this in the future. but i just want to back up what senator mcconnell from kentucky has said. americans don't want government-run insurance company any more than they want government-run car companies. the government is running everything from the banks, the insurance company and now we will run insurance company for health care. i don't think that's what the american people want. i think the senator from kentucky is exactly right. he's right when he says no government-run care. and that we shun be rationing -- shouldn't be rationing care, two critical aspects of the legislation senator kennedy has and among the things being discussed in the senate finance committee, as well. we need to draw a line here, put patients first, not put the government first. now, mr. president, since -- i think i will have a little bit more time on the republican side, but if i have colleagues that wish to speak i will be

happy to finish here for a moment. i'll go for a little bit longer on another subject. we've had kind of a running debate here on the question of closing guantanamo prison. this is a subject that the senate has spoken on by an overwhelming vote, i think, 90-some senators voted not to close gitmo and the american people are 3-1 opposed to bringing gitmo prisoners into the state and 2-1 in opposition to closing guantanamo prison. this is not something on which there is a little bit of doubt. the american people are very much opposed to closing guantanamo prison and bringing those people to their own states. nevertheless the assistant majority leader and five other democrats voted for the proposing of money or the -- actually, the appropriation of money -- to close guantanamo and

acknowledge that it would require bringing many of those people to the united states. well i happen to agree with senator mcconnell, this is a bad idea. and with the other 89 senators would agreed, it's a bad until until we have some kind of plan to do it. so i was struck this morning when the senator from illinois said, well, he said, here's the proof of why we should close the guantanamo prison. we just have an announcement we are going to try a terrorist here in the united states. and that proves we can close gitmo. well, it doesn't prove that it doesn't prove anything. what it proves is you can try somebody in the united states courts. we've done that with a few terrorists. and it's not a pleasant experience. the one that most of us recall here in the washington, d.c. area was the trial across the river in. mr. alexander: the -- in alexan, virginia, o, and much of the

evidence that was gained to try him was classified and could not be shared with him and there were significant questions of due process as a result. how can you try somebody for a serious crime and not show them the evidence against them? that's when of the main reasons why it's very difficult to try these terrorists for crimes. the second problem is, the security issue, and the people in virginia and alexandria in the county will tell you it was a costly and difficult thing for them to be able to conduct this trial of zarqawi there. but it was possible and it was possible to get a conviction, i suggest, primarily because of decisions he made, but it was possible to do so. and, everybody acknowledges that there are some people who need to be tried for serious crimes. in effect, like war crimes.

and that they should be tried in united states courts. it doesn't make it easy but it can be done. what it doesn't prove is that should be done for all of the people at gitmo. in fact, not even the president suggests that. the president, in his speech a few weeks ago, acknowledged that many of the prisoners at gitmo now are infer goin never going a trial. they are being held until the termination of the hostilities that have caused them to be captured and imprisoned in the first place and they are like prisoners of war who can be detained until the war is over. here, however, they don't even have the rights of prisoners of war under the geneva accords because they do not adhere to the rules of war. they don't fight with uniforms for a nation-state and so on. they, in fact, are terrorists. is they are still allowed humane

treatment but they don't is the same rights as prisoners of war. that means as the president acknowledged, as the united states supreme court has averaged, we have a right to hold them until the cessation of hostilities so they don't kill anymore people. you can't just turn them loose. now, the president, in his speech, made the point that at least 60, i think, is the number used, of these prisoners had been released and they were released by the bush administration. that's true. the bush administration was under a lot of pressure to try to release as many of these people who were being held as possible. and so they held determinations. they have a determination once a year and initially as to what the status of the individual is and whether he is still a danger and eventually in many of the cases they decided that the person could be released back to their home country or to a country that would take them and it wouldn't pose a danger to the united states. the problem is, there's a very high rate of recidivism among

the terrorisms. one in seven are believed to have returned to the battlefield and we have evidence of many of them, specifically by name, who returned and who caused a lot of death. there are two in particular, i recall, who both eventually engaged in sow side bombing attack -- in suicide bombing attacks killing 20 in one instance and at least half a dozen in another instance. so even when you try your best to make a determination that's fair to the individual, but you don't want to hold people beyond the time they should be held that they no longer pose a danger, you make mistaxes and release people back to the battlefield who will try to kill you and who will certainly try to kill others and your allies and they do, do so. that is a risk but not a risk we should lightly take. the remaining 240-some prisoners at guantanamo are the worst of the worst, people whom i it is

