Emergency Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 2004

I thank my colleague from Iowa and welcome him back from a very interesting time.

Mr. President, here we go again, another Omnibus appropriations bill, and this one takes the cake. Obviously, the New Years Eve parties didn't end for Congress on January 1. We are on a spending bender and this bill is ample proof of it. I think we have a new phrase in the lexicon of description of the way the Congress does business: Another drunken sailor spending spree embarked on by the Congress of the United States to the detriment of our children and our children's children.

I haven't been around here as long as many others, but I have never seen, nor do I believe history will record, such a rapid transition from a period of surpluses as far as the eye could see, to now commitment on the part of the administration to cut the deficit in half at some time in the future. Multitrillion-dollar surpluses to multitrillion-dollar deficits, and you would think we were still in a period of surpluses. If you look at this legislation, it is a living, breathing argument that this system is broken, the way we do business. Spending is out of control and we are mortgaging the future of our children and our grandchildren, and there is no way that Medicare and Social Security can be viable when we are amassing these kinds of outrageous processes. I say shame on this body, shame on the appropriators, and shame on us because, on Thursday, we will, after a vote of dissatisfaction, now pass this outrageous spending bill.

Americans have heard much about the growing problem of identity theft. We have before us the most costly case of identity theft imaginable. It appears that the big spenders in this body have all but stolen the credit card numbers of every hard-working taxpayer in America and have gone on a limitless spending spree for parochial porkbarrel projects, leaving Americans to pay and pay.

As I will point out later in my statement on such programs as NASA, some of these cuts are dangerous.

Cuts in the International Space Station in the name of porkbarrel spending is endangering the very lives of our astronauts. Policy changes that have to do with fundamental changes in media ownership, in fishing, and in other areas that have been inserted in this bill are absolutely outrageously in violation of Senate rules, I might add.

Please join me as we walk through this shopping mall. On the right, we have $1.8 million for exotic pet disease research in California. On your left, you will find $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa--$50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa? Give me a break. On your left, in front of us, you see $250,000 to build an amphitheater park in Illinois.

It is time we put an end to this theft. I am sorry we have to call it theft but that is how I see the situation.

The sum of these political indulgences is enormous and growing and amounts to the theft of our future and the theft of our economic recovery.

Nearly 1 year ago I stood here and spoke about the 2003 Omnibus appropriations bill. At that time, I said our current economic situation and our vital national security concerns illustrate that we need now more than ever

to prioritize our Federal spending. Obviously, it had no effect.

Let me remind my colleagues that we are nearly 4 months into fiscal year 2004 and still without 7 of the 13 annual appropriations bills. This has become an unacceptable practice. Less than a year after passing one monstrosity, we are poised to do it again as if it should now be our standard operating procedure. But far worse than the breadth and timing, we have before us a bill loaded with special interest porkbarrel projects and legislative riders that have no business in this or any other spending bill.

It is no accident that we are dealing with this bill in an election year. In fact, I strongly suggest we change the name of this bill to ``The Incumbent Protection Act of 2004.'' Forget about the Patriots versus the Panthers in the Super Bowl next weekend. We are right in the middle of the Super Bowl of pork. C-SPAN viewers have seats at the 50- yard line. It is Congress versus the American taxpayer, and sadly we already know the outcome of this game. The taxpayer will be the loser.

We have before us today a bill that incorporates 7 of the 13 annual spending measures totalling a whopping $820 billion chocked full of porkbarrel spending and major policy changes.

The Kansas City Star recently reported, ``Enough pork is layered into the spending bill that even the Missouri Pork Producers Association is in line for $1 million.''

There is over $11 billion unrequested, unauthorized, run-of-the-mill pork projects inserted in the 1,182 pages of this conference report.

Let us talk about some of the interesting provisions: $200,000 for the West Oahu campus of the University of Hawaii to produce the ``Primal Quest'' film documentary.

I am sure my colleagues will again be surprised at the number of projects that go to the States of the senior members of the Appropriations Committee, Alaska, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Hawaii: $225,000 to the Wheels Museum in New Mexico--a wheels museum in New Mexico; $7.3 million for Hawaiian sea turtles; $6 million for sea lions in Alaska; $450,000 for the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center in Ohio; $100,000 to the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines for the development of the World Food Prize; $200,000 to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH, for the Rockin' the Schools education program.

