are sixty three the nays are thirty two the motion the table the coburn a member just twenty eight twelve for twenty eight fourteen and block is agreed to move to reconsider that objection so this very important bill to this point today especially want to thank senator bond his staff and my staff all thank them more after passage of the bill but i actually want to thank senator bond for his work with them on his part of the aisle for putting together south carolina that it will be in  that i would say to the distinguished chair lady of the subcommittee we're still checking to make sure everybody is aware of what we're doing here and i will not object but if we could withhold just momentarily i would would urban development and so forth and for other purposes the question is on the passage as amended all in favor is there are sufficient second appears to be the correct call the roll and final mrs clinton mr coburn mr cochran mr coleman ms collins mr conrad mr corker mr corn and mr grassley mr greg mr roberts mr rockefeller mr sala mr sanders mr schumer mr sessions mr shelby mr smith miss no mr spect wide senators voting in the negative barrasso demand and so on and see mr pryor mr pryor  a bill of this complexity i might even claim it's record time the legislation is very complex we've seen it's controversial and in even the very political as we saw with the mexican truck issue but is always  senator missouri senator murray deserves a great deal of credit and all the accolades for her ability to balance many tough and controversial issues that make up the legislation and continue to do so with a smile and and good mccarthy and terry carton i want to thank my staff and what a good job they've done john kmart alan bears matt mcardle the whole staff brought together special contributions as well as hard work for the bill w overwhelming majority who voted for us and special thanks to republican and democratic for staff for bringing their expertise to make us all look the part of respectable hard charging legislators and sometimes occurred in the process as i did on monday i want to brag about our ability to include funding increases above the budget request housing community development programs these are important programs that help build our communities and without which a number of persons significant number of persons would be placed at risk of homelessness that would have been a particular hardship on seniors and persons with disability i also  gratitude and congratulations senator murray we were able to include seventy five million in section eight funds for the a fair supportive housing program is critical as service people continue to return from iraq with facing new realities conclude the need for housing and other services this program will become even more worthwhile as young disabled servicemen make the difficult adjustment to civilian life members know after two full days on the bill with regard to f a a this bill continues support the beginning stage of the next gen air transportation system and it contains the administration's request for flight inspections previously issues will have to address before the bill could become law we include some revenue aligned budget authority which was not in the in the bill and they were bill also contains  administration to know and be adequate funding for the section a project based housing program this is not an option it's a contractual obligation and it's a critical and important program that serves and during fiscal year zero seven the problem is going to get worse we are on a collision course with the spending on these also with mexican trucks this president i have a much longer statement died like included in the really worked hard with the staff and all of us have been working to get this bill to the farm this is an extremely complex and difficult bill covering a wide variety of programs and projects throughout the entire country and we started this process way back at the beginning of the year with the budget process with our allocation he and i spent many conversations on the phone working together getting our bills through subcommittee through folk miti and now through the senate floor i could not have done it with his help and support and his tremendous knowledge particularly in the housing arena and helping to work through a lot of difficult issues and i really want to thank him in particular for for his diligence and his help and expertise we would not be here and i want to really thank them for their tremendous work on behalf of all of us in this country out who want to thank my personal staff travis plumpton who's been here working with us to get this bill through as well as my floor staff mike spahn who has spent a lot of time helping us work through all of the difficult parts of this bill so it takes a lot of people to get a bill of this complexity to the floor and every one of them should be recognized from our floor staff on we can't do these bills on our own and a lot of people put a lot of time and energy in getting us to this point finally i want to thank senator burns senator carper and the chairman and ranking member of the full committee who have worked with all of us on appropriations to get our work done in a timely fashion this bill is now headed to conference it is an extremely important bill as we have heard throughout the last days as we've debated this bill every american is touched by an impact from this legislation if you get up and go to work with you drive your car or as we heard yesterday right a bike whether you're on an amtrak train or you have to fly to get to your destination what we decide in this bill and how we set our spending priorities makes a difference in your life for many americans who are facing a housing crisis today this bill addresses those concerns as the senator from missouri just talked about an extremely important piece of legislation we received the president's budget with severe cuts in amtrak in housing in f a a modernization and many more that i've talked about over the last several days the senate has said we have to invest in the infrastructure in this country we need to move forward in making sure that average everyday americans who get up and go to work and enjoy time with their families who want to be able to participate in our community have a right to that and we have an obligation as a congress to make sure the infrastructure same place we're going to continue to work on this bill with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and now with our house counterpart i hope we can get a bill to the president's it is signed and we and we move these programs forward so that the money that we have debated and talked about and now are working its way will be allocated and our communities across this country will benefit