you see north carolina growing clean energy jobs at twice the rate of overall jobs or tennessee, or iowa, growing clean jobs at seven times the rate of the average, or south dakota, who mentioned to beat them all with 19 times the job growth in the clean energy sector than overall job growth, we know that it's common sense and good for our economy. when we receive billions of dollars going to other countries, many of whom might not have our security interest at heart, and every year, see ourselves despite rhetoric of after rhetoric, watching our increasing reliance on fossil fuels and on oil that comes from offshore, leave us vulnerable, we know that energy independence is a common sense solution for our country and for hour national security. but for me, most importantly, when we see polluted air, when i see water that is literally in parts of our nation today making people sick, when we experience historic droughts or in my beloved hometown, horrendous historic flooding, we know that clean energy is just fewer common sense for our environment, for reducing climate pollution, reducing o

if you're in new york or iowa, what impact does the rainforest really have on your life? >> simply put, the survival of our species, of human beings, is directly dependent upon the survival of rainforest habitat. 20% of the world's water is locked up in rainforest habitat. specifically the amazon basin. >> despite its value, the destruction of this habitat continues. brazil is the number one soy producer in the world. and it takes land to grow soy. land without trees. it's also the world's top beef exporter. those two industries continue to expand, and they need land to do it. but not all the trees are cut down for big profits. some are harvested by small farmers eking out a meager living. wherever you go in brazil in the amazon, you'll find that. fire. this is a small fire set by a man who's cutting down a couple of acres of land. this is classic slash and burn. cutting down and burning trees not only clears the land, it releases nutrients into the soil, making the ground more fertile. it's an easy but destructive way small-time farmers do business here. like so many are

people i spoke to during the week whether it is the partners at zingerman's deli in ann arbor or the farmers in iowa or the storekeepers in lincoln city, oregon, they had a very strong connection to the place where they lived, where they had done business, where they had a sense of community. so there wasn't this feeling oh, boy, if i could just kick off the dust of this town and go somewhere else. people are really rooted in the places where they live. >> lehrer: now speaking of traveling, you are about to do some more. you are off to copenhagen to the climate conference. you will be reporting were from there next week. what is going to be the focus of your reporting? >>. >> suarez: well, they have a draft document now. and that's created a tremendous upsurge in interest in the deliberations next week when a lot of heads of state are going to be coming to copenhagen to put the finishing touches on some sort of document that they want to end the conference with. originally when we had planned to goback brahm -- barack obama was going to be there this week and not next week when the other heads of na

but if you were at a coffee shop in some small town in texas or iowa or anywhere else and they were talking about health care reform and i walked into that coffee meeting and said something like, well, do you know the bills before congress are going to increase taxes, they're going to increase premiums, they're going to take $400 billion out of medicare that's already in trouble and put it into another new health insurance program and that we're not going to cut down on inflation of health care, and i said, and i told 'em that's what these bills do because that's what these bills do, they'd say, well, that doesn't sound like health care reform to me because the word reform means that we're going to level things off. we're not going to continue to have the inflation. and people that don't have health insurance would have it, and nobody would expect premiums for anybody to go up. but they're going to go up, particularly for young people like this group here. particularly males 20-30 think they don't need health insurance because nothing's ever going to happen to them. so they decide not to bu

if you were in a small town in texas or iowa, and they were talking about health care reform, and i walked into the coffee meeting and said something like you know the bills before congress will increase taxes. they will increase premiums. they will take $400 billion out of medicare that is already in trouble, and put into a new health insurance program. and we are not going to cut down on inflation of health care. they would say, that does not sound like health care reform to me. the word reform means we will level things off. and people that do not have health insurance will have it. nobody would expect premiums for anybody to go up, but they will go up, particularly for young people. a group of young people will see a fabulous increase in health insurance, and they will also see a mandate from the federal government that you have to buy health insurance. never before in the 225 year history of the country has the federal government ever said to have to buy anything. states can say you have to have car insurance. under the 10th amendment, the states have the power to do that. a federal g

we decide what we're going to do is check the underwear from a woman who's flying out of kiokuk, iowa orhio. and his credit card and back into nigeria and they are suspicious and it's true about those flags being added to the mix. >> right now we're going on a one way and the only way and i gather. thank you all very much for outstanding

