that imply russian sovereignty over crimea, its airspace or territorial wawrsz and seventh, prohibit some forms of foreign assistance to countries that recognize russian sovereignty over crimea. madam president, there are very few precedents in post-war history where a state has so boldly and aggressively used force against a neighbor for the purpose of territorial acquisition. this -- what has happened in crimea is a crime left over from an earlier age. we, together with our european friends, must move aggressively to oppose it before it becomes repetitive. at a time when so much depends on vladimir putin's unspoken plans, it is not hard to guess how he will respond to meekness. the american response must be much greater if we want putin to understand his actions in

ukraine are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. at a minimum, i would suggest congress must refuse to recognize russian sovereignty over crimea by passing my legislation. i have imposed a number of sanctions which were added to other measures that i have introduced, and hopefully we will encourage this administration and our european allies to take a much tougher stance and providing much more of a penalty to russia over the actions that it has taken. i urge my colleagues to join me in this effort. and with that, i yield the floor noticing the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: president madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: can we suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blunt: i want to talk a little bit about the letters i've received and the emails and the calls about the health care plan. the numbers signed up or whether the web site worked or not i've never thought and have said repeatedly aren't the test here. the test is, is this a better plan, does it allow more people to have better coverage or does it allow actually more people to have lesser coverage, which i'm becoming more and more convinced that might be the case, the high deductibles, the increase in premiums, the benefit of a couple of years actually where the trajectory of health care costs was beginning -- still going up but beginning to

flatten out, now it's projected to go up pretty dramatically over the next -- the next few years and the recent projections, but the real test here, is this a plan that's a better plan, not does the web site work, i mean the fact that the web site doesn't work shows the ineptitude of government. the easiest thing to do in the world today should be in four years figure out how to develop a web site. so i always say the web site shouldn't be the test of whether the health care plan works or not because the web site will work, apparently a number of states are having a problem, the federal government had a very obvious problem but the web site will eventually work. surely that can't be a long-term problem. and given no other alternatives, people are going to eventually sign up in some number and i'm not even interested in finding whether the number is real or not. i did notice that the president like most of the people i work for in his announcing the numbers the other day referred

to the plan as obamacare again. i noticed he quit doing that since the election, said he kind of liked obamacare in one of the presidential debates in 2012, he liked the term and he pretty well quit using it but with the sign-up numbers he said some people call it obamacare and in his announcement the other day so i guess if he can call it that the people i work for can call that it as well. but premiums rising, deductibles going up, hospitals seeing their -- in many cases their fastest growing column of unpaid debt is people with insurance. now, not too long ago we said that doesn't make any sense. how do people with insurance wind up in the fastest growing column of unpaid debt, it's because people's deductibles are for many families now well beyond a deductible they can pay. if you had a $500 deductible a few years ago and had you a $3,000 deductible today, if you

had a hospital bill, you might be able to put $500 together and think that gets this bill paid, nobody's going to call me anymore, i'm not going to get this repeated notice. but if you have a $3,000 deductible you might just decide i can never pay that he'll sew i'm just going to let them do whatever they're going to have to do and hopefully my insurance company pays enough of the bill that the hospital decides that they're going to not bother me but that's the fastest growing debt in many hospital accounting offices right now, are people who have insurance who aren't paying their part of the bill. but whether it's increases in premium or increase in deductible or can't see their doctor, the people i work for in missouri tell me every week a series of stories that i absolutely believe are true, at least we verified with them before i come to the floor with this -- pulling a few of these stories out, do you mind, timothy from kirksville if i

mention that you've contacted us, i'm not going to give your last name or put it on the record but i would like to show there is some disbursing around the state of this problem and they say it's absolutely true and i told you because i want people to know about this. timothy from kirksville said that his premiums went up drastically in 2013. if premiums continue to rise, he says his family will have to make sacrifices elsewhere in their budget. kim from frank frurt, missouri, said she and her husband's deductible recently increased dramatically to $6,000. so far, she says it feels like we don't have insurance because we have such a high deductible. we couldn't pay it if we ever had to use it so do you really have insurance. kim's parents recently tried to find a plan on the exchange and were shocked to learn that the

