Safe Intersections Act of 2003

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, as Senator Inhofe has already stated, our staffs worked hard over the weekend on amendments people have to this most important legislation. We have gone over many amendments, but have approved 34 amendments we would accept. These are good amendments. They have been reviewed closely by both the majority and minority. A lot of progress has been made. We hope people who have problems with the substance of this legislation, who want to offer amendments, will come and talk to us about it today. We are arriving at a point where there is not going to be a lot of time. Tomorrow we hope to be in a position to do the managers' package--the finance, transit, and EPW aspects of the legislation--and move forward, but we hope Senators who have concern about the legislation will come forward so we can move more quickly. We are running out of time on this very important legislation.

Medicare and Prescription Drugs

Mr. President, in 1965, when Congress created Medicare to provide health care security for our senior citizens, it took less than a year for that to be considered and then put into full operation; in fact, 11 months. That was back before we had computers. All we had then were slide rulers and some adding machines.

On the legislation with which we are dealing now, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, the new Medicare revision, we have a different situation. We are told this legislation we passed--and that was signed by the President and deals with our senior citizens--is going to have to wait for more than 2 years before it can be implemented. Today our senior citizens need help with soaring drug prices. They deserve the security of knowing they will be able to buy the medicine that can keep them healthy and happy. The American people want to know that when their Government wants to get things done, it can act quickly.

This law is a bad deal for senior citizens. That is why the main provisions of this legislation won't take effect until after the election. That is wrong. I suppose the administration thought our senior citizens would be grateful a bill passed, no matter what was in it, and that they wouldn't bother to find out what was in it. But they did find out. They already know. The President has underestimated our seniors.

I have met with seniors throughout the State of Nevada, and they know what is in this law. They don't like it. I read on the floor last week a meeting that was held by people from the State of Nevada to describe what is in this bill.

More than a hundred people showed up and all hundred were there to complain about this legislation. They don't like the fact that this will make many of them pay more for their drugs than they already have to pay. They don't like the fact that many who have drug coverage under private plans could lose their benefits because of this legislation. They don't like the provision in the law that forbids Medicare from negotiating with drug companies to get better prices. Insurance companies can do it and HMOs can do it. But Medicare--the largest health care delivery unit in the world--cannot negotiate with the drug companies to get lower prices.

Instead of working with Congress to address these and other concerns, the President has threatened to veto any change. Then he turned to his reelection campaign and asked them to help polish the image of this new Medicare law. So a company that is part of the President's reelection campaign is now doing the ads even with Medicare.

Fair enough, you might say. That is politics. Except the President is waging this ad campaign at taxpayers' expense. Simply, that is not fair. I am told he is planning to raise $200 million for his campaign this year. But apparently that is not enough because the administration is spending as much as $22 million of the taxpayers' money for this publicity campaign.

I have no doubt that senior citizens need information about this new Medicare law, and education and awareness about a new program is a legitimate use of taxpayer dollars; but these ads they are pushing are misleading. They don't tell seniors what they need to know about the bill. These ads don't shoot straight with the American people. They give our senior citizens false assurances, not facts.

For example, the ads reassure seniors that they can keep their Medicare coverage and the right to choose their own doctor. But the fact is many seniors, including many in Nevada, could be forced into demonstration programs that will make them pay higher premiums if they want to stay in traditional Medicare, and they will not be able to choose their own doctor.

In the same fashion, the ads don't mention that seniors will be prohibited from using their own money to purchase supplemental coverage to fill the gaps in the new law.

As part of this advertising campaign, the administration is also running print advertisements. I was surprised and perplexed when I saw an ad in the newspaper that runs on Capitol Hill, Roll Call. This newspaper is aimed at Senators, House Members, and Capitol Hill staff, and it is also aimed at lobbyists and so-called Washington insiders. If the President is trying to educate senior citizens about this new law, why would they place ads in Washington newspapers where less than 3 percent of the readership is over age 65? It is for obvious reasons.

The last straw was when I learned these ads are being produced by the same company that makes President Bush's campaign commercials. But that makes sense because they are simply campaign commercials--except his campaign isn't paying for them; you are, the American taxpayers.

These ads are political and that is clear. They are not intended to help seniors understand this complicated

Medicare law. They are intended to offset the negative public reaction to this bad law.

The President has every right to defend this law, which he urged Congress to pass, but he doesn't have the right to make the taxpayers pay for it.

Mr. President, again, I see my friend from North Dakota, who has an amendment, and he has been waiting to get a vote on it. I hope the Senator from North Dakota will get a vote on it soon.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I was in this Chamber just a few days ago singing the laurels of my friend from Arizona and saying what a fine man I thought he was, what great work he did on campaign finance reform. I was basically talking about my deep respect and admiration for the senior Senator from Arizona.

Having said that, it does not mean I have to agree with everything he says. I have to say, with the deepest respect, that on this issue he is simply wrong.

There are certain things we have to do in this country that are logical and, over the long term, make a great deal of sense. We have a national highway transportation system started by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The simple fact that the interstate system has been completed, meaning all of the interstate system is finished, all the connecting points have been made in this great puzzle, does not mean we have obligations that cease with highways in this country.

We not only have a national highway transportation system, we also have a national security system. The State of Nevada contributes greatly to the security of this country. We have Nellis Air Force Base, which is the largest and most important fighter training center in the world for our Air Force. We have in the northern part of the State the Fallon Naval Air Training Center, which is the most important part of the fighter training facility for our U.S. Navy. It is so important. People in that desert learn to fly landing on carriers.

We started in Nevada the great work that has been done on unmanned vehicles, military vehicles, the drones, at Indian Springs. We store thousands of tons of ammunition at Hawthorne Ammunition Depot. People from all over the country--the State of North Carolina, the State of Arizona, the State of Vermont, the State of Oklahoma, all over the country--contribute to taking care of those military facilities. The State of Nevada cannot afford to do it all. The taxpayers in Nevada do not pay for those bases even though there is a cyclical spinoff that is important to the State of Nevada. The State of Nevada depends on the American taxpayers to make sure those civilian and military employees at those most important bases are taken care of.

I am the only Member who is in the Chamber who is on the Appropriations Committee. When we work for military construction projects at Nellis Air Force Base, Fallon, and other bases I mentioned, those construction projects are paid for by American taxpayers. People from all over the country make their tax payments. It comes to this Congress, and it is decided that Nellis Air Force Base needs new hangars or needs to buy some new land so that the people around the base are not bothered. That is all paid for by American taxpayers. It doesn't come equally from Nevada. The Congress does not say: As soon as you get enough money in taxes to come from the State of Nevada, we will build that new hangar for the F-20s. That isn't how it works. The same applies to our National Highway System.

I am disappointed that the staff of the good Senator from Arizona did not at least listen to what I said, Senator Inhofe said, Senator Jeffords, and Senator Bond said last Monday. I talked at that time about how this bill is so much more fair than bills in years past.

Just a few years ago, there were some States that were only able to keep 75 cents out of every dollar they contributed into the highway trust fund for their own States. The rest of it went to other places. But a decision was made, and it was not an easy decision--the Senator from Arizona knows around here you count votes, and when you have enough votes to get something passed, you pass it. In years past, people counted votes around here. When they found they could get to 60 votes, sometimes 51, the legislation was jammed through this body. That is why some States wound up not getting very much on the money they paid into the highway trust fund.

When the Senator from Arizona talks about this being pork--and we have talked about that here quite a bit--this bill is basically paid for by the highway trust fund. It is paid for by the fact of when people go to buy a gallon of gasoline, they put money into a trust fund, and we are using those moneys now to distribute among the States. We were a little bit short to cover everything that needed to be done in this bill, so in conjunction with the majority and the minority and members of this administration, we said, we are not going to raise any taxes but we are going to readjust some of the taxes that are already in existence, and we did that to make up a small part of our highway bill.

To talk about pork and people are sick of money being spent--I didn't vote for the Medicare bill. I agree with him, that was a bad deal. You cannot come out here with one big paintbrush and paint everything the same. Why is this country in such deep trouble with deficit? It has very little to do with domestic discretionary spending. We could today eliminate the FBI, close all the prisons in the country, close the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, close the Congress, close the Supreme Court, close the Executive Office of the President, and we would still be in deficit. We simply do not have enough money coming into the Government to cover the expenses. Domestic discretionary spending--you can eliminate it all, and we still could not balance the budget.

The fact is, because of the tax cuts that have taken place over the years, we don't have enough money coming in to cover this. That is why last year we had a budget deficit in excess of $500 billion. This next year will be higher than that. It is not domestic discretionary spending. Especially don't pick on the highway trust fund, don't pick on the highway bill.

From everything I have understood, all of the President's statements about not liking the highway bill have nothing to do with the Senate version of the bill. It is what they are talking about doing in the House. They want to spend more money than what we are spending. The President has not directed any of his comments to the Senate version of the bill, as far as I know, and I think I pretty much know.

I know the good Senator from Oklahoma was on Fox News today explaining that point.

I will yield for a question.

Was that a question?

I am sorry. I missed the question.

Absolutely. I would respond to my friend, yes. I have been in on the negotiations, yes. This is not something that has taken place over the last 2 weeks. This committee--Senator Inhofe, Senator Jeffords, Senator Bond, and Senator Reid has spent months working on this bill. Of course, the administration was in on every one--not every one of them but a lot of those conversations. Yes, we originally wanted a bill much bigger than this one, but because of the pressure we got from the White House and other places we have the bill now the number that it is.

So I absolutely have followed this very closely. This bill is extremely important. This is the fourth or fifth highway bill I have worked on.

Before I was interrupted, I was talking about how much better this bill is than the bills in the past when States gave away 25 percent of the money that came into their States. It was determined, when the so- called four managers started this, what we would like to do with legislation. What we wanted to do was to try to work it out so that every State of the 50 States would get 95 cents out of every dollar they put into the trust fund.