we ought to have a chart, i'm sure that we will have a chart to say to iowa, nebraska or any state here, and texas especially, because of the number of folks that we have. so hospitals, hospices, skilled nursing facilities and all of the rest. i want every senior to know that while maybe it is technically accurate again for my friends across the aisle to claim that this bill doesn't cut medicare benefits there is no way -- no way that you can slash a half a trillion dollars from payments to providers without affecting their ability to keep their door open. especially in rural and small-town america. seniors should know they will be left with a worthless benefit to paraphrase my friend, senator alexander from tennessee, it will be like having a bus ticket without a bus. thank you, senator johanns. thank you for the work that you are doing. thank you for this motion. i hope we are successful. i hope people will wake up and understand the severity of what these cuts will do. and i urge every member of this senate to support senator johanns when we come to a vote on this issue. thank you, m

we decide what we're going to do is check the underwear from a woman who's flying out of kiokuk, iowa or of akron, ohio. we need to remember if we have intelligence we apply it and then we approach it logically instead of sort of this broad scattershot look. and i think we just have to be really careful on how we handle this. >> larry: harry, isn't that a logical fear? >> yeah. look, the list system is so immense that statistically we couldn't possibly manage it. to be proactive in collecting intelligence on individuals is a better way to go. >> larry: but tom, he paid with cash, right? you pay cash, no contact information where he was going. wasn't that suspicious? >> well, certainly it should be. also, it's hard to check whether the person is actually who he says he is since a credit card is not involved and you don't know how to verify the address. he bought the ticket in ghana, then crossed back into nigeria to board the flight. so that would be suspicious. along with no check-in luggage. so you know, that point is true about those flags being added to the mix. >> larry: would i be q

president -- if the senator from iowa will -- the presiding officer: the time until 2:00 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the leaders ornees. the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: parliamentary inquiry. how much time will i be recognized for now. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa will be recognized for 13 minutes. mr. harkin: mr. president, i don't intend to use it more, if others on my side are seeking it. but, mr. president, today and every day an estimated 14,000 americans will lose their health insurance coverage. the historic legislation before us takes unprecedented steps to expand this coverage to the great majority of americans. while cracking down on the abusive practices of the health insurance industry. however, expanding coverage alone is not going to solve our problem. the additional 31 million americans who will gain coverage, thanks to this bill, are going to need health care providers. mainly primary health care providers. the doctors, the nurses, many other health professionals whose skills an hard work -- and hard work provide patients with the high-equally health care they need. we're going t

if it is not good for us, it is not good for our friends in iowa or missouri or south dakota or any other either. you should have fixed the bill, not just get a special sweetheart bill for nebraska. that is not what we want. i do not know this for sure. i have not talked to our friends in nebraska. but i am sure that that is what they will say in the next several weeks. if you look at the dow jones news wire yesterday, there are more sweetheart deals. apparently, there are other references to insurance companies who meet certain qualifications and it just happens that the three that qualified are blue cross, blue shield of nebraska and michigan and mutual of omaha. in other words, that satisfies the special interests in the state and against what the vast majority of nebraska and are telling him what to do, which was to not support this legislation. >> i think you have a half nelson, a three quarter nelson, a double nelson, and more. one is exempting many floridians. the three quarter notes and is that senator nelson has excluded the position on hospital construction in his state by chang

iowa. this issue comes up during my meetings with constituents in washington or during the town meetings i hold in each of iowa's 99 counties every year. it's already a challenge under the current medicare program for iowa to compete for providers with urban areas where medicare reimbursement is higher. i hear countless stories from constituents where they make great efforts to recruit doctors, only to lose them to areas where medicare reimbursement is higher. but the medicare buy-in is only only -- will only make this situation worse in my state of iowa because more and more reimbursement would come from medicare. so the current and future medicare beneficiaries would be assured of limited access to providers because of this buy-in. aarp pointed out another flaw in this buy-in proposal. in their analysis, aarp warned that there are large cost-sharing requirements in medicare, so buy-in enrollees would still be exposed to significant cost sharing. maybe these buy-in enrollees would have the resources to purchase supplemental medicare policies to defray these cost-sharing requirements. perha