As a fan of rock and roll, I can certainly see why that Rockin' the Schools education program would be worthy of $200,000; $1 million for the continued threat of the Mormon cricket infestation in the great State of Utah.

Here are interesting ones: $450,000 for an Alaska statehood celebration and $225,000 for an Hawaii statehood celebration. If I were the Senator from Hawaii, I would certainly be angered that I have been shorted $225,000 to celebrate my statehood. Hawaii became a State in the same year. You would think they would want to equalize that. I am sure they will fix it in a later appropriations bill knowing the way, in the case of Alaska and Hawaii, that one hand washes the other; $175,000 to a city in Missouri for the painting of a mural on a flood wall. That must be one heck of a mural; $90,000 for fruit fly research in Montpellier, France.

Given the closeness of our relationship with the French, I can certainly understand why we would want to send $90,000 over there to help get rid of that fruit fly in Montpellier.

But back to home, $225,000 to Traverse City, MI, for the restoration of an opera house. Opera lovers rejoice; $250,000 for the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. Alaska is known for a lot of things, but being the hotbed or the birthplace of aviation is not one that I knew of, although over the years I have grown to be more and more aware of the critical needs of Alaska for Federal funds for every conceivable purpose; $200,000 to the town of Guadalupe, AR, for the construction and renovation of a shopping center. I will have to go out there and see it. It is not too far from my home; $325,000 to the city of Salinas, CA, for the construction of a swimming pool.

Some of my colleagues may have read about this kind of interesting thing. It appears that a Member of the other body had some pangs of conscience because he dropped a frog into the swimming pool, or something like that. But whatever, the city of Salinas will have a new swimming pool.

And $100,000 to the city of Macon, GA, for the renovation of the Coca-Cola building. I can certainly see why the Coca-Cola people couldn't arrange for that. They are an impoverished corporation, as we all know; $100,000 to the city of Atlanta for the renovation of Paschal's restaurant and motel. I am sure there is great historical significance associated with Paschal's restaurant and motel down there in the impoverished part of Atlanta; $900,000 to an economic development association in Idaho to continue the implementation of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial commemoration plan; $175,000 to the city of Detroit for the design and construction of a zoo. The city of Detroit certainly wouldn't want to have to pick up any of that tab; $238,000 to the National Wild Turkey Federation. I wasn't sure whether this was the animal or the beverage. But either way, $238,000 to the Wild Turkey Federation will, I am sure, be wisely spent, and perhaps that would reduce the cost per bottle; $200,000 for the city of North Pole, AK, for recreational improvements.

I know it has been a bad Christmas season for some, but you would think the elves and others might not need $200,000 for North Pole, AK. But one never knows, does one? The condition of the elves and Mrs. Claus are generally updated only around Christmastime. But it has come a little late this year. I will have to ask my staff to find out the total population of North Pole, AK, although counting nonpersons, I am sure, would enlarge the census there. There is $100,000 for restoration of the Jefferson County Courthouse clock tower in Washington State. That was under the category of economic development. I imagine everyone knowing what time it is would probably encourage efficiency there.

There is $220,000 to the Blueberry Hill Farm in Maine. They are getting their thrill on Blueberry Hill. I almost did not use that one, it is so schmaltzy.

While many of these projects may sound comical, they illustrate a badly broken system in need of serious and comprehensive reform. The HUD portion of this bill contains an account that is perhaps the best evidence that this process is completely broken and out of control. The appropriators included $278 million in this bill for so-called ``economic development initiatives.'' Every single dime of that $278 million was served up as pork. There were 40 pages of report language. The appropriators dished out 902 earmarks for everything from theater renovations in Jenkintown, PA, to quarry updates in Nome, Alaska.

Excuse me, North Pole, Alaska. The population in 2000 was 1,570, so $200,000 is a tidy Christmas present.

Back to the 902 earmarks, from everything from theater preservation to quarry updates in Nome, Alaska. Again, somehow Alaska comes back and back and back and back throughout. I wonder how the people in Alaska feel about being put on welfare.

