done throughout her whole life where she basically come from nothing, worked her way, got into a good college, got into a good law school, did it on her home, maybe with a little help from her mom who bought those encyclopedia britannicas. this is a nominee who not only understands the law and understands the constitution, but also understands america. thank you very much, mr. president, and nominee. ms. landrieu: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. ms. landrieu: thank you, mr. president. i thank my colleague for her passionate remarks about this passionate remarks about this supporting bob and a woman i consider to be an extraordinarily accomplished woman and commend president obama for his selection.

as the senate judiciary committee prepares for its confirmation hearing, i wanted to come to the floor to express my strong support for this nominee. as we know the supreme court serves as the highest tribunal in the nation as the final arbitrator of the law the supreme court justices are charged, mr. president, with assuring the american people achieve the promise of equal justice under the law and serving as interpreters of the constitution. it's a very important charge. it's our duty as samet terse to insure the members of this high court which we are asked to confirm so it is in partial and fair minded who apply the laws not merely their ideology. the american people deserve no less. a number of my colleagues have expressed concern regarding this

nominee. those are not concerns that i share. having reviewed her reza may and academic credentials, having reviewed her time both on the bench, on the second circuit as well as in the trial capacity she has an expansive judicial record and i think that provides evidence of the kind of judge that she will be just as she will be on the supreme court. she has been described as a fearless and affective prosecutor. she has for six years as a trial judge in new york as i said on the federal district court and 11 who years on the circuit court of appeals, so she has been in the courtroom on both sides of the bench representing a variety of different kinds of clients, and she has written extensively and i think that record reflects the kind of

balance, fair minded intellectual rigor that we are looking for. talking about democratic and republican parties, she has been appointed lead both democratic administration and republican administration. so clearly there were some things seen in her and her surface by president george bush as well as president bill clinton. she's participated in over 3,000 decisions. she has written over 400 signed opinions on the second circuit. if confirmed, judge sotomayor would bring more experience to the supreme court than any justice and 100 years. that's a very strong and powerful statement, and i think compelling statement to the members of this body. i had as many of us had the opportunity to meet with judge sotomayor in my office earlier this month and in addition to

having an impressive professional is a make her personal journey also captured my attention as a young woman from a struggling, very middle class background from the bronx came up the hard way with a lot of hard knocks but with a loving and supportive his family around her to leave her and guide her, tutors and teachers that saw a tremendous amount of promise and potential, and she has most certainly lived up to that promise that her mother, her grandmother and others saw and heard at a young age. and i believe she is the kind of person that would bring not only extraordinary intellect and character and credibility, but it tremendous brett the experience that will be very helpful i think to the court and

issues before them today and in the future. she has not only been a champion in many ways, but her life has been an inspiration to all americans proving that with determination and hard work, anything is possible. and finally, it goes without saying she is a historic choice that will bring a wealth of experience and added diversity to the nation's highest court. when confirmed she will become only the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court and the first hispanic justice in the history of the united states. this is truly a remarkable turning point. i wish she could receive because for outstanding resume, not just because of her gender or cultural background. i believe that her resume should garner the support of a broad range of members of this body. hopefully that is the way it

will come out in the final vote. she most certainly from mauney review deserves our support and i look forward to doing what i can to process through her nomination when it is debated as it is today by the full senate. and i thank my colleague from minnesota. and i yield the floor. >> mr. president? >> minnesota. >> i thank my colleague, senator landrieu, for her kind remarks and thoughtful remarks about the nominee, and we are now joined by the senator from missouri, senator mccaskill, who as a former prosecutor i sure will shed some light on the subject. i also want to thank the senator from kansas for allowing us to take an additional five minutes. thank you, mr. president and i yield the floor. >> thank you, mr. president. >> senator from missouri. >> i want to thank my friend, the senator from minnesota, for helping get us organized this

afternoon to spend a little time talking about an outstanding -- outstanding federal judge. i also want to thank my colleague from kansas and giving us a few minutes to make these remarks. as i started looking i will confess i wasn't familiar with julca sotomayor the issue was nominated and i started looking at her resume and there are some things in a resume frankly amazing that you can get distracted by where she went to school and where she got her law degree and the fact that she has been at several levels of the federal bench and also of course she had a very big job with complex litigation and a law firm the part of her resume that spoke to me was her time as assistant district attorney in new york.

