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tv   [untitled]    August 1, 2011 6:24pm-6:54pm EDT

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july 29. she fought a relentless disease for more than two years. she didn't want a funeral, a memorial service or an obituary. but those of us who knew and admired agnes could not allow this passing to go unmarked. agnes was a miracle worker and i'd like to take just a few moments just to share a small fraction of the wonderful things she accomplished in her life overral 0 -- over 80 years. she was an incredible woman who founded a generic drug company 40 years ago when a woman c.e.o. was an uncommon thing. after great success in business, she turned her time and support to people she cared about. from her tireless support for affordable drugs to her generous and unwavering assistance to students, artists, musicians and animals, agnes was an angel to many.
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agnes was a woman who didn't take no for an answer. she fought for battered women of bergen county, new jersey, helped out music lovers seeking affordably priced tickets, supported and cheered on women in politics and generously improved the nary science in animal shelters. when you met her, she was a powerful woman and a caring woman. she combined both of those features in a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful human being. she came from humble beginnings, and maybe that's why she never stopped making a difference in the lives of those around her. she would see somebody who she hardly knew and hear about their plight and then move heaven and earth to help them. she was just a generous soul. she knew that education, success and culture were essential ingredients to a happy life. she brought all of those gifts and opportunities to thousands if not millions of people. dr. agnes varis was born in massachusetts in 1930, raised in
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brooklyn, new york, my hometown. she was the only one of eight greek immigrant parents -- she was only one of eight greek immigrant parents to attend college. she earned her degree in chemistry from brooklyn college and later attended n.y.u.'s stern school of business. right out of school, she took a job in a chemical manufacturing company that focused on bulk pharmaceuticals and her smarts made her incredibly successful. agnes was a pioneer and a leader in the pharmaceutical industry. as president and founder of agvar chemicals and aegis pharmaceuticals, dr. varis worked tirelessly to increase the accessibility of life-saving parmts for people in the united states and around the world. she was one of the founders of the modern generic drug industry and a key player in the adoption of the waxman-hatch act of 1984
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which created streamlined approval processes for generic pharmaceuticals. it's the reason affordable generics exist. today, just about every one of us takes generic drugs. their low cost savings people money and most importantly makes those drugs accessible to people who might otherwise not afford them. in this way alone, agnes probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. she was the one who introduced me, along with a few of her friends, to the issue of generic drugs and why they were so important, and i worked very hard on that issue for -- i have worked very hard on that issue for over a decade, decade and a half, and it was agnes always importuning me on. now, she was always generous as well as being a skillful and savvy businesswoman.
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nearly 1,000 unemployed service workers who lost their health insurance in the aftermath of september 11 got agvar generic drug plan cards which were good for a year, and they gave free generic drug prescriptions at any duane reed pharmacy in new york city. isn't that amazing? no one asked her to do this. she heard it somewhere or other that there were people who lost their jobs and she knew they needed drugs so she bought them a drug card. and at the height of the aids epidemic in africa, agnes helped broker an arrangement between the clinton foundation and an indian generic pharmaceutical company to provide affordable aids medications to african nations at a very low cost. this was written up in all the newspapers, but not agnes' name. she didn't want her name out there. she just wanted to do good, help people who needed help, save lives.
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agnes and her husband carl were great music lovers, they loved classical music. just as she brought affordable drugs to market, she supported the arts and made music and concerts more affordable to all. she donated the agnes varis performance stage to jazz at lincoln center and sponsored the jazz foundation of america's national education children, children's jazz in school program which employs elderly jazz musicians just like agnes. she knew there were elderly jazz musicians who were out of work and struggling. she knew that bringing jazz to young children would be a great thing for many of them. she combined the two and just did it. that was agnes. she was one of the metropolitan operas in new york city, one of the greatest operas in the world, she was one of its most generous and engaging board members. she was committed to bringing opera, typically, again, to the widest possible audience, including those who could not afford tickets.
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in 2006, she funded the enormously popular agnes varis and carl leichman rush tickets program which offered expensive orchestra seats for $20, $25, affordable to one and all. in 2009, dr. varis was appointed by president obama to the president's commission on the arts and humanities. she was a great lady, a rare lady. someone who combined so many different attributes and made a powerful impression, even if you only met her for 10 minutes. agnes, we will miss you. all of your good works and all of the possibilities and opportunities that you made for others will allow your spirit to live on. god bless you, agnes varis. and mr. president, i -- i yield the floor.