difficult to say, they don't pose a danger anymore. we have been through those. and one in seven of those have actually gone off and killed people so you have 240 of the worst of the worst and the president went through the different things that can happen to them. some of them, a limited number, will be tried in u.s. courts like this terrorist senator durbin spoke of. it's hard to do. there are a lot of issues with it but we will try to try some of them. others can be tried with military commissions. others will not be able to be tried. they will have to be held and there may be a few who we deem no longer a threat to us and they will have to be released but to whom, nobody knows, because nobody appears -- well, the french will take one of them. i think there may be another european country that said they, maybe the germans, will take one. that still leaves a lot to go. the bottom line here is that many are going to have to be

detained. the question is, where do you detain them i? my colleague from illinois said others agreed you should close gitmo even my colleague from arizona but he didn't say before we have a plan to do so. and he himself has acknowledged this is really hard to do. and while he would like to close it as he himself has said, i don't know how you do it, you can't do it without a plan or based upon a tame tiebl that th- timetable the president is talking about. it is one thing say telling is nice to close it and another to figure out how to do it that would be safe for the american people. finally, just a point i want to mention here, well, two final points. the senator from illinois said this is a problem that he -- meaning the president -- inherited. no, madam president, the president didn't inherit the problem of having to come up with a plan to close gitmo by next january 20th.

the president made that problem himself. he was sworn into office within three days and he said we are going to close gitmo within 12 months. now, that is an arbitrary deadline i submit he should not have imposed on himself or the country because it will cause bad decisions to be made. we may have to try more people like this terrorist ghalini in the united states than we want to. we will have to find, i gather, facilities in which these people can be held here if the united states. the f.b.i. director, robert mueller himself, testified before the house of representatives, that posed a lot of problems, real risks for the united states. nobody is saying it can't be done. the question; should it be done? most of us believe, no, it shouldn't be done. there are better alternatives. the final point is this: what's wrong with the alternative of the prison at guantanamo? it's a $200 million state-of-the-art facility in which i pointed out yesterday

people are very well humanely treated. they have better medical and dental care they ever got in their home countries or fighting us on the battlefield or afghanistan or somewhere else. the bottom line is, this is a top-rate facility, the people there do not mistreat provides mores and that's the myth here. somehow people compare abu ghraib with guantanamo and this brings up the last point. it is argued by my colleague from illinois and others that terrorists recruit based upon the existence of guantanamo prison. now, think about that for a moment. are we going to say because terrorists accuse us of doing something wrong, even though we didn't, we're going to stop any activity in that area because we want to take away that as a recruitment tool? we would have to basically go out of business as the united states of america if we were going to take away all the things that terrorists use to recruit people to fight the

west. they don't like the way we treat women with equality in the united states or a lot of our social values and they don't like the fact that we hold elections so because that's used as a recruitment tool we are going to stop doing all of that does what sense does this make? we treat people humanely and properly at guantanamo. people were mistreated in another prison called abu ghraib. they are not the same. and abu ghraib, therefore, does not represent the example of what we should be doing with respect to guantanamo. we'll have more debate on this subject. i note that the time is very short and i meant to leave time for my colleague from texas and i hope to engeaj my colleagues in further -- engage my colleagues in further conversation about this.

the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. corn con actually, madam president, i intend to speak on the underlying bill but because the bill manager is not here i think my remarks are just as appropriate here in morning business. madam president, i want to rise to offer my support as a cosponsor of the family smoking prevention and tobacco control act, the so-called f.d.a. regulation of tobacco bill that's currently before the senate. this is a rarity these days in washington, d.c., it is actually a bipartisan bill. bipartisan. people of both parties, working together, trying to solve a real

problem and i want to particularly thank senator kennedy and senator dodd for their leadership on the bill. i also want to thank the campaign for tobacco-free kids for organizing more than 1,000 public health groups, faith-based organizations, medical sosmedical associationsr partners. the house, as you know, passed this bill in april on a bipartisan basis. now it's time for the senate to do its job this week. this comes to us as a rather unusual historical and regulatory posture. the fact of the matter is, madam president, we know that tobacco is a killer. it's a killer. it kills 400 thousand americans each year in the united states. including 90% of all deaths from lung cancer, one out of every