cheapest plan they could find offered premiums of $1,200 a month with a $12,000 deductible. the yearly premiums were equal to 20% increase -- equal to 20% of their income. mike from columbia said his health insurance premiums shot up by a thousand dollars this year, and a thousand dollars matters to families. based on the letters i get, there would be some temptation to contact mike and say if you want to look at the whole stack of letters here, $1,000 is really not the worst story people have to tell, but for a working family, it's almost $100 a month, it's whatever you were going to do with that hundred dollars a month that you're not able to do because your insurance just went up a hundred dollars a month and mike doesn't say anything about his deductible or what his premiums are but he just says it's a

thousand dollars more than it was last year. lisa from jefferson city, missouri, the state capital said she and her husband own a small business and even though they don't have to provide insurance for their employees, they have done so and they've chosen to pay 100% of the cost, up till now. now, actually until january this year, no employer had to provide insurance for their employees, but most employers did, 85% of everybody that had insurance got insurance at work. 90% of them thought what they had at work was great for what they neended -- they needed to have for them and their family, a system was working pretty good for almost everybody that had it. instead ofifying figuring out how to expand that system, i'm afraid we've made it more difficult for everybody involved. lisa, the business owner, says that their premiums went up 35% last year. and they've been told already that they'll go up even higher

next year. she says if the premiums continue to increase, they'll soon be able to cover their employees. carol from cameron, missouri, said that her coverage has gone down -- her out-of-pocket costs have increased significantly. her deductible is now $3,500 and she has to pay $65 every time she goes to see a doctor. she worries she'll never be able to use the coverage she's paying for because the out-of-pocket costs are too high and if she ever actually got sick or had to go to the hospital or had a significant condition, she's worried that she can't pay the deductible even though she's paying every month to have this coverage and feels like the coverage is not really insurance for her at all. merrill and his wife at cape

cape jawedo, they have -- cape girardeau, one of their primary doctors has stopped taking medicare and he and his wife are concerned they can't see the doctor they'd like to see, that their co-pays have increased, their doctor left the program, and, by the way, the administration i guess the day before yesterday announced that we weren't going to have the reductions in medicare advantage next year like we had this year, still have this year's -- this year's increase but you won't have next year's increase. whoever thought that paying for a new health program out of medicare was a good idea anyway? $500 billion out of medicare, which was -- gets -- has bigger and bigger problems all the time, as more and more people enter medicare. $500 billion out of medicare to pay for yet another new system.

and apparently even the administration at least between now and the election doesn't think that's a good idea because they just suspended one of the pay-fors. said, well, we did that once and that was kind of painful because people could see what was going to happen to their medicare advantage so we don't want to do that between now and election day, though i think in fairness they didn't mention election day in the rule, they just mentioned it wasn't going to happen in this even-numbered year. mike from kansas city says his premiums went from $600 billion -- $600 a month to $700 a month for he and his wife, his deductible went from $5,000 to $7,500. he says all because of the new requirements and what has to be covered. mark from columbia says that the doctor he's had for 18 years joined a network of concierge doctors because he's afraid of the president's health care plan

limiting his ability to provide quality care to his patients. unfortunately, now that his doctor is part of a private network, mark's no longer able to afford him or to afford to see him, and not covered by the insurance that mark is covered by. all kinds of unintended consequences appear to be happening here when the government decides not only can it begin to involve itself in 17% of the economy of the country, but in virtually everybody's health care decisionmaking process. this would be a big job for a really efficient government in a really small country. in a federalist system where you have 50 states and territories to deal with, all -- and a big country, this is really hard to do, and it's unfortunate that all of the warnings about the unintended consequences about

people at the workplace would begin to have part-time jobs instead of full-time jobs or people that had less than 50 employees that wouldn't want to go to 51 because they'd are covered by a law they're not initially covered by, all of those warnings have turned out to be at least as bad as those people say this could happen we're saying they could be. john went to healthcare.gov to find a plan. the cheapest quote he could find for his family of four was $750 a month. and in john's case, that's almost 30% of his income. he's looked at the numbers and decided it would be more affordable to go uninsured. he said, "i'm self-employed, married and have two children. and though i'm self-employed, i never had any problem affording health insurance for me and my family until now." richard at stoutsville, missouri, his wife's premium last year was $359 a month with

