Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions
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By Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself, Mrs. Hutchison, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Durbin, Mr. McCain, and Mr. Kyl):
S. 205. A bill to authorize additional resources to identify and eliminate illicit sources of firearms smuggled into Mexico for use by violent drug trafficking organizations, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Southwest Border Violence Reduction Act of 2009. This important legislation, which is cosponsored by Senators Hutchison, Durbin, and Feinstein, is aimed at addressing drug-related violence in Mexico by reducing the number of weapons that are illegally smuggled into the country.
The ongoing violence in Mexico is having a devastating impact on the country. In 2008, more than 5,300 people were killed in Mexico--this is double the number in the previous year. During this last year, there were over 1,600 deaths just in Ciudad Juarez. Drug traffickers are warring with each other, assassinations of police and government officials are commonplace, lawyers and journalists have been killed, and many innocent civilians have been caught up in the crossfire.
Border communities within the United States are also being directly impacted. Many of the people living in this region have strong family ties to Mexico and the violence makes it difficult to visit loved ones. U.S. border hospitals have had to provide medical care to the wounded under armed guard. And in New Mexico, we had to briefly shut down the Columbus Port of Entry due to gun battles in the Mexican border town of Palomas and provide police escorts to school buses passing through the area. At one point this last year, the entire police force in Palomas resigned due to threats by drug traffickers and the Chief of Police fled to the United States to seek asylum.
Besides the horrific human toll this violence is having on communities throughout Mexico, it also impacts the overall economy of the border region. Everyday thousands of people travel back and forth between the United States and Mexico for business and pleasure. This flow of people and goods is an essential aspect of maintaining healthy economic activity on both sides of the border. However, the current security situation is hampering bilateral trade, new business ventures, and tourism. In these tough economic times, the violence exacerbates an already bad economic environment.
The United States has taken some important steps to help Mexico fight drug traffickers, such as increasing bilateral cooperation and providing substantial financial assistance as part of the Merida initiative. However, there is much more that we can be doing to help quell this violence. One key area where more can and should be done is with regard to stopping the flow of weapons being smuggled into Mexico from the United States.
According to the ATF, about 90 percent of the weapons confiscated in Mexico come from sources within the United States because firearms are much more readily accessible in the United States than in Mexico. These weapons are the so-called ``tools of the trade'' for narco-traffickers. They are the means by which cartels maintain control over drug corridors and the instrument they use to execute their scheme of violence and intimidation.
In the four U.S. border States there are about 6,600 licensed gun dealers. The vast majority of these dealers act in accordance with the law, but drug gangs exploit the availability of weapons in the region to supply cartels on the Mexican side of the border with illegal high-powered weapons.
The ATF has a very successful initiative in place to combat southbound illicit weapons trafficking, know as Project Gunrunner, but they need more resources to adequately tackle the problem.
The Southwest Border Violence Reduction Act would provide these much needed resources. Specially, this legislation would authorize $30 million over 2 years to expand Project Gunrunner teams in the border region and $19 million to assign agents to U.S. consulates in Mexico to assist Mexican law enforcement with smuggling investigations.
I would also like to make it clear that nothing in this bill limits the sale of firearms or places any additional restrictions on licensed dealers. This effort is only focused on enhancing the investigative capabilities of the ATF with regard to arms trafficking in order to weed out the bad actors and to ensure that weapons aren't being illegally smuggled across the border.
The United States has traditionally focused on enhancing efforts to prevent illegal narcotics from being smuggled into the county. While we obviously need to dedicate resources toward this end, we also should be taking a comprehensive approach that recognizes that the northbound flow of narcotics is dependent on the southbound flow of weapons and currency. Denying traffickers the proceeds of drug sales and the ability to heavily arm their cartels is essential in reducing the drug flow into the United States.
It is insufficient to simply rely on Mexican authorities to stop the flow of guns going into their country. Drug trafficking is a transnational threat and the solution must involve sustained cooperation between the United States and Mexico. We must do more on our side of the border to disrupt weapons smuggling if we are going to be successful in combating drug cartels.