now, i don't know that most americans truly understand the difference between a state prosecuting attorney and a federal prosecuting attorney. well, those of us who have spent time in the state court rooms like to explain we are the ones that answer the 911 calls. when you're a state prosecutor you don't get to pick which cases you try. you try all the cases. when you're a state prosecutor you don't have the luxury of a large investigative staff. or maybe a very white caseload. it would be unheard of for a federal prosecutor to have a caseload of 100 felonies any given time. that's the case load judge sotomayor handled as assistant district attorney during her time in a district attorney's

office in new york. when she came to the prosecutor's office ironically it was almost the exact same year i came to the prosecutor's office as a young woman out of law school. i was in kansas city, she was in new york. i know what the environment is in these prosecutors offices. they are a lot of aggressive type a personalities and it's very difficult to begin to handle serious felony cases because everybody wants to handle the serious felony cases. and only six months judge subtle am i are was promoted to handle serious felony cases in the courtroom. she prosecuted every type of crime imaginable including the most serious crimes committed in our country. she had many famous cases. one was the tarzan murder where

she joined full enforcement officers in scouring dangerous drug houses for evidence and witnesses and after a month trial, she convicted richard mattocks on three different markers and he was sentenced to 67 years to life in prison. a detective had a hard time finding a prosecutor willing to take his child pornography case. sotomayor stepped up. winning the convictions against two men for distributing films depicting children engaged in pornographic activities. these were the first child pornography convictions after the supreme court upheld the law that barred the sale of sexually explicit films using children. and after her time as a prosecutor, she eventually became a trial judge. now, a trial judge is an on usual kind of experience for a supreme court justice. but keep in mind what the supreme court justices do.

they look at the record of the trial. they are trying to pass on matters of law that in many to from the courtroom 18 wonderful nominee we have that has not only stood at the bar as a prosecutor but also sat on the bench ruling on matters of evidence, ruling on matters of law. i am proud of the fact that she has this experience and if she's confirmed, or when she is confirmed, she will be the only supreme court justice with that judge experience because she is replacing the only judge with that experience, judge souter. you know, this is a meat and potatoes moderate judge. this is a judge who has agreed with republicans on her panel

95% of the time. this is a judge that has the kind of experience that would allow her to make no wing and wise decisions on the most important matters that come in front of our courts in this country. we have a gotcha mentality around here. we all engage in this at one time or another. it's gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. it's outgrowth of the political system we all participate in this grand glorious democracy. not my favorite part, but it's real. justice sotomayor will become a supreme court justice after having gone through a gotcha process and we are going to hear a lot of gotcha over the coming weeks but at the end of today this is a smart proud woman who has fought her way through a system against tremendous odds to show that she has integrity,

writ, intellect and ability to pass judgment on the most difficult intellectual challenges that face a supreme court justice. i'm proud to support her nomination and i look forward to the day and i'm confident that the day will come she will take her place on the highest court in the land. thank you, esther president and to the president for his indulgence. >> senator from minnesota. >> i want to thank the senator from kansas and senator mccaskill and senator shaheen and senator landrieu who spoke today. i also know senator children, feinstein, mikulski, locks her and very well be speaking or may have already in the next few weeks on this nominee as will many of my colleagues but all i appreciate this, mr. president and we are excited for this upcoming hearing and glad we are able to be here as ambassadors of truth. thank you, high-yield the floor.

