The Standing Rules of the Senate are drafted to encourage vigorous public debate on our nation’s most important issues. Indeed, the U.S. Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” The Rules allow any Senator to seek recognition from the Chair at any time and, absent a temporary agreement to the contrary, to speak without interruption so long as he or she wishes. Debating important questions before the Senate is one way a Senator can highlight an issue, advocate for a change in policy, or voice his or her opinion on pending legislation.
Senate debate occurs in public, and is televised on CSPAN and transcribed in the Congressional Record. For your convenience, I post transcripts of my Senate floor speeches on this site for your review. I hope you find them informative and useful. My web site also makes available information on my voting record and legislation that I have sponsored in the Senate.
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Sessions Comments on PEPFAR Legislation
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank Senator DeMint for causing us to confront a very difficult truth; and that is, that we do not have unlimited money. We do have to manage it well.
I, frankly, have been uneasy as to the way this process developed. I supported the previous $15 billion AIDS bill for Africa that was the largest expenditure to fight a disease in the history of the world. I remember thinking the President's plan to double it was a bold, big step, and I hoped to be able to support that. I certainly favored an increase in what we were spending on this program because I think it has made some positive difference. Then I was shocked that out of the blue they added another $20 billion to it. So a 5-year program spending $15 billion on this disease has all of a sudden been converted into a 5-year program that will spend $50 billion.
It is very difficult to spend that kind of money wisely in undeveloped countries. In fact, as the Senator noted, the Congressional Budget Office--our independent analysis branch of the Congress--has concluded we cannot spend that much. They say all we can spend is $35 billion. He has an amendment to bring this bill down to that amount, and I intend to support it. I think that is a very generous increase.
I will note that the G8 nations that are supposed to be participating with us in this--the nations we are supposed to be leading and, in fact, are dramatically leading in this effort worldwide based on the amount of money we have put forth, and with the leadership President Bush has given--those G8 nations recently met and committed to spending $60 billion in the next five years on this project. Obviously, most of it is, of course, the money we are spending. So I do not know that we have the kind of followers that leaders ought to have. We need to stay on those other nations around the world and insist they participate in a generous way.
But I have to tell you, it is not easy to spend this money wisely. Five years ago, when we were talking about this bill, Sir Elton John testified before our committee. He has an AIDS program in Africa, and he works hard at it. They raised a few million dollars. They spend a few million dollars a year. I cannot remember the number. I asked him about that at the committee hearing. I said: Sir, we are talking about $15 billion. What do you think about that? Is that something we can spend wisely? I am sure you try to use your money wisely. What advice do you have?
This is what this man, who has committed much of his life and effort fighting AIDS in Africa, responded:
I concur with you totally. ..... This is just something that the politicians have to make sure that when the [AIDS ] money goes to governments--
That is governments throughout Africa primarily--
the money is spent in the right way. ..... We are a very small AIDS organization; we can control where everything goes, and we do. We know where every penny goes. But when you get to these vast sums of money that we are talking about here today--
He was talking about $15 billion, not $50 billion-- you are going to run into those kinds of problems, and I do not personally know myself how you solve them, but I do concur with you that that is a major problem.
Well, that is obvious to us. So we have not had any kind of intensive effort to ensure this money will be spent wisely. It went to the Foreign Relations Committee, and they popped it out with the full funding--$20 billion more than the President originally asked for, and he is the world leader on this, and the money is just passed along. I say to my colleagues, we ought to be more responsible.
I shared with a group of Senators the other day--yesterday, in fact--these figures, following up on Senator DeMint's comments. In this year, this is what this Congress has done:
We have voted for a $150 billion stimulus package--every penny of that in emergency appropriations, going straight to the debt.
We expanded the GI bill by $60 billion. Everybody wanted to help the soldiers have more education. How could we say no to that? Senator McCain raised a concern that was very legitimate. They attacked him as not caring about veterans. Basically, thank goodness, most of what he asked for got fixed in that bill because it was contrary to what the Defense Department believed was good, and Senator McCain helped us improve that bill.
We passed a $180 billion war supplemental. We spent about $18 billion on a Medicare fix. We now are doing a $50 billion AIDS bill. We are going to have a $15 billion to $18 billion housing bill.
Revenue to the U.S. Treasury, because of the economic slowdown, is going down. So that is a difficulty we face. Last year, after 3 consecutive years of reducing the $400 billion deficit--it fell to $177 billion, and we were feeling pretty good. But now our expenditures are surging, and our revenue is going to be down as a result of the declining taxes because people are not making as much money, they are not making as much overtime, they are not going to get the bonuses they got in the past, which they may well have paid 35 percent on to the U.S. Treasury.
