed to it even at a time of extraordinary prosperity. This minimum wage affects real people in a very important way, and there is no group in our society it affects more powerfully than women and children. They are the great majority of the earners of the minimum wage, and increasingly so. These days parents are spending less and less time with their families. In the last 10 years, parents were able to spend 22 hours a week less with their families. Read the Family and Work Institute's report of interviews with small children who are in minimum-wage families. They are universal in what they say. They all say: We wish our mother--or our father--would be less fatigued. We wish they had more time to spend with us. We are tired of seeing our parents come home exhausted when they are working one or two minimum-wage jobs. That is what this is about. It is about the men and women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Are they real? Of course they are real. I have read the stories. We know who they are. They are out there today, this morning, as teacher's aides in our schools. These teacher's aides are working with young children, our future, and yet they don't earn enough to make ends meet. They are there in the day-care centers. We know that day-care center workers are often at the bottom of the pay scale, earning the minimum wage. As you can see from this graph the purchasing power of the minimum wage [[Page S14346]] has declined since the last increase. As their wages lose purchasing power, turnover in low paying jobs like child care attendants and those who are working in nursing homes, increases. When people are forced to leave these jobs, there is a deterioration in quality of the service day care centers and nursing homes can offer. This is about the most important element of our society. It is about fairness. It is about work. We hear all of these speeches on the other side of the aisle about the importance of work. We are honoring work. We are talking about men and women with dignity who have a sense of pride in what they do and are trying to do better and are trying to look out after their families. They are being given the back of the hand by the Republicans. Their proposal is a sham. It is a raw deal for these workers. On the one hand, they are dribbling out an increase in the minimum wage; on the other hand, they are taking away overtime for 73 million Americans, and in the meantime, they are giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals in our society. That is a sham. Beyond that, they say the minimum wage, if we are even fortunate enough to get it to pass the Senate, will never go to the President because the Republican leadership has made a commitment to whoever it might be that it will never go there. That is what we are up against. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 4 minutes have expired. Mr. KENNEDY. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts that I can yell as loud as he. But today I won't do that because I believe we have a great bill and a great position. The Republicans do support the minimum wage. In fact, they are going to vote for the minimum wage that I propose. That is, instead of a dollar coming in two installments, it will come in three, of 35 cents, 35 cents, and 30 cents. Frankly, there will be an overwhelming vote in favor of that. In addition, we took the opportunity to give small business and some other absolutely necessary situations that need it tax relief. We chose in this bill to do that. Those have been explained fairly well. I will take a minute at the end of my remarks to explain them one more time. I suggest that the Democrats are living in an era that has passed. If they were here on the floor in the 1930s, they would have a case. They would have a case that the minimum wage is going to affect poor families supporting their children. That was the issue in the 1930s. But I suggest the best research today says that day is gone in terms of who is impacted by the minimum wage. It is more likely to impact a teenager than it is the head of a household. The fact is, 55 percent of the minimum wage applies to people between the ages of 16 and 24. The overwhelming number of those are teenagers in part-time jobs, working in McDonald's-type restaurants across America. They need these jobs. They don't even stay in the minimum-wage position very long, according to the research we have seen. If they work well and choose to follow the rules and the orders and do an excellent job, they are raised above the minimum wage rather quickly. To put it another way, to show that the arguments about who benefits from the minimum wage are passe 1930 arguments, two-thirds of all minimum-wage people are part-time employees. The fact is, the argument that these are women heads of households is absolutely dispelled by reality. The best we can find out is that 8 percent of the minimum-wage employees in America today are women heads of households, not the numbers or the tenor and tone of the argument about the slap of the hand we are giving to those who work in America. Quite the contrary. Our minimum wage reflects a sufficient increase to match up with inflation, and we permit many people an opportunity to get into the job market. In fact, we make permanent one of the best taxes we have, which is now there on an interim basis. It says if you hire minimum-wage workers out of the welfare system, and you want to take a chance because they aren't capable of doing the jobs and you need to train them, you get a credit for that. That is a very good part of the Tax Code. We make that permanent so it costs something and it uses up some of our tax money. As to the argument of how big this tax cut is, it is 12.5 percent of the total tax package that the Republicans offered, which passed here and the President vetoed. It tries something very new and exciting. It says to Americans who want to buy their own insurance--because their employers don't furnish it--for the first time, they are going to be permitted to deduct the entirety of their health insurance. Heretofore, they were punished if they tried to buy it, penalized because they didn't get to deduct it while everybody else did. We also made permanent the allowance that the self-employed can take the insurance deduction. We raise that to 100 percent. Everybody knows that is good. Everybody knows that helps with the problem of the uninsured in America, and that is good. So, for all the talk, the Republicans have come forward with a very good bill. I am very pleased that I suggested to the Republicans the basics of this bill, that we ought to do it in three installments. Some wanted to make it longer. Actually, I think this is exactly the right length of time. Add to that the kind of tax relief we have provided versus the tax increases on that side, and it seems to me there is no choice. While everybody is clamoring to do something about the estate tax because it is a very onerous tax, as if to try to punish people, in a minimum-wage bill they raise death taxes and inheritance taxes. I don't care what kind of American they impose it on. We don't have to do that when we are reforming that system because it is somewhat confiscatory. I could go on, but if anybody has any doubt, the gross tax increase under the Democrat package is $12.5 billion over 5 years, and a $28.9 billion tax increase over 10 years. What in the world are we increasing taxes for at this point? To pay for a minimum-wage bill? Of course not. It is because they want other tax relief and they choose to raise taxes to give the benefit to someone else. There is sufficient surplus. This is a very small tax cut in our package--12.5 percent of what we perceived was adequate and what we could do about 4 months ago with the surpluses we have. The President proposed $250 billion, $300 billion in tax relief. In this bill, they raise taxes rather than take advantage of what we know is the right thing; that is, to reduce taxes in these economic times. I reserve my remaining time. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 6 minutes 49 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mrs. BOXER. The Senator from New Mexico said he wasn't going to yell. He got a little close to it. But when I hear the yells on that side of the aisle, it is usually related to their passion for helping the wealthiest among us. The Senator from New Mexico says that the Democrats are living in the past because we want to increase the minimum wage. Well, I have news for the Senator from New Mexico. Compassion for the poorest in our society, those at the bottom rung of the ladder, that is a timeless value; that is a moral value; that is a religious value; that is a value we ought to be proud to have around here. That is not living in the past. Come to Los Angeles, I say to my friend from New Mexico, or look around your big cities. What you will notice is that the people who are living on the minimum wage are adults. We know that to be the fact. A majority of minimum-wage workers are adults--70 percent of them. In the Democratic proposal, out of those who will benefit from this modest increase, 60 percent of them are women. So if you want to say that we are living in the past, you can say it all you want. But it isn't true. We saw in September a very chilling story in the L.A. Times about the working poor in Southern California. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition shows that given the high cost of a two-bedroom apartment in L.A., a minimum-wage earner must work 112 hours per week in order to make ends meet. [[Page S14347]] In San Francisco, it is even worse. A person would have to work 174 hours at minimum wage in order to pay their bills. According to a recent study of the Nation's food banks, 40 percent of all households seeking emergency food aid had at least one member who was working. That is up from 23 percent in 1994. Low-paying jobs, I say to my friend from New Mexico, are the most frequently cited cause of hunger today, according to this well- documented L.A. Times story. The L.A. Times, by the way, is now owned by Republicans. So this isn't a question of yesterday, I say to my friend. It is a question of living today. They have made the same arguments every time we raised the minimum wage. The last time they said it would bring the economy down. We have never seen such a strong economy. If the people at the bottom rung are left behind, it is morally wrong and it is economically wrong. It makes no sense. Those are the folks who go out and spend what they earn and they definitely stimulate the economy. So for anybody to say you are living in the past if you support a minimum-wage increase, they don't know what is going on today. I say that from my heart. I have respect for the Senator from New Mexico, but I think it is insulting to say one lives in the past for wanting to fight for those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder--those women and those children who are living in poverty. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 3\1/2\ minutes. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield a minute to the Senator from Connecticut. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized. Mr. DODD. Mr. President, to make a couple of quick points, I was terribly saddened to see as part of another bill that we have a further reduction in child care provisions, which is a major blow again to working families out there. We all know that quality child care makes a difference for these children. In the midst of all of this, we are obviously told you have to come up with some offsets to pay for the provisions in this bill, which we do. Offsets always attract opposition from one quarter or another. But these are modest offsets to pay for the provisions in the bill. What is going to happen later today we are going to vote on $75 billion in tax cuts and 56 percent of them go to the top 20 percent of income earners, and there are no offsets--none. One of the great contradictions is, we are being accused of not liking the offsets, the pays, from some of the provisions and simultaneously we ask our Members to vote for a provision in the bill or vote for the whole bill, including a $75 billion tax cut over 10 years with no offsets. Let me underscore, as this millennium date of 50 days away approaches, those at the bottom of the economic rung--working people, the majority who receive the minimum wage and are working full time; they are women, they are Hispanic, they are black--deserve to get a fair shake out of this Senate. In a few minutes, we will have an opportunity to give them that fair shake by providing an increase in the minimum wage, allowing them to enjoy the prosperity of the booming economy. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is important to understand exactly what the situation is for our working poor. The number of full-time, year-round workers living in poverty is at a 20-year high: 12.6 percent of the workforce, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of the last 3 days. That is the fact. People are working harder, and they are living in poverty. These are people who value work. Second, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, of those who will benefit from a minimum wage increase, 70 percent are adults over age 20, and about 30 percent will be teenagers. If Senators come to Boston and talk to the young people going to the University of Massachusetts, they will find 85 percent of their parents never went to college and 85 percent of them are working 25 hours a week or more. That is true in Boston, in Holyoke, in New Bedford, and Fall River, and cities across the country. I don't know what Members have against working young people who are trying to pay for their education. We have 6 million working in the workforce, and we have 2 million working at the minimum wage. Why are we complaining about that? The Republican proposal is a Thanksgiving turkey with three right wings. It has a watered-down increase in the minimum wage, it has a poison pill for overtime work, and it has juicy tax provisions for the rich. This Republican turkey is stuffed with tax breaks, and it does not deserve to be passed. Vote for the real increase in the minimum wage; vote for the Daschle increase. Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as the most prosperous nation in the world, our minimum wage should be a living wage, and it is not. When a father or mother works full-time, 40 hours a week, year-round, they should be able to lift their family out of poverty. $5.15 an hour will not do that. A full time minimum wage job should provide a minimum standard of living in addition to giving workers the dignity that comes with a paycheck. The current minimum wage does not pay a fair wage. I support the legislation introduced by Representative David Bonior in the House and Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate which increases the minimum wage. This legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act, will provide a 50 cent increase to the minimum wage on January 1, 2000, and a second 50 cent increase on January 1, 2001. This would raise the minimum wage to $6.15 per hour by the year 2001. The minimum wage increase passed in 1996 prevented the minimum wage from falling to its lowest inflation adjusted level in 40 years. The proposed minimum wage increase to $6.15 in 2001 would get the minimum wage back to the inflation adjusted level it was in 1982. In this era of economic growth, raising the minimum wage is a matter of fundamental fairness. We must look around and realize that we have the strongest economy in a generation. However, even with our strong economy, the benefits of prosperity have not flowed to low-wage workers. A full time minimum wage laborer working forty hours a week for 52 weeks earns $10,712 per year--more than $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three.

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LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS
