Mexican Barriers to Imports of U.S. Agricultural Products

MEXICAN BARRIERS TO IMPORTS OF U.S. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS

IMMIGRATION AND DRUG COSTS

    Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, one of the most fascinating aspects of this job in the Senate is the myriad of issues that come before us in the course of a day or week. If you followed over the last few moments the two speakers—one from Alabama and one from Iowa—they both were speaking about related issues.

    My friend from Iowa and I share an interest in agriculture. His State and mine lead the Nation in the production of corn and soybeans, and naturally we try to export our goods to expand our trade. And he is concerned—and I share his concern—about Mexico. We both voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in the belief of opening up—and it has opened up—trade substantially between these two neighboring countries, the United States and Mexico. But we have run into some problems here, problems related to corn, as my colleague from Iowa noted, whether we can export white corn to Mexico, which, of course, is a major staple of their diet, being the basis for tortillas, part of the Mexican cuisine, and also whether we can export a product made from corn called high fructose sweetener.

    For people who may not be familiar with that term, trust me, virtually every soft drink that you consume in America has high fructose sweetener in it rather than sugar. We want to sell it in Mexico, and they do not want us to sell it there. Frankly, they want to export more sugar to the United States.

    So this trade battle is on. The Senator from Iowa is right, this has been going on too long, and it has to come to an end.

    I would say to our friends in Mexico—and they are our friends and allies and neighbors—we have to resolve this.

    We have to resolve it equitably and honorably, but it has to be done with dispatch. So I certainly support what the Senator from Iowa said.

    Now, before he spoke, the Senator from Alabama got up to speak about immigration. And here is the story, as I see it, related to this trade issue.

    If the farmers in Mexico—who are struggling to grow their crops, with much less efficiency and productivity than the farmers in the United States—are unsuccessful in their farms, many of them move to the city. It is very common. It happens throughout the developing countries of the world. If they move to the large cities in Mexico and they cannot find a way to sustain their families, there is an alternative: El Norte. They head north. And we have seen a dramatic migration from Mexico to the United States.

    In the last 10 years, my State of Illinois has seen a substantial increase in the Mexican-American population. I know it; I see it; I feel it. It is now part of our life in Illinois. The people who have come here I have found overwhelmingly to be some of the finest people I have ever had a chance to meet. It takes real courage to get up and leave your village, your family, your church, your language, your tradition, and to head thousands of miles north into the bitter cold, trying to find a job, to make enough money to sustain yourself and maybe sending back some money to your family in Mexico. Thousands have done it. Many have done it undocumented and illegally, and that is another issue.

    I will say, it is naive for us to believe these undocumented immigrants to the United States have not become an integral part of our economy. They are. A leading restaurateur in Chicago said to me: If you removed all of the undocumented people from the restaurants of this great city, you would have to close them down. Every time you turn around and see who is washing the dishes, busing the tables, doing the work—some of the hardest work in my State and others—you will find a lot of people who are here perhaps without legal documentation.

    A few minutes ago, the Senator from Alabama said he objected to a provision in the bill we have been debating, S. 1, the prescription drug bill, because this provision says that those women who are legally in the United States—legally in the United States—would be able to qualify for Medicaid coverage and their children for basic health insurance coverage if a State decided to offer that coverage.

    That is what the bill says. So if the State of Missouri or the State of Illinois or Iowa or Alabama says: We are not interested in offering Medicaid coverage to legal immigrants who have not been here 5 years—legal immigrant women—then they do not have to. Twenty States have decided, though, it makes good sense to go ahead and enroll these legal immigrant women and their children into Medicaid at their own expense.

    Why would a State Governor and legislature decide to pick up and cover these people? Well, for obvious reasons. Women who come to this country in a legal immigrant status often become pregnant and during the course of that pregnancy need prenatal care. If they do not receive prenatal care during their pregnancy they could end up with complications in the pregnancy or some serious illness facing the child.