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a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio -- the senator from west virginia and i were having a colloquy. mr. brown: could i for a moment, mr. president, i only wanted to add my voice to yours about agnes varis, and i appreciate the senator from west virginia, the junior senator from west virginia giving me a moment or two. i've known agnes for many years, i've worked with her on generic drug issues for the last decade, more than that when i was in the house of representatives, and she had a commitment for the underdog that is rare in this world, especially for someone as
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successful as she was. i remember hearing her story as a greek immigrant and with -- with a mother who actually could not read and write and how agnes was so important to that family after her father died when agnes was a very young woman, a girl still. and how agnes went to brooklyn college and was the only woman i believe the only woman there at the time. and something else agnes did, and i apologize to the senator from new york, now the presiding officer for not hearing all of his remarks but agnes really stepped up after hurricane katrina and helped not just give some of her wealth to these musicians who didn't have jobs because of the disruption in new orleans, but stepped up and actually hired these musicians so they were actually working, not just getting help from her, hired them to go around 0 the schools and through much of louisiana and play for students and teach students music, and if nothing else,
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for those students that had the musical talent most of us have which is limited, help those students appreciate music and appreciate jazz. so she was a -- just a terrific woman that i last saw maybe a month and a half ago, and i miss her. i miss her already, and miss her laugh and her smile and her service to not just the new york and new jersey where she lived but much of this country. so mr. president, i thank you again, the junior senator from west virginia and yield. the presiding officer: the junior senator from west virginia is recognized. mr. manchin: thank you. it's hard to add to your recognition of agnes and my colleague from ohio. you can tell agnes touched quite a few of us in a lot of different ways. agnes was a friend of mine, and also a friend of my family's. she was a dear mentor to my daughter, heather, who is in
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the industry, and we're all going to mourn her passing. heather introduced me to agnes about 10 years ago, and from the first day i met agnes she was the type of person that i always heard my grandmother would say people don't care how much you know until they care how much -- people don't know -- don't know how much you dare until they know how much you care. the thing about agnes was, it wasn't how much had you here but what you had in your heart and agnes was that type of person that was truly remarkable. she lived anistonnishing life as you referred to. she represented the best in our country. and she truly 4reu6d the american dream. agnes was the first generation american and went to college at the time when few women attended college. she started at the very bottom rung of a chemical industry and worked her way up the ladder the top. she was truly an entrepreneur and she and her husband carl as
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you mentioned love the arts. but they also took a risk. they took their life savings, together of about $50,000, to start agvar chemicals. agnes was a fortunate american. she used her wealth to support the crawzs she most believed in especially the arts, women's issues, and caring for the works in new york after september 11 and as we heard from our colleague from ohio, after katrina. agnes was always, would tell my daughter heather you could see a lot more from the edge than the middle and it was the few who were willing to be on the edge that created the right middle. that deep and poetic statement is a piece of wisdom many in this country could benefit from hearing. agnes had such a generous spirit, and over the years my daughter heather sought her ag-vice as she called it many times. so our entire family and all of our colleagues who knew agnes well are definitely going to
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miss her and our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family, and i'm just glad that we had a chance to honor agnes on the floor of the u.s. senate. i know she would be so proud and i want to thank my colleagues for recognizing her also. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. rockefeller. i just wanted to hear you say it. the presiding officer: the senior senator from west virginia. mr. rockefeller: we are entering the second week of a partial shutdown of the federal aviation administration. i know that the congress, the president, and the american people have been focused on the
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debt, deficit crisis, but behind that and not in the shadows to those of us who care about aviation i want people to understand that what has been happening to the f.a.a. is causing enormous pain. throughout the country. and the pain will only grow because of an apparent shutdown of the attempts to pass the federal aviation administration bill, primarily because of the house. the -- because congress has failed to pass a 21st short-term extension of the f.a.a. -- do you understand what that means? in other words it's simply saying i'd like to have a clean bill of extension. that's all. no policy, just a clean bill to give us another several weeks to work on some of the complicated issues. so we've 20 times we've done
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that over four years. and there's been no objection. the 21st time there's content content, suddenly policy is injected into the request for a clean extension or the response to the request. and in this time nearly 4,000 hard-working federal aviation employees have been furloughed. that means they go without pay. if things follow the current course as i believe they will, they will go -- at least another month or more without pay. i don't know how many of them can continue to stay in their jobs. mr. president, i'd appreciate order. it has halted hundreds of critical airport projects. to be honest the whole prospect
