Stakeout Media Availability with Republican Senators Following Policy Luncheons

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: STAKEOUT MEDIA AVAILABILITY WITH REPUBLICAN SENATORS FOLLOWING POLICY LUNCHEONS

PARTICIPANTS: SENATOR BILL FRIST (TN), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER; SENATOR WAYNE ALLARD (CO); SENATOR JOHN CORNYN (TX); SENATOR ELIZABETH DOLE (NC); SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (TX); SENATOR RICK SANTORUM (PA)

TOPICS INCLUDE: A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

LOCATION: THE CAPITOL, THE OHIO CLOCK CORRIDOR, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:
SEN. FRIST: Good afternoon.

First of all, welcome, everybody, back from recess. As you can see from the agenda that is being laid before the United States Senate, it's going to be a very busy three weeks between now and the next recess.

I want to introduce two issues and then have my colleagues comment on them. Then we'll be happy to answer questions. I'll ask-I'd ask that you'd save questions about scheduling at the end, and I'll be happy to answer those.

First, an issue that is very personal with me, but also very personal with every mom who's about to have a baby or everybody who is contemplating having children in the future, and it has to do with medical liability: the bill that is on the floor of the United States. Our medical liability system is failing America. It's failing our communities. It's failing our hospitals. It's failing our doctors. It's failing our nurse-midwives. And most importantly, it's failing our patients.

Don't know what the outcome of the vote will be today, but as you can see from the response on floor of the United States Senate, it is powerful. It's a problem that is getting worse. We are in a crisis in many states, and it is our responsibility to respond.

The second big issue that I'll briefly introduce but my colleagues will comment on is another big, important issue to our society and to our culture, and that is marriage. We have had said, for the last several months, if activist judges went down the path-and indeed they've gone down that path-of radically redefining marriage, then it is very likely and increasingly likely by the day that we will act in the United States Senate.

As most of you know, the president of the United States said earlier today that he would support a constitutional amendment with that. With what is being done by activist judges-in Massachusetts, most notably, but around the country-it is very likely that we will act. And that process will begin through hearings here shortly in the United States Senate.

With that, I'll turn to my colleagues and Senator Hutchison, who will be talking a little bit on the medical liability. Thanks.

SEN. HUTCHISON: We must address this national crisis in health care. In Texas, one-half of the OB-GYN doctors have had to drastically change their practices, either stopping the delivery of babies or closing their doors completely.

We have 254 counties in Texas. Half of them have no OB-GYN care at all.

Now, this is something that can be fixed. I think the point here is this is a problem that has a solution. If we can deal with medical liability, take care of people who have injuries in a responsible way, but not allow the profligate lawsuits that just kill our insurance rates, and therefore is now affecting the quality of care, if we can't do something about it, then I just think our country is walking away from a very important health care quality-of-life issue.

So I hope that we can get this bill up and stop the filibuster that is happening. It is very important that we continue to increase the quality of our health care. Let's get OB-GYN doctors back in practice so that our women expecting babies will know that they have a quality of health care that they deserve in the United States of America.

SEN. FRIST: Okay. Senator Dole.

SEN. DOLE: Back during my campaign for the Senate, I came up with the Dole plan for North Carolina. And this is the plan that I wanted to carry out in my first year or two in the Senate. There's one part of it that's not carried out yet, and let me just read it to you:

Medical malpractice reform to hold down costs and increase access to care. Medical liability costs add-at this time when I wrote this, was between $60 billion and $110 billion to health care costs each year. In fact, doctors in some states cannot afford the liability coverage they need in order to see patients or even volunteer free clinical services.

And what I was proposing then is that we cap non-economic damages and punitive damages to $250,000. Now, punitive damages under this legislation would be two times the costs of the economic damages, or a quarter of a million dollars, whichever is higher. And this is certainly going to help to hold down health care costs, and also to go after this problem of our doctors who are leaving the practice because of this serious problem.

For example, Dr. John Schmitt of Raleigh. I talked about him all over North Carolina.

And Dr. Schmitt said, "Look, when my insurance went from $17,000 a year, my premium, to $46,000 a year," he said, "I'm out; I'm no more going to practice medicine." He's now at UVA Medical School teaching at the medical school.

And then there's people like Dr. Turner from Garner, North Carolina. He said to me, "Mrs. Dole," he said, "I spend about $5,000 a year-or I prescribe about $5,000 a day, which is $1.2 million a year, in medicine, defensive medicine to cover myself because of these potential lawsuits." That's $5,000 a day, or $1.2 million a year. One doctor. And he said, "This is happening all across North Carolina." So there's no question it's impacting the cost of health care.