Sadly, the EDI account in the HUD appropriations bill has become nothing more than a slush fund for the appropriators, completely eliminating any competitive or merit-based determination by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The only word that comes to mind to describe this practice is ``shameful.''

At the same time, I will comment about some language in the statement of managers language accompanying this conference report that offers a more appropriate approach. Many of the accounts throughout the Department of Justice portion of this bill contain language that allows Federal officials, Governors, and other State and local representatives some discretion in awarding the appropriated funds. While the statement of managers names specific entities in connection with the Department of Justice grant, it also states that funding should be awarded if they are warranted after a proper review. Unfortunately, that kind of language is missing throughout the rest of this legislation. I hope the agency officials charged with reviewing these proposals will employ a modicum of fiscal restraint in some projects mentioned, such as $2 million for the First Tee Program, which teaches

young people how to play golf. I know the Presiding Officer is an avid golf fan and has been to many parts of the world in order to enjoy the game of golf, but I don't think even he would think it is justified in this period of multitrillion dollar deficits to spend $2 million for the First Tee Program.

As inappropriate as the earmarks are, I am perhaps more dismayed at the inclusion of some major policy changes in the bill. Every member of this Chamber knows it is a violation of Senate rule XVI to legislate on an appropriations bill, the most often violated rule I know of in the Senate. Moreover, every Member knows it is a violation of rule XXVIII to add new provisions in conference that have not been included in either House or Senate bill sent to conference. Sadly, every Member knows this omnibus violates those rules. The inclusion of special interest legislative riders on a must-pass spending measure is not only a corruption of the proper process, it is irresponsible and an affront to good government.

I turn first of all to Section 629, the Commerce-State-Justice division of the omnibus. The provision would undo the Federal Communications Commissions June 2 decision to incrementally raise the national television broadcast station ownership from 35 percent to 45 percent. Instead, the provision would set the ownership cap at 39 percent. I strongly object to the inclusion of this provision for both procedural and substantive reasons. Procedurally, this is a blatant attempt by the appropriators to usurp the jurisdiction of the authorizers. I have not supported the use of the appropriations process to legislate policy and I will not do so today. Substantively, this provision is objectionable because while purporting to address public concerns about excessive media consolidation, it really only addresses the concerns of special interests. It is no coincidence, my friends, that the 39 percent is the exact ownership percentage of Viacom and CBS. Why did they pick 39 percent? So that these two major conglomerates would be grandfathered in, purportedly, in order to reduce the media ownership, which was voted 55-40 in the Senate. The fact is now they are endorsing Viacom and CBS's 39 percent ownership, grandfathering them in because they should have been at 35 percent. Remarkable.

I am not sure where the line should be drawn. We have spent hours and hours and hours in the Commerce Committee in hearings on this issue. I have never seen such an uprising of American public opinion on an issue that surprised me as much as this issue of media concentration. Hundreds of thousands of people contacted the FCC on this issue. A vote was forced in the Senate which rolled back--the first time in my memory--a decision of the Federal Communications Commission. I had very mixed emotions about it. But when I saw a clear channel radio go from 140 stations to 1,240 stations and there is a toxic spill in Minot, ND, and there is not a single person in any of those stations to warn the local people, I am worried about media concentration.

So what did the appropriators do? They pandered to a special interest, Viacom and CBS, and grandfathered them in. That is what this is all about. Do you think they addressed the major concern that most have, which is cross ownership? When Gannett owns the Arizona Republic and Channel 12, it is OK. What happens when Gannett owns Channel 12 and Channel 10 and Channel 5? That is what concerns people.

So the appropriators, in a blatant bow to Viacom and CBS, insert a 39 percent rule. I again give credit where it is due, the power of the National Association of Broadcasters, which is not included in the provision, as the ultimate proof of their influence. Why is it that other concerns that have been raised and were voted on in the Senate were not included in the appropriations bill? It is because the National Association of Broadcasters did not want it in.

As I mentioned, this is not the first attempt by Congress to undo the FCC's new media ownership rules. Last September, the Senate voted 55-40 in support of Senator Dorgan's congressional disapproval resolution which sought to declare all of the FCC's new media ownership rules ``null and void.'' The omnibus spending bill is not the appropriate legislative vehicle to undo the commission's broadcast ownership cap.