a $5,000 deductible. this year it's $800 a month. and since they're on a fixed income, they've just decided they can no longer afford to pay for her individual insurance because they had to buy it as individuals. i would just say that we need to look at these cases. surely somebody out there has benefited from the system. the people that were able to stay on their -- their family policies longer in a piece of legislation i wrote when i was a member of the house, it was 3 1/4 pages long. apparently it's added about as many people as any other single thing did and it would have added those people whether you had the rest of this health care bill or not, at no cost to any taxpayer anywhere and at no disruption of anybody else's insurance coverage. those are the kinds of things we should have looked at but we need to look at what it takes now to be sure that we have a system that's not measured by

whether the web site works and not measured by an argument about whether people who signed up paid or not but is measured by whether or not this really does provide better health care. health care is critical to families. somebody told me one time that when everybody in your family is well, you've got lots of problems. when somebody in your family is sick, you've got one problem. that's how important health care is and we need to be sure that this is a system that doesn't meet some numerical or technical check the box but really does provide access to what was the greatest health care system in the world. and there are ways to encourage more access to that system and more choices, not fewer choices, and less access and more people who feel like they're paying a premium every month. and if they ever really get sick, they really don't have insurance. and i would yield the floor and suggest there's not a quorum

here. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. moran: i i would ask the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. moran: i would ask to address the senate as if in morning hour. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. moran: thank you. nearly every minute someone in america develops alz phaoeurpls disease. more than -- alzheimer's disease. more than 35 million individuals worldwide. if trends continue the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease after the age of 65 is expected to double every five years while the number over 58 will triple by 2050. alzheimer's is the sixth leading

cause of death in the united states and there is currently no cure and no treatment for this disease. as a nation we must remain committed to defeating one of the greatest threats to the well-being of all americans. caring for those with alzheimer's and other dementia is expected to cost $214 billion this year. $214 billion this year alone with $150 billion covered by the federal government through medicare and medicaid. a recent study outlined that the cost of care for those struggling with dementia is projected to double over the next 30 years surpassing health care expenses for both heart disease and cancer. without a way to prevent, cure or effectively treat alzheimer's, costs will only continue to climb. alzheimer's has become a disease to define our generation, but if we focus and prioritize our research capabilities, it need not remain an inevitable part of aging.

and there is reason for newfound hope. over the last five years, significant strides have been made in understanding how alzheimer's disease affects the brain and body. this new understanding has the potential to lead to new research opportunities and to better management of the disease. in february the senate appropriations health subcommittee held a hearing on the impact of alzheimer's both economic and personal and the state of these current research initiatives. i'm the ranking member of that subcommittee and chairman harkin and i held this hearing to raise awareness of the threat to america's health, the impact on the financial well-being of our country and to highlight the groundbreaking research initiatives currently taking place. for example, until 2009, only one genetic variant was known to increase the risk of late onset alzheimer's disease. however, through advances in genome studies and other technology, the list of known gene risk factors has grown

substantially. now researchers identified 11 genetic risk factors. the national institutes of health are supporting research that supported methods of testing for buy o markers -- biomarkers for onset disease. changes could be a key to unlocking the causes and progression of the disease. n.i.h. has also made significant progress over the past several years and we continue to support them moving more aggressively toward developing new treatments for alzheimer's. related studies on early stages clinical trials are underway. a sustained federal commitment to research for alzheimer's will improve health outcomes for people living with the disease both today and in the future and will also lower health care costs. i have been and remain committed to prioritizing the funding for alzheimer's research. recently i and other members of

the committee worked to include $1 billion funding increase for national institutes of health in the 2014 omnibus appropriations bill. this amount includes a $100 million increase in funding for the national institute of aging within n.i.h. as well as the initial year of funding for the new brain initiative to map the human brain. these research investments are critically important because they will increase our understanding of the underlying causes of alzheimer's, help unlock the mysteries of the brain and help us to be closer to an effective treatment and one day a cure. alzheimer's is a defining challenge of our generation. we must together commit to defeat this devastating disease by supporting the critical research carried out by scientists and researchers across the nation. the health and financial future of our nation are at stake and the united states cannot afford to ignore this threat. together we can make a sustained commitment to alzheimer's research that will benefit our

nation and bring hope to a future generation of americans. the challenge is ours and the moment for us to act is now. madam president, i yield the floor, but before i do that i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. sanders: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont.