every time that i told this story in iowa or wherever i've been, people said, they offered 61 amendments, surely they must have been happy about that. they would have voted for the bill. they don't understand it. in the finance committee, deliberation on the bill stretched out for months solely to accommodate the wishes of the republican members of the committee. despite the fact that he bent over backwards to accommodate the minority's requests, all but one republican on the committee voted against the bill. and now today republican senators say they are opposing the cloture petition because they need more time. they say we're rushing things. rushing things. there's a big rush going on here. good grief, this bill's been on the floor for 21 days. we've been deliberating health reform almost the entire day. congress has been trying to get this done since theodore roosevelt. so republican colleagues say "slow down, you're moving too fast." that's absurd and disingenuous. you have to ask yourself: are our republican friends going to be more constructive, more willing to act in good faith af

he lost in the iowa caucus is then in new hampshire was do or die. >> host: absolutely do or die for reagan. the current primary process is that new hampshire falls eight days after the iowa caucuses. if you had taken the current primary schedule and overlaid over the 1980 schedule reagan would lose the nomination george bush would have won and reagan would have become the william jennings bryan of the party will worsted reagan's favor is that he decided to take control and new hampshire fell five weeks after the iowa caucuses that allowed him time to get back into the race. >> host: see you are saying if he had not, if we took modern day schedules come a you would not be president reagan? talk to me about new hampshire. my impression is with modern day politics and terms of reports, they're draw but at tha high school debate that you write about seems to be an extraordinary exception to the role. can you talk to the importance of that? >> reagan leaves iowa collapse of the national polls, new hampshire polls, campaigned heavily in debt. still the campaign aides are saying that just p

iowa caucuses. it was new hampshire do or die. >> it was absolutely do or die for reagan. 's what's interesting is that the current primary process now is that new hampshire falls eight days after the iowa caucuses. if you'd taken the current primary schedule and overlaid it over the 1980 schedule, reagan would have lost the nomination. george bush would have won the nomination. ronald reagan would have become the williams jennings bryant of the republican party, a guy who ran three times and lost three times. what worked in reagan's favor were two things. one, himself, 'cause he decided to take control of his own destiny and number two was that new hampshire fell five weeks after the iowa caucuses which allowed him the time to get back into the race. >> so i think what you're saying is if he had not -- if we took modern day schedule and overlaid it on the reagan campaign, he wouldn't have been president reagan. >> he would not have been president reagan. >> talk to me about new hampshire now. at least my impression is in modern day politics as big as debates may be played

is not a california revolution or new york revolution, a revolution happening and kansas, iowa, places we don't think of where a huge amount of immigration and inter ratio marriage and all the rest is changing our country. that is a big story itself and certainly worth the book of itself. but then there is a family revolution. if you go back to the old majority with the typical american family mom, dad, my kids, usually to. today, one-third of americans describe their own family as being mom and dad and kids. according to stan greenberg. the number one description? love. when asked to describe what the families are in the open-ended question number one answer is love. i can understand that. if you go back to 1968, 88% of the kids under the age of 18 live with a married parent. now 69 and falling. divorce rate has doubled from 1960 through 2000 but it has been pretty stable interestingly prayer at the beginning of our country most marriages ended in death but now and by choice. [laughter] 1965 percent of newborns had unburied mothers but today that is one-third. and rising. among africa

you go to a search engine of choice and type in, who is my united states senator, for the state of iowa or texas, will come back and tell you or you can go to senate.gov and put the name of your state in and it will tell who you your senator is and how to contact them. it will give you their washington telephone number and their phone numbers back home in the state and your senator needs to hear from you in these coming weeks or days that are immediately ahead of us. . you think back to may of 2005 and there were a few senators who were trying to solve problems around immigration. american people said not so fast. we have a say. and they stopped the senate cold in its tracks. but the senate, true to form, decided, maybe that was a miss nomer and maybe they didn't mean not so fast. their switch boards were shut down, their servers were crashed because of the volume of information that was coming in telling them not so fast. well, i would submit to the the gentleman from iowa that we, he and i are going to be hardpressed to stop this in the senate. it is going to require the level of democra