the senate continues work on a health care bill. this is the sixth day the senate health committee has led to mark up its legislation. they are one of a number of congressional -- [inaudible conversations] >> the committee will come to order. >> i thank my colleagues for being here. let me turn to senator enzi for offering the first amendment. >> mr. chairman, i call amendment 55 and this amendment

strikes section 421 which modifies the student loan rates -- you still can't hear me? i thought they fixed that while we were on break. is that better? i called amendment 55 which strikes section 421 which modifiers student loan rates for medical profession guidelines and the purpose of this amendment is to -- there are changes being suggested that are in the bill, the current wall we operate under has a fixed interest rate of 5% and it would change that to be 1.4%. the current law has 18% fixed interest rate for students who default and this bill reduces that to 5.6%. the current law requires individuals to remain in an underserved area and told the loan is repaid and the bill

changes that ten years when the loan is repaid and number four, prohibits hrsa to using par entel financial information to determine student need. i think we have some agreement on the numbers two and three but not on how one and four and i can understand why we would agree using parental financial information to determine student need is not a good idea because we do want this to be for the needy students, not for just everybody. and so i want to concentrate a little bit on those other points because i think they are very important. the default rate of 18% if we reduce debt default rate from 18% then there will be less money coming into the program and they said just 300 people

would not receive aid and i just don't think it's a good idea to make a default rate equal to the current interest-rate. what we are doing is worrying about those who've defaulted. what we ought to be worrying about is what kind of prevention we have to keep them from defaulting. we want them to be encouraged to continue to pay their loan, not to default on their loan and get a mere 5.6 interest rate on it. i think it would encourage defaulting and i don't think that has ever been our goal. and of course i'm from one of those underserved areas, so the idea of having them being the underserved area until the loan is repaid is of prime concern, but this goes a little deeper than that because one of the things as i have travelled around asking about how well and

repayment programs are reduced, most of the hospital's use a loan repayment program to entice doctors to come and when they do that they never have a program as long as ten years. they usually can convince that further to about three years if they will work there for three years they can have the loan forgiven. so obviously they are paying it off three times as fast and what they found is maybe the state one year, about one-third of their loan paid off and then they leave and there's no way for the hospital to come back on them for the part that's on paid so it's kind of a way of cheating the hospital out of -- and that can be solved other ways, too, of course. we could put provisions in there where if they leaves outside the contract it moves back to the principles we had originally. this is a section outside of the

higher education act. this is one that is designed specifically for the medical profession, and i think that we do want to encourage people to practice in underserved areas and take care of the neediest students. we don't want to reduce funding for the programs and that's what my amendment tries to do. >> senator murray. >> thinks mr. chairman. we worked hard at the issue on the fact we need people to go into some of these professions. it's very costly, and we need these people that do go into these professions to work in some of the targeted areas. we know we are short on primary care physicians and other areas so we put together a program to make sure people had access to these programs and stayed in them. working with some of our colleagues on the other side we have resolved some of the issues

senator enzi is mentioned in the statements, senator enzi i'm not sure if you know but in the maria and but adopted before we went to the vote we fixed the family issue you were worried about students having parental information and we did put in the word in dependent so if you are an independent student it eliminates the provisions of that is taken care of. also the issue that you mentioned regarding the beginning of a loan. we had of originally written this amendment that the loan would start at less interest for students in this program than the current stafford loans and i think there was concern on the other side that would mean students would go into the program and default. we did change that in one of the murkowski amendments adopted prior to going to the vote, so both the loan will start out the same as the stafford loan but what we are trying to do here is to encourage people to go into these professions and put high

enough interest rate they will just get the loan and leave. but on the other side of it, make sure the loan isn't so high they say forget it and never take the risk to go into this. so mr. chairman, i do want you to know we have been working with several members on both sides of the kennedy and to have an amendment i hope will be agreed on after we deal with this amendment when senator schakowsky returns it modifies the original proposal so that we do keep 18% interest rate for the first six years to keep people in the program and then reduce overtime so that we make sure people are also afraid to go into these, they do see some kind of willingness to be flexible. but that we don't create such that no one goes into the professions. i think it is a really great modification and i want to thank senter schakowsky and her staff