    Now, Governors and legislatures have said it is far better for us to offer prenatal care to that legal immigrant woman and her child, once born, than to run the risk they are going to be unhealthy, not only for their own sakes but for the cost it would bring to society. I think that is perfectly sensible.

    The Senator from Alabama objects. He says we should not give States the option to provide, with Federal assistance, that kind of medical care. I think that is a mistake. I think the bill is right. The bill understands that these women, during their pregnancy, are carrying future American citizens. Those babies, once born on our soil, are citizens.

    Is it important for us to make sure—or do the best we can to make sure—those mothers are healthy and the babies are healthy. Well, if not for the sake of humanity, certainly from an economic point of view it is. A sick baby is not only a family tragedy, it becomes a social cost. So this bill, by giving to States the option of offering Medicaid to legal immigrant women and health insurance to their children, once born, I think just makes common sense.

    It will be interesting to watch the vote tomorrow to see how many Senators in this Chamber, who feel very strongly about the so-called pro-life position, who want to make certain that we avoid abortions and that we honor the children who are being born, join the Senator from Alabama in denying prenatal care to legal immigrant women and denying their babies, once born, health insurance.

    I would think it is obvious, whatever your position on the issue of abortion, that if you believe in families, you would vote against the amendment by the Senator from Alabama.

    Let me just say very briefly, when I was a young student, I read a Sherlock Holmes book that I still remember. It was entitled "The Dog That Didn't Bark." Sherlock Holmes solved this mystery by not hearing something but by realizing that he hadn't heard something. The witnesses to this crime had not heard a dog bark. And that was an important piece of evidence for him to determine what happened that led up to the actual murder.

    The reason I remembered that is I am listening carefully to this national debate on the floor of the Senate about a prescription drug bill. I am waiting for the barking of the pharmaceutical lobby. Where are the drug companies? Why haven't we heard from the drug companies?

    This is a bill that will affect some 40 million senior citizens and provide assistance for them to pay their prescription drug bills, and the drug companies are silent. Why? There are two reasons for it.

    First, they believe the passage of a Federal prescription drug benefit is going to reduce the likelihood that more and more States will establish their own State prescription drug plans, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs in each State. I commend to those who follow it a "Frontline" program of last week on public television that analyzed this.

    As the States of Maine and Oregon and my State of Illinois and others developed prescription drug plans, the pharmaceutical industry challenged them in court, particularly in the case of Maine, and lost the challenge.

    So it was at that point that they became more intent on seeing us pass a prescription drug benefit on a national level to try to diffuse this growing public sentiment against increasing drug prices and the growing public sentiment that local and State legislatures had to act on this because the Congress was inept, unable to do it.

    So we have this bill before us that is one of the reasons why the pharmaceutical lobby has been strangely silent during this debate. They are happy that we are considering a Federal prescription drug benefit program.

    The second reason is even more important. This bill, S. 1, before us now for consideration, is a pretty long bill. As a matter of fact, it is 654 pages long. You will have to search this bill line by line and page by page and I am afraid you will find that after that search, there are few, if any, efforts in this entire bill to control the runaway cost of prescription drugs. So the pharmaceutical companies see this as a win/win situation. We pass a national prescription drug program that takes the heat off the States, and at the same time we do nothing to reduce the cost of prescription drugs to seniors and others across America. So these already very successful companies have to view this as the greatest windfall that has ever come their way.

    The Federal Government will pay a percentage of the cost of prescription drugs, but the Federal Government will do little or nothing to control the cost of those drugs.

    The senior citizens of this country understand this issue far better than Members of the Senate. In fact, when they were recently asked the question: What is more important to you, to provide a prescription drug benefit under Medicare to help you pay for your prescription drugs or to establish a policy and program that will bring down the excessive costs and the increasing rise in cost of prescription drugs across the Nation, by a margin of almost 2 to 1, they said go after the cost of the drugs. Don't tell me how much you are going to give me if you are not going to control the cost.