about what is about to happen to them is too important for us to simply give up or acquiesce in what the senator from iowa seems to think is inevitable. there is nothing inevitable about this. the only thing i think inevitable about it is in light of the unpopularity of what is being jammed down the throats of the american people, there will be a day of accounting. we don't know when that day of accounting will be. perhaps one of the first days of accounting will be election day 2010. i just don't understand how people who are elected to represent their constituents can try to impose something that is so obviously unpopular with their constituents and expect somehow to be patted on the back and said, well, you're right, you really are smarter than we are. you really do know better than we do what's better for our families and what we ought to be limited to when it comes to health care choices. i i just think that is an upside-down way of looking at the world and maybe that's the reason why we have these -- such disparate views of what we are engaged in here. clearly on the other side of the aisle, they --

or spa memberships. i raised a point the other day, why should my medicare beneficiaries in iowa have to pay more in medicare so that a medicare beneficiary, say, in arizona, in arizona can go to a spa and have it paid for by medicare advantage? paid for by the subsidies of of $12 billion that we give them. that come both from taxpayers and from medicare recipients right now. so i don't think it's fair for my seniors and i to have to pay for that. now, a lot has been said about all the people that are in the medicare advantage plans. i looked up the figures. right now, nationally, only 18.6% of all enrollees are in medicare advantage. a little less than one out of five. in iowa, in my state, it's 10%. one out of every ten. why is that? well, we don't have a lot of spas in iowa. we don't have those fancy things like they got in florida and texas and arizona and california, wherever else all this stuff is going. but what my seniors need is they need the peace of mind of knowing that medicare -- medicare is going to be there for them in the future. they need to know that they're going to get the benefits that w

all children need the same nutrients to grow, no matter where they live in this country -- iowa, georgia, oronal school lunch and breakfast program? when usda changes the new guidelines, all vendors change their specifications to accommodate the latest science. if there are 50 different markets and not just one, it greatly increases the cost of doing business. that increased cost is passed on to my program. lastly, for each opera -- 10 cents for each breakfast program is needed. we receive about 20 cents in commodities for each school lunch, but there is no commodity for breakfast. we would also like to see, first and foremost, the increased reimbursement for all lunches served by 35 cents. and 20 cents for breakfast. reimbursement rate that it needs to beç updated twice a year to çkeepçt(ç pace withok inflats opposed to the current annual çadjustment. çmanyw3çç vendors escalate tr pricesçtd monthly. the freeç meal program shoulde expanded to include all children who fall below the wickedç income guidelines or 1% with a famy çqualifies for wic, they should qualify for free meal

if it's not good for us it's not good for our friends in iowa or missouri or kansas or colorado or southr. and so if you had that kind of leverage, you should have used it to fix the bill, not just get a special sweetheart deal for us here in nebraska. that isn't what we want. i don't know this for sure because i haven't talk today friends in nebraska. but i'll bet you that's what they're saying and will say over the course of the next several weeks. final points. if you look at the dow jones news wire of yesterday you'll also find there were a couple of other sweetheart deals. the one i refer to specifically mentions the name "nebraska" on page. but apparently there are other references to insurance companies who meet certain qualifications and it just happens that three insurance companies that qualify are blue cross-blue shield of nebraska and michigan and mutual of omaha. in other words, satisfying the special interests in his state and going against what i think the vast majority of nebraskaens were telling him what to do which was don't support this legislation. >> well, i'd just l

iowa. compuserve would try to match it or go higher. and each year we were making money by creating communities online. from the world wide web came along and in some ways it was bad. because a couple things happened. first of all of the web we said wow this is great. we are no longer in this walled garden of online services. we can control everything. as we took the entire magazine and put it online. but we would let people drive by and surf by and read the magazine. we weren't creating a community. at the very most of it was a sort of comment section at the end of the article, but nobody did that. they came by, read the magazine, and moving on. so we lost the notion of community. the good thing is that's changed tack. just in the past five years social media, social networking, youtube, twitter, facebook, myspace him of that notion of creating communities around ideas that content had cut back. the other thing we did when we threw everything online is we assumed that we would, you know, you subscribe to it just like he did anything el