Keep in mind this was a big leap forward because some States were getting less than that. Let me just briefly go over, so that people who are watching this--staffs, Senators--understand how difficult this bill has been. Let's go back to the bill of 1982 called the Surface Transportation Assistance Act. This bill established the mass transit account of the highway trust fund. What this is all about is a determination was made to do everything we could do to keep people off of our highways, which saves the highway trust fund money. Therefore, we would work to help with mass transit because if we had good bus service, if we had monorail like we have in Las Vegas, if we have subways like we have in various places, including Washington, DC, it keeps people off the streets and saves us money out of the highway trust fund. So that was the first time we established that. That was in 1982, the first year the Senator from Arizona and I came to Congress.

It contained an 85-cent minimum return provision, meaning that all of those States were getting in the seventies before they would get a minimum of 85 cents for every dollar they put into the trust fund. The Federal gas tax was increased from 4 cents to 9 cents back in 1982. So that took care of that bill.

In 1987, this was a difficult year. That year President Reagan vetoed our bill. We had to override the President's veto. We did that. We did it by one vote in the Senate and they overrode it by a significant number in the House. It was a good bill. It was a bill that changed the speed limit above 55 miles per hour. It included a provision requiring States to be more concerned about the environment as they were doing the road work.

Then 1991 was the first so-called ISTEA bill, Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. Earlier, all of us talked about the importance of Senator Moynihan and Senator Chafee and having a highway program in this country that was reflective of the changes to the Interstate Highway System that had been constructed. What we did in the 1991 act was create the CMAQ; that is the Congestion Mitigation Air Quality Program. This was extremely important so that there would be transportation conformity, air quality. With the Interstate System largely complete, as I indicated, ISTEA shifted the Federal program from capital construction to focus on people and goods movement. There were a lot of things we looked at in that bill that simply had not been looked at before. We realized just building new roads was not the answer to all of our highway problems, our congestion problems, our transportation problems in the country. We came to the realization that we talked a lot about that the whole country suffers when there is a traffic jam.

Millions of gallons of fuel are wasted as cars sit and idle. They are the most inefficient when they idle. We also came to the realization, talked a lot about it, that when people are stuck in traffic they can no longer be productive workers. They cannot deliver their goods. They cannot be on their computers at work. They cannot be going to court. They cannot be taking care of their patients. When traffic is stopped, it stops people from being productive. So we talked about that in the 1991 ISTEA bill.

We also expanded the transportation decisionmaking process to include local officials, and even citizens.

Now, in 1998, we did TEA-21 which continued the basic policy structure established in ISTEA. The reason that was important, from 1982 to 1998 we had not changed the minimum requirements States would receive. Six years ago when we took this bill up we said every State will get 90.5 percent of the money they put into a program. That was a big step forward involving a changing of formulas and billions of dollars changed. We did that. We thought it was fair.

In the bill we are taking up this year, we have even gone further. We have said it is important that after we pass this legislation, States at the end of this bill will get 95 percent of what they put in.

My friend from Arizona is right; States that are getting 90.5 percent now would rather get 95 percent tomorrow rather than at the end of this 6-year period. But we are moving this ball down the line toward the goal line, and I think we are scoring a touchdown. Even though the Senator from Arizona talks about how bad this bill is and how he does not like it because of all the pork in it, I do not know what his definition of pork is. I really have some trouble understanding that.

This is a highway bill. There is some money spent for doing work on bridges. As was stated just a few days ago by the Senator from Florida, actually 29 percent of all bridges in this country are substandard. What we have done in this bill, S. 1072, is to try to make sure there is growth among the core programs of this bill, and we have created a new program which is called the safe routes to school program. This has been accepted across the country as being important. We believe children should walk and ride bicycles to school as much as they can. In some places they cannot do that because the traffic patterns are such that they cannot. So part of this money would be spent building bicycle paths and in effect making it easier for children to walk and ride to school.

This reduces the rate of return gap between donor and donee States. So I think we are doing the right thing in this bill. As I indicated, I cannot envision why my friend from Arizona complains about this being pork. It is a highway bill. Is building a highway something that is bad? Is repairing an outdated, dangerous bridge bad? I do not think so. Is trying to improve air quality while doing construction bad? I do not think so. So I do not know why my friend from Arizona is so angry and is talking about all of these bad things. This is a good bill.

As I indicated, the situation in dealing with our national defense system it is not based upon how much money a State pays into a program. It is based on where we need the defense program. Using the theory of my friend from Arizona, what would the State of Idaho do? Idaho is a big State. It is a bridge State. It helps one get to California. If they only got back the money they paid into the program, the roads in Idaho would be a mess. What about Wyoming? What about South Dakota? What about North Dakota? What about Alaska? If one takes off from Seattle and goes to Miami, that is how big the State of Alaska is. Now, they do not have any people there. They do not pay much money into the gas fund. They need help. Their roads are very difficult to maintain.

Wyoming also has no people in it, basically. My friend from Arizona wants Wyoming to get the money they pay into the program, and that is all? This is the United States of America. We are a central whole divided among self-governing parts, and we have a central government that helps make these States not independent, saying every penny they pay into the tax system is all they get out. It will never work that way.

My friend from Arizona, as much as I respect and understand what great contributions he has made to the country,

on this debate has added nothing. He has added nothing. He is just off base. I don't know how else to say it.

I will be happy to yield.

I would say, through the Chair to my friend from Vermont, yes. Major Eisenhower was asked to bring a caravan of military vehicles across the country. He did it, but it was not easy because the roads were impassable on occasions. The people in the convoy had to work on roads as they came across the country. This young officer decided at the time if he ever had the ability to change the condition of the highways in our country, he would do it.

Lo and behold, Eisenhower is elected to be President of the United States and one of the first things our Republican President does is to propose this program that is loaded with pork, that builds roads. President Eisenhower is responsible for the Interstate Highway System more than any other person, and he did it because it met the needs of this country.

As we said, the actual construction of the roads has been completed. One of the last places it was done was in the State of Nevada. Actually it was in California, but it connected Mesquite, NV with St. George, UT. But they had to go through this terrible hard rock to finish the Interstate Highway System. It took a long time and it was extremely expensive to do that, but there were a few little places like that which hung on for years until we could say we completed the system. We did that. Now we have come up with programs that are so important. There are roadways in the country that are just as important as the Interstate Highway System. That is why we have a program, the National Highway System. What this talks about is the offshoots of the Interstate System.

I have talked about this on the floor today. To get to my hometown of Searchlight is not easy to do. There are a couple of ways you can get there. But this bill takes into consideration places such as Searchlight, NV. They are entitled to good roads also. You are not entitled to good roads just because you are on the interstate system.

This bill has gone such a long way to making the playing field more level. I commend my friend from Vermont and my friend from Oklahoma. We didn't have to do this. We could have gotten enough votes to pass this legislation without raising it to 95 percent at the end of this bill. But it was believed by the committee we should do that, that we would raise every State to a minimum of 95 percent. We have done that. It was hard to do, but it benefits a lot of States and certainly the American people and makes a system that is easier to explain and understand.

Yes. When I served in the House of Representatives, I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was dumbfounded. We have all this surplus food and we would take it to other continents, for example, to Africa, and the food would never get where it was supposed to go. Why? Simple. There was no way of hauling it to the places where it was needed. They had an insufficient transportation program in many of these countries. People were starving to death and they couldn't get the food where it was needed.

We don't have anything like that, but it does illustrate why we have to have the ability to move things easier. Each year that goes by, we have to make it easier because we have competition around the world. The more people who are tied up in traffic, in trucks and trains and in personal vehicles, the less competitive we will be. That is what this bill is all about.

For my friend to suggest let's just extend this for a year, come back and look at it again--we have already done that once. The State of Nevada and the other 49 States were grousing when we did that. Why? Because these highway programs, many of them, are multiyear programs. If they can't enter into a multiyear contract, it wastes a lot of money. It wastes money. Something that would have cost $3 million, if we extend this now for an extra year, by the time we finish it could wind up costing $6 million, twice as much as it ordinarily would cost. Without what we have in this bill, we would get a lot less product. Extending this bill for a year's time is not the way to go.

The former majority leader and minority leader of the Senate, the distinguished junior Senator from Mississippi, was on the floor today and that is one of the things he talked about.

We talk about job creation. Here it is actually taking place. This bill will be responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs in this country--millions of jobs. For every $1 billion we spend in infrastructure, we create 47,000 jobs.

In addition to those 47,000 jobs we will create spending $1 billion here, the spinoff of this, according to Senator Frist, the majority leader of the Senate, is $6.2 billion that flows from that. This bill is a win-win for everyone.

I am at a loss as to why my friend from Arizona would come and try to throw this into the same pot as: Boy, we are spending too much money around here. This is like Medicare.

It has nothing to do with that. These moneys come from the highway trust fund with the exception, which we have already acknowledged, that some moneys are coming from the reshuffling of taxes that are already in existence. There are no new taxes.

I hope the ship is not tilted even a little bit from these statements made by my distinguished friend from Arizona because they should be accorded very little weight.

Madam President, I close by saying again I want the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Oklahoma to understand how much I appreciate their work on this legislation. We have to keep our eye on the prize. This is, as Senator Lott said, probably the most important piece of legislation we will pass all year. He said that an hour ago, and he is absolutely right. This could be the most important legislation we pass all year

to stimulate the economy, to create jobs, to help States become and remain competitive, and to ease traffic burdens and congestion which we have throughout our country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I have just talked to the managers of the bill. My understanding is there is nobody waiting to speak on the bill. As a result of that, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes, with the understanding that I will relinquish the floor if the managers have Senators who wish to offer an amendment to the bill. I don't want to delay the bill.

Mr. President, I wanted to speak for a moment about the issue of jobs. There has been an especially vibrant debate recently about the number of jobs that are being created in this country and the number of jobs that are moving overseas from the U.S. to other countries. I wanted to talk about jobs specifically today because there was an announcement that the U.S. has finished a trade agreement with the country of Australia.