The Wall Street Journal said the deficit this year, instead of $177 billion, would be $500 billion. So I am telling you, we have to be responsible here. Every single billion has to be watched with care, and I wanted to mention it.
I thank Senator Biden and Senator Lugar for their support on an amendment I have offered on this bill. It follows up on an amendment I offered 5 years ago to deal with the concern of how many people are being infected with AIDS as a result of medical treatment--either through blood transfusions or reusing needles in medical settings. We had an estimate 5 years ago that 300,000 people a year were being infected as a result of medical transmissions. It is hard to believe the testimony to that effect. So we came up with a program that required needles that could not be reused, and checking the blood supply before transfusions. I was pleased to see that in the USAID's report on their Web site a few days ago, they have calculated that the efforts to improve the safety of immunizations, made possible through the legislation Senator McConnell and others accepted which I proposed--and it went in that bill--have saved as many as 300,000 lives.
But Dr. Gisselquist, a researcher from Pennsylvania, who raised that issue originally, and some others who supported this concern, believe there are other things that need to be done, and I have offered some additional legislation this time.
I thank Senator Biden--I know he cares about it--for accepting this legislation.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank Senator Biden for his commitment and Senator Lugar's commitment to this. I know it is quite sincere, and I know this reauthorization will, indeed, save lives. I will note I have a New York Times article from 2004 about 428 Libyan children who were infected with HIV by Bulgarian nurses who were reusing needles. So during our discussion before, we learned there were quite a number of children infected with HIV whose mothers were not infected with HIV, and it indicated they got it from some other source. It was believed that medical transmissions were a part of that. So I believe we can make a difference.
One of the things this legislation calls for is that whenever a circumstance such as this is discovered, that an investigation be undertaken to find out how it occurred so a stop can be put to the tragedy of someone going to a physician--a doctor--or a clinic to get a shot for an infection or a virus or an antibiotic and they come home with a deadly disease. We can do better with that, and I hope we will.
I will note also how proud I have been of Dr. Michael Saag at the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a part of the infectious disease program. They have operated programs throughout the world, including Zambia, under a program headed by Dr. Jeff Stringer.
I also wish to thank Senator TOM COBURN. Sometimes people complain that Dr. TOM COBURN holds up bills and doesn't always let them pass by unanimous consent--with no debate, no ability to offer amendments. He felt this bill needed to be improved. I met with a group from Africa who urged us to oppose the legislation as originally written for a few reasons, primarily because it removed the requirement that a significant percentage of the money from the bill be spent on medical treatment. They said, in fact, we should oppose the bill, even though they would, in many ways, benefit. We had a grandmother come whose daughter died from AIDS and she had her granddaughter with her and the granddaughter was infected with HIV. So it was an emotional moment.
I wish to say that as a result of Senator Coburn's objections to the bill and the willingness of the sponsors and leaders of the bill to listen to Dr. COBURN's complaints and concerns, considerable changes were made that I think made this bill better. I do feel better about that. I wish to say I am pleased that occurred.
So, again, I am going to support the amendment of Senator DeMint which would reduce the funding to a level above that which President Bush originally asked for, to the level the Congressional Budget Office has said is all we can spend.
I am going to remember--I will not forget--what Sir Elton John said: That it is a responsibility that he felt to everybody who contributed to his program to see that every penny is spent wisely. There is no way this huge increase in spending can effectively occur with this legislation. There is no way it can be passed down through governmental agencies and bureaucracies and be wisely spent. I hope some of the amendments and ideas to ensure integrity in the process will become part of the law.
So I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak on this. I do believe it will have a positive impact in the world. I do believe the United States should lead, and we are able to lead, but I have to tell my colleagues that we are in a position financially where we can't do everything we would like. We wanted to help the veterans. We wanted to stimulate the economy. We wanted to support housing. We wanted to support a worldwide program to fight disease, as this bill does, but there comes a point in time when we have to ask ourselves: Where are we going to get the money?
I am telling my colleagues, the deficit this year will be more than twice what it was last year. A lot of this spending we approved this year is not going to come out of the budget until next year. Unless the economy dramatically improves, we will probably see less tax revenue next year than this year. Much of this AIDS money would not come out until next year to be spent. So I am worried about that. I think we ought to be responsible. I don't think we have been sufficiently frugal in managing this program and in ensuring that every single penny does what we want it to do and that we are building up the funding at a rate we are sure can be done safely and effectively and protect the taxpayers' money.
So for that reason, I intend to support the amendment of Senator DeMint and some of the other amendments that call for rigorous monitoring to ensure that the money is spent wisely.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
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