mikulski, and the republican leader or their designees. the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: parliamentary inquiry. there's time now between now and the hour of 11:45, equally divided between the republican and democratic side; is that correct? the presiding officer: correct. mr. harkin: then i assume the thing will be to go back and forth between one side and the other, republican and democratic side? the presiding officer: that will not be an order unless it's propounded. mr. baucus: i think it's very well understood. mr. harkin: madam president, i ask to be he can ared for -- i ask to be recognized for seven minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. baucus: will the senator yield for just a quick inquiry to my friend from wyoming. i might inquire of my friend from wyoming, that article that the senator from quoting from about the costs in "the wall street journal," was that a news article or was that an editori editorial? mr. enzi: it was confirmed by m.i.t., brigham young, and others. mr. baucus: thank you. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa

i yield my time -- or i yield to the senator from iowa. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: yesterday -- yesterday we had a very ear

but the seniors in iowa who have come to rely upon the free flu shots, eyeglasses, dental care that medicare advantage provides, don't really care if they're guaranteed or if they're statutory. seniors in iowa just want to know that they're still have these benefits after health reform is passed. also the senator from connecticut challenged any member to come down to the floor and point out where this bill will cut benefits. he even read a section from page 1,004 of the bill -- page 1,004 of this 2,074-page bill that talks about how the medicare commission cannot cut benefits or ration care. well, i have read page 1,004, and what senator dodd failed to mention is that this section only refers to part-a and part-b of medicare. it fails to provide any protection to medicare part-d, the prescription drug benefit, or the medicare advantage program that covers 11 million seniors. are we now going to start hearing that medicare part-d isn't part of medicare either? in fact, on page 1,005, it specifically says -- the medicare commission can include recommendations to reduce medicare payments under parts c and d, end of quote. now i've asked c.b.o. and they hav

iowa, illinois, and wisconn. the arctic bla brought winds guing to 40 miles an hour. forecasters also wned flights woulbe delayed or canceled om chicago to denver. hureds of police officers rned out in tacoma, washingt today for a memoal service horing four of their fallen. they were shot and killed la moh at a coffee shop. later, police in seattle kled the suspected gunman. today, a processn of hundreds police cars moved from an a force base down reets lined by soer crowds. the merial service was held in the tacomaome. the u.s. govnment will pay americanndian tribes $3.4 billion to ttle a suit over royales. the de ends a 13-year lawsuit brought the tribes. theylaimed the interior departnt cheated them out of billions of dollars in o, gas and timberevenue dating back to 1887. the proposed settlemenmust be approvedy congress and a federajudge. wa street had a down day, over a new case of jitts about the glob economy. the dow jones industrialverage lost 104 pnts to close just below 1028 e nasdaq fell 16 points to cle a fraction under 2173. those are some of the day's adlines. i'll be back at thend of the broadct with

iowa, illinois, and wisconsin. the arctic blast brought winds gusting to 40 miles an hour. forecasters also warned flights would be delayed or canceled from chicago to denver. hundreds of police officers turned out in tacoma, washington today for a memorial service honoring four of their fallen. they were shot and killed last month at a coffee shop. later, police in seattle killed the suspected gunman. today, a procession of hundreds of police cars moved from an air force base down streets lined by somber crowds. the memorial service was held in the tacoma dome. the u.s. government will pay american indian tribes $3.4 billion to settle a suit over royalties. the deal ends a 13-year lawsuit brought by the tribes. they claimed the interior department cheated them out of billions of dollars in oil, gas and timber revenue dating back to 1887. the proposed settlement must be approved by congress and a federal judge. wall street had a down day, over a new case of jitters about the global economy. the dow jones industrial average lost 104 points to close just below 10286. the nasdaq fell 16 points to close a fraction under 2173. th

or three times before, we're trying to fix the health care system. health care reform. the word reform implies all of that. if you were having a coffee clatch in rural iowa this v

or the united states government. >> mr. president i was going to yield five minutes next to the senator from iowa but if there is someone who wishes to go prior to the senator from iowa i would ask-- is it center lautenberg seeking recognition and of so following the presentation. >> mr. president. >> the senator from iowa. >> we have to keep those this afternoon on drug reimportation. these boats mean that today is the day that we can show the american people whether we can repass drug reimportation or whether the senate will give it lip service and nothing else. now, we have heard here on the floor of the concerns that some have about drug importation and whether or not it can be safe. everyone who knows me knows that i care deeply about drug safety. the fact of the matter is that the hon save situation is what we have today. today consumers are ordering drugs over the internet from who knows where and the fda does not know, does not have the resources in fact to do much about-- anything about it. the fact is that legislation to legalize importation would not only helped to lower the cost of prescription drugs for all ame