from it thank you mr president and thank you again to my calling from experience and i ask now mr president for unanimous consent that the senate proceed to period of you it won't be a real long time but longer than the usual ten minutes that we've had a lot of do if there is no objection i ask out objection mr president for twenty seven years i have come to the senate flo discuss legislation that will help the government run efficiently and effectively i've been an outspoken advocate for whistleblowers which whistleblowers in good faith bring forth information about waste fraud and abuse of taxpayers dollars i have championed oversight efforts and i've spent my time in the senate asking the tough questions of government bureaucrats in order to expose these problems particularly problems that have been brought to my attention by  patriotic whistleblowers one thing that i've learned from oversight is that no matter how engaged congress made be or just enough hands to find all where there are not enough hands i should say to find all the waste fraud and abuse in government programs instead we have to rely then as i've indicated on those ranges and patriotic individuals who speak out and blow the whistle to go to court to collect government money that was lost const group has contractors who are selling false or for dealing goods in the case of one hundred years ago to union troops because that's where the  about and and to make sure that we to make sure that we protect whistleblowers when program is not working and taxpayers dollars are being lost by these whistleblowers by sticking their necks out are individuals often at risk they risk everything to fix problems within our government because they believe in doing their job the way it was intended to be done and they probably don't get the attention of people higher up in the bureaucracy that's why they become whistleblowers and come to congress to bring these faults out so somehow they end up being as well them in the bureaucracy as a skunk however pointing out fraud is one thing getting results fixing the problem and recouping taxpayers money lost to fraud waste and abuse is quite another thing the key to recup ting these last funds is ensuring that we have effective laws on the books one such a law is a federal false claims act and so i'm coming to the floor today to remind people about the history of the false claims act but also all to suggest some improvements and i so it can be even a more useful tool in the fight against waste fraud and abuse and the protection of whistleblowers i've referred to the false claims act this is known as a link in law because it has some history going back to the civil war the link in law was originally passed by congress to  combat or profiteering by government contractors during the civil war the false claims act allowed individual citizen whistleblowers to go to court to collect government money that was lost to unscrupulous contractors or selling falls or fraudulent goods to union troops this legal mechanism known as key tame a latin term is the key component to the false claims act allowing individual citizens to act as private attorneys general to help on earth fraud and recover lost money however following world war two the false claims act was weakened by an act of congress which lowered the penalties limiting the money that the government could recover from fraud this remain the state and the language of the false claims act until nineteen eighty six when i  amendments to the act were three stored teeth and breathed new air and new life into a law that was designed to protect all american taxpayers i'm happy to report in the twenty years since i entered dusun congress passed the one nine hundred eighty six amendment the federal government has use of all its claims act to recover over twenty billion dollars from those who defraud the government that's twenty billion dollars that would otherwise be lost and gone forever more importantly this twenty billion dollars serves as a deterrent reminder to those who wish to steal from the government now we can't measure the deterrent value of this legislation but i personally feel and i've had students of government tell me that the the turn value of the false claims act is much greater than even the twenty billion dollars that we can quantify that has come back to the federal trade for today the false claims act faces a situation where it may not be as effective as intended recently savings by federal courts have limited the false claims act in a way that was not invasion when i last heard held it false claims presented to the federal government in this case employees at amtrak were not actually presented to the federal government as a result the government was precluded from recovering money lost a fraud and abuse perpetuated against amtrak the second case rockwell international corporation versus us was decided earlier this year by the us supreme court in this case the court interpreted an area of the false claims act known as a public disclosure bar which prohibits a false claims case from moving forward if the case is based upon publicly disclose information such as a government report unless the whistleblower filing the case was quote unquote the original source of the information now here the supreme court held that a key tam whistleblower was barred from receiving a share of any money recover unless that whistleblower was the original source of all claims ultimately settle now i can tell from my colleagues that this may not sound like a very troublesome  however it is the impact is that oftentimes a cases brought by a whistleblower on a certain set of facts and then expanded by the department of justice who ultimately settles on other grounds as a result this case creates a disincentive for a whistleblower to bring forth information about fraud as a mean not get to share in any part of the recovery because you see one of the incentives for the whistleblowers is if they bring a case that brings back money into the federal treasury they get part of that settlement as an incentive to do this because quite frankly a whistleblower six their neck out they probably do it by doing the right thing ruin themselves professionally and let's say that that they get part of the recovery well the federal government gets billions of dollars that we wouldn't even got if we hadn't had the information the whistleblower that's why the whistleblower very very important now there's another case that gives us problems this third case challenges the intent of the false claims act is the united states the r c versus custer battles he cited a year ago in that case a jury found that a defense contractor in iraq had defrauded the government of ten million dollars however the judge overturned the jury verdict finding that