three deaths from other tips of cancer and one out of every five deaths for cardiovascular disease. the real tragedy is not just that adults choose to smoke and ham their health and many of whom, unfortunately, die premature deaths, as a result, it is that many smokers begin their addiction to tobacco, the nicotine, which is the addictive substance within tobacco when they are young before they are able to make intelligent choices about what to do with their bodies and their health. every day about 1,000 children become regular daily smokers. the medical professionals project about one-third of these children will eventually die prematurely from a tobacco-related disease. not surprisinglying at a time weapon we are contemplating health care reform in this country, in the huge expense of

health care, the fiscal unsustainable of medicare program, it's also important to point out tobacco directly increases the costs of health care in our country. more than $100 billion is spent every year to treat tobacco-related decembers. $100 billion of taxpayer money. and about $30 billion of that is spent through our medicaid program. now, america has a love-hate relationship with tobacco, and congress, i should say, and state government does as well. you'll recall that tobacco actually presents a revenue source for the state and federal government. one of the most recent instances is when congress passed a 60-cent plus additional tax on tobacco in order to fund an expansion of the state children's health insurance program. so government has become addicted to tobacco too because

of the revenue stream that it presents. and that's true at the federal level and at the state level. but because of the political clout of tobacco companies years back when the f.d.a. regulation statute was passed, tobacco was specifically left out of the power at the f.d.a. to regulate this drug, the active ingredient, i mentioned was nicotine, which was not acknowledged to be an addictive drug for many years until finally the surgeon general did identify it for what it was -- an addictive drug that makes it harder for people once they start smoking to quit. and then, of course, we tried litigation to control tobacco and the pred of market -- and the spread of marketing tobacco to children and addicting them to this deadly drug which it is. and then we found out that it had basically no impact.

this massive national litigation through the attorneys general and the states, basically the only thing happened as a result of that was lawyers got rich. but it really didn't do anything to deal with the problem of marketing tobacco to children. you might ask as a conservative, why would you support regulation, more regulation rather than less? well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco, recognizing it as a deadly drug, recognizing it marketing often targets of the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care skofts not only in phed -- costs not only in medicare but in medicaid. and why in the world would we just ban it? i know the senator from oklahoma said the world would be a better

place if tobacco wasn't legal. we all know that's a slippery slope for the individual choices we make. if we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food. we might as well ban alcohol. obviously the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume. and i just don't think the american people would tolerate it. and i think with some good reason. we have to accept individual responsibility for our choices. but, again, when you target a deadly drug like tobacco and nicotine, this addictive component of tobacco to children, that, to me, crosses the line where we ought to say the federal government does have a responsibility to allow this legal product. and if it's going to be to* remain legal to be used, but under a regulatory regime that will protect the most vulnerable among us. many states have effective ways to deal with underage use of

tobacco. i think the regime in my state, in texas, works pretty well, but it's spotty and not uniform across the country, thus, i think, necessitating a federal response. this bill which, as i say, should be really our last resort, and in many ways it is, this bill increases federal regulation, i believe, in a responsible way. under an imperfect situation, where this legal but deadly drug is used by so many people in our country, this bill gives the food and drug administration the authority to regulate manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products. it would restrict marketing and sales to our young people. it would require tobacco companies to disclose all of the ingredients in their products to the f.d.a. there have been various revelations over time that there

were actually efforts made by tobacco companies to provide an extra dose of the addictive component of tobacco, which is nicotine, in order to hook people younger. and i think by providing for disclosure of all the ingredients of these products to the f.d.a. and, thus, to the american people, we can give people at least as much information as we can possible to make wise choices with regard to their use of tobacco or not preferably. it would require larger and more -- and stronger health warnings on tobacco products. this bill would also protect our young people and taxpayers as well. smokers will pay for the enforcement of these regulations through user fees on manufacturers of cigarettes, cigarette tobacco and smokeless tobacco products. nonstphoerbgs will not have to pay any additional -- nonsmokers will not have to pay any additional taxes or fees as a result of this bill.