iowa was on the great plains, the so-called saudi arabia of wind. recognized that a lot of wind farms were going to be built within a 5 or 600-mile radius of their town and there was good transportation and they enticed a maker of blades to come in and a maker of towers to hold the turbines above the ground and, you know, pretty quickly there were some good jobs in that town. the life sciences, another promising area. consider the case of north carolina, which is in recent years lost a lot of textile and furniture-making and tobacco jobs. and has directed a lot of funding to research institutions creating one of the largest and most important bio tech centers in the centers. i met a woman named rerega whitiker who right out of high school went to work in a textile plant and as production started to shift to latin america and asia, she started to get nervous that she was going to lose her job and she took advantage of a new training program that north carolina created for workers like her to train her for an entry level job in biotech and when i met her she was working as a lab technician at a company, a biotech company spun off from rj reynolds and n

iowa. mr. grassley: i would yield myself such time as i might take, and i don't think i'm going to speak more than six or seven minutes, for the benefit of my colleagues that may want some of this time. i want to tell my colleagues why i'm supporting the hatch amendment. in my home state of iowa, there are 64,000 seniors enrolled in medicare advantage. these are seniors that have come to rely on lower cost and particularly additional benefits that medicare advantage provides as opposed to traditional medicare. yesterday, i came to the floor to point out that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are playing word games to cover up the fact that they are raiding medicare, cutting benefits by 64% for these 11 million seniors that have chosen voluntarily to go on medicare advantage as opposed to traditional medicare. so let me repeat, this bill cuts medicare benefits, or let's say raids medicare, by 64% for 11 million medicare beneficiaries. my friends on the other side of the aisle keep saying that they're not cutting, and they use these words -- they're not cutting guaranteed benefits. but this isn'

senator tom harkin of iowa, stood at the podium last night, or early this morning, and said what this debate is about is whether health insurance is a right or privilege. it is -- if it is a privilege only for the wealthy in america, then we've loss our way as a nation. we have to understand that protection of our well-being of health through health insurance is something that every american is entitled to. we have to understand that we're the only nation on earth -- developed nation on earth where a person could literally die because they don't have health insurance. if you thinks that overly dramatic let me give you an illustration. man i met in illinois had a health insurance policy that wasn't very good. it had a $5,000 co-pay. now he had to take that co-pay so that his premiums would be low enough so he could afford it. that men went to a doctor who said, i see some indications that you need a colonoscopy. you may be developing colon cancer. so the man priced a colonoscopy procedure and found out it was $3,000 that he would have to pay out-of-pocket and he said, i don't have it.

or the united states government. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i was going to yield five minutes to the senator from iowa, but if there's someone who wants to go -- is the senator from lautenberg seeking recognition? if not, i would ask the senator from iowa be recognized -- if so, i would ask the senator from iowa be recognized following the senator for five minutes. i recognize the senator from iowa for five minutes. mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. 34 grassley: we have two key votes this afternoon on drug reimportation. mr. grassley: these votes mean that today is the day that we can show the american people whether we can really pass drug reimportation or whether the senate will give it lip service and nothing else. now, we have heard here on the floor the concerns that some have about drug importation and whether or not it can be safe. everyone who knows me knows that i care deeply about drug safety. the fact of the matter is that the unsafe situation is what we have today. today, consumers are ordering drugs over the internet from who knows where and the f.d.a. does not know -- does not hav

iowa's experience is. they are community health centers. in rural areas, it's not rich or poor. and large, most of the people, regardless of their income, go in there, the doctors are there for a long time, the dentists are there. it is, in fact, in the best sense of the word a community health center, open and accessed by all people. people take responsibility for it because it's democratly -- democratically run. it is a program, it is one of the bright, shining stars of public health in america, and i would hope to work with the chairman of the health committee to make sure that these programs are funded adequately in this bill, that we adopt the language in the house which goes a long way. i would yield to my friend. mr. harkin: i can assure my friend from vermont that this senator will be in the forefront of fighting for the maximum possible support, money, and input for our community health centers that we can possibly get out of this bill, i can assure him of that. mr. sanders: i thank the senator very much and yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wyomi