And it means that a lot of our doctors are simply leaving. They're moving away. A woman in little Sparta, North Carolina, a town of 2,000 people, she decided "I can't deliver babies any more because my insurance premium just went up 300 percent." So they have one obstetrician now for that community. It's happening all over.

And we are one of the 19 states that the American Medical Association has declared to be a medical liability crisis state. It's time to do something about this. I'm urging my colleagues to vote for this cloture vote today.

SEN. CORNYN: Marriage is something I didn't think I was going to be dealing with when I came to the United States Senate about 14 months ago, but such are the times we live in. But this is not an issue that we in the Senate or we in the Congress have initiated; this is an issue that's been thrust upon us by activist judges in Massachusetts.

Now, some said that the decision would be isolated there, it was a state decision, no role for the federal government. Well, we've seen that this issue has caught on like a brush fire across the country, showing up in places like San Francisco, Chicago, New Mexico. Even in Austin, Texas, people have shown up seeking a marriage license for same-sex marriages. But I can't think of anything that's more fundamental to our society or to the family than the stability of the traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

Last September we held hearings on whether the Defense of Marriage Act was in jeopardy. And some said, no, it's not in jeopardy, this is a hysterical reaction to some Supreme Court decisions that were made last summer. But in fact we found out that the threat to the institution of marriage was much faster than any of us would have dreamed.

This Wednesday, this coming Wednesday we'll be having hearings, in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution that I chair, on the implications of the Massachusetts decision and what we are seeing happening around this country. And thereafter, perhaps the week after the March recess, we'll come back, have another hearing and discuss language of proposed constitutional amendments, including the one that Senator Allard has filed in this body.

Senator Allard?

SEN. ALLARD: Yeah, I'm Wayne Allard from Colorado, sponsor of the Family Marriage Amendment. Obviously, I was very pleased with the president's endorsement of the principles that I have introduced in my particular piece of legislation in the Senate. First of all, it defines marriage as between the union between a man and a woman and then we also leave it up to the states to determine the definition of civil unions and any regulations that might apply thereto.

I think that this is a very important issue to the American people. I think that it's a popular issue out there. We just need to look at the votes in the House and the Senate when we had the DOMA legislation moving through, where huge majorities in both the House and the Senate endorsed that concept of a marriage between a man and a woman, and then also we look at 38 of the state legislatures that have endorsed similar legislation. I think this is necessary.

I agree with my colleague Senator Cornyn that the courts, the activist courts, and local officials are forcing court cases to come forward. I share his concern about whether DOMA might be overturned or not, and I think that necessitates an amendment to the Constitution. I want to congratulate, or thank, Senator Cornyn publicly for agreeing to hold hearings on this. I think it's important that we move forward quickly on it and so I'm looking forward to those hearings and debating the issue on the floor and discussing it with my colleagues.

SEN. FRIST: Questions?

Q Is there a disconnect between the Senate and the House, Mr. Leader? Mr. DeLay this morning said that the House wants to move through this at a more slow pace --

SEN. FRIST: Which one? Transportation?

Q No, no. On the DOMA, on gay marriage.

SEN. FRIST: Oh.

Q That they want to move at a slower rate, whereas you folks here today are saying, "Let's go."

SEN. FRIST: I think we've made it clear at the outset that one doesn't want to knee-jerk or respond too quickly to amending the Constitution of the United States. And we've said that, I think, for the last several months, and that action would come really in response to activist judges redefining this law of the land-that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Therefore, the pace I see being set more by the activity that's going on in Massachusetts-and we keep referring to that because that's where we predicted it would happen, and indeed that's where it has happened.

But as we've seen over the last week, we've seen that there are repercussions throughout this country. So I see the schedule being set more by the activist judges.

I have not talked to the House members yet as to when they are going to be considering it. As you can see, as laid out by Senator Cornyn, we're going to continue the process in a very deliberate and a very thoughtful way. He has begun hearings in the last session. We'll continue those hearings not this week, but next week. We'll probably be looking at a number of amendments or language of amendments, and that will be his second hearing.

And we'll work out-the most common question I've received is, are you going to take it to the floor tomorrow, the next week, and the answer is probably not. Somebody could take it to the floor, but we're going to go about it in a very thoughtful way. It is talking about-amending the Constitution is a huge issue, and marriage is as important, I think, as any issue before us today. So in due time, it will come forward.

Yeah?

(Cross talk.)

SEN. FRIST: Over here.

Q We've had a number of people say that gay marriage weakens the institution of heterosexual marriage. How specifically does gay marriage weaken heterosexual marriage? Is it-does it cause divorce? What does it do that weakens heterosexual marriage?