for working hard to do that with the amendment before us would eliminate the entire program and mr. chairman, i think one of the things we have heard over and over is we have a crisis in primary care and we know the severe shortage of primary-care providers prevent americans from accessing high-quality care. i first hear it in rural communities and now he read in my urban areas. we have to encourage students to go to primary care and decrease expense and potential risk they take in doing so is a fundamental way we can steer medical students into primary care so i would ask the members of the committee to reject this amendment because it eliminates the whole program and hopefully this afternoon we will be able to offer the amendment with senator murkowski that i think what modify and present a very good so what we forward. >> mr. chairman. this would not eliminate the program. this would keep the program the

way it is at the current time. nobody wants to eliminate this program. the reason i bring up the points is i think cbo and others have said that if we do the other two plants we will be reducing the number of providers and of we've reduced the number of providers people have less people getting it and that isn't our intent. the intent is the same on this and how we get there is very important because we want to make sure we have providers want to increase the number of providers if we want to increase the number of students participating in it what we need to do is -- but i will do on my next amendment which has to do with emphasis on primary care because we will have to encourage people to be in primary care. if we are going to be able to take care of the baby boomers coming along and getting more people into these programs. this has more to do with the providers on the loans the and whether they are going to be

increasing the number of loans or reducing the number. >> mr. chairman, i have not seen any cbo report on this whatsoever. if the senator would share that -- >> it's not cbo -- >> it's been used in your remarks. >> i miss spoke. >> we have been working with hrsa and they said the graduated interest rate that you will see when senate term schakowsky offers her amendment they do believe it is a good way to go so we do have that coming hopefully shortly. >> mr. chairman. >> senator coburn. >> i agree with senator marie there is a shortage of primary care. but i disagree as to the reasons why. the reason why is it because we don't have adequate enough loan programs and penalties. it's because there is an absolute economic reason not to go into primary care. and so, i think this title of

the bill fixes the wrong problem. it increases what we are doing by 400% and changes interest rates, which i don't think have any indication. the reason people are all going into primary care is there is a 300% payment differential if they go into a sub specialty. so, we are treating the rahm disease. the disease is economic. it will if in fact you could lower the total cost in pherae that might in fact do it but it's not when you have that kind of payment differential. and what we have to do is instruct in a revenue neutral way increase in payments from medicare and medicaid from primary care. and once you do that, once people see that they can make -- they don't have to make 300% but they could make 50% more during primary-care you will have people flooding into primary care but we have an economic

disincentive today to go into primary care and this won't fix it. this is more of the same and we have had these programs not at this level senator marie proposes. we've had these programs for years. the fact is as people are going to go where they get the vast majority, not all, some truly altruistic that will go and serve in a rural community and make far less income, but in general they are going to go where the money is. why do you rob banks? that's where the money is. when we had one and 50 doctors who graduated this year go into primary care this won't fix that. we have to change the reimbursement and the reimbursement starts with medicare and medicaid and if we don't do that in this bill it doesn't matter how much money we put in the program it's not going to solve the problem so i think we ought to look at it in terms of fixing and treating the

real disease which is economic. and if we treat that, if we make tremendous strides to change reimbursement for pediatricians and in terms, for family practice and psychiatrists, because we have an absolute shortage in terms of psychiatrists in this country, we will see a marked improvement or some combination of both but you can't just do this, this won't work. >> i think i can clear up some of the difficulty on this. yes, it is hrsa and not cbo that said 306 people wouldn't be receiving a. >> that was the original proposal we will modify later. >> okay. but people need to know this default that we are talking about doesn't mean a default not paying their loans. it means the fault not meeting the requirements under which they got the loan but they would serve underserved areas. if they move out of that the default rate goes up.

the move out of there because they are going to get a lot more money so if they are going to get a lot more money we shouldn't be reducing the rate for their default for not meeting the requirements they signed up for to begin with. >> before we go too far down this path i do want to say, mr. chairman, the 306 people that senator enzi just mentioned was already changed and an amendment we adopted prior before the vote and that was because initially we had written the amendment that the initial rate was 2% lower than stafford. we changed that in the murkowski amendment adopted, so the default rate will stay at 5%. >> i would like to ask senator enzi question if i could. >> is your amendment only speaking to decisions, not to nurses and training of their primary health care workers?