president, i listened to my colleague from iowa earlier talking about meaningless amendments and amendments that don't have any teeth or just meaningless an stuff like that. i listen to that. i want to make it very clear, the gregg amendment is not a meaningless amendment. it has a lot of meaning because what it does is it kills health reform. oh, yeah, this is a meaningful amendment. make no mistake about it. it goes right to heart of what this health reform is all about. making sure that people at the low-income end of the scale have a little bit better coverage. that's people on medicaid. that's section 2001, the tax credits and co-pays in there to help moderate income people and families to afford better coverage for themselves and their families. he guts that too. and, of course, the expansion of the schip program. so, yeah, i say to my friend from iowa, this is a meaningful amendment if you want to kill the bill. if you want to kill it. and i suppose most of my friends from that side of the aisle would like to kill the bill, will probably vote for the gregg amendment. but it completely guts it. completely guts it

iowa senate that actually failed in the house. so this index is right down the line and very well done. just -- and it adds integrity. as you said it's not a democrat or republican issue. and you mentioned that you're working with the u.s. attorney for the northern district of indiana. and that there have been a number of communications there. and i would just ask you if it is so that this panel knows how to recognize people that are working together, can you tell us the name of the u.s. attorney? >> oh, sure. his name is david capp. >> thank you. i want to watch the news as this unfolds. i'm looking for allies that care about our constitutional underpinnings and i want to be able to pat the right people on the back when the time comes. i know you're one of them. and i got to do that just a moment ago. and then to attorney general caldwell, that was a bold decision to go in and do the -- and subpoena that information and go in and pick up the 178 hard drives and the other documents that you talked about. just out of curiosity, i haven't been down there since the first part of july. at that time there was a large -- we call it a barn sign campaign post

or spa memberships. i raised a point the other day, why should my medicare beneficiaries in iowa have to pay more in medicare so that a medicare beneficiary, say, in arizona, in arizona can go to a spa and have it paid for by medicare advantage? paid for by the subsidies of of $12 billion that we give them. that come both from taxpayers and from medicare recipients right now. so i don't think it's fair for my seniors and i to have to pay for that. now, a lot has been said about all the people that are in the medicare advantage plans. i looked up the figures. right now, nationally, only 18.6% of all enrollees are in medicare advantage. a little less than one out of five. in iowa, in my state, it's 10%. one out of every ten. why is that? well, we don't have a lot of spas in iowa. we don't have those fancy things like they got in florida and texas and arizona and california, wherever else all this stuff is going. but what my seniors need is they need the peace of mind of knowing that medicare -- medicare is going to be there for them in the future. they need to know that they're going to get the benefits that w

iowa, senator grassley, walked away. senator snowe, to her credit, stayed at the table, worked hard with people, continues to try to have a dialogue about what it may need or not need. somehow they come here with the notion that they have a right to dictate what's in the bill that 60 senators might think otherwise about. and because they just can't get their way on the big picture, they're even willing to try to block the funding for the troops in afghanistan and iraq. that's just stunning to me. i learned full well firsthand what it's like to be fighting in a war when people back home aren't supporting it, and i vowed that when i came back that would never be a mistake we'd make again. we might disagree with the war but we'd never confuse the war with the warriors, the people fighting it. and in fact, these folks, they don't care. folks on the other side, willing to just hold it hostage, do anything they cannot just to defeat -- do anything they can not just to defeat health care because it is different philosophically how they would approach it. i hope america hears this. this is the party over here that opposed medicare when it was put in. opposed medic

or three times before, we're trying to fix the health care system. health care reform. the word reform implies all of that. if you were having a coffee clatch in rural iowaorning and one of us senators dropped in on it and he started asking us about a bill because they were already talking about health care reform, and any one of us told him that it would increase taxes, it would increase premiums of health insurance, that it wouldn't do anything about decreasing inflation of health care, in other words, costs are going to go up yet and we're going to take $464 billion out of medicare, a program that's already in distress, to setup a whole brand-new government program, you know what every one of those people around the table would say? well, that doesn't sound like health care reform to me. so let's not denigrate the word "reform." i ask unanimous consent, along with my last remarks, to put a letter from the afl-cio in the -- in the record. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: without >> keep up the latest on the senate health care debate on our companion station, c-span2. we will have updates from the reporters and editors of congressional quarterl