mr. sanders: thank you. i would ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: madam president, i hear more and more from people of my own state of vermont, from people in fact all over this country via e-mail, to my web site, who are wondering whether or not this great country is evolving into an oligarchic society. historically, as i think most people know, the united states was the envy of the world for so many reasons, but one of the reasons economically is that in our country there was always the belief that regardless of your income, you have the opportunity to move up the economic ladder, there was the reality -- not just the belief but the reality that we had a great and expanding middle class, that if your dad and your mom didn't go

to college, which was in fact the case in my family, you would have that opportunity to go to college and move up the educational ladder or the business ladder or professional field. and there was in feeling that economically what america was about and what we celebrated was the great middle class. and i think people today, both from an economic perspective and from a political perspective, are beginning in a very serious way to question that reality. and what they are looking at is that today in our country we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth. and, you know, i think a lot of young people say, well, how can that be? in england you have the queen of england and you have all the lords and all the royalty all over europe. we don't have that in the united states. yet the truth is that over the

years we have moved to a situation, where in terms of wealth, we are the most unequal society of any major industrialized nation on earth. and i keep mentioning one statistic, because i don't hear too many other people talking about it, but we need to talk about it, and that is in terms of wealth -- wealth is what we own. wealth is what we have accumulated over a lifetime of work. in terms of wealth, the top 1% in our nation owns 38% of the financial wealth of america. and i would ask those people back home who might be listening, what does the bottom 60% own? the top 1% owns 38% of the wealth. what do you think the bottom 60% own? they own 25%, 20%, 10%? what do they own? well, the answer is, they own

all of 2.3%. all of 2.3% is what the bottom 60% of americans own in terms of total wealth. so if you had a big pizza with 100 slices in it, one person would get 38% of those pieces of pizza, if we looked at wealth, and the bottom 60% of the people who have to share 2.3% of the pizza. i don't think that that is what america is supposed to be abou aboutment, anment, thand situats getting evening worse. in terms of income right now -- everybody goes out and works. you've got millions of people today who are working longer hours, and their income is going down, their wages are going down.

maybe they are paying more for health care. their pensions are going down. but in terms of all new income, new income generated in this country, from the last statistics we corks whic saw, we 2009-2012, in terms of all new income, 95er p of all new income went to -- 95% of all new income went to the top ^1%. so more and more income goes to the millionaires and billionaires while millions of people are working longer hours for low wages, while we have the highest rate of childhood poverty at 22%, of any major country on earth. since 1999, the typical middle-chasclass family has sees income go down by more thank $5,000. you want to know why people are angry, concern the, worried what

is going to happen to their kids is because the median family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999. let me break it down even further. the typical male worker, that guy right in the middle, makes $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. imagine that. in the last 44 years, with all of the increase in productivity, with all of the robotics, with all of the space technology, all of the iphones and ipads and everything illiteracy, where peopl-- andeverything else, whee are now producing much more, the typical male worker made $283 less than year than he did 44 years ago. the typical female worker earned $1,700 less last year than she did in 2007. today in america we have more people living in poverty than ever before, and that's 46.5

million people. and, madam president, here is a fact that should frighten everybody, and that is, half of americans have less than $10,000 in their savings account right now. imagine that. that means that if your car breaks down -- you need to car to get to work -- of our a serious health problem -- and you don't have particularly good health insurance -- there it goes, it goes. and then you talk about people who are getting older who have to real estate tire. how do you -- who have to retire. how do you retire with dignity if you have less than $10,000 in the bank? wcialtion you're going to get social security. and thank god you and i and other members made sure there were not cuts in social security that other people wants. but is social security alone enough? the answer is, no, it is not. what is happening in this