the money lost was not u s taxpayer money but was instead iraqi money under the control of the u s government as a result of this case the u s government may not recover any fraud committed against u s government if the funds are not american fans even if the u s government has been entrusted with the management of those funds mr president these decisions i can tell you as author of this legislation are contrary to the spirit and the intent of the eighty six amendments so today i'm here joined by senator durbin as the lead co sponsor republican so i feel by having senator durbin senator leahy and senator specter's co sponsors of this false claims act correction act as powers within the senate to bring attention to what those courts have done an injustice to the false claims act and gutted the false claims act and bring this act back to its original intent so all this legislation then would correct judicial interpretations damaging the false claims act but i want to say that this bill is narrowly tailored to ensure that the intent of congress and the eighty six amendments is upheld and nothing more  false claims act correction bill would correct these three judicial interpretations in addition to also making technical and correcting amendments first the bill would address the  sagem by removing the requirement that falls claims be directly presented to a government official instead of timing the liability directly to government money and property next the bill would address the rockwell the sagem by requiring the attorney general to file a timely motion to dismiss claims that violate the public disclosure ball bar by allowing the attorney general to present to the court information about public disclosures up front in the case the bill would eliminate procedural uncertainties that exist now by allowing public disclosures to it would be addressed at any time in the case of false claims act correction bail also clarifies that non taxpayer funds under the trust in the ministration of the us government subject to fraud are actionable under the false claims thus money directly under the control of the us government subject to fraud that are currently outside the scope of the false claims act would now be covered this would correct the problems that has arisen following the sagan in the custard battles case at dish and the bill clarifies a split between federal circuit court of appeals that currently exist regarding whether a government employee may file a false claims act case more specifically the bill provides that a government employee would be able to bring a false claims act case based upon information learned in the course of their employment only when the employee one discloses the fraud to their supervisors to disclose is a fraud to the inspector general of that agency and three discloses the fraud to the attorney general and then waits twelve months without the government acting after these conditions are met then and only then a government employee act as a key tam whistleblower finally the bill makes two technical corrections to the false claim say the first is a technical correcting amendment that clarifies a statute of limitations the second is a technical amendment to the civil investigati demands that the department of justice is already authorized to issue these technical corrections will streamline the procedures for filing as well as prosecuting false claims act cases b key tam whistleblowers as well as cases instituted originally by the department of justice mr president the false claims act correction bail is a narrowly tailor and i'm proud to say that this veil has drawn bipartisan support as i'm joined by senator durbin as the lead democratic co sponsor and i want to emphasize senator leahy and senator specter's co sponsorship of this legislation i'm glad that we have a bipartisan coalition ready to work to fix the false claims act with these narrowly tailored corrections but i encourage my colleagues not to bow to special interest groups who have work to weaken the number one tool for recovering government dollars lost to fraud and let me say at this point that i had a private discussion with a senator who will go on name yesterday that said even as corrective as this legislation is and it was only meant to be correct that already we have the pharmaceutical companies out working against this legislation so this may not be easy to get through even though it's just going and sticking with the original in pampa so i don't want to get into a situation like i did in one nine hundred eighty six when we wrote a bill that was bipartisan and it took about a year to get the various holds off that were put on this in those days we had secret holes and under the new rules of the senate we're not supposed to have any secret holds anymore so if people have complaints about this legislation i want to work it out with them but i don't know how anybody can hold up legislation where the under lying legislation has brought twenty billion dollars that would otherwise been lost a fraud back to the federal trade american taxpayers then these oeuvre a law that the tax prevents and recovers money lost to for all the false claims act works and has recovered this twenty billion dollars and that the last twenty years old but let me tell you this money didn't start rolling in till about six or seven years after that eighty six law was passed the false claims act correction bill will provide necessarily and narrowly tailored corrections to ensure that the false claims act works to protect the taxpayers in the future as i visualized it would in one thousand nine hundred eighty six in spirit as well as in letter so i originally colleagues to support this important legislation and i'm going to file the bill right the calling of the form be suspended without objection mr president i failed to ask that my bill that i've just introduced it be printed in the record and i've also had the pleasure of having center from iowa i ask that the calling of the form be suspended without objection mr president i want to i want to speak as if in morning business and we're in mourning business for just a short period of time on a nother issue that i've been working on mr president yesterday the journal of american medical association published a study on the diabetes drug avandia this study concluded that significantly increased the risk of heart attacks a subject as senator baucus and i have been investigating for some months you'll remember that it was back in may that a study in the new england journal of medicine first were quote unquote absolutely false today i would like to discuss some internal company communications that suggest otherwise the person who first blew the whistle about cardiovascular problems with a medical meetings that the drug might be dangerous