(Senate - November 09, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S14340-S14364] LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I wish to make a brief comment, if I may, on one of the items referred to in a statement by the majority leader about the appropriations process, which I think will be of interest to our colleagues and perhaps to others who may be watching on C-SPAN 2. We had negotiations beginning at 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon with officials from the White House, and we are trying to resolve those issues in a spirit of accommodation. With respect to the dollars involved, the bill which came out of the Appropriations Committee was $93.7 billion for the three Departments. That was $600 million more than the President's figure, and it was $300 million more than the President's figure on education. I worked on a bipartisan basis with my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin. The bill was crafted with what we thought was the right dollar amount--frankly, the maximum amount--to pass with votes in substantial numbers from Republicans and an amount which would be acceptable to Democrats and to the President because it was somewhat higher than his figure and we emphasized increased funding for the National Institutes of Health. The administration has come back with a figure of $2.3 billion additional, and Congressman Porter and I made an offer yesterday to add $228 million, provided we could find offsets because it is very important that we not go into the Social Security trust funds. So that whatever dollars we add to accommodate the President's priorities--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. We are prepared to meet him halfway on priorities on dollars--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. There is a much more difficult issue in this matter than the dollars, although the dollars are obviously of great importance, and the issue which is extremely contentious is what will be done on the President's demand to have $1.4 billion to reduce classroom size to have additional teachers. The Senate bill has appropriated $1.2 billion which maintains the high level of last year's funding. When it comes to the issue of the utilization of that money, we are prepared to acknowledge the President's first priority of reduction of classroom size for teachers. But if the local school board makes a factual determination that is not the real need of the local school board, then we propose that the second priority be teacher training. If the local school board decides that is not where the money ought to be spent, then we propose to give it to the school board the discretion as to the spending to local education, as opposed to a straitjacket out of Washington. The White House Press Secretary has issued a statement this morning saying that these funds could be used for vouchers, and that is not true. That is a red herring. To allay any concern, we will make it explicit in the bill that the President's concern about the use of these funds for vouchers will be allayed. We are prepared to make that accommodation, although there had never been any intent to use it for vouchers. However, we will make that intent explicit in the bill. Behind the issue of classroom size and the President's demand is a much greater constitutional issue. That is the constitutional issue of who controls the power of the purse. The Constitution gives the authority to the Congress to establish spending priorities, and we have seen a process evolve in the past few years which does not follow the constitutional format. The Constitution is very specific that each [[Page S14341]] House will decide on a bill, have a conference, and send that bill to the President for his signature or for his veto; and if he vetoes it, the bill then comes back to the Congress for reenactment. But what has happened in the immediate past has been that executive branch officials sit in with the appropriators and are a part of the legislative process, which is a violation of the principle of separation of powers. Now, I must say that I have been a party to those meetings because that is what is going on. But I want to identify it as a process which is not in conformity with the Constitution. It is something we ought to change. When it comes to the power and the control, what we have seen happen in the last 4 years is that the President has really made an effort, and to a substantial extent a successful effort, to take over the prerogative of the Congress on the power of the purse. When the Government was closed in late 1995 and early 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress was blamed for the closure. That, candidly, has made the Congress gun-shy to challenge the President on spending issues. Since that time there has been a concession to the President on whatever it is that he wants, sort of ``pay a price to get out of town'' when people are anxious to have the congressional session adjourn. Speaking for myself and I think quite a few others in the Congress are not going to put on the pressure to get out of town. We are going to do the job and do it right. Senator Lott held a news conference yesterday and was asked about the termination time. He said he thought it was possible to finish the public's business by the close of the legislative session on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, but it was more important, as Senator Lott articulated, to do it right than get it finished by any arbitrary deadline. I concur totally with Senator Lott. I think it is possible to get the business finished by the end of the working day tomorrow. But it is more important to get it right than to get it finished on any prescribed schedule. In modern times there is too much concern about getting out of town, than perhaps getting the job done right. But we are determined to get it done and to get it done right. If we can get it done by the end of business tomorrow, that is what our goal is. But we are not going to sacrifice getting it done right in order to be able to finish up by Wednesday afternoon to get out of town. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question? Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. SPECTER. No, I will not yield here, but I will in just a minute. What we have seen is the President's ultimatum. He says this issue on schoolteachers is nonnegotiable. That is hardly the way you get into a negotiation session. Then his Chief of Staff, John Podesta, said on Sunday that if the Congress wants to get out of town they are going to have to accede to the President's demands on teachers, to do it his way. I think that is not appropriate. Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution. It is our fundamental responsibility on appropriations. We are prepared to negotiate, but we are not prepared to deal with nonnegotiable demands. We are not prepared to deal with ultimatums. We are going back into a session--I don't know whether I should call it a negotiating session or not, because the President talks about nonnegotiable demands. Frankly, I am prepared to meet that with a nonnegotiable demand, not giving up on our prerogative to make a determination as to how the money is to be spent and getting local control over a Presidential straitjacket. Now I would be delighted to yield to my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. I wanted to inquire of the desk what the Senate business was supposed to be? I was under the impression we were supposed to be, at 9:30, on the minimum wage. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor? Mr. SPECTER. I have concluded. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask we extend the time. How much time did the Senator from Pennsylvania expend? Mr. DOMENICI. What was the question? Mr. KENNEDY. I asked how much time the Senator from Pennsylvania used? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican side has 19 minutes left. Mr. KENNEDY. Just as a matter of inquiry, were taken out of the time of the debate. Is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Taken out of the Republican time. Mr. KENNEDY. OK. Mr. President, I yield myself 12 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Pennsylvania's comments with great interest. I will mention very briefly in defense of the administration, although they can make the case quite well for themselves that if the Appropriations Committee had finished their business on time we would not be in this particular dilemma. Only four appropriations bills were actually completed on time for the fiscal year. So with all respect to our friend on the other side, if the appropriators had placed, particularly the HEW appropriations, first rather than last, I do not think we would be having these kinds of problems in the areas of negotiation between the President and the Congress. Second, the basic program which the President has been fighting for in this negotiation is almost identical to what the Republicans supported last year. With all respect to the comments we have just heard, the fact is if the classes reach the goals, the 15 percent set- aside for funding for smaller class sizes can be used to enhance the teacher training. If the school had already achieved the lower class size of 18, it would be used for special needs or other kinds of professional purposes. So it is difficult for me to understand the frustration of the Senator from Pennsylvania when the Republican leaders all effectively endorse what the President talked about last year. If their position is not sustained, there are going to be 30,000 teachers who are teaching in first, second, and third grades who are going to get pink slips. I don't think the problem in education is having fewer schoolteachers teach in the early grades but to have more. I want to make clear I am not a part of those negotiations this year, but I was last year. I know what the particular issue is. With all respect to those who are watching C-SPAN II, I want them to know the President is fighting for smaller class sizes as well as for better trained teachers. We have seen Senator Murray make that presentation and make it effectively time and again. I think it is something that parents support, teachers understand, and children have benefited from. No one makes that case more eloquently than the Senator from the State of Washington. But I certainly hope the President will continue that commitment. We have scarce Federal resources. They are targeted in areas of particular need. That is the purpose of these negotiations. I hope we can conclude a successful negotiation. Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield on my time? Mr. KENNEDY. On your time, yes. Mr. DOMENICI. Just for an observation. He might want to answer it. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the truth of the matter is if schools want the new teachers, under the proposal of the distinguished chairman who just took to the floor to explain the obstinacy of the President, they can have the money for teachers. That is what he is saying. It is up to them. If they want all the money that comes from this appropriation used for teachers, they can have it. If they say, we don't need them, we don't want them, he is saying there is a second priority. Frankly, I think that is excellent policy with reference to the schools of our country. I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania makes a good point. For the President to continue to say we are not going to get this bill unless we do it exactly his way leaves us with no alternative. We have some prerogatives, too. The fact is, if you read the Constitution, he doesn't appropriate; the Congress does. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. [[Page S14342]] Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just to respond, we have a need for 2 million teachers. We have scarce Federal resources. If the States or local communities want to do whatever the Senator from New Mexico says, all well and good. But we are talking about scarce Federal resources that are targeted in ways that have been proven effective in enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. I am again surprised. The Republicans were taking credit for this last year. I was in the negotiations. Mr. Goodling and Mr. Gingrich--as we were waiting to find out whether the powers that be, the Speaker, was going to endorse this, when we were waiting and having negotiations--went out and announced it and took credit for it. They took credit for this proposal of the President. I find it a little difficult to understand this kind of frustration that is being demonstrated here. But we will come back to this and Senator Murray can address these issues at a later time. I certainly hope the President will not flinch in his commitment to getting smaller class sizes and better trained teachers and after school programs. That is what this President has been fighting for. I hope he will not yield at this time in these final negotiations, after we have only had four appropriations that have met the deadline. Before we get all excited about these negotiations, if our appropriators had completed this work in time, we would not be here. Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. How much time do we have? I will be glad to yield. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Good. I am glad to yield. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, briefly, I ask my colleague, is it not true this appropriation for education was the last of the bills considered by the Appropriations Committee? Is it not true that we waited until the very last day to even bring up this issue of education, the highest priority for American families? Now we find ourselves trying to adjourn, stuck on an issue that could have been resolved months ago had we made education as high a priority on Capitol Hill as it is in family rooms across America. Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from California, and I know the Senator from Washington as well, had hoped--and I believe I can speak for our Democratic leader--this would be the No. 1 appropriation and not the last one. If we had this as the No. 1 appropriation on the issue of education, we would not have these little statements we have heard this morning. But it is the last one. That is not by accident; that is by choice of the Republican leadership. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 7 minutes. In a few moments, we will be voting on the minimum wage issue that is before the Senate. I want to review what the record has been over the last 2 years. In September of 1998, we brought up the minimum wage issue, and were unable to bring that to a vote on the basis of the merits. The Republican leadership said no. In March of 1999, we tried to bring up this issue. Again, we were denied an opportunity to vote on it. In April of 1999, we brought it up again as an amendment on Y2K. We were denied an opportunity to have a full debate. In July of 1999, we brought it up again, and again we were turned down. Now we have the minimum wage legislation before us, and in a cynical move, the Republican leadership said: Even if you get the passage of the minimum wage, it ``ain't'' going to go any further; the President isn't going to see it; it is going to end. It is a sham. Their effort is basically a sham. That is the position in which we find ourselves today. We know Americans are working longer and harder. The working poor are working longer and harder than at any time in the history of our country. We know that over the last 10 years, women are working 3 weeks longer a year in order to earn the minimum wage and men are averaging 50 hours a week. These are some of the hardest working men and women in the country. At the height of the minimum wage in the late 1960s, it had the purchasing power that $7.49 would have today. If we are not able to raise the minimum wage this year and next, its value will be at an all- time low--in a time of extraordinary prosperity in this country. That is fundamentally wrong. A vote for the Republican amendment will not help working families. It is, in fact, an insult to low-wage workers. It robs them of over $1,200 as compared to the Democratic proposal, and it drastically undermines the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act which has been the law for over 60 years. The Republican proposal jeopardizes the overtime pay of 73 million Americans. The Republicans did not water down their own pay increase of $4,600. They are now watering down the increase in the minimum wage, and they are watering down overtime. On the one hand, they are giving an inadequate increase in the minimum wage and taking it back by cutting back on overtime. That is a sham. That is a cynical attempt to try to win support for working families from those who are trying to do justice for those individuals. We can ask, What difference does an increase in the minimum wage make? Cathi Zeman, 52 years old, works at a Rite Aid in Canseburg, PA. She earns $5.68 an hour. She is the primary earner in the family because her husband has a heart condition and is only able to work sporadically. What difference would an increase in the minimum wage mean to Cathi and her family? It would cover 6 months of utility bills for Cathi's family. Kimberly Frazier, a full-time child care aide from Philadelphia testified her pay of $5.20 an hour barely covers her rent, utilities, and clothes for her children. Our proposal would mean over 4 months of groceries for Kimberly and her kids. The stories of these families remind us that it is long past time to raise the minimum wage by $1 over 2 years. We cannot delay it. We cannot stretch it out. We cannot use it to cut overtime. And we cannot use it as an excuse to give bloated tax breaks to the rich. Members of Congress did not blink in giving themselves a $4,600 pay raise. Yet they deny a modest increase for those workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. I do not know how Members who voted for their own pay increase but I do not know how Members who vote against our minimum wage proposal will be able to face their constituents and explain their actions. It is hypocritical and irresponsible to deny a fair pay raise to the country's lowest paid workers. Above all, raising the minimum wage $1 over 2 years and protecting overtime pay is about fairness and dignity. It is about fairness and dignity for men and women who are working 50 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year trying to provide for their children and their families. This is a women's issue because a great majority of the minimum-wage workers are women. It is a children's issue because the majority of these women have children. It is a civil rights issue because the majority of individuals who make the minimum wage are men and women of color. And it is a fairness issue. At a time of extraordinary prosperity this country ought to be willing to grant an increase to the hardest working Americans in the nation--the day-care workers, the teachers aides. They deserve this increase. Our amendment will provide it, and the Republican amendment will not. Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. I yield for a question. Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague for yielding. I say to the Senator from Massachusetts how much I appreciate him pushing this forward and how important it is to all of our States. I bring out an article that ran in the paper yesterday and today about the status of children in my home State of California, by far the largest State. I want my friend to respond to these numbers because they really say it. This is what it says: Despite a booming economy that has seen a tide of prosperity wash over California in [[Page S14343]] recent years, nearly 1 in 4 children under 18 in the Golden State lives in poverty. . . . Although the annual ``California Report Card 1999'' laments that so many children live in poverty, it paints an especially bleak portrait of a child's first four years of life. Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, says: Among all of California's children, our littlest ones . . . face the most stressful conditions of all. . . . At a time when a child's sense of self and security is influenced most powerfully, California deals them a [terrible] hand. I say to my friend, this issue he is raising is so critical. We all say how much we care about the children. Every one of us has made that speech. Today the rubber meets the road. If you care about children, you have to make sure their parents can support them. My last point is, and I will yield for the answer, I wonder if my friend has seen the New York Times editorial that says: The Senate will vote today on a Republican-sponsored amendment to raise the minimum wage and they say sadly the Republicans are not content to do this good deed and go home. They have loaded the amendment with tax cuts that are fiscally damaging and cynically focused on wealthy workers. Almost all of the Republican tax cuts go to the wealthy. One of the economists who looked at this said: It would encourage the reduction of contributions made by employers to the pensions of the lowest paid workers. Can my friend comment on the importance of this proposal to children and also this cynical proposal that our colleagues on the other side are presenting? Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator has raised an enormously important point. Americans who are working in poverty, which is at the highest level in 20 years, are working longer and harder than ever. The men work 50 hours a week or more on average and the women work an average of 3 weeks more a year. They have less time--22 hours less--to spend with their children than they did 10 years ago. That is why this is a children's issue, as the Senator has pointed out. On the issue the difference between the Republican and the Democratic proposals, the Republicans say that their proposal makes some difference for those individuals who are going to get an increase in the minimum wage over 3 years. This is a raw deal for them. On the one hand, they give them an increase in the minimum wage, and on the other hand they take back the overtime for 73 million Americans. It is a cynical sham, and it is a cynical sham because the majority leader has said even if it passes, it will never go out of this Chamber. That is the attitude toward hard- working men and women who are trying to play by the rules and get along at a time when they have the lowest purchasing power in the history of the minimum wage and we have the most extraordinary prosperity. And then they insult these workers even further by adding a $75 billion tax break over 10 years. And then we just heard about the difficulty we are having in conference about $1 billion on education because they say we cannot afford to do things, but the same side is suggesting a $75 billion tax break. Where are they getting their money? So it is a cynical play. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Who yields time? Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota off our time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my enthusiastic support for the package of tax proposals introduced by Senator Domenici. I'm enthusiastic, in part, because it contains a provision that is very important to me--above-the-line deductibility of health insurance for individuals. Over 40 million American workers didn't have health insurance in 1997. The number has increased in the last two years to 44 million. This is disturbing, but I believe there is something Congress can do to help without resorting to a national health care system. Mr. President, when employers purchase a health plan for their employees, he or she can fully deduct the costs of providing that insurance, effectively lowering the actual costs of providing coverage. However, when an employee purchases an individual policy on their own, they must do so with after tax-dollars. They don't have the ability or the advantage offered to employers to reduce the actual costs of the policy by deducting premiums from their taxes every year. Therefore, they often wind up without any health coverage at all. Earlier this year, I introduced the Health Care Access Act, which would have ended this discrimination within the Tax Code and make health care available for many more Americans by allowing the full deduction of health insurance for those without access to employer- subsidized health coverage. We have a tax code that discriminates against some, while favoring others. Clearly, this results in fewer people being covered. The amendment before us today takes a slightly different approach, but its goal is the same--to level the tax-playing field. By allowing individuals without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, or those whose employers do not cover more than 50 percent of the cost of coverage, to deduct those costs regardless of whether they itemize or not, we can address a growing segment of our uninsured population by doing this. Under this amendment, from 2002 to 2004, eligible employees can deduct 25 percent of costs, 35 percent in 2005, 65 percent in 2006, and 100 percent after that. If there are no changes in the health care system and no significant downturn of the economy, we can expect the number of uninsured to reach 53 million over the next ten years. This translates into 25 percent of non-elderly Americans without coverage. Forty-three percent of the uninsured are in families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-eight percent of the uninsured work for small firms and 18 percent of all uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 24. The question that comes to mind is, if we're experiencing record growth in our economy and the unemployment rate is declining, why is the number of uninsured continuing to rise? The answer is costs. In the event a small business can offer a health plan to its employees, many times it is at a higher cost to the employee than it would be if the employee were to have a job at a larger firm. In this instance, employees have to decide if they believe their health status is such that they can go without health insurance, or if they should spend after-tax dollars to pay for a larger portion of their health insurance. Here is where we have the difficulty. Individuals employed by small businesses which can't afford to pay more than 50 percent of the monthly premiums for their employees should be able to have the same tax advantage as the employer in paying for their health insurance. Under our plan today, they will. In fact, because the tax deduction is what we call ``above-the-line,'' meaning if would be available to everyone--even if they don't itemize their taxes--we attack the most significant barrier to health coverage again, which is its costs, and move closer to eliminating all barriers to health coverage. In other words, get more Americans covered by allowing them the deductibility of the costs. I am also pleased that this amendment includes many other important components such as pension reform and small business tax relief. We are talking about tax relief for small businesses, not the wealthiest as you hear from the other side of the aisle, but tax relief pinpointed at the hard-working Americans in this country who are also job providers. Retirement income security is crucial for millions of American workers. This amendment reforms and enhances current pension laws to ensure workers will achieve income security upon retirement. It repeals the unnecessary temporary FUTA surtax, which has become a burden to many small businesses. The amendment allows millions of self-employed Americans to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance costs. This is a critical provision because 61 percent of the uninsured in this country are from a family headed [[Page S14344]] by an entrepreneur or a small business employee. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Mr. GRAMS. I ask for 2 more minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the Senator 2 additional minutes. Mr. GRAMS. In wrapping up, the amendment increases small business expensing to $30,000. This change alone means an extra $3,850 in tax savings for each small business in new equipment next year. This amendment also allows small business to increase the meal and entertainment expense tax deduction. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit has helped millions of Americans leave welfare programs and become productive workers in our economy. This amendment makes the WOTC permanent, so small businesses and former welfare recipients will continue to benefit from the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It seems unfair to me that in a time of prosperity we hear our colleagues on the other side talking about tax increases. Again, in their plan, they would impose new, even higher taxes. They talk about minimum wage; they are taxing and taxing and taxing those people as they enter the job market. What we need is a plan that will reduce taxes, not increase taxes. America's small business is the key to our economic growth and prosperity. The health care, pension reform and tax relief measures included in this amendment will help small business continue to work for America and will allow millions of Americans to realize the American Dream. Again, that is why I rise today to enthusiastically offer my support for the tax package proposed by Senator Domenici. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does each side have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls 11 minutes 40 seconds; the Senator from Massachusetts controls 13 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. How much time would you like, I ask Senator Nickles? Mr. NICKLES. Four or 5 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 4 minutes to Senator Nickles. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized. Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague from New Mexico for the work that he has done in providing a more realistic substitute. But the first vote we are going to have today is voting on a motion to table the Kennedy amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment for a lot of different reasons, one of which is that it dramatically increases the minimum wage--about 20 percent over the next 13\1/2\ months. That is a big hit for a lot of small businesses. I am afraid it will prevent a lot of people, low- income people, who want to get their first jobs--they may not be able to get them. Estimates by some of the economists, CBO, and others, are that it could be 100,000 people; it could be 500,000 people that lose their jobs. It is a big hit. There are a lot of other reasons to oppose the Kennedy amendment. How many of our colleagues know it has a $29 billion tax increase, that it extends Superfund taxes? We do not reauthorize the Superfund Program, but we extend the taxes. Many of us agree we need to extend the taxes when we reauthorize the program, but not before and that is in there anyway. There is a tax increase on business. I received a letter from all the business groups opposing it. It is practically an IRS entitlement program, so they can go after anything they want. It deals with ``Noneconomic attributes,'' whatever that means, it is a $10 billion tax increase. It may sound good and some people say that it is just to close loopholes. But it is to give IRS carte blanche to go after anything and everything they want. We reformed IRS and curbed their appetite somewhat, and regardless of those efforts this would be saying: Hey, IRS, go after anybody and everybody. There is also a provision in the Democrat proposal that hits hospice organizations right between the eyes. I have put letters from outside organizations addressing this very issue on Members' desks so they may see it for themselves. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record three letters from various hospice organizations. There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: National Association for Home Care, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: The National Association for Home Care (NAHC) represents home health agencies and hospices nationwide. While generally speaking, NAHC is supportive of efforts to maintain a reasonable minimum wage, a proposed amendment to S. 625 creates serious concerns for hospices across the country. The proposed amendment would create a civil monetary penalty for false certification of eligibility for hospice care or partial hospitalization services. This proposal would impose a civil monetary penalty of the greater of $5,000 or three times the amount of payments under Medicare when a physician knowingly executes a false certification claiming that an individual Medicare beneficiary meets hospice coverage standards. On its face, this provision is addressed only to those physicians that intentionally and purposefully execute false certifications. However, the impact of a comparable provision on the access to home health services, as added to the law as Section 232 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, should caution Congress in expanding the provision to apply to hospice services. Immediately after the physician community became aware of the 1996 amendment, physicians expressed to home health agencies across the country great hesitancy to remain involved in certifying the homebound status of prospective home health patients. The vagueness of the homebound criteria and the stepped up antifraud efforts of the Health Care Financing Administration brought a chilling effect to physicians. As a result, home health agencies reported that physicians became less involved with homecare patients rather than increasing their involvement as had been recommended by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We believe that a comparable physician reaction will occur if this provision of law is extended to hospice services. A recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that many eligible people may be denied Medicare hospice benefits because the life expectancy of patients with a chronic illness is nearly impossible to predict with accuracy. Medicare requires that the patient's physician and the hospice medical director certify that the patient has no more than six months to live in order to secure entitlement to the Medicare hospice benefit. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. The existing scientific and clinical difficulties in accurately predicting the life expectancy of a patient combined with the threat of additional civil monetary penalties will adversely affect access to necessary hospice services. The experiences with home health services indicate that physicians distance themselves from the affected benefit. While the standard of applicability relates to a knowing and intentional false certification, physicians will react out of fear of inappropriate enforcement actions. There are already numerous antifraud provisions within federal law that apply to the exact circumstance subject to the proposed civil monetary penalties. These existing laws include even more serious penalties such as the potential for imprisonment for any false claim. We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a non-germane legislative effort to increase the federal minimum wage. There is no evidence that physicians engage in any widespread abuse of the Medicare hospice benefit. To the contrary, evidence is growing that hospice services are underutilized as an alternative to more expensive care. Thank you for all of your efforts to protect senior citizens in our country. Sincerely, Val J. Halamandaris. ____ Hospice Association of America, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: On behalf of the Hospice Association of America (HAA), a national association representing our member hospice programs, thousands of hospice professionals and volunteers, and those faced with terminal illness and their families, I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. It is often difficult to make the determination that a patient is terminally ill (life expectancy of six months or less if the terminal illness run its normal course), because the course of terminal is different for each patient and is not predictable. In some rare cases patients have been admitted to hospice care and have improved so as to be discharged from the program. The determination regarding the terminal status of a patient is not an exact science and should not be judged harshly in retrospect. In a recent edition of JAMA, The Journal of American Medical Association, researchers reported that the recommended clinical prediction criteria are not effective in a population with a survival prognosis of six [[Page S14345]] months or less. According to Medicare survival data, only 15 percent of patients receiving Medicare hospice survive longer than six months and the median survival of Medicare patients enrolled in hospices is under 40 days. This information demonstrates what has been well known by those working in the hospice community, the science of prognostication is in its infancy and physicians must use the tools that are available, medial guidelines and local medical review policies developed by the Health Care Financing Administration, as well as their best medical judgment. Physicians can not be punished for possible overestimation of a terminally ill patient's life expectancy. The only ones to be punished will be the patients in need of hospice services whose physicians will be denied from enrolling appropriate patients, thus denying access to this compassionate, humane, patient and family centered care at the end-of-their lives. Please reject the proposed amendment to S. 625. Sincerely, Karen Woods, Executive Director. ____ Federation of American Health Systems, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Hon. Don Nickles, Assistant Majority leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Assistant Majority Leader: The Federation of American Health Systems, representing 1700 privately-owned and managed community hospitals has generally not taken a position on the minimum wage bill. However, we find it necessary to object to an amendment that will be offered today during consideration of the bill. Specifically, we are concerned with an amendment that will apparently address ``partial hospitalization'' issues. While the Federation supports the goal of improving the integrity of the Medicare program by addressing concerns with partial hospitalization, we oppose its attachment to non-Medicare legislation. Clearly, any amendment that reduces Medicare trust fund spending should either be used to enhance the solvency of the trust fund, or for other Medicare trust fund purposes. We appreciate your consideration of our position. Sincerely, Thomas A. Scully, President and CEO. Mr. NICKLES. From the Hospice Association of America: . . . . I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 1625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. I have a letter from the Federation of American Health Systems urging opposition to the Kennedy amendment. I have a letter from the National Association for Home Care, also in opposition. It says: We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a nongermane legislative effort to increase the minimum wage. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. Do we want to do that? I don't think so. Certainly we shouldn't do it in this legislation. Let's have hearings to find out more about this. Let's do it in Medicare reform. Let's do it when we have a chance to know exactly what we are doing because this is strongly opposed by hospice organizations. I encourage my colleagues to oppose it for all the above reasons. I urge them to vote yes to table the Kennedy amendment. We will move to table it at the appropriate time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Washington. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Kennedy amendment that we will be voting on shortly. It is important to note that 59 percent of the over 11 million workers who would receive a pay increase as a result of this minimum wage are women--women, by and large, with children; women who, because the minimum wage is so low today, are working two, three, four jobs. Those losing out in the country today because of the lack of a minimum wage increase are our children. They are being left home alone. They aren't getting the attention they deserve. They are not getting the support they deserve. A vote for the Kennedy amendment is a vote for our children. While I have the floor, I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania came to the floor this morning to question the President's constitutional authority to insist on reducing class size. I remind our colleagues, reducing class size is something we as Democrats have fought for, stood behind, and we stand behind the President in the final budget negotiations. This is not about constitutional authority. It is about making sure young kids in first, second, and third grade get from a good teacher the attention they need in order to read and write and do arithmetic. That is a bipartisan agreement we all agreed upon a year ago, $1.2 billion to help our local schools reduce class size. To renege on that commitment 1 year later and to have language which takes that money and gives it to whatever else school districts want to use it for sounds good except we lose out. A block grant will not guarantee that one child will learn to read. A block grant will not guarantee that a child who needs attention will have it on the day he or she needs it. A block grant will not assure that our children get the attention they deserve and learn the skills they need. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 2 minutes have expired. Mrs. MURRAY. I ask for an additional 30 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Thirty seconds. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, what we as Democrats are going to stand strong for is a commitment we made a year ago to assure that every child in first, second, and third grade gets the attention they deserve. If our Republican colleagues want to add additional money to the budget for block grants, for needs in our schools that we agree are important, we are more than happy to talk to them about it. But we believe the commitment we made a year ago is a promise that should be kept. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. How much time, Mr. President? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts controls 10 minutes 34 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico controls 8 minutes 23 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 minutes. I again thank the Senators from California and Washington for illustrating in very powerful terms what this issue is all about. It is about working women and families. With all respect to my friend from Oklahoma, when we had an increase in the minimum wage a few years ago, the Republicans fought it. They said that it would harm the economy and adversely impact small business. In the measure I have introduced we have tried to provide some relief for small businesses and we have paid for it. Now we can't do that because we have some kind of offsets. Therefore, we can't do it. The fact is, the Republicans are opposed to any increase in the minimum wage. That is the fact. They have been opposed to it even at a time of extraordinary prosperity. This minimum wage affects real people in a very important way, and there is no group in our society it affects more powerfully than women and children. They are the great majority of the earners of the minimum wage, and increasingly so. These days parents are spending less and less time with their families. In the last 10 years, parents were able to spend 22 hours a week less with their families. Read the Family and Work Institute's report of interviews with small children who are in minimum-wage families. They are universal in what they say. They all say: We wish our mother--or our father--would be less fatigued. We wish they had more time to spend with us. We are tired of seeing our parents come home exhausted when they are working one or two minimum-wage jobs. That is what this is about. It is about the men and women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Are they real? Of course they are real. I have read the stories. We know who they are. They are out there today, this morning, as teacher's aides in our schools. These teacher's aides are working with young children, our future, and yet they don't earn enough to make ends meet. They are there in the day-care centers. We know that day-care center workers are often at the bottom of the pay scale, earning the minimum wage. As you can see from this graph the purchasing power of the minimum wage [[Page S14346]] has declined since the last increase. As their wages lose purchasing power, turnover in low paying jobs like child care attendants and those who are working in nursing homes, increases. When people are forced to leave these jobs, there is a deterioration in quality of the service day care centers and nursing homes can offer. This is about the most important element of our society. It is about fairness. It is about work. We hear all of these speeches on the other side of the aisle about the importance of work. We are honoring work. We are talking about men and women with dignity who have a sense of pride in what they do and are trying to do better and are trying to look out after their families. They are being given the back of the hand by the Republicans. Their proposal is a sham. It is a raw deal for these workers. On the one hand, they are dribbling out an increase in the minimum wage; on the other hand, they are taking away overtime for 73 million Americans, and in the meantime, they are giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals in our society. That is a sham. Beyond that, they say the minimum wage, if we are even fortunate enough to get it to pass the Senate, will never go to the President because the Republican leadership has made a commitment to whoever it might be that it will never go there. That is what we are up against. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 4 minutes have expired. Mr. KENNEDY. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts that I can yell as loud as he. But today I won't do that because I believe we have a great bill and a great position. The Republicans do support the minimum wage. In fact, they are going to vote for the minimum wage that I propose. That is, instead of a dollar coming in two installments, it will come in three, of 35 cents, 35 cents, and 30 cents. Frankly, there will be an overwhelming vote in favor of that. In addition, we took the opportunity to give small business and some other absolutely necessary situations that need it tax relief. We chose in this bill to do that. Those have been explained fairly well. I will take a minute at the end of my remarks to explain them one more time. I suggest that the Democrats are living in an era that has passed. If they were here on the floor in the 1930s, they would have a case. They would have a case that the minimum wage is going to affect poor families supporting their children. That was the issue in the 1930s. But I suggest the best research today says that day is gone in terms of who is impacted by the minimum wage. It is more likely to impact a teenager than it is the head of a household. The fact is, 55 percent of the minimum wage applies to people between the ages of 16 and 24. The overwhelming number of those are teenagers in part-time jobs, working in McDonald's-type restaurants across America. They need these jobs. They don't even stay in the minimum-wage position very long, according to the research we have seen. If they work well and choose to follow the rules and the orders and do an excellent job, they are raised above the minimum wage rather quickly. To put it another way, to show that the arguments about who benefits from the minimum wage are passe 1930 arguments, two-thirds of all minimum-wage people are part-time employees. The fact is, the argument that these are women heads of households is absolutely dispelled by reality. The best we can find out is that 8 percent of the minimum-wage employees in America today are women heads of households, not the numbers or the tenor and tone of the argument about the slap of the hand we are giving to those who work in America. Quite the contrary. Our minimum wage reflects a sufficient increase to match up with inflation, and we permit many people an opportunity to get into the job market. In fact, we make permanent one of the best taxes we have, which is now there on an interim basis. It says if you hire minimum-wage workers out of the welfare system, and you want to take a chance because they aren't capable of doing the jobs and you need to train them, you get a credit for that. That is a very good part of the Tax Code. We make that permanent so it costs something and it uses up some of our tax money. As to the argument of how big this tax cut is, it is 12.5 percent of the total tax package that the Republicans offered, which passed here and the President vetoed. It tries something very new and exciting. It says to Americans who want to buy their own insurance--because their employers don't furnish it--for the first time, they are going to be permitted to deduct the entirety of their health insurance. Heretofore, they were punished if they tried to buy it, penalized because they didn't get to deduct it while everybody else did. We also made permanent the allowance that the self-employed can take the insurance deduction. We raise that to 100 percent. Everybody knows that is good. Everybody knows that helps with the problem of the uninsured in America, and that is good. So, for all the talk, the Republicans have come forward with a very good bill. I am very pleased that I suggested to the Republicans the basics of this bill, that we ought to do it in three installments. Some wanted to make it longer. Actually, I think this is exactly the right length of time. Add to that the kind of tax relief we have provided versus the tax increases on that side, and it seems to me there is no choice. While everybody is clamoring to do something about the estate tax because it is a very onerous tax, as if to try to punish people, in a minimum-wage bill they raise death taxes and inheritance taxes. I don't care what kind of American they impose it on. We don't have to do that when we are reforming that system because it is somewhat confiscatory. I could go on, but if anybody has any doubt, the gross tax increase under the Democrat package is $12.5 billion over 5 years, and a $28.9 billion tax increase over 10 years. What in the world are we increasing taxes for at this point? To pay for a minimum-wage bill? Of course not. It is because they want other tax relief and they choose to raise taxes to give the benefit to someone else. There is sufficient surplus. This is a very small tax cut in our package--12.5 percent of what we perceived was adequate and what we could do about 4 months ago with the surpluses we have. The President proposed $250 billion, $300 billion in tax relief. In this bill, they raise taxes rather than take advantage of what we know is the right thing; that is, to reduce taxes in these economic times. I reserve my remaining time. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 6 minutes 49 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mrs. BOXER. The Senator from New Mexico said he wasn't going to yell. He got a little close to it. But when I hear the yells on that side of the aisle, it is usually related to their passion for helping the wealthiest among us. The Senator from New Mexico says that the Democrats are living in the past because we want to increase the minimum wage. Well, I have news for the Senator from New Mexico. Compassion for the poorest in our society, those at the bottom rung of the ladder, that is a timeless value; that is a moral value; that is a religious value; that is a value we ought to be proud to have around here. That is not living in the past. Come to Los Angeles, I say to my friend from New Mexico, or look around your big cities. What you will notice is that the people who are living on the minimum wage are adults. We know that to be the fact. A majority of minimum-wage workers are adults--70 percent of them. In the Democratic proposal, out of those who will benefit from this modest increase, 60 percent of them are women. So if you want to say that we are living in the past, you can say it all you want. But it isn't true. We saw in September a very chilling story in the L.A. Times about the working poor in Southern California. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition shows that given the high cost of a two-bedroom apartment in L.A., a minimum-wage earner must work 112 hours per week in order to make ends meet. [[Page S14347]] In San Francisco, it is even worse. A person would have to work 174 hours at minimum wage in order to pay their bills. According to a recent study of the Nation's food banks, 40 percent of all households seeking emergency food aid had at least one member who was working. That is up from 23 percent in 1994. Low-paying jobs, I say to my friend from New Mexico, are the most frequently cited cause of hunger today, according to this well- documented L.A. Times story. The L.A. Times, by the way, is now owned by Republicans. So this isn't a question of yesterday, I say to my friend. It is a question of living today. They have made the same arguments every time we raised the minimum wage. The last time they said it would bring the economy down. We have never seen such a strong economy. If the people at the bottom rung are left behind, it is morally wrong and it is economically wrong. It makes no sense. Those are the folks who go out and spend what they earn and they definitely stimulate the economy. So for anybody to say you are living in the past if you support a minimum-wage increase, they don't know what is going on today. I say that from my heart. I have respect for the Senator from New Mexico, but I think it is insulting to say one lives in the past for wanting to fight for those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder--those women and those children who are living in poverty. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 3\1/2\ minutes. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield a minute to the Senator from Connecticut. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized. Mr. DODD. Mr. President, to make a couple of quick points, I was terribly saddened to see as part of another bill that we have a further reduction in child care provisions, which is a major blow again to working families out there. We all know that quality child care makes a difference for these children. In the midst of all of this, we are obviously told you have to come up with some offsets to pay for the provisions in this bill, which we do. Offsets always attract opposition from one quarter or another. But these are modest offsets to pay for the provisions in the bill. What is going to happen later today we are going to vote on $75 billion in tax cuts and 56 percent of them go to the top 20 percent of income earners, and there are no offsets--none. One of the great contradictions is, we are being accused of not liking the offsets, the pays, from some of the provisions and simultaneously we ask our Members to vote for a provision in the bill or vote for the whole bill, including a $75 billion tax cut over 10 years with no offsets. Let me underscore, as this millennium date of 50 days away approaches, those at the bottom of the economic rung--working people, the majority who receive the minimum wage and are working full time; they are women, they are Hispanic, they are black--deserve to get a fair shake out of this Senate. In a few minutes, we will have an opportunity to give them that fair shake by providing an increase in the minimum wage, allowing them to enjoy the prosperity of the booming economy. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is important to understand exactly what the situation is for our working poor. The number of full-time, year-round workers living in poverty is at a 20-year high: 12.6 percent of the workforce, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of the last 3 days. That is the fact. People are working harder, and they are living in poverty. These are people who value work. Second, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, of those who will benefit from a minimum wage increase, 70 percent are adults over age 20, and about 30 percent will be teenagers. If Senators come to Boston and talk to the young people going to the University of Massachusetts, they will find 85 percent of their parents never went to college and 85 percent of them are working 25 hours a week or more. That is true in Boston, in Holyoke, in New Bedford, and Fall River, and cities across the country. I don't know what Members have against working young people who are trying to pay for their education. We have 6 million working in the workforce, and we have 2 million working at the minimum wage. Why are we complaining about that? The Republican proposal is a Thanksgiving turkey with three right wings. It has a watered-down increase in the minimum wage, it has a poison pill for overtime work, and it has juicy tax provisions for the rich. This Republican turkey is stuffed with tax breaks, and it does not deserve to be passed. Vote for the real increase in the minimum wage; vote for the Daschle increase. Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as the most prosperous nation in the world, our minimum wage should be a living wage, and it is not. When a father or mother works full-time, 40 hours a week, year-round, they should be able to lift their family out of poverty. $5.15 an hour will not do that. A full time minimum wage job should provide a minimum standard of living in addition to giving workers the dignity that comes with a paycheck. The current minimum wage does not pay a fair wage. I support the legislation introduced by Representative David Bonior in the House and Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate which increases the minimum wage. This legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act, will provide a 50 cent increase to the minimum wage on January 1, 2000, and a second 50 cent increase on January 1, 2001. This would raise the minimum wage to $6.15 per hour by the year 2001. The minimum wage increase passed in 1996 prevented the minimum wage from falling to its lowest inflation adjusted level in 40 years. The proposed minimum wage increase to $6.15 in 2001 would get the minimum wage back to the inflation adjusted level it was in 1982. In this era of economic growth, raising the minimum wage is a matter of fundamental fairness. We must look around and realize that we have the strongest economy in a generation. However, even with our strong economy, the benefits of prosperity have not flowed to low-wage workers. A full time minimum wage laborer working forty hours a week for 52 weeks earns $10,712 per year--more than $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. The pover

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LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS
(Senate - November 09, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S14340-S14364] LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I wish to make a brief comment, if I may, on one of the items referred to in a statement by the majority leader about the appropriations process, which I think will be of interest to our colleagues and perhaps to others who may be watching on C-SPAN 2. We had negotiations beginning at 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon with officials from the White House, and we are trying to resolve those issues in a spirit of accommodation. With respect to the dollars involved, the bill which came out of the Appropriations Committee was $93.7 billion for the three Departments. That was $600 million more than the President's figure, and it was $300 million more than the President's figure on education. I worked on a bipartisan basis with my distinguished colleague, Senator Harkin. The bill was crafted with what we thought was the right dollar amount--frankly, the maximum amount--to pass with votes in substantial numbers from Republicans and an amount which would be acceptable to Democrats and to the President because it was somewhat higher than his figure and we emphasized increased funding for the National Institutes of Health. The administration has come back with a figure of $2.3 billion additional, and Congressman Porter and I made an offer yesterday to add $228 million, provided we could find offsets because it is very important that we not go into the Social Security trust funds. So that whatever dollars we add to accommodate the President's priorities--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. We are prepared to meet him halfway on priorities on dollars--we are going to have to have offsets on priorities which the Congress has established. There is a much more difficult issue in this matter than the dollars, although the dollars are obviously of great importance, and the issue which is extremely contentious is what will be done on the President's demand to have $1.4 billion to reduce classroom size to have additional teachers. The Senate bill has appropriated $1.2 billion which maintains the high level of last year's funding. When it comes to the issue of the utilization of that money, we are prepared to acknowledge the President's first priority of reduction of classroom size for teachers. But if the local school board makes a factual determination that is not the real need of the local school board, then we propose that the second priority be teacher training. If the local school board decides that is not where the money ought to be spent, then we propose to give it to the school board the discretion as to the spending to local education, as opposed to a straitjacket out of Washington. The White House Press Secretary has issued a statement this morning saying that these funds could be used for vouchers, and that is not true. That is a red herring. To allay any concern, we will make it explicit in the bill that the President's concern about the use of these funds for vouchers will be allayed. We are prepared to make that accommodation, although there had never been any intent to use it for vouchers. However, we will make that intent explicit in the bill. Behind the issue of classroom size and the President's demand is a much greater constitutional issue. That is the constitutional issue of who controls the power of the purse. The Constitution gives the authority to the Congress to establish spending priorities, and we have seen a process evolve in the past few years which does not follow the constitutional format. The Constitution is very specific that each [[Page S14341]] House will decide on a bill, have a conference, and send that bill to the President for his signature or for his veto; and if he vetoes it, the bill then comes back to the Congress for reenactment. But what has happened in the immediate past has been that executive branch officials sit in with the appropriators and are a part of the legislative process, which is a violation of the principle of separation of powers. Now, I must say that I have been a party to those meetings because that is what is going on. But I want to identify it as a process which is not in conformity with the Constitution. It is something we ought to change. When it comes to the power and the control, what we have seen happen in the last 4 years is that the President has really made an effort, and to a substantial extent a successful effort, to take over the prerogative of the Congress on the power of the purse. When the Government was closed in late 1995 and early 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress was blamed for the closure. That, candidly, has made the Congress gun-shy to challenge the President on spending issues. Since that time there has been a concession to the President on whatever it is that he wants, sort of ``pay a price to get out of town'' when people are anxious to have the congressional session adjourn. Speaking for myself and I think quite a few others in the Congress are not going to put on the pressure to get out of town. We are going to do the job and do it right. Senator Lott held a news conference yesterday and was asked about the termination time. He said he thought it was possible to finish the public's business by the close of the legislative session on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, but it was more important, as Senator Lott articulated, to do it right than get it finished by any arbitrary deadline. I concur totally with Senator Lott. I think it is possible to get the business finished by the end of the working day tomorrow. But it is more important to get it right than to get it finished on any prescribed schedule. In modern times there is too much concern about getting out of town, than perhaps getting the job done right. But we are determined to get it done and to get it done right. If we can get it done by the end of business tomorrow, that is what our goal is. But we are not going to sacrifice getting it done right in order to be able to finish up by Wednesday afternoon to get out of town. Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question? Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. SPECTER. No, I will not yield here, but I will in just a minute. What we have seen is the President's ultimatum. He says this issue on schoolteachers is nonnegotiable. That is hardly the way you get into a negotiation session. Then his Chief of Staff, John Podesta, said on Sunday that if the Congress wants to get out of town they are going to have to accede to the President's demands on teachers, to do it his way. I think that is not appropriate. Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution. It is our fundamental responsibility on appropriations. We are prepared to negotiate, but we are not prepared to deal with nonnegotiable demands. We are not prepared to deal with ultimatums. We are going back into a session--I don't know whether I should call it a negotiating session or not, because the President talks about nonnegotiable demands. Frankly, I am prepared to meet that with a nonnegotiable demand, not giving up on our prerogative to make a determination as to how the money is to be spent and getting local control over a Presidential straitjacket. Now I would be delighted to yield to my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. I wanted to inquire of the desk what the Senate business was supposed to be? I was under the impression we were supposed to be, at 9:30, on the minimum wage. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor? Mr. SPECTER. I have concluded. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask we extend the time. How much time did the Senator from Pennsylvania expend? Mr. DOMENICI. What was the question? Mr. KENNEDY. I asked how much time the Senator from Pennsylvania used? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican side has 19 minutes left. Mr. KENNEDY. Just as a matter of inquiry, were taken out of the time of the debate. Is that correct? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Taken out of the Republican time. Mr. KENNEDY. OK. Mr. President, I yield myself 12 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Pennsylvania's comments with great interest. I will mention very briefly in defense of the administration, although they can make the case quite well for themselves that if the Appropriations Committee had finished their business on time we would not be in this particular dilemma. Only four appropriations bills were actually completed on time for the fiscal year. So with all respect to our friend on the other side, if the appropriators had placed, particularly the HEW appropriations, first rather than last, I do not think we would be having these kinds of problems in the areas of negotiation between the President and the Congress. Second, the basic program which the President has been fighting for in this negotiation is almost identical to what the Republicans supported last year. With all respect to the comments we have just heard, the fact is if the classes reach the goals, the 15 percent set- aside for funding for smaller class sizes can be used to enhance the teacher training. If the school had already achieved the lower class size of 18, it would be used for special needs or other kinds of professional purposes. So it is difficult for me to understand the frustration of the Senator from Pennsylvania when the Republican leaders all effectively endorse what the President talked about last year. If their position is not sustained, there are going to be 30,000 teachers who are teaching in first, second, and third grades who are going to get pink slips. I don't think the problem in education is having fewer schoolteachers teach in the early grades but to have more. I want to make clear I am not a part of those negotiations this year, but I was last year. I know what the particular issue is. With all respect to those who are watching C-SPAN II, I want them to know the President is fighting for smaller class sizes as well as for better trained teachers. We have seen Senator Murray make that presentation and make it effectively time and again. I think it is something that parents support, teachers understand, and children have benefited from. No one makes that case more eloquently than the Senator from the State of Washington. But I certainly hope the President will continue that commitment. We have scarce Federal resources. They are targeted in areas of particular need. That is the purpose of these negotiations. I hope we can conclude a successful negotiation. Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield on my time? Mr. KENNEDY. On your time, yes. Mr. DOMENICI. Just for an observation. He might want to answer it. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the truth of the matter is if schools want the new teachers, under the proposal of the distinguished chairman who just took to the floor to explain the obstinacy of the President, they can have the money for teachers. That is what he is saying. It is up to them. If they want all the money that comes from this appropriation used for teachers, they can have it. If they say, we don't need them, we don't want them, he is saying there is a second priority. Frankly, I think that is excellent policy with reference to the schools of our country. I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania makes a good point. For the President to continue to say we are not going to get this bill unless we do it exactly his way leaves us with no alternative. We have some prerogatives, too. The fact is, if you read the Constitution, he doesn't appropriate; the Congress does. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. [[Page S14342]] Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just to respond, we have a need for 2 million teachers. We have scarce Federal resources. If the States or local communities want to do whatever the Senator from New Mexico says, all well and good. But we are talking about scarce Federal resources that are targeted in ways that have been proven effective in enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. I am again surprised. The Republicans were taking credit for this last year. I was in the negotiations. Mr. Goodling and Mr. Gingrich--as we were waiting to find out whether the powers that be, the Speaker, was going to endorse this, when we were waiting and having negotiations--went out and announced it and took credit for it. They took credit for this proposal of the President. I find it a little difficult to understand this kind of frustration that is being demonstrated here. But we will come back to this and Senator Murray can address these issues at a later time. I certainly hope the President will not flinch in his commitment to getting smaller class sizes and better trained teachers and after school programs. That is what this President has been fighting for. I hope he will not yield at this time in these final negotiations, after we have only had four appropriations that have met the deadline. Before we get all excited about these negotiations, if our appropriators had completed this work in time, we would not be here. Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. How much time do we have? I will be glad to yield. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Good. I am glad to yield. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, briefly, I ask my colleague, is it not true this appropriation for education was the last of the bills considered by the Appropriations Committee? Is it not true that we waited until the very last day to even bring up this issue of education, the highest priority for American families? Now we find ourselves trying to adjourn, stuck on an issue that could have been resolved months ago had we made education as high a priority on Capitol Hill as it is in family rooms across America. Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from California, and I know the Senator from Washington as well, had hoped--and I believe I can speak for our Democratic leader--this would be the No. 1 appropriation and not the last one. If we had this as the No. 1 appropriation on the issue of education, we would not have these little statements we have heard this morning. But it is the last one. That is not by accident; that is by choice of the Republican leadership. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three minutes. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 7 minutes. In a few moments, we will be voting on the minimum wage issue that is before the Senate. I want to review what the record has been over the last 2 years. In September of 1998, we brought up the minimum wage issue, and were unable to bring that to a vote on the basis of the merits. The Republican leadership said no. In March of 1999, we tried to bring up this issue. Again, we were denied an opportunity to vote on it. In April of 1999, we brought it up again as an amendment on Y2K. We were denied an opportunity to have a full debate. In July of 1999, we brought it up again, and again we were turned down. Now we have the minimum wage legislation before us, and in a cynical move, the Republican leadership said: Even if you get the passage of the minimum wage, it ``ain't'' going to go any further; the President isn't going to see it; it is going to end. It is a sham. Their effort is basically a sham. That is the position in which we find ourselves today. We know Americans are working longer and harder. The working poor are working longer and harder than at any time in the history of our country. We know that over the last 10 years, women are working 3 weeks longer a year in order to earn the minimum wage and men are averaging 50 hours a week. These are some of the hardest working men and women in the country. At the height of the minimum wage in the late 1960s, it had the purchasing power that $7.49 would have today. If we are not able to raise the minimum wage this year and next, its value will be at an all- time low--in a time of extraordinary prosperity in this country. That is fundamentally wrong. A vote for the Republican amendment will not help working families. It is, in fact, an insult to low-wage workers. It robs them of over $1,200 as compared to the Democratic proposal, and it drastically undermines the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act which has been the law for over 60 years. The Republican proposal jeopardizes the overtime pay of 73 million Americans. The Republicans did not water down their own pay increase of $4,600. They are now watering down the increase in the minimum wage, and they are watering down overtime. On the one hand, they are giving an inadequate increase in the minimum wage and taking it back by cutting back on overtime. That is a sham. That is a cynical attempt to try to win support for working families from those who are trying to do justice for those individuals. We can ask, What difference does an increase in the minimum wage make? Cathi Zeman, 52 years old, works at a Rite Aid in Canseburg, PA. She earns $5.68 an hour. She is the primary earner in the family because her husband has a heart condition and is only able to work sporadically. What difference would an increase in the minimum wage mean to Cathi and her family? It would cover 6 months of utility bills for Cathi's family. Kimberly Frazier, a full-time child care aide from Philadelphia testified her pay of $5.20 an hour barely covers her rent, utilities, and clothes for her children. Our proposal would mean over 4 months of groceries for Kimberly and her kids. The stories of these families remind us that it is long past time to raise the minimum wage by $1 over 2 years. We cannot delay it. We cannot stretch it out. We cannot use it to cut overtime. And we cannot use it as an excuse to give bloated tax breaks to the rich. Members of Congress did not blink in giving themselves a $4,600 pay raise. Yet they deny a modest increase for those workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. I do not know how Members who voted for their own pay increase but I do not know how Members who vote against our minimum wage proposal will be able to face their constituents and explain their actions. It is hypocritical and irresponsible to deny a fair pay raise to the country's lowest paid workers. Above all, raising the minimum wage $1 over 2 years and protecting overtime pay is about fairness and dignity. It is about fairness and dignity for men and women who are working 50 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year trying to provide for their children and their families. This is a women's issue because a great majority of the minimum-wage workers are women. It is a children's issue because the majority of these women have children. It is a civil rights issue because the majority of individuals who make the minimum wage are men and women of color. And it is a fairness issue. At a time of extraordinary prosperity this country ought to be willing to grant an increase to the hardest working Americans in the nation--the day-care workers, the teachers aides. They deserve this increase. Our amendment will provide it, and the Republican amendment will not. Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. KENNEDY. I yield for a question. Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague for yielding. I say to the Senator from Massachusetts how much I appreciate him pushing this forward and how important it is to all of our States. I bring out an article that ran in the paper yesterday and today about the status of children in my home State of California, by far the largest State. I want my friend to respond to these numbers because they really say it. This is what it says: Despite a booming economy that has seen a tide of prosperity wash over California in [[Page S14343]] recent years, nearly 1 in 4 children under 18 in the Golden State lives in poverty. . . . Although the annual ``California Report Card 1999'' laments that so many children live in poverty, it paints an especially bleak portrait of a child's first four years of life. Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, says: Among all of California's children, our littlest ones . . . face the most stressful conditions of all. . . . At a time when a child's sense of self and security is influenced most powerfully, California deals them a [terrible] hand. I say to my friend, this issue he is raising is so critical. We all say how much we care about the children. Every one of us has made that speech. Today the rubber meets the road. If you care about children, you have to make sure their parents can support them. My last point is, and I will yield for the answer, I wonder if my friend has seen the New York Times editorial that says: The Senate will vote today on a Republican-sponsored amendment to raise the minimum wage and they say sadly the Republicans are not content to do this good deed and go home. They have loaded the amendment with tax cuts that are fiscally damaging and cynically focused on wealthy workers. Almost all of the Republican tax cuts go to the wealthy. One of the economists who looked at this said: It would encourage the reduction of contributions made by employers to the pensions of the lowest paid workers. Can my friend comment on the importance of this proposal to children and also this cynical proposal that our colleagues on the other side are presenting? Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator has raised an enormously important point. Americans who are working in poverty, which is at the highest level in 20 years, are working longer and harder than ever. The men work 50 hours a week or more on average and the women work an average of 3 weeks more a year. They have less time--22 hours less--to spend with their children than they did 10 years ago. That is why this is a children's issue, as the Senator has pointed out. On the issue the difference between the Republican and the Democratic proposals, the Republicans say that their proposal makes some difference for those individuals who are going to get an increase in the minimum wage over 3 years. This is a raw deal for them. On the one hand, they give them an increase in the minimum wage, and on the other hand they take back the overtime for 73 million Americans. It is a cynical sham, and it is a cynical sham because the majority leader has said even if it passes, it will never go out of this Chamber. That is the attitude toward hard- working men and women who are trying to play by the rules and get along at a time when they have the lowest purchasing power in the history of the minimum wage and we have the most extraordinary prosperity. And then they insult these workers even further by adding a $75 billion tax break over 10 years. And then we just heard about the difficulty we are having in conference about $1 billion on education because they say we cannot afford to do things, but the same side is suggesting a $75 billion tax break. Where are they getting their money? So it is a cynical play. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Who yields time? Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota off our time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my enthusiastic support for the package of tax proposals introduced by Senator Domenici. I'm enthusiastic, in part, because it contains a provision that is very important to me--above-the-line deductibility of health insurance for individuals. Over 40 million American workers didn't have health insurance in 1997. The number has increased in the last two years to 44 million. This is disturbing, but I believe there is something Congress can do to help without resorting to a national health care system. Mr. President, when employers purchase a health plan for their employees, he or she can fully deduct the costs of providing that insurance, effectively lowering the actual costs of providing coverage. However, when an employee purchases an individual policy on their own, they must do so with after tax-dollars. They don't have the ability or the advantage offered to employers to reduce the actual costs of the policy by deducting premiums from their taxes every year. Therefore, they often wind up without any health coverage at all. Earlier this year, I introduced the Health Care Access Act, which would have ended this discrimination within the Tax Code and make health care available for many more Americans by allowing the full deduction of health insurance for those without access to employer- subsidized health coverage. We have a tax code that discriminates against some, while favoring others. Clearly, this results in fewer people being covered. The amendment before us today takes a slightly different approach, but its goal is the same--to level the tax-playing field. By allowing individuals without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, or those whose employers do not cover more than 50 percent of the cost of coverage, to deduct those costs regardless of whether they itemize or not, we can address a growing segment of our uninsured population by doing this. Under this amendment, from 2002 to 2004, eligible employees can deduct 25 percent of costs, 35 percent in 2005, 65 percent in 2006, and 100 percent after that. If there are no changes in the health care system and no significant downturn of the economy, we can expect the number of uninsured to reach 53 million over the next ten years. This translates into 25 percent of non-elderly Americans without coverage. Forty-three percent of the uninsured are in families with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-eight percent of the uninsured work for small firms and 18 percent of all uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 24. The question that comes to mind is, if we're experiencing record growth in our economy and the unemployment rate is declining, why is the number of uninsured continuing to rise? The answer is costs. In the event a small business can offer a health plan to its employees, many times it is at a higher cost to the employee than it would be if the employee were to have a job at a larger firm. In this instance, employees have to decide if they believe their health status is such that they can go without health insurance, or if they should spend after-tax dollars to pay for a larger portion of their health insurance. Here is where we have the difficulty. Individuals employed by small businesses which can't afford to pay more than 50 percent of the monthly premiums for their employees should be able to have the same tax advantage as the employer in paying for their health insurance. Under our plan today, they will. In fact, because the tax deduction is what we call ``above-the-line,'' meaning if would be available to everyone--even if they don't itemize their taxes--we attack the most significant barrier to health coverage again, which is its costs, and move closer to eliminating all barriers to health coverage. In other words, get more Americans covered by allowing them the deductibility of the costs. I am also pleased that this amendment includes many other important components such as pension reform and small business tax relief. We are talking about tax relief for small businesses, not the wealthiest as you hear from the other side of the aisle, but tax relief pinpointed at the hard-working Americans in this country who are also job providers. Retirement income security is crucial for millions of American workers. This amendment reforms and enhances current pension laws to ensure workers will achieve income security upon retirement. It repeals the unnecessary temporary FUTA surtax, which has become a burden to many small businesses. The amendment allows millions of self-employed Americans to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance costs. This is a critical provision because 61 percent of the uninsured in this country are from a family headed [[Page S14344]] by an entrepreneur or a small business employee. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Mr. GRAMS. I ask for 2 more minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the Senator 2 additional minutes. Mr. GRAMS. In wrapping up, the amendment increases small business expensing to $30,000. This change alone means an extra $3,850 in tax savings for each small business in new equipment next year. This amendment also allows small business to increase the meal and entertainment expense tax deduction. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit has helped millions of Americans leave welfare programs and become productive workers in our economy. This amendment makes the WOTC permanent, so small businesses and former welfare recipients will continue to benefit from the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It seems unfair to me that in a time of prosperity we hear our colleagues on the other side talking about tax increases. Again, in their plan, they would impose new, even higher taxes. They talk about minimum wage; they are taxing and taxing and taxing those people as they enter the job market. What we need is a plan that will reduce taxes, not increase taxes. America's small business is the key to our economic growth and prosperity. The health care, pension reform and tax relief measures included in this amendment will help small business continue to work for America and will allow millions of Americans to realize the American Dream. Again, that is why I rise today to enthusiastically offer my support for the tax package proposed by Senator Domenici. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does each side have remaining? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls 11 minutes 40 seconds; the Senator from Massachusetts controls 13 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. How much time would you like, I ask Senator Nickles? Mr. NICKLES. Four or 5 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 4 minutes to Senator Nickles. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized. Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague from New Mexico for the work that he has done in providing a more realistic substitute. But the first vote we are going to have today is voting on a motion to table the Kennedy amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment for a lot of different reasons, one of which is that it dramatically increases the minimum wage--about 20 percent over the next 13\1/2\ months. That is a big hit for a lot of small businesses. I am afraid it will prevent a lot of people, low- income people, who want to get their first jobs--they may not be able to get them. Estimates by some of the economists, CBO, and others, are that it could be 100,000 people; it could be 500,000 people that lose their jobs. It is a big hit. There are a lot of other reasons to oppose the Kennedy amendment. How many of our colleagues know it has a $29 billion tax increase, that it extends Superfund taxes? We do not reauthorize the Superfund Program, but we extend the taxes. Many of us agree we need to extend the taxes when we reauthorize the program, but not before and that is in there anyway. There is a tax increase on business. I received a letter from all the business groups opposing it. It is practically an IRS entitlement program, so they can go after anything they want. It deals with ``Noneconomic attributes,'' whatever that means, it is a $10 billion tax increase. It may sound good and some people say that it is just to close loopholes. But it is to give IRS carte blanche to go after anything and everything they want. We reformed IRS and curbed their appetite somewhat, and regardless of those efforts this would be saying: Hey, IRS, go after anybody and everybody. There is also a provision in the Democrat proposal that hits hospice organizations right between the eyes. I have put letters from outside organizations addressing this very issue on Members' desks so they may see it for themselves. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record three letters from various hospice organizations. There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: National Association for Home Care, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: The National Association for Home Care (NAHC) represents home health agencies and hospices nationwide. While generally speaking, NAHC is supportive of efforts to maintain a reasonable minimum wage, a proposed amendment to S. 625 creates serious concerns for hospices across the country. The proposed amendment would create a civil monetary penalty for false certification of eligibility for hospice care or partial hospitalization services. This proposal would impose a civil monetary penalty of the greater of $5,000 or three times the amount of payments under Medicare when a physician knowingly executes a false certification claiming that an individual Medicare beneficiary meets hospice coverage standards. On its face, this provision is addressed only to those physicians that intentionally and purposefully execute false certifications. However, the impact of a comparable provision on the access to home health services, as added to the law as Section 232 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, should caution Congress in expanding the provision to apply to hospice services. Immediately after the physician community became aware of the 1996 amendment, physicians expressed to home health agencies across the country great hesitancy to remain involved in certifying the homebound status of prospective home health patients. The vagueness of the homebound criteria and the stepped up antifraud efforts of the Health Care Financing Administration brought a chilling effect to physicians. As a result, home health agencies reported that physicians became less involved with homecare patients rather than increasing their involvement as had been recommended by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We believe that a comparable physician reaction will occur if this provision of law is extended to hospice services. A recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that many eligible people may be denied Medicare hospice benefits because the life expectancy of patients with a chronic illness is nearly impossible to predict with accuracy. Medicare requires that the patient's physician and the hospice medical director certify that the patient has no more than six months to live in order to secure entitlement to the Medicare hospice benefit. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. The existing scientific and clinical difficulties in accurately predicting the life expectancy of a patient combined with the threat of additional civil monetary penalties will adversely affect access to necessary hospice services. The experiences with home health services indicate that physicians distance themselves from the affected benefit. While the standard of applicability relates to a knowing and intentional false certification, physicians will react out of fear of inappropriate enforcement actions. There are already numerous antifraud provisions within federal law that apply to the exact circumstance subject to the proposed civil monetary penalties. These existing laws include even more serious penalties such as the potential for imprisonment for any false claim. We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a non-germane legislative effort to increase the federal minimum wage. There is no evidence that physicians engage in any widespread abuse of the Medicare hospice benefit. To the contrary, evidence is growing that hospice services are underutilized as an alternative to more expensive care. Thank you for all of your efforts to protect senior citizens in our country. Sincerely, Val J. Halamandaris. ____ Hospice Association of America, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Dear Senator: On behalf of the Hospice Association of America (HAA), a national association representing our member hospice programs, thousands of hospice professionals and volunteers, and those faced with terminal illness and their families, I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. It is often difficult to make the determination that a patient is terminally ill (life expectancy of six months or less if the terminal illness run its normal course), because the course of terminal is different for each patient and is not predictable. In some rare cases patients have been admitted to hospice care and have improved so as to be discharged from the program. The determination regarding the terminal status of a patient is not an exact science and should not be judged harshly in retrospect. In a recent edition of JAMA, The Journal of American Medical Association, researchers reported that the recommended clinical prediction criteria are not effective in a population with a survival prognosis of six [[Page S14345]] months or less. According to Medicare survival data, only 15 percent of patients receiving Medicare hospice survive longer than six months and the median survival of Medicare patients enrolled in hospices is under 40 days. This information demonstrates what has been well known by those working in the hospice community, the science of prognostication is in its infancy and physicians must use the tools that are available, medial guidelines and local medical review policies developed by the Health Care Financing Administration, as well as their best medical judgment. Physicians can not be punished for possible overestimation of a terminally ill patient's life expectancy. The only ones to be punished will be the patients in need of hospice services whose physicians will be denied from enrolling appropriate patients, thus denying access to this compassionate, humane, patient and family centered care at the end-of-their lives. Please reject the proposed amendment to S. 625. Sincerely, Karen Woods, Executive Director. ____ Federation of American Health Systems, Washington, DC, November 8, 1999. Hon. Don Nickles, Assistant Majority leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Dear Assistant Majority Leader: The Federation of American Health Systems, representing 1700 privately-owned and managed community hospitals has generally not taken a position on the minimum wage bill. However, we find it necessary to object to an amendment that will be offered today during consideration of the bill. Specifically, we are concerned with an amendment that will apparently address ``partial hospitalization'' issues. While the Federation supports the goal of improving the integrity of the Medicare program by addressing concerns with partial hospitalization, we oppose its attachment to non-Medicare legislation. Clearly, any amendment that reduces Medicare trust fund spending should either be used to enhance the solvency of the trust fund, or for other Medicare trust fund purposes. We appreciate your consideration of our position. Sincerely, Thomas A. Scully, President and CEO. Mr. NICKLES. From the Hospice Association of America: . . . . I am requesting your support to reject a proposed amendment to S. 1625 that would apply civil monetary penalties for false certification of eligibility for hospice care. I have a letter from the Federation of American Health Systems urging opposition to the Kennedy amendment. I have a letter from the National Association for Home Care, also in opposition. It says: We would encourage the Senate to oppose this provision, generally, and in particular, because it is contained in a nongermane legislative effort to increase the minimum wage. The foreseeable result of the proposed amendment would be to further discourage physicians from utilizing hospice services for terminally ill patients. Do we want to do that? I don't think so. Certainly we shouldn't do it in this legislation. Let's have hearings to find out more about this. Let's do it in Medicare reform. Let's do it when we have a chance to know exactly what we are doing because this is strongly opposed by hospice organizations. I encourage my colleagues to oppose it for all the above reasons. I urge them to vote yes to table the Kennedy amendment. We will move to table it at the appropriate time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Washington. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Kennedy amendment that we will be voting on shortly. It is important to note that 59 percent of the over 11 million workers who would receive a pay increase as a result of this minimum wage are women--women, by and large, with children; women who, because the minimum wage is so low today, are working two, three, four jobs. Those losing out in the country today because of the lack of a minimum wage increase are our children. They are being left home alone. They aren't getting the attention they deserve. They are not getting the support they deserve. A vote for the Kennedy amendment is a vote for our children. While I have the floor, I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania came to the floor this morning to question the President's constitutional authority to insist on reducing class size. I remind our colleagues, reducing class size is something we as Democrats have fought for, stood behind, and we stand behind the President in the final budget negotiations. This is not about constitutional authority. It is about making sure young kids in first, second, and third grade get from a good teacher the attention they need in order to read and write and do arithmetic. That is a bipartisan agreement we all agreed upon a year ago, $1.2 billion to help our local schools reduce class size. To renege on that commitment 1 year later and to have language which takes that money and gives it to whatever else school districts want to use it for sounds good except we lose out. A block grant will not guarantee that one child will learn to read. A block grant will not guarantee that a child who needs attention will have it on the day he or she needs it. A block grant will not assure that our children get the attention they deserve and learn the skills they need. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 2 minutes have expired. Mrs. MURRAY. I ask for an additional 30 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Thirty seconds. Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, what we as Democrats are going to stand strong for is a commitment we made a year ago to assure that every child in first, second, and third grade gets the attention they deserve. If our Republican colleagues want to add additional money to the budget for block grants, for needs in our schools that we agree are important, we are more than happy to talk to them about it. But we believe the commitment we made a year ago is a promise that should be kept. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. How much time, Mr. President? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts controls 10 minutes 34 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico controls 8 minutes 23 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 minutes. I again thank the Senators from California and Washington for illustrating in very powerful terms what this issue is all about. It is about working women and families. With all respect to my friend from Oklahoma, when we had an increase in the minimum wage a few years ago, the Republicans fought it. They said that it would harm the economy and adversely impact small business. In the measure I have introduced we have tried to provide some relief for small businesses and we have paid for it. Now we can't do that because we have some kind of offsets. Therefore, we can't do it. The fact is, the Republicans are opposed to any increase in the minimum wage. That is the fact. They have been opposed to it even at a time of extraordinary prosperity. This minimum wage affects real people in a very important way, and there is no group in our society it affects more powerfully than women and children. They are the great majority of the earners of the minimum wage, and increasingly so. These days parents are spending less and less time with their families. In the last 10 years, parents were able to spend 22 hours a week less with their families. Read the Family and Work Institute's report of interviews with small children who are in minimum-wage families. They are universal in what they say. They all say: We wish our mother--or our father--would be less fatigued. We wish they had more time to spend with us. We are tired of seeing our parents come home exhausted when they are working one or two minimum-wage jobs. That is what this is about. It is about the men and women at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Are they real? Of course they are real. I have read the stories. We know who they are. They are out there today, this morning, as teacher's aides in our schools. These teacher's aides are working with young children, our future, and yet they don't earn enough to make ends meet. They are there in the day-care centers. We know that day-care center workers are often at the bottom of the pay scale, earning the minimum wage. As you can see from this graph the purchasing power of the minimum wage [[Page S14346]] has declined since the last increase. As their wages lose purchasing power, turnover in low paying jobs like child care attendants and those who are working in nursing homes, increases. When people are forced to leave these jobs, there is a deterioration in quality of the service day care centers and nursing homes can offer. This is about the most important element of our society. It is about fairness. It is about work. We hear all of these speeches on the other side of the aisle about the importance of work. We are honoring work. We are talking about men and women with dignity who have a sense of pride in what they do and are trying to do better and are trying to look out after their families. They are being given the back of the hand by the Republicans. Their proposal is a sham. It is a raw deal for these workers. On the one hand, they are dribbling out an increase in the minimum wage; on the other hand, they are taking away overtime for 73 million Americans, and in the meantime, they are giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals in our society. That is a sham. Beyond that, they say the minimum wage, if we are even fortunate enough to get it to pass the Senate, will never go to the President because the Republican leadership has made a commitment to whoever it might be that it will never go there. That is what we are up against. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 4 minutes have expired. Mr. KENNEDY. I reserve the remainder of my time. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts that I can yell as loud as he. But today I won't do that because I believe we have a great bill and a great position. The Republicans do support the minimum wage. In fact, they are going to vote for the minimum wage that I propose. That is, instead of a dollar coming in two installments, it will come in three, of 35 cents, 35 cents, and 30 cents. Frankly, there will be an overwhelming vote in favor of that. In addition, we took the opportunity to give small business and some other absolutely necessary situations that need it tax relief. We chose in this bill to do that. Those have been explained fairly well. I will take a minute at the end of my remarks to explain them one more time. I suggest that the Democrats are living in an era that has passed. If they were here on the floor in the 1930s, they would have a case. They would have a case that the minimum wage is going to affect poor families supporting their children. That was the issue in the 1930s. But I suggest the best research today says that day is gone in terms of who is impacted by the minimum wage. It is more likely to impact a teenager than it is the head of a household. The fact is, 55 percent of the minimum wage applies to people between the ages of 16 and 24. The overwhelming number of those are teenagers in part-time jobs, working in McDonald's-type restaurants across America. They need these jobs. They don't even stay in the minimum-wage position very long, according to the research we have seen. If they work well and choose to follow the rules and the orders and do an excellent job, they are raised above the minimum wage rather quickly. To put it another way, to show that the arguments about who benefits from the minimum wage are passe 1930 arguments, two-thirds of all minimum-wage people are part-time employees. The fact is, the argument that these are women heads of households is absolutely dispelled by reality. The best we can find out is that 8 percent of the minimum-wage employees in America today are women heads of households, not the numbers or the tenor and tone of the argument about the slap of the hand we are giving to those who work in America. Quite the contrary. Our minimum wage reflects a sufficient increase to match up with inflation, and we permit many people an opportunity to get into the job market. In fact, we make permanent one of the best taxes we have, which is now there on an interim basis. It says if you hire minimum-wage workers out of the welfare system, and you want to take a chance because they aren't capable of doing the jobs and you need to train them, you get a credit for that. That is a very good part of the Tax Code. We make that permanent so it costs something and it uses up some of our tax money. As to the argument of how big this tax cut is, it is 12.5 percent of the total tax package that the Republicans offered, which passed here and the President vetoed. It tries something very new and exciting. It says to Americans who want to buy their own insurance--because their employers don't furnish it--for the first time, they are going to be permitted to deduct the entirety of their health insurance. Heretofore, they were punished if they tried to buy it, penalized because they didn't get to deduct it while everybody else did. We also made permanent the allowance that the self-employed can take the insurance deduction. We raise that to 100 percent. Everybody knows that is good. Everybody knows that helps with the problem of the uninsured in America, and that is good. So, for all the talk, the Republicans have come forward with a very good bill. I am very pleased that I suggested to the Republicans the basics of this bill, that we ought to do it in three installments. Some wanted to make it longer. Actually, I think this is exactly the right length of time. Add to that the kind of tax relief we have provided versus the tax increases on that side, and it seems to me there is no choice. While everybody is clamoring to do something about the estate tax because it is a very onerous tax, as if to try to punish people, in a minimum-wage bill they raise death taxes and inheritance taxes. I don't care what kind of American they impose it on. We don't have to do that when we are reforming that system because it is somewhat confiscatory. I could go on, but if anybody has any doubt, the gross tax increase under the Democrat package is $12.5 billion over 5 years, and a $28.9 billion tax increase over 10 years. What in the world are we increasing taxes for at this point? To pay for a minimum-wage bill? Of course not. It is because they want other tax relief and they choose to raise taxes to give the benefit to someone else. There is sufficient surplus. This is a very small tax cut in our package--12.5 percent of what we perceived was adequate and what we could do about 4 months ago with the surpluses we have. The President proposed $250 billion, $300 billion in tax relief. In this bill, they raise taxes rather than take advantage of what we know is the right thing; that is, to reduce taxes in these economic times. I reserve my remaining time. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 6 minutes 49 seconds. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from California. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mrs. BOXER. The Senator from New Mexico said he wasn't going to yell. He got a little close to it. But when I hear the yells on that side of the aisle, it is usually related to their passion for helping the wealthiest among us. The Senator from New Mexico says that the Democrats are living in the past because we want to increase the minimum wage. Well, I have news for the Senator from New Mexico. Compassion for the poorest in our society, those at the bottom rung of the ladder, that is a timeless value; that is a moral value; that is a religious value; that is a value we ought to be proud to have around here. That is not living in the past. Come to Los Angeles, I say to my friend from New Mexico, or look around your big cities. What you will notice is that the people who are living on the minimum wage are adults. We know that to be the fact. A majority of minimum-wage workers are adults--70 percent of them. In the Democratic proposal, out of those who will benefit from this modest increase, 60 percent of them are women. So if you want to say that we are living in the past, you can say it all you want. But it isn't true. We saw in September a very chilling story in the L.A. Times about the working poor in Southern California. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition shows that given the high cost of a two-bedroom apartment in L.A., a minimum-wage earner must work 112 hours per week in order to make ends meet. [[Page S14347]] In San Francisco, it is even worse. A person would have to work 174 hours at minimum wage in order to pay their bills. According to a recent study of the Nation's food banks, 40 percent of all households seeking emergency food aid had at least one member who was working. That is up from 23 percent in 1994. Low-paying jobs, I say to my friend from New Mexico, are the most frequently cited cause of hunger today, according to this well- documented L.A. Times story. The L.A. Times, by the way, is now owned by Republicans. So this isn't a question of yesterday, I say to my friend. It is a question of living today. They have made the same arguments every time we raised the minimum wage. The last time they said it would bring the economy down. We have never seen such a strong economy. If the people at the bottom rung are left behind, it is morally wrong and it is economically wrong. It makes no sense. Those are the folks who go out and spend what they earn and they definitely stimulate the economy. So for anybody to say you are living in the past if you support a minimum-wage increase, they don't know what is going on today. I say that from my heart. I have respect for the Senator from New Mexico, but I think it is insulting to say one lives in the past for wanting to fight for those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder--those women and those children who are living in poverty. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has 3\1/2\ minutes. The Senator from New Mexico has 1 minute 51 seconds. Mr. KENNEDY. I yield a minute to the Senator from Connecticut. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized. Mr. DODD. Mr. President, to make a couple of quick points, I was terribly saddened to see as part of another bill that we have a further reduction in child care provisions, which is a major blow again to working families out there. We all know that quality child care makes a difference for these children. In the midst of all of this, we are obviously told you have to come up with some offsets to pay for the provisions in this bill, which we do. Offsets always attract opposition from one quarter or another. But these are modest offsets to pay for the provisions in the bill. What is going to happen later today we are going to vote on $75 billion in tax cuts and 56 percent of them go to the top 20 percent of income earners, and there are no offsets--none. One of the great contradictions is, we are being accused of not liking the offsets, the pays, from some of the provisions and simultaneously we ask our Members to vote for a provision in the bill or vote for the whole bill, including a $75 billion tax cut over 10 years with no offsets. Let me underscore, as this millennium date of 50 days away approaches, those at the bottom of the economic rung--working people, the majority who receive the minimum wage and are working full time; they are women, they are Hispanic, they are black--deserve to get a fair shake out of this Senate. In a few minutes, we will have an opportunity to give them that fair shake by providing an increase in the minimum wage, allowing them to enjoy the prosperity of the booming economy. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is important to understand exactly what the situation is for our working poor. The number of full-time, year-round workers living in poverty is at a 20-year high: 12.6 percent of the workforce, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of the last 3 days. That is the fact. People are working harder, and they are living in poverty. These are people who value work. Second, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, of those who will benefit from a minimum wage increase, 70 percent are adults over age 20, and about 30 percent will be teenagers. If Senators come to Boston and talk to the young people going to the University of Massachusetts, they will find 85 percent of their parents never went to college and 85 percent of them are working 25 hours a week or more. That is true in Boston, in Holyoke, in New Bedford, and Fall River, and cities across the country. I don't know what Members have against working young people who are trying to pay for their education. We have 6 million working in the workforce, and we have 2 million working at the minimum wage. Why are we complaining about that? The Republican proposal is a Thanksgiving turkey with three right wings. It has a watered-down increase in the minimum wage, it has a poison pill for overtime work, and it has juicy tax provisions for the rich. This Republican turkey is stuffed with tax breaks, and it does not deserve to be passed. Vote for the real increase in the minimum wage; vote for the Daschle increase. Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as the most prosperous nation in the world, our minimum wage should be a living wage, and it is not. When a father or mother works full-time, 40 hours a week, year-round, they should be able to lift their family out of poverty. $5.15 an hour will not do that. A full time minimum wage job should provide a minimum standard of living in addition to giving workers the dignity that comes with a paycheck. The current minimum wage does not pay a fair wage. I support the legislation introduced by Representative David Bonior in the House and Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate which increases the minimum wage. This legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act, will provide a 50 cent increase to the minimum wage on January 1, 2000, and a second 50 cent increase on January 1, 2001. This would raise the minimum wage to $6.15 per hour by the year 2001. The minimum wage increase passed in 1996 prevented the minimum wage from falling to its lowest inflation adjusted level in 40 years. The proposed minimum wage increase to $6.15 in 2001 would get the minimum wage back to the inflation adjusted level it was in 1982. In this era of economic growth, raising the minimum wage is a matter of fundamental fairness. We must look around and realize that we have the strongest economy in a generation. However, even with our strong economy, the benefits of prosperity have not flowed to low-wage workers. A full time minimum wage laborer working forty hours a week for 52 weeks earns $10,712 per year--more than $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three.