country is that while the middle class shrinks, there is another reality. that is, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. they are doing phenomenally well. today we see a situation in which some of the wealthiest families in america -- the koch brothers come to mind; i'll talk to them in another context. they are now worth $80 billion. in the last year alone, their wealth went from $68 billion to $80 billion -- in one year, one year, a $12 billion increase in their wealth. sheldon ai adelson, another billionaire who's been in the paper a lot, has brought cans to las vegas for the presidency to

talk to them, he also saw a huge are increase in his wealth over the last year. so an oligarchy -- what is the face of oligarchy? the face of oligarchy is what we see in russia, and many people refer -- think of oligarchy and think of russia. in russia, after the collapse of the soviet union, a small number of bureaucrats were able to steal a lot of public property, and they became multibillionaires. they controlled oil companies, banks, gold mines, aluminum companies, television stations and other state-owned companies and that is how they became oligarchs. people say oligarchy, that has to do with russia.

what does it have to do with the united states of america? well, it has everything to do with the united states of america because that is the direction in which we are moving. let me give you some examples of what oligarchs do. when we think of oligarchy, we might want to think of a gentleman named hank mckennel jr., the c.e.o. of pfizer, a major drug company, from 2001 to 2006. and when he retired, he received $188 million golden parachute. $188 million at the same time as the people in our country paid the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. that's oligarchy. when we think about oligarchy, we may want to think about a

gentleman named lee raymond who served as the c.e.o. of exxonmobil from 1993-2005. when he retired -- remember, this is at a time when the vast majority of the american people do not have the resources to retire with a shred of dignity. but when mr. raymond retired from exxonmobil, he received a golden parachute, retirement benefits, of more than $320 million. $320 million, and that's at the same time when people of vermont and all over this country are finding it harder and harder to pay for gas at the pump. and what oligarchy is also about is that in 2009 exxonmobil, maybe the most profitable corporation in the history of america, did not pay any federal income taxes even though in that

year it earned $19 billion in profits. madam president, when we talk about oligarchy, we might want to think about somebody like jamie dimon, who is the c.e.o. of j.p. morgan chase, and he recently received a 74% increase in pay, more than $20 million in total compensation. now, interestingly enough, that's a pretty big salary, $20 million, what did he do to earn it? well, during that same period over the last year, the bank he runs, j.p. morgan chase, paid out over $20 billion in penalties to the federal government for financial fraud. so your reward after paying out $20 billion to the federal government in penalties for financial fraud is to get a $20

million compensation package. that is called oligarchy. no matter what you do, if you're at the head of a large financial institution, you're going to get rewarded for that. oligarchy has a lot to do with a gentleman named william mcguire, the c.e.o. of united health group from 1991 to 2006. and everybody knows the crisis that we're facing in health care. everybody knows that tens of millions of americans today, despite the affordable care act, are still uninsured. and everybody knows that we spend more per capita on health care than do the people of any other nation. and yet, when this gentleman retired from united health group in 2006, he received a $285 million golden parachute.

so we have the most dysfunctional health care system in the world, the most expensive health care system, tens of millions of people uninsured, yet the head of a major insurance company gets $285 million in retirement benefits. that is called oligarchy. but let me take oligarchy away from the economic realm and turn it into an area that i am, and many americans are, very, very concerned about. recently we saw an interesting spectacle about politics that took place in las vegas. and that is that a gentleman named sheldon adelson, who is worth some $38 billion, who is maybe the world's largest casino magnet not only in las vegas,

but off the shores of china as well, he held a meeting in las vegas in which he brought forth republican candidates who are interested in run tporg president. now -- interested in running for president. now here's the point. in the last presidential election both president obama and mitt romney spent a little over $1 billion in their campaign. sheldon adelson, if he provided more money into a campaign than both obama and romney spent, he would still have $9 billion more in wealth than he did in 2013. what am i saying? what i am saying is we are moving towards a situation where people like the koch brothers