We have already had the completion of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA; we have had NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico; we have had GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; and the WTO. We have all of these agreements and the fact is they are not working out well.

Despite that, instead of correcting the problems in previous trade agreements, our negotiators are continuing to move ahead to negotiate new trade agreements.

Let's consider NAFTA. NAFTA was negotiated with Mexico and Canada. Prior to NAFTA being negotiated, and then approved by the Congress, the United States had a very small trade surplus with Mexico, nearly a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Now, 10 years later, we have a $40 billion deficit with Mexico. I will say that again. In 10 years, with the North American Free Trade Agreement, we took a small surplus with Mexico and turned it into a very large deficit.

Again, when we negotiated the trade agreement with Canada--it was with Canada and Mexico--we had a $10 billion trade deficit with Canada, and that is now $50 billion.

With Mexico, we took a small surplus and turned it into a big deficit. With Canada, we had a modest deficit and quintupled it, from $10 billion to $50 billion. We still have people walking around this town thumbing their suspenders, between puffs of their cigars, and saying this trade agreement was wonderful for our country, it has worked well.

I decided to check which companies certified to the Federal Government the movement of jobs, or the loss of jobs, as a result of NAFTA. I have just received the information from the Congressional Research Service. It is the first time anybody has catalogued this job loss, in this level of detail, as far as I know. But here is what you have.

Now, NAFTA allows for transitional trade adjustment assistance. That is a fancy way of saying, if you are going to lose your job because of this trade agreement, we will give you some supplemental income to help you over the tough spot. The anticipation was people would lose their jobs, and we would try to provide some help, transitional trade adjustment assistance.

In order to get transitional trade adjustment assistance, the employer has to certify that jobs are going to be lost in their company as a result of this trade agreement. That certification goes to the Department of Labor, which keeps track of those certifications.

Let me describe what we found with this Congressional Research Service study, based on Department of Labor data. This is the first time a study has been done in this level of detail.

It says the No. 1 company that certified jobs certified they had 16,095 jobs that they lost either because they moved the jobs to Mexico, in most cases, or because of additional imports from either Mexico or Canada that displaced their workers here.

No. 2, Levi Strauss: 15,676 jobs over this nearly 10-year period. Levi Strauss, now, that is everything that is American, right? Just go buy some Levis. Levis used to be made in the United States. Not anymore. Levis left, and the workers who used to make Levis in this country were able to get some transitional trade adjustment assistance. That is a fancy way of saying: By the way, we are going to sew those Levis in Mexico, and we will give you a few bucks as your job leaves and goes to Mexico. That is what it said to American workers.

There is a whole series of companies, as one might imagine. Fruit of the Loom is seventh on the list, 5,350 jobs. I remember when I saw the actual notice in the paper that Fruit of the Loom was shutting down its U.S. manufacturing plants. I spoke on the floor of the Senate. I said: It is one thing to lose your shirt, but Fruit of the Loom is gone. They are making shirts and shorts and underwear in Mexico. I understand even now that labor costs are too high, and now it is moving to Asia, in some cases.

How about Fig Newton, Kraft Foods? Eat a Fig Newton and you think you are eating a Fig Newton cookie from the U.S. I am sorry, think again. It is Mexican food; Fig Newtons made in Mexico. It left this country, and the resulting layoffs of U.S. workers meant they received transitional trade adjustment assistance.

What does that mean? It means they got laid off. They made a good Fig Newton cookie, but they don't make it here anymore. American employees lost their jobs, and Fig Newtons are now made in Mexico.

This is a list of 100 companies from the Congressional Research Service. This list can be derived from Labor Department data because the companies had to certify job loss. This is slightly over 200,000 employees who lost their jobs. In fact, if you included in the list all who certified, it would be over 400,000 American workers who lost their jobs because of NAFTA, the free trade agreement with the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Some say other jobs were created. Maybe so. Ask yourself this: If we took a small trade surplus with Mexico and turned it into a very large deficit, and a modest deficit with Canada and turned it into a very large deficit, isn't it inevitably the case that we will have lost a lot of jobs? The answer is clearly yes. It doesn't matter what all the other folks say. We have lost a lot of jobs, and all of these folks-- these are just numbers on a chart, but of these 200,000 people, every one of them had to come home, perhaps some evening after work, and say to their spouse: Honey, I lost my job. I did good work. I had good evaluations all of my career with this company, but they have decided to shut the doors in this country and move to Mexico.

The reason I wanted to point this out is to say there is precious little attention paid these days to the question of what is happening with jobs being so-called ``outsourced.'' I recently visited with a fellow who is founder and CEO of a very substantial company. He said to me: All of my competitors have now moved offshore. All of my competitors have moved offshore, and I have not. He said: I am not going to at this point, but I want you to know it puts me at a dramatic competitive disadvantage because I am paying American wages, and they are in India or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or China, and they are paying pennies on the dollar for those wages and it makes them much more difficult to compete with.

I said: Good for you for keeping your jobs in this country.

He said: Yes, but somebody has to do something.

The question of this globalization is not just about whether we are globalizing, whether the economy is becoming increasingly global, because it

is. The question is, Are there rules attached to globalization? What will the rules be for globalization? Is it OK to move jobs to a country where you pay them 16 cents an hour and work them 16 hours a day and 7 days a week? Is that something we should aspire to have American workers and American companies compete with? Yet that is exactly the case today. The answer so far has been, yes, that is fair trade.

It is not fair trade where I come from. This economy will not be the economy that produces jobs and represents the economy of the world's biggest and most vibrant economic engine if it does not retain a strong manufacturing base. No country will remain the dominant economy in the world without a dominant and strong manufacturing base.

For 42 straight months, we have had reductions in the manufacturing job base. Why? Because of outsourcing; moving jobs overseas where you can hire people for pennies on the dollar.

Let me go through a couple of charts that show where we are with trade.

This chart shows trade with Mexico. We can see where we were just before our trade agreement. What has happened since that time? A flood of red ink every single year; more and more trade deficits with Mexico.

This chart shows our trade deficit with Canada. I mention both of these only because this is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. There is a flood of red ink. We negotiated the trade agreement in 1993, and we can see what is happening. And we still have people saying this has been a great free trade agreement.

This chart shows our trade deficit, which is completely out of control. The President's budget last week asked the Congress to approve a budget that has a dramatic budget deficit. In it, he predicts in the fiscal year in which we now work, the budget deficit will be roughly $530 billion, roughly $530 billion. But in order to get to that, he had to take the Social Security trust funds for the year and use them as other revenues to make the deficit look lower than it really is.

The budget deficit this year is going to be about $660 billion. That is the budget deficit. Add to that a nearly $500 billion trade deficit, and we can see where this is going--higher, higher, and higher. We have a Government with a combined budget deficit and trade deficit that is over $1 trillion, and people walk around as if nothing is going on. This is serious for this country. This is a burden that must be repaid.

Let me talk for a moment about a couple of specific trade issues to show the absurdity of what is happening. This chart shows cars to Korea. Korea sent to the United States 620,000 cars to sell in our marketplace, and we sold to Korea 2,800.

Let me say that again. Mr. President, 620,000 Korean cars came to the U.S. We were able to sell 2,800 in Korea. Why? Because the Korean government doesn't want U.S. cars sold in Korea.

Beef? We can't sell beef in Europe. Why? Because $100 million of beef is banned from the EU each year due to bogus reasons, and we have a very large trade deficit with the EU. Here is the way they characterize U.S. beef: A cow with two heads because of growth hormones.

Guess what. We said to Europe: If you are going to take that action against us, we are going to take action against you. And in the first small semblance of direct action on trade, the U.S. Government decided to take action against Europe.

What did we do? We are going to slap Europe around. We decided to slap Europe around by imposing duties on Roquefort cheese, goose liver, and truffles.

That will strike fear into our trade adversaries, and I say adversaries because when they take unfair action against us, we have a right to take action against them. What do we do? We slap import duties on truffles and goose liver. I am sorry, that does not seem to me to be the kind of action that is very effective against trade partners that are engaged in unfair trade.

I could go on at great length about the issue. The issue, to me, comes down to the subject of jobs. This is a BusinessWeek article of February 3, last year. It talked about U.S. jobs moving offshore. They talked about the official estimate of 3.3 million white-collar jobs moving offshore in the near future. They are talking about in the coming 10 to 12 years an additional 3.3 million jobs. These are not factory jobs, manufacturing jobs. These are white-collar jobs that will be moving offshore.

On the cover of BusinessWeek Magazine recently, it states: ``Is Your Job Next?'' A new round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include chip design, engineering, basic research.

Recently, in the last couple of weeks, a Wall Street Journal article talking about documents from the IBM Corporation gives a rare look, they say, at ``sensitive plans for offshoring.''

They got ahold of IBM documents that show the company is acutely aware of the sensitivities involved when they ship jobs overseas. These are white-collar jobs. They say:

Do not be transparent regarding the purpose/intent, and

cautions that the terms ``onshore'' and ``offshore'' should

never be used. The memo--

Which talks about moving jobs offshore--

suggests that anything written to employees should first be

``sanitized'' by human-resources and communications staffers.

In the draft prepared for managers at IBM they suggest workers be told:

This action is a statement about the rate and pace of

change in this demanding industry. . . . It is in no way a

comment on the excellent work you have done over the years. .

. . For the people whose jobs are affected by this

consolidation, I understand this is difficult news.

It is a rare look at companies that are now moving high-skilled, high-wage, white-collar jobs overseas.

We have some serious problems to deal with. This issue of the movement of American jobs overseas is a very serious issue. We can talk about the issue of globalization, and I am somebody who believes this is an increasing economy--I understand that--but I also believe there needs to be standards: What is the admission price to the marketplace of a developed country, a country that fought, for example, for the right of workers to organize, a safe workplace, the ability to prohibit the dumping into streams and waters and the air, poisons and effluents?