SEN. FRIST: I'll turn to-Rick hasn't commented yet, so I'll turn to Rick because Rick-Senator Santorum-because he in fact is the one who predicted a year ago, two years ago that this glide path to right where we are today was going to occur, and I commend him because it allowed me and others to address it. But I'll-why don't I turn to Senator Santorum to paint the large picture and why it is important from a cultural point, a values point for us to move in the direction of amending the Constitution.

SEN. SANTORUM: Thank you, Bill. And I want to thank you, Leader, for your willingness to stand up last year, before anyone was calling for this, and stand up and saying that this was something that needed to be done, and your willingness to move forward and hold hearings and to bring this issue to the American people.

And that's really what the issue is here; the issue is that we're in the process right now of judges and, candidly, vigilantes-people taking justice into their own hands and deciding to change the law without either the courts or the legislature acting, and simply disobeying the law and changing what marriage is in this country. And I think all of us here believe, and I think most Americans believe, that they should have a say in it.

The American public should decide this issue, which is the foundation of the family, which is the foundation of our civilization and our culture. And to allow a very small group of people, one of whom called marriage a "stain on our laws that must be eradicated"-that's what one of the justices referred to marriage as-this is not a mainstream viewpoint, and the public has a right to speak on this issue.

And the second issue as to why is this important? I think you have to look at a fact of what marriage is.

Marriage has been set up by cultures in the past not to affirm the love of one person of another. If that were the case, mothers and daughters and fathers and sons could be married, if all it was about was affirming love between two people. The whole point of marriage and why it was treated as a special status in society was for the procreation and furtherance of the culture with the raising of children in a stable environment where a man and a woman can participate in the nurturing of a child. And that that's why it was given special status. What does having other people other than a man and a woman who are not related be married? What does that-what does that do, and why is that a threat if we allow others to be married? Because it devalues what marriage is. It turns marriage into not a union of two people for the purpose of the furtherance of the culture, but simply a sign of affirming someone's love for another, which, while not unimportant, is not the centrality of what marriage is about.

And what we've seen in countries that have adopted gay marriage-and there are several countries who have done so in Europe-is not that many gays have decided to get married. In fact, quite the contrary; very few have. What has happened is that heterosexuals stopped getting married. And, in fact, in Denmark, where they've had gay marriage now for 10-plus years, 60 percent of the children in Denmark are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of children first born are born out of wedlock. People just aren't getting married any more, and, as a result, families aren't being formed and children are being left to be raised by, in many cases, the state.

The breakdown of the family is something that we cannot afford in this country. The society is not built to have a culture in which families don't exist. We can't afford it, economically or culturally or socially. And so, this is not an issue of being against anybody, but it's being for something that is an intrinsic good for society that must be maintained.

Q Can the amendment pass the Senate this year?

SEN. SANTORUM: I would argue that it must. I --

Q But can it?

SEN. SANTORUM: I haven't counted votes. I don't think anyone here has counted votes. I would argue that it must, otherwise I think obviously there are those who would like to take the law into their own hands, whether they happen to wear judicial robes or mayoral robes.

Q Senator, there are federal laws that benefit married couples in the tax code. You have income tax rates, you have estate tax rules, Social Security. Is it your intent that along with banning gay marriage that you would preclude gay couples from receiving those benefits, continue-to continue to prohibit that?

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, that is-that's a separate issue, which is what-you know, what are the benefits that accrue to someone who is married.

The legislatures, under Senator Allard's law, are free to assign what are the benefits. And let's just be honest about it, most of the benefits-certain civil benefits, not government benefits, but certainly civil benefits can be contracted for right now. Two people can sign a contract to have their life insurance or have other benefits that would otherwise be spousal benefits go to someone else. There's nothing precluding that in the law. And so this idea that somehow now that we need a statute to protect those rights is just not true.

SEN. FRIST: We're going to take about three more questions.

Q Senator, what is the strategy to pass the energy bill now, given the opposition in the House to the leaner bill and the large number of possible Democratic amendments?

SEN. FRIST: The energy bill, which I've not yet mentioned, I did what's called Rule 14 last night, which all of you know, but for other viewers, means that we have a free-standing bill now that Senator Daschle and I, in a colloquy before we left for recess agreed that at an appropriate time, at an early time we would bring up as a free- standing bill in a contained way-meaning we're not going to have an excessive number of amendments.