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of the nextgen, that is the ground based g.p.s. system of tracking planes and how far they are from each other, once we have that like every other industrialized country they'll be able to land so quickly and efficiently and much less delays. they've suspended payments to hundreds of small businesses dependent upon reimbursement from contracts that they have made with the f.a.a. for their work. so that just stops. things just come to a dead halt. runways, you know, control towers, whatever, they just stop. and they will say stopped, they'll just remain stopped. and as things are going now throughout the months of august and early part of september. they have forgone more than $250 million in aviation tax revenue that is critical into to supporting our aviation system. that's about $25 million a day, mr. president, that's meant to
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go into the airport trust fund that does not. and by the end -- by the time we return, that will be about a a -- $1.2 billion. mr. president, could i have order. the presiding officer: order in the senate, please. mr. rockefeller: very shortly i will seek unanimous consent to pass a clean extension of the f.a.a. and it will be objected to. by the senator from utah. it in some ways you can say it's a futile gesture but it's all that i've got left. it's all i've got left. in trying to take this incredible process which we've been working on, senator hutchison and myself, forever, forever. with so much damage being caused, you might ask why not all of my republican colleagues but some of them have refused repeated requests to pass a clean extension.
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so i'm here in the senate, mostly all in the house, all the leadership in the house certainly. so i want to outline how we have in fact in my judgment come to this point. the chairman of the house transportation infrastructure committee, which is called t.n.i., that chairman is my counterpart on the conference committee. now, he has certain jurisdictions and i have certain jurisdictions. they're not always the same. he's transportation and infrastructure. that doesn't comport exactly with the jurisdiction of the commerce committee. but in any event, he seems willing to shut down the f.a.a. f.a.a., it's certainly going to stick it to the f.a.a. employees and there will be many more of them by the time this is ended,
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and it's a tragedy which never had to happen. it's a tragedy about ego, about bullying, about an attempt to prove one side would cave. it's sort of the worst kind of political bickering that the american people are so sick of. but this time they're going to pay a terrible price. they are insisting on anti-worker language that didn't even pass the house. it has to do with the national mediation board. they tried that in the house, it didn't pass. so they want us to do it. they have jurisdiction over the national mediation board. the commerce committee does not. that's in senator bingaman's health committee, health, education and labor committee.
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and what they want now is much stronger than what they defeated themselves in their own house. and they know full well that the house 0 passed language that was voted on failed in the senate. they know full well that this was destined never to happen in the senate. they knew full well the president of the united states had already said publicly a number of times we veto anything which contained this kind of language for the national mediation board. basically changing 75 years of labor law. to be just a little bit explicit about this because it's interesting, the -- what they want to do is have a system wherein if when you're voting, joining a union or whatever, and let's say i'm a worker but my mother is very sick, so i'm at home taking care of her, so i don't vote, the fact that i didn't vote doesn't mean i just
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didn't vote, it means i voted no. thus helping the company, thus tilting in a very odd way, very un-american way what an election is all about. we have not had a formal conference. senator hutchison and i have resolved over 200 -- and maria cantwell and john thune, we've resolved over 250 differences between the house and the senate. and now they're only -- there are only about 12 that remain to be resolved all of which can be resolved. but that's of no consequence. i also sent over a suggested language on significant program like the essential air service program six weeks ago to the chairman, chairman mica, that reforms in a way that saves $71 million each year for the four years of the bill in the
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essential air service program. six weeks ago, the house passed a clean short-term extension. the 20th. like every other extension has gone on around here forever. passed it clean, no policy, nothing in it. just extend it so we have more chances to talk. but then they promptly left on a week tour of european and middle eastern airports, which made it a little more difficult to talk. since they returned, i've been told that unless and until the senate accepts house language on their proposed changes to the national mediation board, they would negotiate no further. and that message was reaffirmed in the strongest terms this afternoon on a midafternoon basis. you know, this all started with delta airlines. delta airlines is out of
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atlanta, georgia, and they've had four -- they don't like -- they don't have any unions. that's their business, not mine. and they've had four elections. unions have tried to organize four times. four times the unions have lost. so it would appear that their chances aren't very good in the future, but that doesn't stop delta. they want to make sure that we put in place a structured system which is out of kilter to a fair election for that kind of -- and other purposes with other unions. so what they then did, they sent over an essential air service policy rider on the extension. unprecedented. with which we didn't agree. and, therefore, one, you don't do it in the first place, and if
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you do do it, both sides have to agree to it before you send it over and then it's easy to say okay, we'll extend it, and then we include that policy because both sides have agreed to it. but they sent over an essential air service program specifically targeted at rural communities in the states of democratic senators. if the house were serious about reforming the essential air service program, it would have stayed at the negotiating table. they would have welcomed the chance to come back. the house-passed extension is not about good policy, it's about politics and everybody knows that. so here we are on the eve of august recess and we have a choice tonight. we can pass a clean extension and put people back to work, all the 4,000 people furloughed now who have gone for some period of time without any paychecks, they would all be taken back, life would be as it was before through september 16.