We fought for years about those things: Child labor laws, fair labor standards, minimum wages. Now, with just an airplane ride and a decision memo by a company which said we will just pole vault over all of that, we do not have to worry about that, they move our jobs to Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, or to a place where they can hire 12-year- olds, pay them 12 cents an hour, and work them 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. And they do. Then they will ship the product back to Toledo, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Fargo. They say that consumers will be advantaged by that because they will get lower priced commodities.

I conclude by telling one story that I have told previously. It is about Huffy bicycles. Most people are familiar with Huffy bicycles, 20 percent of the American marketplace sold at Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart. They used to have an American flag as a decal between the handle bar and the front fender. That was when they were made by workers in Ohio who made $11 an hour producing a Huffy bicycle.

I do not know any of those workers, but I am sure they were proud because they had good jobs and produced a good bicycle. They were all fired. Huffy bicycles are now made in China. The workers in Ohio were making $11 an hour. That was too much, according to the company. So Huffy bicycles are made in China for 33 cents an hour by people who work 12 to 14 hours a day for 7 days a week.

No, there is not a flag anymore. That little tin decal between the fender and the handle bar is not an American flag. It is now a picture of the globe.

The question for this country is: Are we going to have any manufacturing jobs left? Is it fair competition to ask an American worker to compete against 33-cent-an-hour labor? We have to answer these questions.

I am not suggesting it is not an increasingly global world, but we need rules for globalization. What is fair competition for the American worker and for American businesses? That is something the Congress has been unwilling to deal with and recent trade agreements have ignored. In fact, the

trade agreements have been fundamentally incompetent, the ones with China, NAFTA, and others.

I have spoken about those agreements at great length previously. Today, what I wanted to do was simply show the chart that shows the 100 companies that have exported jobs, and they have certified that the export of these jobs came about as a result of our trade agreement. This certification is not some speculation on my part. This is certification by each of these companies about the number of jobs that no longer exist in this country because they either moved to Mexico or they displaced imports coming into this country.

This certification that has been made and the CRS has compiled for me is on my Web site, Dorgan.Senate.gov, if someone wants to see the list of companies. I think it is important for people to understand this is what is happening. The question is: Does it matter? For me, it does.

If we are going to have a strong manufacturing base, we have to worry about this. No country will remain a dominant economic power without a strong manufacturing base, in my judgment.

I have more to say about trade. I will do it at a more appropriate time. I understand my colleague wishes to speak on the bill, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, this amendment very simply deals with the question of open containers of alcohol in automobiles and moving vehicles on the roadways. Some perhaps will not believe this, but there are some locations in this country where it is still

legal to put one fist around the neck of a bottle of whiskey, use the other hand to put the key in the ignition, and then with a hand on the steering wheel and a hand on a bottle of whiskey drive off down the road. And it is perfectly legal. Some would say that can't be. Yes. It is. It is the case. In some parts of this country, you can't be drunk while you drive, but you still can drink while you drive, and you are perfectly legal.

I don't think there is any intersection in any part of this country where you or your family or your neighbors ought to meet a vehicle, an automobile, that is being driven by someone who is drinking alcohol, in a circumstance where it is legal for them to drink alcohol while meeting you at that intersection. That is unforgivable, in my judgment. I have been trying, I suppose for 10 or 12 years, to get this done. I offer this amendment again. It simply says to the States: You must have a prohibition on open containers of alcohol in State law. If not, you lose 2 percent of your highway funds. And for up to 4 years you can get the funding restored if you pass the prohibition, but you must have a prohibition of open containers that meets the Federal requirement.

We have that federal requirement. I was instrumental in getting it passed into law. It says you must have a prohibition on open containers of alcohol, and if you do not, some of your highway money goes to hazard mitigation. So we have 36 States that have actually passed statutes that prohibit open containers of alcohol; 14 States have not passed statutes that meet this test. A number of them still get the same amount of highway money, but because money is fungible, they use it for hazard mitigation and use the money on the other side and there is no pain involved at all.

The result is that we have States in this country where it is, one, legal, or, two, illegal but not enforced, where people are driving while they are consuming alcohol. I don't think it ought to be the case anywhere in America for it to be legal to drink and drive.

Every 30 minutes someone receives a call in this country that their loved one has been killed due to a drunk driver. I received that call at about 10:30 one evening, a moment I will never forget. My wonderful mother was killed by a drunk driver. She, like so many others, was driving down the street 30 miles an hour, coming from the hospital at 8 o'clock at night, and a drunk was coming in the other direction, witnesses say at speeds between 80 and 100 miles per hour, in a high- speed police chase, and ran into my mother's car and she was killed.

This carnage on America's highways that is caused by someone drinking and driving is not some mysterious illness or disease for which we do not know the cure. We know what causes this, and we know how to stop it. The way to stop it is to say to people all across this country: You cannot drink and drive. Just that simple. You just cannot do it. Yet there are still States in this country in which it is legal to drink and drive. And there are other States in which it is legal, if the driver does not drink, that other passengers in the car can have open containers of alcohol.

It is long past the time for us to stop it. We have passed legislation that tries to coax the States into doing this, and many have complied by passing legislation that prohibits open containers of alcohol. Now I say let's go the next step, to say to the States: It does not matter where you are driving in this country. We expect, as policymakers, never to have to meet someone at an intersection where the driver or the passengers in that car are drinking, and doing so legally. We know better than that.

Again, every 30 minutes someone receives a call that some member of their family was killed by a drunk driver. That simply means that someone took a drink of alcohol, took too much alcohol, got drunk, got behind the wheel, and turned the automobile into an instrument of murder. We can do better than that in this country. I suggest this piece of legislation is long overdue.

It is interesting to note that the States that do not have a prohibition of open containers of alcohol on the books have alcohol- related fatalities that are higher than the States that do have that prohibition. So the evidence exists that the prohibition works.

It is true that I grew up in a State that is not going to be affected by this because North Dakota has never allowed anyone to have an open container of alcohol in the vehicle. I grew up understanding you do not do that; no one ought to do that. If you are old enough to drink and you want to drink and it is legal for you to drink, you do not drink in a vehicle. There are places for you to drink--in your home or perhaps in an establishment somewhere, but not in a vehicle, not in a car.

It is also the case that those States that have prohibitions on open containers of alcohol have a lower rate of hit-and-run accidents. That is a fact. The Department of Transportation has that information. It is just common sense for a State to say to people, you cannot do this, No. 1, by law; and, No. 2, in enforcing the law, you will have fewer deaths as a result of drunk drivers.

Let me finally say something about an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It was not too many years ago that a drunk driving charge by the neighbor had others giving him kind of a knowing wink and a nod and a grin and a pat on the back, saying: Well, tough luck, Charlie; you got caught. Not anymore. Now it is serious business. Drunk driving is not a joking matter. Do you know what changed that? Mothers Against Drunk Driving--all across this country, that organization, started by mothers who had lost children and lost loved ones to drunk drivers and decided they were going to make a difference. They went statehouse to statehouse, capital to capital, and they put in place some tough laws. But it is still not enough. I am pleased to say Mothers Against Drunk Driving have supported what I am trying to do in the Senate today for some long while.

They have made a difference. We can help them make an even greater difference by passing this amendment and saying to the States: We are not fooling around. This is serious business. This is life or death for thousands of people.

As I indicated previously, I have offered this amendment prior to this time, I suppose on three or four other occasions. Each time I have offered the amendment, I have been told: Those sanctions are too tough. So they got changed, so that it attempts to coax the States to do the right thing. But the fact is, coaxing is not enough. This Congress, this Senate, ought to say to every State in this country, ought to say to every State, reflecting every jurisdiction, there should be not one corner, not one highway in this country, in which it is legal for people to drink and drive at the same time. That is the policy that ought to come out of this Senate.

A mandate? It is a mandate, no question about that. We propose a number of mandates from time to time on a bill such as this. It is not a mandate that will hurt any State. No State will lose money if only the States decide as a matter of common sense that in their State it shall never be appropriate and never be legal for people to have an open container of alcohol in the vehicle, it shall never be allowed in their State for people to be able to drink and drive simultaneously.

People will shake their heads and say it cannot possibly be the case that that would exist today, but it is, long after the time that should have been changed in some little corners of this country.

That is the amendment I offer. I know my colleagues from Oklahoma and Vermont have pleaded with people to come and offer amendments. I hope they will approve this in 5\1/2\ or 6 seconds, but perhaps it will require more discussion because, as is always the case, I understand, there are some who have heartburn when I propose a significant mandate. And this mandate is 2 percent of highway funds, although no State, in my judgment, would ever lose it and no State need ever lose the highway funds if only they decide, as we have decided, that it ought not be permissible to drink and drive at the same time anyplace in this country and it ought not be permissible to have an open container of liquor in a passenger vehicle on America's highways.

That is a devastatingly simple concept and one that I hope before we finish this highway bill will be approved by this Senate.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, first, I say to the distinguished manager and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I have been privileged to serve some 16, 18 years, I commend him for his diligence and commitment to try to get this highway bill through the Senate and hopefully enacted into law. I had much the same responsibility some 6 years ago. I know the complexity of this particular piece of legislation.

I have worked with the distinguished chairman and the distinguished Senator from Missouri in the preparation of this particular measure. It is badly needed by America. I hope we can work our way through this situation.

I send to the desk an amendment.

I address the distinguished manager of the bill and ask unanimous consent to have this amendment called up and possibly agreed to.

Mr. President, the distinguished manager had the courtesy to advise me that he would object. Given the situation which I think I understand, I would just like to speak to the bill and develop a record for today and hopefully eventual consideration of this amendment in the not distant future can be arranged.