Instability and violence in Mexico is taking a toll on communities on both sides of the border. I strongly believe that this is an issue that deserves more attention, and I hope my colleagues will support this bipartisan legislation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
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Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Lieberman, and Mr. Cardin):
S. 214. A bill to amend title XXI of the Social Security Act to permit qualifying States to use their allotments under the State Children's Health Insurance Program for any fiscal year for certain Medicaid expenditures; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise with co-sponsors Senators Leahy, Lieberman, and Cardin to introduce and ask your support for the Children's Health Equity and Technical Amendment Act.
Since the passage of the Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, in 1997, a group of States that expanded coverage to children in Medicaid prior to the enactment of SCHIP has been unfairly penalized for that expansion. States are not allowed to use the enhanced matching rate available to other States for children at similar levels of poverty under the act. As a result, a child in the States of New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania, because they were grandfathered in the original act or in Iowa, Montana, or a number of other States at 134 percent of poverty is eligible for an enhanced matching rate in SCHIP but that has not been the case for States such as New Mexico, Vermont, Washington, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and a number of others, including Connecticut, Tennessee, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Maryland.
As the health policy statement by the National Governors' Association reads, ``The Governors believe that it is critical that innovative states not be penalized for having expanded coverage to children before the enactment of SCHIP, which provides enhanced funding to meet these goals. To this end, the Governors support providing additional funding flexibility to states that had already significantly expanded coverage of the majority of uninsured children in their states.''
For 6 years, our group of States has sought to have this inequity addressed. Early in 2003, I introduced the Children's Health Equity Act of 2003 with Senators Jeffords, Murray, Leahy, and Ms. Cantwell and we worked successfully to get a compromise worked out for inclusion in S. 312 by Senators Rockefeller and Chafee. This compromise extended expiring SCHIP allotments only for fiscal years 1998 through 2001 in order to meet budgetary caps.
The compromise allowed States to be able to use up to 20 percent of our State's SCHIP allotments to pay for Medicaid eligible children at 150 percent of poverty that were part of our State's expansions prior to the enactment of SCHIP. That language was maintained in conference and included in H.R. 2854 that was signed by the President as Public Law 108-74. Unfortunately, a slight change was made in the conference language that excluded New Mexico and Hawaii, Maryland, and Rhode Island and needed specific changes so an additional bill was passed, H.R. 3288, and signed into law as Public Law 108-107, on November 17, 2003. This second bill included language from legislation that I introduced with Senator Domenici, S. 1547, to address the problem caused to New Mexico by the conference committee's change. Unfortunately, one major problem with the compromise was that it must be periodically reauthorized. Most recently, this authority was renewed through fiscal year 2007 in Section 201(b) of the National Institutes of Health Reform Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-482. Without future authority, the inequity would continue with SCHIP allotments.
This legislation would address that problem and ensure that all future allotments give these 11 States the flexibility to use our SCHIP allotments to pay for health care services of children. In order to bring these requirements in-line with those of other States, it would also lower the threshold at which New Mexico and other effected States could utilize the funds from 150 percent of the Federal poverty level to 125 percent.
There is strong bipartisan support for addressing this inequity. Legislation was introduced in the 110th Congress in both H.R. 3584 by Republican Representative Barton, and 141 co-sponsors, and S. 2086 by Senator Trent Lott and other Republican leadership to expand the category of children eligible through this correction to 133 percent of the Federal poverty level.
This rather technical issue has real and negative consequences in States such as New Mexico. In fact, due to the SCHIP inequity, New Mexico has been allocated $266 million from SCHIP between fiscal years 1998 and 2002, and yet, has only been able to spend slightly over $26 million as of the end of last fiscal year. In other words, New Mexico has been allowed to spend less than 10 percent of its Federal SCHIP allocations.
This legislation would correct this problem.
The bill does not take money from other States' SCHIP allotments. It simply allows our States to spend our States' specific SCHIP allotments from the Federal Government on our uninsured children--just as other States across the country are doing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
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