If the Congress wishes to take action on the issue of media ownership, it ought to do so in the committee of jurisdiction. The issue of media ownership is far broader than the limited scope of this provision. As William Safire wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, itself a large owner of several media outlets: The effect of the media's march to amalgamation on America's freedom of voice [is a] far- reaching political decision [that] should be made by Congress and the White House, after extensive hearings and fair coverage by too-shy broadcasters, no-local-news cable networks, and conflicted newspapers.

I can spend a lot of time later on this year on this whole issue of what is happening with localism, with the station owner in Baltimore where the person goes on the set with an overcoat on and says, It is really cold here in Minnesota today. These are serious issues.

What did the appropriators do? They decided to do something for the National Association of Broadcasters. We had multiple hearings in examining media ownership and several committee members introduced S. 1046, the Preservation of Localism Program Diversity and Competition in Television Broadcast Service Act of 2002, and that is what we should be debating.

As the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, has said many times, we now have many voices and one ventriloquist.

Now, if we could have a little straight talk here today, while the NAB is unhappy with only part of the FCC's new rules, there is no valid public policy reason why both of the FCC rules should not be considered together. In fact, if only one rule could be addressed, as I said before, the broadcast/newspaper cross-ownership rule is the one that should be addressed.

In an October hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, the entire panel of academics and analysts agreed that the FCC's new newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule would have a significantly greater impact on media ownership concentration than the new 45-percent national television broadcast ownership cap.

One of the panelists, Dr. Mark Cooper, provided the example of Tallahassee, FL, where the top TV station has a 70-percent market share and the daily newspaper has 60 percent penetration. If they merge, they would employ almost two-thirds of all local journalists in that community.

A September article in Business Week recognized this and stated:

The 45% cap has become a rallying symbol, but the

regulations that would truly reorder America's media

landscape and affect local communities have flown under the

radar. These would allow companies to snap up not only two or

three local TV stations in a market but also a newspaper and

up to eight radio stations. If the courts and Congress are

worried about the dangers of media consolidation, they'll

have to resist calling it a day after dispensing with the

network cap and go after the rules with real bite.

In opposition to the National Association of Broadcasters selective advocacy, all four television networks have quit their membership in NAB. In a resignation letter submitted last year, ABC/Disney wrote:

Almost two years ago, the other major broadcast networks

resigned from the NAB. The issue was the patently

hypocritical NAB position favoring deregulation of newspaper

cross-ownership and duopoly while simultaneously advocating

continued regulation of the national station cap. The NAB and

the public policy process in Washington should not be abused

to advance the business interests of one broadcaster over

another.

The ABC/Disney suggestion is exactly what is going on here. This provision is not about public policy; it is about advancing the interests of the National Association of Broadcasters.

To summarize, stand-alone legislation like S. 1046, that was reported out of the authorizing committee, is the correct vehicle to address these difficult and complex issues involving media ownership. Attaching a rider to selectively address concerns of special nonpublic interests is not the way to make good policy.

Let me state from the outset I take a back street to no one in my support of second amendment rights. I have supported nearly every law that protects the rights of law-abiding gun owners since first coming to Washington. But there is a special interest rider included in this Omnibus appropriations bill that is absolutely appalling. The House sponsor of this provision has argued that it benefits gun

owners, but the only gun owners it seems to help are those who have broken the law.

This rider has three major provisions, all of them unnecessary for gun owners, and none of them helpful for law enforcement.

First, it requires that background check approval records be destroyed within 24 hours instead of the current policy of 90 days. Proponents argue that keeping these records for 90 days constitutes a national firearms registry. I want to be very clear, I oppose Federal registration of firearms.

I also want to be equally clear that our current policy of keeping these records for 90 days does not constitute in any way, shape, or form a national registry. It is a phony issue.

The 90-days retention allows the NICS system to correct mistakes that occur when they accidentally approve someone who should have been denied a gun in the first place. This happens about 500 times a year, according to the General Accounting Office. Nearly all these false approvals are because of missing domestic violence records. So as far as I can tell, this provision benefits no one except those who should have been denied a firearm but were not.

The second provision prevents ATF from conducting an inventory audit of licensed gun stores. This means that ATF auditors will have no way of knowing if a gun store is missing firearms, a sure sign that they are selling guns illegally without the proper background checks.