This amendment is cosponsored by the distinguished Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, and my dear friend and colleague, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. DeWine. It is an amendment to increase our national seatbelt use rate to some 90 percent. This amendment is identical to the text of legislation I introduced last year, S. 1993.

If my colleagues examine the highway bill and what it means to each of our States, our foremost responsibility, in my judgment and in the judgment of many, and in the judgment of the President of the United States, must be to improve highway safety for the driving public.

Today we had a very impressive press conference. I will give further details about it shortly. We must have had a dozen or so representatives who spoke on behalf of their respective organizations endorsing this bill.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a list of organizations endorsing this bill.

Mr. President, this is a list of 135 organizations across America that advocate their support for this particular piece of legislation.

This chart is an enumeration of those organizations. It is not readable, but the list is in the Record for all to see.

Simply by increasing the number of Americans who will buckle up is the most effective step that can be taken to save their lives and the lives of others. That is the single most important step.

I am privileged to serve on this committee, as I said, that has the primary responsibility for reauthorizing TEA-21. The bill addresses, as it should, highway safety measures, such as how to build safer roads or how to use new technologies to improve safety. But--and I underline ``but''--statistics show that the greatest measure of safety again to drivers, passengers, and possibly third parties, many of them innocent third parties, not connected with the bill is through the use of the seatbelt. It is remarkable the lives that have been saved through the use of this simple device over the years.

America has about a 79-percent use rate of seatbelts. That has been translated into the saving of tens of thousands of lives and injuries in automobile accidents, but we can do better. Those are the facts. Are we just going to have a standstill or are we going to move forward? Senators Clinton, DeWine, and myself think we should move forward with a firmer approach with achievable goals and funding.

We have debated the benefits of seatbelt use on many occasions in this body and elsewhere across America. Whether it is in the town forums we conduct, the town meetings, or on the floor of the Senate, there is always that individual who comes back: Don't tell me what I have to do. What does it matter to you--they will often say, or to any other colleague with whom I have had the privilege to serve--what does it matter to you whether I buckle up? It matters a great deal to me and to all those who share the joys but often the burdens--the increasing burdens--of driving and using our road system and the risks.

Let's take a look. No one disputes that the absence of wearing a seatbelt causes more loss of life and serious injury. Statistics solidify that assumption. The statistics show that the impact associated with a crash, to the extent a driver can maintain control of the vehicle in those fatal seconds, the severity of the crash, and perhaps the loss of life can be reduced significantly by the use of the safety belt. It is as simple as that.

Accidents involving unbelted drivers result in a significant cost. Many people are rushed from the accident scene to various emergency facilities. All of that has the initial cost of the law enforcement and the rescue squads that respond, and eventually the cost to the emergency room or whatever medical facility you might have the good fortune to be taken to hopefully save your life. That does not come free. How well we know that.

There is a cost. It is borne by the local community often or the county or the State. Regrettably, a number of persons who suffer these types of injuries are uninsured. Again, the cost often devolves down on the good old hard-working taxpayers and, in most instances, the taxpayers who otherwise would buckle up.

That is lost time for your mission on the road, be it for business, family, or pleasure. That is lost time in productivity. Behind you are often trucks and other vehicles involved in commerce. That is lost time in delay due to the serious occasion of injuries and accidents from the lack of use of seatbelts. It is simple as that. Often the highway is shut down, and it is just incalculable the inconvenience and cost to others while your safety and perhaps your survivability is attended to more often than not by volunteer fire departments or others who come to the rescue.

The legislation that we three Senators are introducing today will take an important step for the States to adopt either a primary safety belt law or take steps of their own devising to meet a 90-percent seatbelt use rate, not the Warner amendment or the legislative measure put forth by the administration upon which Senator Clinton and I draw for concepts of certain portions.

The States can decide for themselves--I wish to underline, we are challenging the States to decide for themselves how they achieve a 90- percent goal of the use of seatbelts in their respective States. They could have a far better idea than we have. That is the purpose of this legislation, to move every State to a 90-percent use rate for safety belts.

In a letter dated November 12, 2003, to Chairman Inhofe of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, on which, again, I am privileged to serve, Secretary Mineta states:

President Bush and I believe that increasing safety belt

usage rates is the single--

I repeat, the single--

most effective means to decrease highway fatalities and

injuries.

That is explicit and clear. The Secretary goes on in that letter to say:

. . . the surest way for a State to increase safety belt

usage is through the passage of a primary safety belt law.

I have had this debate with Governors, former Governors, even in this Chamber with former Governors. I think they would all say that a primary safety belt law is tough legislation to pass solely on its own in the State legislatures. Those in this Chamber who have been members of State legislatures know best. Those of us who have worked with State legislatures, as I have over the 25 years I have been privileged to be a Senator, I have some idea of how those legislatures operate. Certainly, those who have been Governors--and many of my colleagues in this Chamber have been Governors--know full well the difficulty confronted at the State level in getting this type of law through.

Frankly, it needs the cover, one might say the political cover, the impetus, given by the Congress--that is us, Uncle Sam--of the United States to move that process in the States forward.

So the local politicians can shake their fists at old John Warner, they can shake their fists, hopefully, at those who will join in passing this legislation and say it is Washington that has done it again--more regulation, more direction. We know the arguments. We have all heard them. But lives and injuries and costs to the community can be saved.

I think quietly, in the hearts of those State legislatures, is the thought that we will improve safety in our State. We will improve the chances of survivability on the roads of our State.

I ask unanimous consent the full text of Secretary Mineta's letter be printed in the Record following my remarks.

As provided in our amendment, States can increase seatbelt use by enacting, as I said, a primary seatbelt law. Everybody knows what a primary seatbelt law is and how it works.

I want to explain the basic laws as shown on this chart. The white State has a primary enforcement seatbelt law. Those are the existing States. The red State needs a primary enforcement seatbelt law. So my colleagues can see the magnitude.

Here is my State, Virginia. Twice now that primary seatbelt law has gone through the legislature up to the point of a final vote, and by one vote only, twice, the General Assembly of Virginia has rejected that primary seatbelt law. That is a clear reason that impetus by the Federal Government can help achieve that one vote and hopefully many more.

Now, let's talk about the mechanics. It means a law enforcement officer can literally stop a vehicle if they observe that the individual is not wearing his or her seatbelt. It is as simple as that. But a State, if they decide not to enact a primary seatbelt law, can, by implementing their own strategies, whatever they may be--and there is a lot of innovation out in the States--that would result in a 90- percent seatbelt use rate. So that is a challenge to the States.

It can be achieved by other means other than having the officers under law be given the right to stop the vehicle when he observes that the driver is not using a seatbelt.

The current national seatbelt use, as I said, is 79 percent. But many States, those that have the primary law, are sometimes at 90 or even above 90, but those that do not have the primary seatbelt law are down somewhere in the 60 percentile. Just think, only 60 percent of the drivers in some States utilize that seatbelt. It is the weight of the primary States that carries the percentile and brings it up to 79 from those States that do not have an effective law. States with their primary safety belt law have the greatest success for drivers wearing seatbelts.

On an average, States with the primary seatbelt law have a 10 to 15 percent higher seatbelt use compared to those with a secondary system. This demonstrates that secondary seatbelt laws are far more limited in their effectiveness than a primary law.

Essentially, the secondary laws say if a law enforcement officer has cause other than a perceived or actual seatbelt violation, namely the driver did not have it buckled, if they have cause to stop that car, for example, for a speeding offense or a reckless driving offense or indeed an accident, and they observe there has been no use of the seatbelt, then in that circumstance, in the course of proceeding to enforce the several laws of that State as regards speeding and reckless driving or whatever the case may be, they can add a second penalty to address the absence of the use of the seatbelt in that State.

Drivers are gamblers, unfortunately, but that is the way it is. They say: Oh, well, don't worry. I will not buckle up--State law does not require it--unless they stop me, and they are not going to stop me today.

It is that gambling attitude that more often than not will cause an accident. Then it is too late.

So we come forward today to build on our national program. We are building on what we did in TEA-21. I was privileged to be on that committee at that time. I was then, as I said, chairman of the subcommittee 6 years ago. I worked with the late Senator John Chafee. What a distinguished and able Senator he was, and those who were privileged to serve with him have fond memories of working with him. He was chairman of the full committee. We drove hard to make progress for the seatbelt laws, and we did it. This chart shows the result.

We basically put aside a very considerable sum of money to encourage States, again, by using their own devices, to increase usage. As a direct consequence of what we did in TEA-21, there has been an 11- percent increase in these 6 years in the use of seatbelts. Now, that is significant, but it could be much greater and stronger.

Sadly, traffic deaths in 2002, just one fiscal year, rose to the highest level in over a decade. It is astonishing. Of the nearly 43,000 people killed on our highways, over half were not wearing their seatbelts. Now, that is a considerable number of individuals. That is according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In the judgment of the people who responded to the accidents, they considered that 9,200 of these deaths might have been prevented if the safety belt had been used.

Those are the alarming statistics. Automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 2 to 34. Stop to think of that, age 2. That means a child. That means a parent neglected to buckle up the child. Automobile crashes are the leading causes of death for Americans age 2 to 34. That is our Nation's youth. So many of them are in the Armed Forces of the United States. Passage of this will be helpful to the Armed Forces.

Do we have a higher calling in the Congress than to do everything we can to foster the dreams and ambitions and the productivity of our Nation's youth? I think not. And this is one of the most effective means to do it.

Last year, 6 out of 10 children who died in car crashes did not have the belt on; 6 out of 10. That is over half. I plead with colleagues to join me, join with the President of the United States, join with the Secretary who has taken this initiative.

My primary responsibility in the Senate--and this is one of the reasons I got interested in this subject--is the welfare of the men and women of the Armed Forces, as I mentioned. I say to colleagues again, the statistics are tragic. Traffic fatalities are the leading noncombat cause of death for our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, our marines. They are in that high-risk age category, 18 to 35. I repeat, it is the largest noncombat cause of death.