and sheldon adelson have so much money that it would hardly matter to them at all to write out a check which would be more than both obama and romney spent in the last presidential election. they could write out a check for $2 billion, and it would be an insignificant fraction of their increase in wealth over a one-year period. and, madam president, as bad as that situation is, because of the disastrous citizens united supreme court decision, we may not have seen the worst yet. judge thomas of the supreme court, most conservative member of a very conservative supreme court, he wrote an opinion which said, you know, maybe we should look at doing away with all

limitations on campaign finance. and many republicans think that that is a great idea. let's do away all limitations. now in the real world, what does that mean? it means that billionaires, people who are worth $20 billion, in the case of the koch brothers, $80 billion, if we moved in that direction and ended all limitations on campaign spending, they could sit in a room -- and, madam president, you come from the state of wisconsin, a moderate state, they could write a check out for $50 million or $100 million and it would not matter at all in to a governor or senator from wisconsin or anyplace else. and i want people to take a deep

breath and think about what we believe american democracy is supposed to be. but when i grew up and what we believe american democracy is all about, and we still practice it in vermont. we have town meetings. people come out, they argue about the school budget and they argue about other budgetary items, and every person has a say and every person has a vote. and i have done in my career hundreds and aupbs -- hundreds of town meetings where people from any walk of life can walk in the door and ask any question they want. because i think what democracy is about is to have people talking, communicating with people regardless of their income, and listening to their comments and answering their question. i do not believe that democracy is about a handful of billionaires like the koch

brothers, like sheldon adelson being in a position in which they can spend as much money as they want on any political race in this country. it is very hard for me to imagine how anybody could defend that as being democracy. it is not. it is oligarchy. it is the power of a handful of billionaires tow cole the political -- billionaires to control the political process. so, madam president, both in terms of economics where so few own so much and so many have so little, and in terms of politics, where a handful of billionaires increasingly are able to determine the nature of politics in america and who is elected and who is defeated, i think we as a nation have a lot

of hard thinking in front of us. and what we have got to ask ourselves, are we going to fight for our democracy in an expanded middle class? are we going to fight for a democracy where one person has one sroept and billionaires cannot fight elections? to my mind, that is the most important issue that we face as a nation. and i hope the american people become engaged in that struggle, are prepared to take on the billionaires who apparently are not content to have $10 billion or $20 billion in wealth. they feel the need to have more and more, and to take that out of the hides of the working families, elderly, sick and the poor. they want more tax breaks for millionaires and they want to

cut social security, medicare, medicaid, education, and every other program that is important to americans. we need millions of americans to stand up and fight with us to defend american democracy and to stop this country from evolving into an oligarchic form of society. and with that, madam president, i would yield the floor. ms. murkowski: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. ms. murkowski: madam president, i come to the floor just about an hour or so after a motion to proceed to take up the paycheck fairness act. and i struggled with my decision

as to whether to move to a measure that i feel was flawed in terms of its approach to a solution, or to recognize that perhaps this was more an exercise in political messaging than an effort to try to resolve what i believe is an issue. and in sorting through all aspects, not only the merits of the legislation, the facts as they exist back home, the facts as they exist around this country where we see pay disparity between men and women. i had a lot on my mind. i had a lot to weigh. i did not come to the floor yesterday to speak with the many who rose to either offer amendments, proposed amendments to the paycheck fairness act, or

those who wrote to speak to defend the act. and skwropbt my silence yesterday to be construed that t think this is an issue here, that i don't think this is something that needs to be addressed. yesterday was national payday. that is when women's wages supposedly catch up to men's wages. we can argue, we can debate what that gap is, whether it's 77 cents, whether those statistics are outdated, whether it's closer to 82 cents, what the raw statistics are. we can debate that. but the fact of the matter is, and i think you and i would agree, madam president, that if there is any discrepancy there, it's worth looking at. why does a discrepancy exist? is there disparity that stems

from discrimination? because if it stems from discrimination, it should not be allowed. pretty simple. in alaska, the statistics are a little bit different than what we have on the national level. equal pay day in my state is not going to occur until may 5. may 5. so as -- as an alaskan and as a woman and as one who has been in the alaska job market, i want to know, why -- why the greater disparity in my state. we had a women's summit in anchorage, alaska, back in september. i had worked with a former colleague in the state legislature to host a summit designed to really look at many