The bill itself is about half the size it was in the large energy bill we previously passed. The liability provisions have been removed from that bill. And I would like-and I'll be discussing this with Senator Daschle-to advance that bill on the floor of the United States Senate sometime in the next three weeks. We've not agreed to that, but would like to do that. We have to have-again, the understanding which we agreed to on the floor, that it would be in a very contained way. We can't take it out there for days and days and days because we've already spent more time on the energy bill in the last two years than any other single bill.

Q (Off mike) -- the European Union is going to start sanctions on Monday, March 1. A bill has been ready in the Senate Finance Committee since October. What has been the obstacle about bringing the bill to the floor to avert these sanctions, and when will you do it?

SEN. FRIST: The bill that you're referring to is the FSC/ETI bill, which means nothing to most people in terms of the FSC/ETI terminology, so from now on it's called Jump-start for Business Support, JOBS. That bill-in terms of order, we will address medical liability. If we're unable to get cloture on medical liability, we'll go to gun liability tomorrow. And yes, we do-are working on liability issues because on both of these issues it's driving up, unnecessarily, the cost of consumer products or health care or general products in this country. So we're spending this week on liability. I would like to come to the Jump-start for Business Support, I think, bill following that. Again, energy --

Q What is the obstacle?

SEN. FRIST: And there is no obstacle.

We'll take it to the floor. I'm sure there will be amendments. And we'll have the Senate work its will on that on that bill.

Whether or not it can be done by March 1st-I doubt it, because we have two bills to consider before that. But it should be soon thereafter.

Q On malpractice, is this --

Q (Off mike.)

SEN. FRIST: Medical liability.

Q-some of your colleagues have suggested, yes, that this is a political issue and that it's going to come up in the election. Do you agree? And if so, is that the reason that you're bringing this up in several parts, to keep it before the Senate?

SEN. FRIST: No, the medical liability issue, as I said, is hurting communities and hurting patients. We are hurting-we're not, the medical liability system, as currently being carried out, is hurting the American people. It's hurting individual patients. And I can say that so clearly because it used to be people would think it was just money and how much doctors are having to pay for insurance. Now it's access. As you just heard, you have doctors moving one state to another state because of insurance premiums that are 14, 15, 20 times higher. You have doctors stopping delivery of babies, which affect moms, when their obstetricians no longer can take care of them, and you have trauma centers who are closing. In Nevada last year we saw the trauma center actually close. Now it's affecting access, it's affecting quality of care.

That's why I'm bringing it up. As a physician, I see it happening. I talk to people every day or about every day who are coming forward and saying patients are being hurt. I'm going to bring up-if we're unsuccessful today, I'm going to bring up again. It may be three weeks. It may be four or five weeks.

Right now, with the crisis and people being hurt, this body is going to eventually address this in a way that will rectify the problem.

Q Have you -- (off mike) -- on how long the highway bill's going to be --

SEN. FRIST: Highway bill-I'm going to keep taking questions on the different issues, instead of staying on too much-highway bill-well, the highway bill we have done. We've delivered on a $290 billion bill. We will have to act in the next two days for an extension, since the House has not yet acted. And that extension could be what the House has proposed, four months, or it could well be shorter than that. In all likelihood, it would be around two months. But that formal-final decision has not been made.

Q The president notified his intent to sign two trade agreements over the last two weeks. And I wonder, Senator-it was with Australia and with Central America, and I wonder if you've given any thought to potential floor time for either once he's signed those agreements.

SEN. FRIST: Yeah. Let me take one more question after this. This issue is on trade. The president has addressed trade. I have not talked to Chairman Grassley yet specifically about those trade agreements. I know real progress, as you know, has been made on Australia, real progress on CAFTA.

And in terms of actual floor time, I would like to address it with the appropriate chairmen.

One more question.

Q Senator, on recess appointments?

SEN. FRIST: This is the final question.

The recess appointments. As all of you know, for the first time in the history of this country, six of the president's nominees have been filibustered, first time in the history of the country. That is, a minority of United States senators are using filibuster to stop the majority-not from approving everybody, but just the opportunity to carry out our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent. We can't get to advice and consent if we can't vote, and the Democrats are stopping us from voting. Yet we know these nominees have majority support in the United States Senate.

That being the case, the president is using his constitutional right to rectify the wrong that the Democrats have put forward. So I wholly support the recent so-called recess appointment by the president of the United States of Attorney General Pryor, and clearly support the previous appointment with Judge Pickering.

It's been, I think, 77 days before we've, on the floor of the United States Senate, been allowed to consider the circuit court judges, and that's too long. We have a backlog. We have judicial emergencies, like where Attorney General Pryor was appointed to, and where we have these regions of judicial emergencies it is incumbent upon our government to act, and indeed the president has acted.

Thank you all. We'll stay in session. Appreciate it.