now how did this company respond when this professor brought these issues up in an e mail dated june twenty fifth one nine hundred ninety nine companies  that would warn him about doing this again with the punishment being that we will complain up his academic line and to the c m e granting body that credit his activities and a quote now c m e stands for continuing medical education i'll come to that back to that in just a second now in response another company executive emailed back proposing to sue dr abuse and launched a media all fancy promoting avandia based on this in email exchange it seems to me that at least two drug company officials did attempt to silence critic in fact dr abuse stopped making any critical statements about avandia shortly after this in email exchange scientists should be able to raise issues related to public health and safety  nonsense or manner not the way they do things in china and china and when they when these scientists are suppressed i don't we ought to consider that a very serious problem and the reason why is because scientific process will take care of itself as scientists grassley has a suggestion and you think it's crazy you're a scientist can be reviewed by you and it's got to stand the test of peer review so i think it's a very good process that if we just let it go on it'll show whether this scientist or that scientist is right or wrong so the scientific process if suppressed i say is a very serious problem but more importantly in this whole process the american public loses instead of on dia being more critically examined for safety it was heavily marketed and became what experts have called the best selling diabetes drug in america it is being reported to me that this huge volume of sales may have resulted in sixty thousand to one hundred thousand heart attacks from one thousand nine hundred nine until the year two thousand and six that's about twenty a days from the users of onshore and what happened to the company executives and sought to attack dr abuse for voicing his scientific opinion based on the information i received to date nothing has happened to these corporate executives now let me return to the issue of continuing medical education in the e mail exchange that i quoted the two company officials discuss complaining about dr abuse to the accrediting bodies  education every year medical professionals must get continuing medical education credits to stay current in their profession the continuing medical education companies and their doctors who teach the classes are supposed to be independent and independent of drug companies who fund the courses but i think we now know what we have often suspected continuing medical education courses of independent at all in fact the drug companies have a lot to say about what goes on in these courses and who gets paid to teach them in april the finance committee staff released a report on pharmaceutical come the support of continuing medical education drug companies pour about one billion dollars every year into continuing medical education and the report noted that some educational courses have become veiled form of advertising of course it's also ties into last week's introduction of the bill that i put in called the physicians payment sunshine act i ent kohl who is chairman of the aging can make because americans have a right to know how the drug companies are using money to try to shape the medical field the bill requires drug and device companies to report payments and other gifts that they give to doctors bringing a little transparency to the practice of companies such as glaxo smith kline and i hope to see more of my colleagues sign on to this legislation i cannot spotlight every instance when a drug company goes after an independent scientists with a stick as they did after dr abuse but together we can splice some sunlight on the financial carrots that drug companies use to try to shape doctors behavior and mr president before you leave the floor i asked that the emails that i've been referred to akaka senator from vermont i would ask that the quorum call be rescinded without objection the president i have six you not amisse consent request the committees to meet today to meet during today's session of the senate they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders earlier this morning the senate finished up work on the transportation and housing spending the fourth of twelve spending bills that the senate must pass for fiscal year two thousand and eight and this one passed today a little under one hundred five billion dollars we are waiting for senators to return they'll be doing some morning business and then later all right going to recess for the jewish new year and they'll return monday to take up defense programs and possibly an iraq measure retired general james jones led the iraq security forces report and he issued that report also by military and police officials last week he's speaking today about the report's findings on the state of iraqi security forces live coverage five thirty eastern on c span and tomorrow president bush addresses the nation on the iraq war our live coverage at nine eastern also on our companion network c span at this hour live on c span three senator richard durbin of illinois is holding a senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on lead paint and toy safety standards after a recent toy recalls from china we're waiting for senators to continue general speeches as they move toward a recess later today for the jewish new year earlier today they finished the senate finished work on transportation and housing spending passing a bill eighty eight to seven the fourth of twelve spending bills that the senate must pass for fiscal year two thousand and eight and this one a little under one hundred five billion dollars the senate and a half have a similar bill on the highway programs granting a forty point two billion dollars for highway spending that's a billion more than last year and and track would receive one point four billion dollars under this bill some other programming notes on c span live right now on the c span the senate hearing on to a safety and coming up after several recalls due to lead problems in toys and then at one thirty senate democrats will weigh in on general petra admiral crocker ambassador crocker's comments on the iraq situation and at five thirty retired general james jones on the state of the iraqi security forces james jones led the iraqi security forces report issued earlier this week by retired military and police officials and he'll be speaking today about the report's findings we'll cover that live for you at five thirty eastern on c span and then tomorrow president bush addresses the nation on the iraq war our live coverage at nine eastern also on c span