of the issues that women face in alaska, whether it's pay disparity, issues as they relate to child care affordability, access to health care, so many of the issues and concerns tha that -- that women all over the country deal with as they are dealing in their day-to-day. and we relied on a -- a study that the legislative research services from the legislature had prepared, and a portion of that research tried to drill down into some of the pay disparities that we have in the state. in 2010, our state department of labor reported a wage gap of 67 cents, 33%. and this statistic is different than the overall national averages because in that review that was conducted by legislative research, it included part-time as well as full-time workers and our part-time workers just generally

received lowered salaries so that one reason for the -- received lower salaries so that's one reason for the disparity. but when you look at some of the areas where you have the discrepancies, it -- it really does cause you to say, well, wait a minute. in areas where these are occupations that are significantly male dominated -- crab fisherman, for instance, welders on the pipelines -- areas where quite honestly the pay is really quite substantial. you might look at that and say, okay, i can understand why you might have discrepancy, why you might have disparity. but there are some occupations that have some pretty surprising statistics. for example, the average earnings for a male physician back in 2010 was $229,312. but the average for a woman

physician was $166,000. doesn't make sense. it doesn't make sense. in certain areas, you have women who outearn men, dieticians, for instance. the ratio of women to men's earnings is 170%, according to the raw numbers. legal secretaries, the ratio of women's to men's earnings is 132%. teachers, the ratio of women's to men's earnings is 125%. so, again, trying to peel back the onion here and really understanding what we're dealing with. is this a situation where it's the difference in the career choice that has made the distinction with the pay disparity. if that's the case, what are we doing to encourage women to go into areas where -- where quite clearly your earning opportunities are better. so when we look to occupations, i think that that is something

that needs to be considered. but when we talk about a wage disparity, a pay disparity, i think we need to look very critically at to -- as to whether or not there are other factors that come in to place. is it a career choice? is it the need, the desire for flexibility? when i was starting out as a young lawyer in anchorage, i -- i -- when i started out, i was making what the young men in the firm were making. but when i -- when my husband and i decided that we wanted to spend -- i wanted to spend more time at home with our boys, i negotiated for that level of flexibility. well, that put me behind my male counterparts in the firm. i was good with that. that was a choice that i made. i wanted that flexibility. are there other nonmonetary

forms of compensation that perhaps our statistics don't necessarily respect? we don't know, and this is whe where -- this is where i came down in my decision process as to -- to which direction to go on the paycheck fairness act that we had just an hour or so ago. do we want to try to address what i believe is an issue in that we do have a disparity and how we understand what causes that disparity and then what we do with that going forward it is an important consideration. we have the equal pay act of 1963 that imposes strict liability for wage disparity based on gender. it is in law. we have title 7 of the civil rights act of 1964 that protects against all forms of employment discrimination, including basis -- on the basis of sex.

but maybe we are not enforcing these federal laws as we need to. if, after all these years we are still seeing areas of disparity that we cannot reconcile based on occupation or based on -- o on -- on desire for flexibility, is there -- does there continue to be discrimination? and that's what we need to get to. that's why some of the amendments that were presented yesterday that i had supported and many of my colleagues had supported i think were important to -- to present, to make sure that there is no retaliation for -- for a woman when she inquires as to what others are making to determine whether or not there is discrimination. so making sure that -- that we're able to access that information. but when you take a proposal like we had with paycheck --

paycheck fairness, that has an initial presumption that the employer has unlawfully discriminated against an employee if there is a difference in pay, if you start off with the presumption of discrimination, it's pretty hard for an employer, particularly a hard employer, to -- to deal with that, to defend that, to present the case, to -- to really work through these issues. this -- the solution should not be more litigation as our response here. the solution really needs to be more all-encompassing because we have laws that are on the books that already say it is illegal to discriminate. but if we're still seeing incidences of discrimination -- and, again, let's figure out where and why and how -- then let's honestly try to address that. rather than through messaging