Someone even took a look at the statistics and totaled the fatalities last year and said that represents in deaths the size of an average U.S. Army battalion. That is a lot of folks. That is one of the principal incentives I have. I cannot think of any reason why we all cannot join behind this effort. That alone is the driving impetus for this Senator.

The time is long overdue for a national policy to strengthen seatbelt use rates. I said a national policy, and that is what this bill represents, either through States enacting a primary seatbelt law of their own conception and devising or passing this law, giving far greater attention to public awareness programs that result in more drivers and passengers wearing safety belts. Our goal is 90 percent for the Nation.

I have been privileged to serve on this committee 17 years and I, together with many others, notably my dear friend, the late chairman, Senator John Chafee, addressed this issue. Our committee is rich in the history of focusing revenue from highway trust funds on effective safety programs. It goes back through many chairmen and members of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

With jurisdiction over the largest share of the highway trust fund, our committee has had the vision to tackle important national safety programs. The legislation before us does provide more funding to help build safer roads. That is a step forward. But it does not have, in my judgment, that provision which represents a step up from what we did in TEA-21, that provision that would represent a recognition for the President's initiative.

The President has taken a decidedly strong initiative to increase the use of seatbelts. It is absent from the bill, and that is why we need a provision, by virtue of this amendment, to strengthen and move forward the position of the Congress on the position of increased use of safety belts on America's highways and roads. That is the purpose of this amendment.

It is just unfortunate that those with reckless intent quickly disregard responsible behavior and drive unbelted at excessive speeds, and many times with the use of alcohol. So no increased dollars for improving road engineering, which is in this bill--and I commend them for that, but that alone cannot defy, in many instances, the type of personal conduct that results in reckless behavior. In other words, engineering can quickly be overcome by the reckless driving, and particularly that associated with alcohol.

Automobiles now come equipped with crash avoidance technologies and are more crashworthy than ever before. But these advances are only a very small part of the solution. In repeated testimony before the Environment and Public Works Committee from the administration, from our States, safety groups, and the highway insurance industry, we are told three main causes of traffic deaths and injury are unbelted drivers, speed, and alcohol.

The formula we have devised in this legislation does have a reduction in the amount which the State receives under the proposed bill that we will consider next year when they fail to achieve the 90 percent safety belt use rate. It is as simple as that. But the formula is patterned directly after the law that is on the books now with respect to the .08 legal blood alcohol content level.

In other words, the formula we have in this amendment is identical, in terms of that what I call inducement--carrot/stick type of legislation--that we did for the .08 legal blood alcohol.

The net effect of this legislation is simply to recognize we are asking the same type of sanction policy with regard to one of the three major causes of death--alcohol--be equated to a second cause of death and injury, and that is the absence of the use of seatbelts, bringing into parallel two of the three principal causes of death and injury on the highways: .08 and mandatory use of seatbelts.

The administration put forward an innovative safety belt program, as I said, under the leadership of the President, and that was a major component of a new core transportation program, the Highway Safety Improvement Program, submitted to the Congress. Our amendments incorporate the administration's bill and include additional incentives for States to increase seatbelt use rates.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record today a deeply moving statement delivered by the representative of the American Medical Association, strongly in support of this legislation, and a letter from the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, strongly in favor of this legislation. Of course, the letter to the distinguished chairman, Mr. Inhofe, from the Secretary of Transportation is already a part of the Record.

I am pleased to say Senator Murray has asked to join as a cosponsor and I so request that be noted on the amendment.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the ``Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003.'' This bill consists of the President's DNA initiative, which will expand and improve DNA databases used for criminal investigations and authorize additional funds to clear the backlog of untested DNA evidence in the nation's crime labs.

This bill offers several advantages over another version of the President's proposal that recently was introduced in the Senate. Today's bill gives States greater leeway in the use of DNA grants, removes arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions on the testing of criminal suspects' DNA samples, authorizes additional funds to clear the backlog of non-DNA forensics evidence, and--most importantly avoids tying this critical program to unrelated and highly controversial anti- death penalty legislation. I include in the record at the end of this statement a news story that describes the nature of the state counsel and other extraneous provisions that others have sought to attach to the President's proposal.

The bill that I introduce today is an unencumbered--and unabridged-- version of the President's DNA initiative: the DNA Sexual Assault Justice Act and the Rape Kits and DNA Evidence Backlog Elimination Act, which authorize the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program and provide $755 million over five years to address the DNA backlog crisis in the nation's crime labs.

Today's bill includes the following improvements over other congressional versions of the President's proposal: First, this bill also expands funding for non-DNA forensics funding. Section 211 of the bill authorizes $100 million in new grant programs to eliminate ``the backlog in the analysis of any area of forensic science evidence, including firearms examination, latent prints, toxicology, controlled substances, forensic pathology, questionable documents, and trace evidence.''

Second, this bill increases the authorization for the Paul Coverdell grant program, in recognition of the fact that this program never has been funded at more than a small fraction of its authorization. Other congressional versions of the President's DNA initiative only authorize decreasing Coverdell funding in the coming years. This bill resets the clock on the Coverdell program, authorizing 2004 funding at the level for 2001, and subsequent years accordingly. This will allow sharp increases in Coverdell funding in the coming years.

Third, today's bill allows states to test DNA samples from convicts seeking exoneration against the national DNA database, in order to determine if the convict has committed other rapes or murders. The other congressional versions of the President's DNA initiative would bar such testing; they effectively would give convicts a free roll of the dice to challenge their current convictions while protecting them against the risk that they will be linked to other crimes. There is no reason why states should be prevented from solving such other crimes. If DNA evidence is good enough to test a prisoner's conviction for the crimes that we do know that he committed, it also is good enough to establish the prisoner's involvement in crimes that we do not yet know that he committed.

Fourth, this bill includes all Federal felony arrestees in the federal DNA database. Other versions of this bill exclude arrestees and place other unnecessary and arbitrary limits on the federal DNA index. The federal government already maintains fingerprints for all federal felony arrestees--there is no reason to treat DNA evidence differently. Nor is there any reason to prevent states and the federal government from solving other crimes committed by suspects arrested for a federal felony offense.

The Department of Justice has expressly informed Congress of the benefits of casting a wide net when including criminal suspects in the federal DNA database. During a July 17 hearing on the President's DNA initiative before the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Sarah Hart, the Director of the National Institute of Justice, testified that:

The efficacy of the DNA identification system depends

entirely on the profiles entered into it. Experience

demonstrates that broad collection and indexing of DNA

samples is critical to the effective use of the DNA

technology to solve rapes, murders, and other serious crimes.

The DNA sample that enables law enforcement to identify the

perpetrator of a rape, for example, often was not collected

in connection with an earlier rape. Rather, in a large

proportion of such cases, the sample was taken as a result of

the perpetrator's prior conviction for a non-violent crime

(such as a burglary, theft, or drug offense).

For example, in Virginia, which has authorized the

collection of DNA samples from all felons since 1991, a

review of cases in which offenders were linked to sex crimes

through DNA matching found that almost 40% of the offenders

had no prior convictions for sexual or violent offenses. Most

serious offenders do not confine themselves to violent

crimes. The experience of States with broad DNA collection

regimes demonstrates that DNA databases that include all

felons dramatically increase law enforcement's ability to

solve serious crimes.

Fifth, today's bill tolls the statute of limitations when a perpetrator has been identified through DNA--including in rape cases. Other congressional versions of the President's initiative inexplicably exclude sexual-assault crimes from the initiative's DNA tolling provision. There is no reason to do so. Indeed, it is in sexual-assault cases that DNA evidence is most likely to identify a perpetrator. At the July 17 hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Crime Subcommittee, the Department of Justice testified in favor of tolling the statute of limitations to the full extent permitted by the Constitution.

Sixth, this bill allows grants for DNA training and research to be made to prosecutors' organizations, universities, and other private entities. Competing bill versions limit such grants to state and local governments, which is inconsistent with the President's DNA initiative.

Finally, the bill that I introduce today does not include the so- called ``Innocence Protection Act'' (IPA), a controversial anti-death penalty bill. The other congressional versions of the President's initiative have incorporated the IPA as a third title to the President's bill. At the July 17 hearing on the President's initiative, the Department of Justice made very clear that it ``do[es] not believe that legislation embodying the important proposals in the President's DNA initiative should be joined to these controversial [IPA] measures, which intrinsically are unrelated to DNA.''

In an October 27 letter to several members of Congress, the National District Attorneys Association also voiced strong objections to the capital-counsel provisions included in the IPA titles of the other bills. The NDAA's letter stated:

Section 321 [of these bills] attempts to re-establish the

old 'death penalty resource centers.' As you no doubt recall,

Congress abolished funding for such centers because they

devolved into organizations dedicated solely to the abolition

of the death penalty and were staffed and controlled by those

dedicated to the disruption of the criminal justice system by

whatever means available, ethical or otherwise. Section 321

would cause a return to such tactics by removing the ability

for the state judiciary to appoint counsel in death penalty

cases and giving that authority to a self-appointed group of

anti-death penalty attorneys.

. . . NDAA strongly urges deletion of Section 321 from this

bill . . . .

Elimination of Section 321 . . . keeps the appointment and

control of capital defense counsel in the hands of state

court judges who are responsible for insuring that defendants

receive quality representation. With Section 321 there is no

oversight of those individuals selected to develop state

standards for capital defense counsel.

The IPA titles included in the other congressional versions of the President's DNA initiative would authorize $500 million in Federal funding for State public defenders in State capital cases. There is no reason for Congress to finance the States' public-defender systems. The States adequately fund these programs themselves--indeed, many have enacted reforms and substantially increased funding for public defenders in recent years. When the IPA originally was introduced in 2000, it was targeted at the State of Texas. In 2001, the Texas legislature enacted reforms that completely overhauled the State's public-defender system. Yet the IPA provisions of the other Senate bill would declare Texas's reforms ``ineffective,'' and would force the State to again replace its indigent-defense system. Such a mandate makes no sense.