In Tacoma, WA, ATF auditors recovered 233 firearms missing from Bull's Eye Shooters Supply store. One of those weapons was used by the accused DC area snipers. Why are we putting special language in a must- pass Federal spending bill to protect a store such as Bull's Eye? Consider the potential consequences.

A third provision prohibits the public release of crime gun trace information. This information is not top secret data that jeopardizes our national security or hinders law enforcement. We cannot have a government that operates in secret and refuses to release information that shows where criminals have obtained a gun.

This provision has no support from the law enforcement community, and was even opposed by Chairman Young and Subcommittee Chairman Wolf. Yet here it is today included in this terrible bill. This language is an embarrassment to law-abiding gun owners and a slap in the face to law enforcement.

Now, it is going to get a little esoteric here for a second, but it is very important. Because what we have done in this bill has basically changed the entire fishing industry and the way they do business, again, to protect certain entities in the State of Alaska.

One of the policy riders is language that authorizes the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab fisheries rationalization plan, which would divide 90 percent of that crab market among just a small group of processors. Under the provision, fishermen could only sell this crab to those few processors and, in turn, only those processors would sell to consumers.

We are creating a cartel, a Government-mandated cartel. And who is going to pay for that, at the end, in the form of higher prices? Those who eat this crab all over America, including my State.

This legislative language has not been considered by the authorizing committee nor requested by the administration. This provision raises serious antitrust concerns. Again, it would require--not simply allow but require--the crab fishermen to sell 90 percent of their crab harvest to predetermined processing companies. This precedent-setting action would vitiate antitrust laws, limit competition in the seafood sector, and ultimately hurt fishermen and consumers. Fishermen around the Nation have expressed strong opposition to this provision, as have at least a dozen newspaper editorial boards.

Before I go any further, I wish to clarify the difference between ``fishing quotas'' and ``processing quotas.'' Fishing quotas are allocation tools that allow fishermen to catch a certain portion of the overall allowable harvest. Fishermen can determine when and under what conditions to fish with such quotas, and fishing quotas have been widely recognized to benefit fishermen, the environment, and consumers.

In contrast, processing quotas would allocate buying rights for the crab catch among a handful of processing companies so that each would be guaranteed to receive a certain percent of the overall harvest. Regardless of how efficient these processors are or what kind of price they are offering, they would have a guaranteed market share. I thought that kind of thing went away with the Berlin Wall. Under this plan, it would be illegal for fishermen to take their crab to other processors.

This language would have far-reaching consequences. Yet it was included in this must-pass bill without ever having been considered or debated by the committee of jurisdiction, the Commerce Committee.

Fishermen throughout the Nation object to the crab plan's individual processing quotas, IPQs, because the precedent-setting nature of this action could lead to IPQs in the processing sector of other fisheries. Indeed, crab boat owners and crew from all over the country--even from Arizona--have voiced their opposition to this proposal.

``Crab cartels,'' the Anchorage Daily News--even the Anchorage Daily News. ``Stevens pushes plan that gives processors too much market power.''

The Los Angeles Times: ``Toss This Stinker in the Sea.''

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The quota plan would guarantee shares not just to boat

owners, as has been done successfully with other species, but

also to fish processors on the land. That has nothing to do

with safety. As the U.S. Department of Justice recognizes, it

raises significant anti-trust concerns.

Crab Cartels are Bad News for Maine Lobster Industry.

Seattle Times:

Crab Industry Bakes a Monopoly Pie.

Seattle Times:

Feeling Crabby? No Need for a Monopoly.

It goes on and on. There is nobody who thinks this is a good idea.

In addition to affecting the price setting process, I am aware of at least one crab fisherman who owns a fishing boat and a ``catcher- processor'' boat. He objects to this policy rider because it would make it illegal for him to sell his own catch to himself, so that the catch from his fishing boat could be processed on his processing boat.

According to the National Research Council, the General Accounting Office, and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, fishermen's concerns about IPQs are clearly justified. The 1999 NRC publication, Sharing the Fish, found no ``compelling reason to establish a separate, complementary processor quota system'' to accompany an Individual Fishing Quota program. These findings were echoed by the GAO in its December 2002 report on IFQs, which failed to find the IFQ programs resulted in harmful impacts on processors in the halibut and sablefish fisheries that would warrant creation of an IPQ program.