efforts that are designed to elevate the issue, which is fa fair, but then not be pragmatic about how we approach the solutions. and so, mr. president, there was a -- there's one final point that i want to include and i'd ask that a copy of an article that was included in this morning's "washington post" regarding president obama's persistent 77% claim on the wage gap gets a new pinocchio rating, be included as part of the record. but included in this article is the following quote and it's referencing a study that is done by the census bureau. and it says, "this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage

gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. indeed, there may be nothing to correct." i don't know that, mr. preside mr. president. there, indeed, may be more that we can correct. and i'm willing to look to see, to continue to peel back this onion to see if we can do more than we have done with the equal pay act of 1963, doing more than we did with the civil rights act of 1964, doing more than we did with the lilly ledbetter act that i supported just several years ago. if there is more that needs to be done, i'm willing to work on it because i don't want to be in a state where men are being viewed as being paid a dollar to the 67 cents that a woman is being paid. i don't want those statistics to be valid. i don't want them to play out in my state.

i want to understand how we ensure that there is a level of fairness. but i do think that we need to make sure that we're looking keenly to the issue of whether or not there is discrimination at play or whether in fact there are a host of other issues that we need to consider as well. and i'm willing to work in good faith with my colleagues to do just that. with that, i see that the chairman of the judiciary committee is with us, and i will yield the floor to him. mr. leahy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. leahy: mr. president, i thank the distinguished senior senator from alaska for yielding, and i was interested in hearing her speech, too. and i have 11 unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the apriewl of the majority and minority leaders.

i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed ato understand a printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president, you represent the beautiful state of massachusetts. consider i in your state of massachusetts, if 15% of the land area of your state was littered with 100,000 land mines. or my state of vermont, which is slightly larger in land area, if we were littered with 100,000 land mines. and think of these as each one a tiny explosive buried a few inches beneath the surface of the ground, and they explode when an unsuspected person steps on it. each one is capable of killing a child or blowing the legs off of an adult. now, that may sound far-fetched, but it is not.

it is a reality today for many countries, from vietnam to angola to colombia. but i'll tell you this, mr. president: if that were a reality in our state, i think we'd all gray agree that these inherently indiscriminate weapons designed to be trirld bay civilian, whether a combatant or civilian, to not blow in th -- do not belg in the arsenal of a civilized country. countries have joined in an international treaty banning them. 161 nations. they include every single member of nato, except one: the united states of america. they include every country in this hemisphere except two: the united states of america and cuba.

now, we condemn the use of i.e.d.'s against our soldiers and civilians in afghanistan. of course we should. but why not be condemning antipersonnel land mines? because there's really no appreciable difference. the distinguished presiding officer in his earlier service in the house of representatives, i know, always voted to ban land mines. so i realize i am perhaps preaching to the converted to him. but i'm hoping some will be listening to me at the other end of pennsylvania avenue, because i ask this: if land mines were littering this country in schoolyards, along roads, in cornfields, in our national parks, and hundreds of american children were being crippled like this cambodian girl who lost her left foot, how long would it take before the

white house said the mine ban treaty to the united states senate -- sent the mine ban treaty to the united states senate for ratification? two days, two weeks? it wouldn't take any longer than that, i'm sure. but we hear the same excuses year after year. i look at my grandchildren, five beautiful grand children, and i think, what if they were living in a country where simply by awing walking across a field, going to a playground, walking down a road, they might lose their life? they're not combatants. it is usually noncombatants who are injured and killed by these land mines. but when we hear these same excuses year after year why the most powerful nation on earth can't join its nato allies in signing this treaty, why the most powerful nation on earth is the only country other than cuba in this hemisphere not to sign it, what do we get?

the same talkingpoints, the same boring power points. so it's really bureaucratic inertia. but it is also lack of leadership. for 20 years, the pentagon says korea is the problem. but 20 years later, there is absolutely no evidence they have done anything to revise the korea war plans with antipersonnel mines or that any president, democratic or republican, has ever told them to do so. now, the u.s. government deserves credit for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clear mines, help mine survivors. i would also note the leahy war victims fund has been an important part of that, including the money i have gotten through appropriations to clear these land mines. but this