Moreover, there is no reason why States cannot or should not fund their own indigent-defender systems. Basic principles of federalism dictate that each level of government should finance its own operations. Once States become accustomed to and budget for Federal funds, they never are able to reject the money (or its conditions) in the future. And Federal funding inevitably comes with increasing Federal strings. In the long run, the States risk losing control over their own public-defender programs. There is no reason to start down this path.

The IPA proposals in the other congressional versions of the President's initiative begin by placing a number of conditions on the states' receipt of federal funds. Among these conditions is that states transfer control over capital defense to an ``entity'' composed of persons with ``demonstrated knowledge and expertise in capital representation.'' (This means private defense lawyers; public prosecutors likely would be barred by their jobs from serving or would be conflicted out.) This new ``entity'' would be charged with: (1) setting standards for capital-defense counsel; (2) deciding which lawyers meet those standards; and (3) appointing lawyers from the roster of qualifying attorneys to represent defendants in particular cases.

Essentially, the bill's new ``entity'' would completely control staffing of the defense in capital cases. From past experience with the ``capital resource centers,'' which were defunded by Congress in 1996, we know that hard-core death penalty opponents tend to gravitate toward these jobs, and will engage in litigation abuse when not supervised. Congress should not require the states to repeat its own past mistakes. It should not place anti-death penalty partisans in charge of public representation of capital defendants.

The other congressional versions of the President's proposal also include these additional highly problematic provisions:

They allow free DNA testing under very low standards. The competing bills provide that DNA tests shall be available to any prisoners if a negative test match would ``raise a reasonable probability that the applicant did not commit the offense.'' This standard is too low. Not all DNA evidence clearly came from the perpetrator of the crime or had anything to do with the crime--for example, a blood spot near the crime scene may or may not have come from the perpetrator. The ``reasonable probability'' standard means a prisoner could secure a test even if, despite a negative match, the other evidence would still show that the prisoner more likely than not committed the crime.

The bill requires only a chance that the prisoner did not commit the crime. Almost every prisoner with material to test will be able to meet this standard. Reopening old cases forces victims and their families to relive the ordeal of the crime. They should not be put through this unless a negative test result could at least show more likely than not that the prisoner did not commit the crime.

During the July 17 hearing before the House Crime Subcommittee, NIJ Director Sarah Hart expressly warned congress of the consequences of applying unduly low DNA testing standards. Director Hart testified:

[W]hile post-conviction DNA testing is necessary to correct

erroneous convictions imposed prior to the ready availability

of DNA technology, experience also points to the need to

ensure that postconviction DNA testing is appropriately

designed so as to benefit actually innocent persons, rather

than actually guilty criminals who wish to game the system or

retaliate against the victims of their crimes. Frequently,

the results of postconviction DNA testing sought by prisoners

confirm guilt, rather than establishing innocence. In such

cases, justice system resources are squandered and the system

has been misused to inflict further harm on the crime victim.

The recent experience of a local jurisdiction is instructive:

``Twice last month, DNA tests at the police crime lab in

St. Louis confirmed the guilt of convicted rapists. Two other

tests, last year and in 2001, also showed the right men were

behind bars for brutal rapes committed a decade or more

earlier.

`` [The St. Louis circuit attorney's] staff spent scores of

hours and thousands of dollars on those tests. She personally

counseled shaking, sobbing victims who were distraught to

learn that their traumas were being aired again.

`` One victim, she said, became suicidal and then vanished;

her family has not heard from her for months. Another, a deaf

elderly woman, grew so despondent that her son has not been

able to tell her the results of the DNA tests. Every time he

raises the issue, she squeezes her eyes shut so that she will

not be able to read his lips.

`` `She finally seemed to have some peace about the rape,

and now she's gone back to being angry,' the woman's son

said.

`` DNA tests confirmed that she was raped by Kenneth

Charron in 1985, when she was 59. To get that confirmation,

however, investigators had to collect a swab of saliva from

her so that they could analyze her DNA. They also had to

inquire about her sexual past, so they could be sure the

semen found in her home was not that of a consensual partner.

`` The questioning sent the woman into such depression that

she's now on medication. `None of this needed to happen,' her

son said. ''

Post-conviction DNA testing is not without its costs. It should be allowed only in carefully measured circumstances.

Another problematic provision in the other congressional versions of the President's DNA initiative would employ an unduly low standard to authorize new trials for very old cases. This provision of these bills is designed to allow new trials for prisoners who may have been convicted 20 or more years ago. But it is very often impossible to retry a case this old--key witnesses die or disappear or their memories simply fade, and other evidence deteriorates or is lost. For many such cases, ordering a new trial effectively means that the prisoner walks free.

Congress should make sure that there is compelling evidence of innocence before ordering new trials in old cases. Unfortunately, these other bills would allow a new trial if test results simply ``establish by a preponderance of the evidence that a new trial would result in an acquittal.'' The key language here is ``result in acquittal.'' It means a test result would not even have to indicate actual innocence; it need only conflict with other evidence of guilt so as to undermine the jury's ability to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Prisoners could win new trials--and go free--even if, despite the negative DNA match, other evidence still shows the prisoner very likely committed the crime. Current law, Federal Rule 33, uses the liberal ``result in acquittal'' standard to allow new trials based on new evidence, but only within three years of trial. It usually is not difficult to retry a case within three years. But for older cases, Congress should insist on a showing of actual innocence before ordering an often-impossible new trial.

There are other problems with the IPA titles in the various congressional versions of the President's DNA initiative. These titles would vastly expand DNA testing by authorizing tests even for prisoners who pleaded guilty. According to the Department of Justice, 90 percent of Federal prisoners pleaded guilty. Extending free tests to these prisoners literally expands the pool of potential test seekers by an order of magnitude. A guilty plea also means that there is no trial record, which makes it much more difficult to assess the potential relevance of DNA-test evidence.

These other bills also impose broad and potentially costly new evidence-retention requirements on the States--requirements that appear to require States to preserve all potential DNA evidence in all cases, indefinitely. And these bills also would give the newly created capital-counsel ``entities'' an unwarranted degree of control over defense attorneys' budgets. States traditionally have charged courts and other responsible agencies with monitoring budgets for capital representation. Prosecutors do not have unlimited budgets. There is no reason to allow the capital-counsel entity to draw a blank check on State treasuries.

There are other problems with the IPA titles of the competing bills. Suffice it to say that these titles are unrelated to the President's DNA initiative and both the Department of Justice and the NDAA oppose adding them to the President's bill. We should not weigh down the President's DNA initiative with the IPA. For this reason, my colleagues and I today introduce the President's proposal--important, consensus legislation that should be enacted by Congress without delay.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill, the following letter, and the following article all be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, we have 17 dead astronauts on our plate--3 from Apollo I, all preventable; 7 from the Challenger, all preventable; and 7 from the Columbia, all preventable.

What we are trying to do on behalf of myself and these several other Senators is get to a good healthy debate on the future of space in the United States and, more particularly, on correcting the safety features. There is a culture there that prevents safety from being adhered to, and, more than anything else, NASA is broke.

What is not understood is that at the present time we are going in all directions. It is like the Navy during World War II: When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

We here are saying we ought to take the orbital space station and accelerate it. Others on the other side say no, that is should be abolished. Some say we ought to go to Mars, and others say what we really need is to hire more expert personnel and bring them in. No one is going to leave their job and come work for the NASA endeavor at this particular time until we get a mixture and a program and a policy. That has to come from the President of the United States.

I introduce the National Space Commission Act to address the range of issues that the Columbia Accident Investigation Board--CAIB--identified with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--NASA--and our space program in general, following the tragic loss of the Columbia Space Shuttle and its crew of seven astronauts. This bill authorizes the creation of a National Space Commission appointed by the President, to ensure that the safety reforms and recommendations of the Columbia investigation board are fully implemented by NASA. The commission will review and make recommendations regarding NASA's return-to-flight proposals and institutional changes that NASA will need to make to improve safety in the agency and to improve safety of the space shuttle, and other actions to assure future safe transportation to space and to the International Space Station. The commission will also look at the broader question of how the United States is organized for the safety of space flight across civilian, military and commercial sectors. It will begin to build a consensus on a future vision of space exploration that I hope will rekindle enthusiasm for our space program and generate the necessary support in the Congress and the administration for these endeavors.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board shone a laser-sharp spotlight upon NASA and its program of human space exploration. Their pain-staking work to determine the cause of the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia provides the context and justification for a new national agenda for space, a turning point in the history of space. Though the board stopped short of laying out this new future, its clear expectation is that the President and Congress should take up where the board left off.

The U.S. civilian space effort has moved forward for more

than 30 years without a guiding vision, and none seems

imminent . . . Recommending the content of this debate goes

well beyond the Board's mandate, but we believe that the

White House, Congress, and NASA should honor the memory of

Columbia's crew by reflecting on the nation's future in space

and the role of new space transportation capabilities in

enabling whatever space goals the nation chooses to pursue.

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I,

August 2003, p. 210

The legislation I am introducing today, the National Space Commission Act, is designed to respond to this challenge. It is a complex challenge, and a complex undertaking, that now lies before the Congress and the Nation. My bill is not intended to supplant, nor substitute for, the President's desire to set a new goal in place for the Human Space Flight Program. But as we have seen in the board's report, merely setting a far-reaching goal into place for

NASA and for the Nation is not enough. It will not resolve the many complex issues raised by Admiral Harold Gehman and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. No, this report, and these challenges, run deeper than a rousing call for future missions to Mars on the Earth's Moon can resolve. As Admiral Gehman said last week in testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee:

In the course of (our) study, we became convinced how

difficult it is to get into and out of low Earth orbit. It is

extraordinarily dangerous and very difficult to do . . . We

have to do it more safely than 49 out of 50 times, that's not

good enough . . . No matter what your vision is for human

space flight, whether it's Mars or the L2 or the Moon or

whatever it is, it starts in low Earth orbit . . . We need

some leadership to say, ``Just getting into and out of low

Earth orbit is a goal worthy of itself, without killing a lot

of people.'' And that's hard to argue, because it isn't very

jazzy.