madam president, i hope this bill does some good. i think it will. but the key to reducing smoking is for individuals to make better choices and for our culture really to change, as it has already changed, when it comes to consumption of tobacco products. and i think about other examples over time where our culture has really changed to where we now do things that are safer and better today than we used to when i was growing up. for example, when i was growing up, seat belt use was very sparse. as a matter of fact, you'd buy a car. and if you wanted a seat belt, you'd have to have somebody install it for you because it didn't come as original manufacturer's equipment. today we know that seat belt use is not only much broader and more widely spread, but you can't get into a car and turn it on without being dinged to death or otherwise reminded you need to put your seat belt on.

the truth is it's made driving in cars safer. it's kept people healthier in spite of accidents they have been involved in and it has not coincident lip helped reduce medical admissions and medical expenses as well. we know there is a greater societal stigma against drunk driving. that was not always the case. as a result of many years of public education and stricter law enforcement now people take a much smarter and more informed view of drinking and the risk of drinking and driving. we know that many americans in dealing with energy and dealing more responsibly by recycling and conserving energy and, of course, millions of americans are trying to do better when it comes to eating right and exercising more frequently so they can protect their own health and engage in preventive medicine, so to speak.

government can't do it all because, as i said earlier, i think individuals bear a responsibility to make good choices. one thing government can do is inform those choices and consumers can make better decisions by knowing what is in the product and allowing f.d.a. to regulate this drug. i believe the real drivers of change, though, are not just the government, not the nanny state who will tell us what we can and cannot do, but cultural influences and indeed economic incentives which are more powerful than government regulations in influencing individual behavior. now, some, madam president, have said why in the world would we give tobacco regulation to the food and drug administration? a federal agency whose primary job is to determine safety of food and drug and medical

devices as well as efficacy. as a matter of fact, many people have been tempted to buy prescription drugs, let's say, over the internet but not knowing where they were actually manufactured, whether they were actually counterfeit drugs. so there's not only the question of safety -- in other words, if you put it in your mouth, is it going to poison you. but it's also if you put it in your mouth taking it spefbgting it to actually be effective against the medical condition that you want. the f.d.a. is a regulatory agency that's supposed to determine not only safety of food and drugs, but also their efficacy. now there is a certain anomaly in giving the f.d.a. regulatory authority for something that we know will kill people and does, in fact, kill hundreds of thousands of people when used as intended by the manufacturer. but i think this is a step in the right direction. i think the world would be a better place. we'd all certainly be healthier if people chose not to use

tobacco, and many have made that choice due to the cultural influences that we mentioned as well as some of the economic incentives that are provided by employers. as we undertake the task of reforming our health system in america, something that comprises 17% of our gross domestic product, i think we could well learn from some of the successful experiences and experiments that some employers have used and some workers have used when it comes to drugs like tobacco. for example, one large grocery company headquartered out in california -- safeway -- which also has many employees in texas, as an employer, they noticed that 70% of their health care costs were related to individual behavior, things like diet, exercise, and yes indeed, smoking.

and they recognized that if they could encourage their employees to get age-appropriate diagnostic procedures for cancer, colon cancer, for example, that they could encourage their employees to quit smoking, if they could encourage their employees to watch their weight and get exercise and to watch their blood pressure and take blood pressure medication where indicated, where they could encourage them to take cholesterol-lowering medication if they had high cholesterol, that they could not only have healthier employees, more productive employees, that could actually bring down the cost of health care for their employees as well as their own costs as well. so, safeway is just one example of many, i think, successful innovations across this country where people are encouraged to do the right thing for themselves and for their employers and for their families. and i think these are the kinds of things that ought to guide us as we debate health care reform

during the coming weeks. but, madam president, i believe that this legislation fills a necessary gap in f.d.a.'s regulatory authority, an agency that regulates everything from dog food to prescription drugs to medical devices. the only reason tobacco is left out of it is because of the political clout of tobacco years ago. and this legislation fills that gap and, i think, presents the most pragmatic approach to try to deal with the scourge of underage smoking and marketing to children as well as informing consumers what have they need to know in order to make smart choice force their own health and for the health of their family. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: and i ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 12:30 p.m. with senators permitted to speak up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: thank you, madam president. i came to the floor to speak in support of the family smoking prevention and tobacco control act and also to express my gratitude to senator kennedy and to my colleagues who have pushed so hard for consideration of