    Last year, the cost of prescription drugs went up 10 percent in my State of Illinois. Nationally, the figures are higher. If those increases continue, no matter what we pass this week in the Senate, it will not be enough. The cost of drugs will go off the end of the chart, and private insurance companies, HMOs that are being lauded by conservatives, by the President, and the White House as the answer to our prayers, frankly, don't have the interest or the power to make a difference in the cost of these prescription drugs. So the seniors will find themselves at the end of the day with a very limited benefit from this program.

    But hope is on the way. Tomorrow I will be offering an amendment which is a dramatically different approach to dealing with prescription drugs. We are going to make cost containment part of our prescription drug program. We are going to follow the model of the Veterans' Administration which said, in serving the millions of America's veterans, drug companies had to give a discount to the Veterans' Administration on the drugs that were provided, and the drug companies did—a discount of 40 to 50 percent. This isn't radical or innovative. It is a fact. This is what is happening.

    We believe using the same logic and the same Government effort to bring competition and lower costs under my amendment will mean that drug costs will start coming down and this program will go a lot further in helping seniors. And once the drug costs start coming down, let me tell you what we can do: This bill does not guarantee a monthly premium for prescription drug benefits. It suggests $35 a month. But I think the sponsors will tell you, there is no guarantee that it won't be $50 or $75 a month for this prescription drug program being offered by HMOs and private insurance companies under the Grassley-Baucus bill.

    Under MediSAVE, which is my alternative plan, we mandate a $35-a-month maximum monthly premium. Second, there is a $275 deductible before anybody can get the first dollar in Government benefits under the Grassley-Baucus bill. Under the amendment I will offer, there is no deductible. Third, under the Grassley-Baucus bill, they will pay 50 percent of the cost of prescription drugs after the deductible is applied. Under the MediSAVE Program, which I am going to introduce, it is 70 percent.

    How can I offer all this? How can I offer a program that has no gap in coverage so that it continues to cover you right up to a $5,000 annual cost in drugs and then you switch over to catastrophic coverage? How can I do all this? Because I go after the price of the drugs. The underlying bill doesn't touch the cost of drugs. As a result, $400 billion, as large a sum as that may sound, does not go very far. When we bring in cost containment, we can offer a real prescription drug program.

    And there is one more thing. The amendment I will offer will allow Medicare itself to compete with the private insurance companies. I have listened carefully to the debate for the last week or so. I can tell you that most of my Republican friends are loathe to concede the obvious. There is no private insurance company that can effectively compete with Medicare when it comes to offering prescription drug benefits. Why? Because Medicare doesn't have a profit motive. Medicare has a low overhead. Medicare can bargain on behalf of millions of seniors to get a formulary or a list of drugs at discount prices.

    These private insurance companies cannot do any of those things. They are out for the profit. They have high administrative costs, and they won't have the power to bargain down the price of the cost of the drugs. So by putting Medicare in the mix, saying every senior can always turn to the Medicare prescription drug program, we have real choice and real competition and a real scare for the Republicans who believe that competition only involves private insurance companies. They don't want a Government agency competing with them.

    The amendment I will offer tomorrow has been endorsed by a number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, as well as the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, a variety of unions across the United States, as well as senior citizens organizations. They understand this is a real prescription drug benefit program that tries to keep the costs under control and makes sure we maximize the benefits to seniors across the United States.

    It will be interesting to note the vote tomorrow. I believe there have been clear indications that many people here are not going to do anything to ruffle the feathers of the drug companies and pharmaceutical lobby. I hope they will keep in mind that the senior citizens they represent understand full well that these drug companies are the most profitable companies in America.

    They can bring down costs. They have done it in Canada and in other countries. They can still make enough profit to reward shareholders for their risk and have money left to invest in research. I hope this MediSAVE amendment will have the positive response of my colleagues tomorrow when it is offered on the floor.

    I am prepared to yield the floor at this time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.