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so that's another month and a half of -- of wages they would have to feed their families and contractors could go back to work, projects at airports and related facilities could continue. very, very important. aviation is 16% of the american economy, of the gross domestic product. we have inflicted far too much damage on our aviation system for the needs of one airline -- one airline. so i urge my colleagues to allow this consent agreement to go forward. it won't but if you believe in a goal of having an f.a.a. system which is funded and which is well, which can take on the incredible technological needs that we have to, in particular the next-generation system, which is not just ground based but also the avionics have to be placed in every single plane that flies, that's a -- that's a
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major undertaking. and what they've done at the -- by their decision is to take $25 million a day outside, away from the airport trust fund. well, the airport trust fund can't afford that. so what i want the airlines to be thinking about over the next number of weeks until we can get back at this, unless everything suddenly changes tonight -- i doubt that -- how they're going to divide up between themselves the $1.2 billion that they will owe to the airport trust fund. i commit to the president of the senate and to my colleagues that i will do everything i can to make sure that not just the $250 million which they've already vanquished out of the airport trust fund, which we depend upon for everything, but
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the billion above that, that will happen, that $25 million a day, because they just didn't want to have -- they didn't want to give up anything so they could have their national mediation board stacked the way they wanted it. and in a most unfair, most un-american, to me, way. so having said that, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of calendar number 109, h.r. 2553, that a rockefeller-hutchison substitute amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. hatch: i object. mr. president? the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. hatch: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: for the third time in a week, i must object to another short-term federal aviation
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administration extension. and i want to make it absolutely clear that a long-term f.a.a. reauthorization is a priority for this country and it's a priority for me, for myself. the current lapse at f.a.a. taxes and expenditure authority from the airport and airway trust fund is a detrimental situation brought about -- brought on by the senate majority's refusal to engage in substantive negotiations on a long-term f.a.a. reauthorization bill, which, by the way, did pass the house. additionally, it isn't clear to me that the legislation just offered would avoid a retroactive tax increase on travelers. i didn't set out to cause f.a.a. taxes to expire but reinstating them to a retroactive basis is more than i'm willing to subject taxpayers to. and as i've already said, i share house transportation and infrastructure committee chairman mica's frustration and the frustration of republican
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leadership in both the house and the senate that favors to organized labor have overshadowed the prospects for long-term f.a.a. reauthorization. last year, the national mediation board changed the rules under which employees of airlines and railroads are able to unionize. for decades, the standard has been that a majority of employees would have to agree in an election to form a union. however, the new n.m.b. rules, national mediation board rules, changed that standard so that all it takes to unionize is a majority of employees voting. now, this means that the n.m.b. wants to count an employee who doesn't vote as voting for big labor. somehow organized labor is able to claim that it is democratic to appropriate someone else's vote without that person's input and participation, even though that's been the -- even though
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the rule that i'm talking about has been in place for 75 years. they just changed it in favor of the unions. and unions win, at least the nlrb proceedings, they win 60% of the unionize attempts. now, i personally have not had any communication with anyone in the industry. i'm here because i think what the n.m.b. did is absolutely wrong and someone needs to stand up to them. this issue is much larger than the n.m.b. itself and the airlines and railroads impacted by the n.m.b. ruling. if the n.m.b. succeeds and the administration is allowed to put their thumb on the scale in favor of big labor, in contradistinction to 75 years of labor law practice, every small bu

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