iowa. we feel it is imported targeted fiscal assistance from local government, whether air for structured products that we talked about in the group orether energy efficiency block grants or tiger prints or cbdg. those have all worked in the past, and it gets money to where people work and live in were the gdp is produced in the country. we have to target those kinds of opportunities. >> let me pick up on this point, and this may have been discussed in some of the groups. as tough as this financial crisis recession has been on the federal budget, it is in some cases worse on state and local government budgets. about one-third of the recovery act or essentially stabilization, either for individuals in the form of unemployment insurance, were assistance to states so they would not have to lay off teachers and crime fighters and police officers. we did not get a lot of credit for that. i would point out that some mayors and governors who were very critical of the recovery act nevertheless are very happy to get this money. but i think it raises the point that what we have been able to do this year is to stabilize aggregate demand. and th

or his designee. and the final ten minutes, five minutes each for senator mccain and senator ben and from colorado. >> without objection. >> thank you. senator from iowa. >> matter president, i heard the distinguished minority leader and his comments this morning say that one of the reasons they're kind of slowing to spill down and having all this debate is because i quote his words, a strictly partisan venture thus far. well, i beg to differ with the minority leader. nac are distinguished ranking member of our health committee here on the floor. in the health committee, the health committee, let me just again or the alignment of the senators, we have 13 days of markup, 54 hours, 788 amendments for file, 287 amendments were considered, debated, and voted on or accepted. 161 republican amendments were adopted. 161 republican amendments adopted. no one was denied the opportunity to offer any amendment to discuss and debate it and get a vote or get it accepted, whatever the case may be. to me this is truly a bipartisan way of proceeding. it seems to me that the minority leader, his argument, basically goes to the fact that the people of this country over

or the united states government. mr. dorgan: mr. president, i was going to yield five minutes to the senator from iowa, but if there's someone who wants to go -- is the senator from lautenberg seeking recognition? if not, i would ask the senator from iowa be recognized -- if so, i would ask the senator from iowa be recognized following the senator for five minutes. i recognize the senator from iowa for five minutes. mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. 34 grassley: we have two key votes this afternoon on drug reimportation. mr. grassley: these votes mean that today is the day that we can show the american people whether we can really pass drug reimportation or whether the senate will give it lip service and nothing else. now, we have heard here on the floor the concerns that some have about drug importation and whether or not it can be safe. everyone who knows me knows that i care deeply about drug safety. the fact of the matter is that the unsafe situation is what we have today. today, consumers are ordering drugs over the internet from who knows where and the f.d.a. does not know -- does not hav

iowa senate that actually failed in the house. so this index is right down the line and very well done. just -- and it adds integrity. as you said it's not a democrat or republican issue. and you mentioned that you're working with the u.s. attorney for the northern district of indiana. and that there have been a number of communications there. and i would just ask you if it is so that this panel knows how to recognize people that are working together, can you tell us the name of the u.s. attorney? >> oh, sure. his name is david capp. >> thank you. i want to watch the news as this unfolds. i'm looking for allies that care about our constitutional underpinnings and i want to be able to pat the right people on the back when the time comes. i know you're one of them. and i got to do that just a moment ago. and then to attorney general caldwell, that was a bold decision to go in and do the -- and subpoena that information and go in and pick up the 178 hard drives and the other documents that you talked about. just out of curiosity, i haven't been down there since the first part of july. at that time there was a large -- we call it a barn sign campaign post

you know, the senator from iowa, tom harkin, has talked about for years the need to understand why we are seeing more and more people coming down with cancer or heart disease or diabetes or other chronic illnesses which not only cause death and pain and suffering but huge expenditures for our health care system. and it seems to me to make a lot more sense to get to the root of the causation of those problems, try to prevent them, and in the process keep people healthy, save our system substantial sums of money, and we have a lot of resources in there for disease prevention. so those are just a few of the positive elements that are in this bill, and i congratulate the people who have fought to make those provisions possible. but let me talk about some of the weaknesses in this bill and some of the areas where i have real concern. right now, mr. president, today we are spending almost twice as much per person on health care as any other major country on earth, despite the fact that our health care outcomes in many cases are not as good. can i sit up here or stand here with a straight face and say, we have got strong cost-containment provisions