Hearing on NASA's Future, October 29, 2003

Since the inception of the human space flight program, seventeen astronauts have lost their lives and all were avoidable. In its investigative work, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board reached several fundamental conclusions that went beyond the specific technical and physical causes of the loss of Columbia. The Columbia Board found basic flaws in how NASA managers behaved, the belief system that lay behind NASA attitudes and behavior, and NASA's understanding of basic technical and organizational requirements of safety.

The attitudes and decision-making of Shuttle Program

managers and engineers during the events leading up to this

accident were clearly overconfident and often bureaucratic in

nature.

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I,

August 2003, p. 177

NASA's bureaucratic culture kept important information from

reaching engineers and managers alike. The same NASA whose

engineers showed initiative and a solid working knowledge of

how to get things done fast had a managerial culture with an

allegiance to bureaucracy and cost-efficiency that squelched

the engineers' efforts. When it came to NASA managers' own

actions, however, a different set of rules prevailed. The

Board found that Mission Management Team decision-making

operated outside the rules even as it held its engineers to a

stifling protocol . . .

Each decision, taken by itself, seemed correct, routine,

and indeed, insignificant and unremarkable. Yet, in

retrospect, the cumulative effect was stunning.

Ibid, p. 202-203

Most troubling to the Board was the fact that these NASA tendencies were not new but existed in full force at the time of both the Challenger and the Columbia Shuttle accidents.

The (Rogers) Commission found that NASA's safety system had

been silent . . . (denoted by) a lack of problem reporting

requirements, inadequate trend analysis, misrepresentation of

criticality, and lack of involvement in critical discussions

. . .

By the eve of the Columbia accident, institutional

practices that were in effect at the time of the Challenger

accident--such as inadequate concern over deviations from

expected performance, a silent safety program, and schedule

pressure--had returned to NASA.

Ibid, p. 100-101

This ``echo'' between the events eighteen years ago and the present made the loss of Columbia and its explanation all the more confounding, because so many who reviewed the agency, its practices, and its culture had sounded an alarm. The fact that these NASA behaviors and beliefs were so enduring that they persisted beyond the stunning loss of the Challenger and her crew was all the more startling to the Columbia Board. So startling, that the Board found it necessary to offer a blunt and chilling assessment.

If these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the

scene is set for another accident.

Ibid, p. 195

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board also found that it was not only NASA that was at fault for the loss of Columbia. Rather, the Board found that the weaknesses at NASA were just as much a result of the Nation's neglect of its human space flight program.

Post-Challenger policy decisions made by the White House,

Congress, and NASA leadership resulted in the agency

reproducing many of the failings identified by the Rogers

Commission. Policy constraints affected the Shuttle Program's

organization culture, its structure, and the structure of its

safety system.

Ibid, p. 197

The impact of this neglect extended beyond NASA's organizational responses, encompassing broad aspects of planning for NASA's future missions and the development of its technology.

There (has been a) lack, over the past three decades, of

any national mandate providing NASA a compelling mission

requiring human presence in space . . . (and a) lack of

sustained government commitment over the past decade to

improving U.S. access to space by developing a second-

generation space transportation system.

Ibid, p. 209

It is the view of the Board that previous attempts to

develop a replacement vehicle for the aging Shuttle represent

a failure of national leadership.

Ibid, p. 211

The bill I am introducing today establishes a permanent National Space Commission to oversee the nation's current and future development and use of space. The commission is established with 12 members, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Commission members will be leaders chosen from industry, academia, and other professions who have a profound expertise in space flight and safety and have worn the mantle of responsibility and challenge in the development and use of space.

The Commission will be independent of NASA and is authorized to hire a staff to develop the engineering and technical expertise to carry out its work. It will begin its work looking at some of our most vexing current problems raised by the Columbia Board's report and provide the necessary oversight to ensure that the Board's recommendations are implemented in the following areas: (1) the return-to-flight of the Space Shuttle and return to assembling the International Space Station, (2) replacement of the Space Shuttle, and (3) changes to the culture of NASA. We specify a number of detailed questions, criteria, and concerns that the Commission should take up in laying out a near-term path forward for NASA's Human Space Flight program. In making its recommendations, the Commission is directed to consider the safety and dignity of human life as its highest priority.

This specific aspect of the bill is a special clause in my mind, one that is not subject redaction--the United States space flight program must, above all, be an American approach to the future of space flight and, as such, must place the dignity and preservation of human life above all other considerations. This assertion is not meant as an accusation or indictment of NASA--Admiral Gehman made it clear that the fault for the loss of Columbia rests with us all, impressed as we all were with space flight and our accomplishments, and naive about its risks and challenges.

If Shuttle operations came to be viewed as routine, it was,

at least in part, thanks to the skill and dedication of those

involved in the program. They have made it look easy, though

in fact it never was. The Board urges NASA leadership, the

architects of U.S. space policy, and the American people to

adopt a realistic understanding of the risks and rewards of

venturing into space.

Ibid, p.208

For never again should we have to read in a formal accident report of the United States space program:

Managers failed to fulfill the implicit contract to do

whatever is possible to ensure the safety of the crew.

Ibid, p.170

Never again.

In each of these assessments of current issues in NASA's Human Space Flight Program, we intend the commission to provide the President, the Congress, and NASA its informed judgment and advice, so that we can expeditiously return the program to a condition of stability and adopt a NASA culture of safety as soon as possible.

The second aspect of the bill is to set a long-range view of our Nation's participation in and development of space.

Concurrent with the work on current issues at NASA, but due by late 2005, are two ground-breaking studies. These studies are intended to go beyond defining a destination for humans in space and to address broader questions about the goals and methods we use, with a specific concern for public and private utilization and investment in space. Though we have learned that the economics of space flight should never again take precedence over its safety, we also know that, in the past, its cost has driven us down pathways that have not resulted in success.

In all three (Shuttle replacement) projects--National

Aerospace Plane, X-33,

and X-34--national leaders had set ambitious goals in

response to NASA's ambitious proposals. The programs relied

on the invention of revolutionary technology, had run into

major technical problems, and had been denied the funds

needed to overcome these problems--assuming they could be

solved. NASA had spent nearly 15 years and several billion

dollars, and yet had made no meaningful progress toward a

Space Shuttle replacement.

Ibid, p. 111

Continued U.S. leadership in space is an important national

objective. That leadership depends on a willingness to pay

the costs of achieving it.

Ibid, p. 211

First, the commission is chartered to provide a sweeping assessment of the future of space. Included in that assessment is a review of United States capabilities, goals, and uses for space, including the state of our Nation's investment in launch capabilities, how space could benefit State and local governments and regions, and the role of non-governmental, private organizations in the promotion of our space endeavors. The review will also take up the difficult issues related to public and private investment: the role of private institutions in the development and use of space and the business conditions they must meet; how Federal Government programs in space science, exploration, national security, and public safety support or limit the commercial development of space; and how space contributes to the terrestrial economy of the United States.

Given the high cost of space, and the even higher costs of space that the Nation is certain to experience in the near and long-term future, resolution of these questions of private versus public participation and promotion of the development of space is a necessary part of the examination of possible technological and economic futures for the space sector of the economy.

Second, and most importantly, the National Space Commission Act is directed to perform a comprehensive assessment and inventorying of the Nation's programs and practices related to the conduct and safety of space flight. This study will assess the state of the Nation's acceptance, approval, and commercial licensing practices as they relate to the conduct of civil, commercial, and military space flight and explore how space launch and high-risk space operations are conducted across each of these sectors. This study is intended to result in a series of recommendations about the future management of space launch and high-risk orbital and sub-orbital space operations in order to achieve the highest level of safety and management of these risks. To those who question the importance of establishing an authority independent of NASA to assess these provisions, the Columbia Accident Investigation board stated the case most convincingly:

(NASA) cultural norms tend to be fairly resilient . . . The

norms bounce back into shape after being stretched or bent.

Beliefs held in common throughout the organization resist

alteration.

Ibid, p. 101

Within NASA, the cultural impediments to safe and effective

Shuttle operations are real and substantial . . . Leadership

will have to rid the system of practices and patterns that

have been validated simply because they have been around so

long . . . These recommendations will be difficult to

initiate, and they will encounter some degree of

institutional resistance.

Ibid. p. 209

NASA's blind spot is it believes it has a strong safety

culture . . . Twice in NASA history, the agency embarked on a

slippery slope that resulted in catastrophe . . . A safety

team must have equal and independent representation so that

managers are not again lulled into complacency by shifting

definitions of risk.

Ibid, p. 203

Since NASA is an independent agency answerable only to the

White House and Congress, the ultimate responsibility for

enforcement of the recommended corrective actions must reside

with those governmental authorities.

Ibid, p. 209

The National Space Commission is established on a permanent basis to maintain oversight of the implementation of space flight across all sectors of industry and government and vigilance in the management of safety in all United States high-risk space operations.

Let me reiterate. Merely announcing a bold new plan to travel to the Earth's Moon or to Mars is not sufficient. If the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia merely results in that proposal, we will have failed the memory of our brave astronauts who lost their lives aboard both Challenger and Columbia. And we will have failed our own future. Unfortunately, our current charge is more difficult. We must challenge our assumptions, question our decisions and designs, revisit our approaches, and rethink our Nation's ambitions and goals for space. We must submit ourselves to the discipline to begin anew. The future of space and our Nation's reputation that we carry into history rests in the balance.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and an article from the New York Times be printed in the Record.