Keystone XL Pipeline Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, it has been my privilege to serve on the Senate Special Committee on Aging since my very first days in the Senate, and I am honored to have been elected to chair this committee for the 114th Congress. I wish to welcome the Presiding Officer, Senator Cotton of Arkansas, to the committee. He will be a new member on our committee, and I believe he will enjoy his service as much as I have.

My service on the aging committee is particularly appropriate since Maine is the oldest State in the Nation by median age. Many people would guess that Florida would have that distinction, but, in fact, it is the great State of Maine.

Throughout its history, the aging committee has spurred Congress to action on issues that are important to older Americans through its hearings, its investigations, and its reports. This is the first time a Maine Senator has chaired the committee since the 1990s, when my predecessor, mentor, and friend, Senator Bill Cohen, served as chairman.

I wish to share with my colleagues today my priorities for the committee as we begin this new Congress. I have three major priorities for the committee's work: first, retirement security; second, investments in biomedical research targeting diseases that disproportionately affect older Americans, such as Alzheimer's and diabetes; and, third, protecting seniors against financial exploitation and scams.

I am increasingly concerned that our seniors will not have adequate savings and other financial resources during their retirement years. The committee will, therefore, focus on retirement security and, in particular, on the need to encourage more savings and better financial planning. According to the nonpartisan Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, there currently is an estimated $6.6 trillion gap between the savings Americans have today and what they should have in order to maintain their standard of living during retirement.

Nationally, one in four Americans has no source of income beyond Social Security. In the State of Maine, the number is one in three. Social Security provides an absolutely vital safety net. However, with an average benefit of just $16,000 a year, it certainly is not enough to finance a comfortable retirement for many Americans.

According to a Gallup survey published in 2012, more than half of all Americans are worried they will not be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. That is up sharply from 34 percent two decades ago, and the Boston College analysis demonstrates that their concern is warranted.

There are many reasons for the decline in retirement security facing American seniors, including the demise of many defined benefit pension plans in the private sector; the severity of the recent financial crisis, which wiped out much of the net worth of many seniors, at least temporarily; rising health care costs; the need for long-term care; and, most of all, the simple fact that Americans are living far longer than we used to. Many Americans reaching retirement age also have more debt than retirees of previous generations.

I remember when my parents paid off the mortgage on their home and had a mortgage-burning party. Well, today, people who are the age my parents were when they paid off their house are taking on new debt and new mortgages. We found in the aging committee that there are seniors who are still paying off their student loans or the student loans of their children. These are all issues I look forward to the committee exploring in depth in this new Congress.

Another priority will be highlighting the importance of biomedical research on diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes, which take such a devastating toll on older Americans and their families. Investments in biomedical research not only improve the health and longevity of Americans but also provide benefits to our economy and to the Federal budget.

For example, nearly one out of three Medicare dollars is spent treating people living with diabetes. According to multiple economic analyses, there is roughly a 2-to-1 return on investment in Federal support for biomedical research. This investment at the National Institutes of Health and at research centers across the country spur job creation and are critical to America's competitiveness in the global research environment.

As the Senate cochair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease, I am particularly committed to helping to spur breakthroughs in Alzheimer's disease, which has had such a devastating impact on 5.2 million Americans and their families. In addition to the suffering it causes, Alzheimer's costs the United States an astonishing $214 billion a year. That includes $150 billion in costs to the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

These costs will only skyrocket as the baby boom generation ages.

Fortunately, there is promising research that holds hope for Alzheimer's patients and their families. The research community is poised to make important advances through clinical trials and investigating new therapeutic targets. But adequate funding is critical to advance this research and to achieve these breakthroughs.

At a time when the United States is spending more than $200 billion a year for Alzheimer's patients, we are spending less than three-tenths of 1 percent of that amount--about $600 million a year--on research. Surely, we can do more for Alzheimer's, given its tremendous human and economic price.

The National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease has as its primary goal the prevention and effective treatment of Alzheimer's by the year 2025. To meet that goal, the chairman of the Federal Alzheimer's Advisory Council says that we need to devote $2 billion a year to Alzheimer's research. Well, think about that. That is only 1 percent--in fact, it is less than 1 percent--of what we as a society are spending to care for people with Alzheimer's. That investment will lead to better treatments and ultimately to a means of prevention or even a cure for this awful and expensive disease.

The aging committee will also continue its focus on scams that target our seniors, such as the Jamaican lottery phone scam we exposed in the last Congress. This nefarious scheme, which is estimated to have cost Americans as much as $300 million a year, particularly targeted seniors in the Northeast. Some seniors in my State lost tens of thousands of dollars to the scam which involved a con artist calling a victim to tell him or her that they had won the Jamaican lottery but needed to pay fees to process the winnings. I don't need to tell my colleagues that these seniors had won nothing of the sort. But this was a very sophisticated scheme.

In addition to educating seniors to help them avoid becoming victims of such scams, the hearing resulted in the Jamaican Government passing new laws targeting the scammers and prompted Federal law enforcement to make several arrests. The aging committee will also continue its fraud hotline to help protect seniors from these kinds of scams and financial exploitation, and the phone number for that fraud hotline, which is toll-free, is 1-855-303-9470.

In addition to these three major priorities, it is my hope our committee in the second year will also take a close look--really scrutinize--Federal programs designed to help our seniors, such as those authorized by the Older Americans Act. We want to make sure these programs are as effective and efficient as possible and that their benefits reach those seniors as intended. So we will be performing that oversight function and sharing our findings with the committee of jurisdiction--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--on which I am also privileged to serve.

The Senate Special Committee on Aging has a long history and tradition of bipartisanship, and my work on this committee during the past Congress was particularly rewarding because of the strong partnership I forged with the committee chairman, the senior Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson. I look forward to continuing that bipartisan tradition with my good friend and close colleague, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who will be serving as the committee's ranking member in the 114th Congress.

Finally, I encourage the Presiding Officer and all of the other members of the committee not only to be active participants in the committee but also to share with us their thoughts on issues that we should pursue.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor, and seeing no one seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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