Furthermore, on August 27, 2003, the Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division wrote a letter to the General Counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, in which he opposed the IPQ provisions of the crab plan, stating ``processor quotas are not justified by any such beneficial competitive purpose'' and that ``The Department urges NOAA to oppose IPQ.''

While the fisherman are up in arms, the processors are already counting their chickens, or in this case, crab harvests, and in turn, their profits. That is because the percent of the harvest that they will be able to process in the future is based on how much they have processed in the past under the free market environment. Regardless of future operational efficiency, supply and demand, or any other real- world factors, these processors will be guaranteed their allocation in perpetuity. Consider, for example, one company that recently has processed roughly 20 percent of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Island crab. This provision will assure that company continues to receive 20 percent of future harvests--worth on the order of tens of millions of dollars annually.

For centuries, fishermen have used market forces to negotiate their dockside prices, and this has had the effect of maintaining competition and benefitting consumers. Processor quotas throw an enormous wrench into the free market machinery.

In addition to affecting the price-setting process, the crab IPQ plan also would effectively prevent new processors from entering the industry. If anyone wants to enter the processing sector, they would need to buy the processing rights from the few processors who would have processing quota.

Considering all these facts, the administration has officially stated its opposition to IPQs, as reported in the Sacramento Bee, Kodiak Daily Mirror, Anchorage Daily News, and Seattle Times. The administration's proposed language for amending the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act clearly specifies that processors could own fishing quota, but does not propose a separate quota system divvying up processor quotas.

Editorial boards from at least 12 major newspapers--the Washington Post, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Oregonian, Anchorage Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Honolulu Advertiser, Daily Astorian, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Portland Press Herald in Maine, and the Tampa Tribune--have come out against IPQs. Note that these newspapers include the entire west coast--even Alaska and Hawaii.

I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record.

Additionally, the conference report would authorize a similar processor quota program for Gulf of Alaska rockfish. Even though IPQ proponents had previously indicated that IPQs are needed for crab only, they are now proposing authorizing such a program for a different Alaskan fishery.

Further, the conference report also would authorize the North Pacific Council to open an area currently closed to fishing, but open it only to the Aleut Corporation, which would also have the exclusive right to process the fish. This new fishery could be worth more than $10 million, yet the proposal has not undergone the proper congressional authorization and oversight process that we demand for other important policy issues.

Obviously this proposal makes fundamental changes to our fisheries policies. This rockfish and pollock language was not requested by the administration nor the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and it hasn't been reviewed by the authorizing committees. At a minimum, all of these new quota provisions merit thorough review and debate prior to their enactment.

The tacking of fisheries riders onto appropriations bills extends all the way to North Atlantic fisheries as well. Last-minute language was added that would prevent the administration from implementing a groundfish management plan required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Not surprisingly, the administration did not request this change, nor has the authorizing committee of jurisdiction held any hearings on this proposal.

In the northeast, fishery managers must comply with a court-ordered implementation date of May 1, 2004, for putting a groundfish management plan into effect, and the administration is now seeking public comment on and finalizing regulations to do this.

Even before we know what the final plan is, the language would prohibit the administration from spending any money to implement this plan. The legislative rider would authorize funding for only a certain set of management rules--which have already been determined by a court to be out of compliance with the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

So, under the language in the omnibus, it would be illegal for the administration to comply with Federal fisheries law as set out in the Magnuson-Stevens Act. If this provision is enacted, there is a real risk that the fishery could be ordered closed by a Federal court.

Again, this significant policy change was not considered by or debated in the Commerce Committee. I am more than willing to discuss ways to redesign the fisheries management council process, along with the rest of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, if indeed, it is as flawed as some seem to think it is. This rider, however, is not the appropriate way to make policy.

Section 626 of the omnibus broadly requires the Secretary of Commerce to ``negotiate or reevaluate, with the consent of the President, international agreements affecting international ocean policy.''

Under 22 U.S.C. Section 2655a, however, international ocean policy issues are currently handled by the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, or OES. Several marine resource conservation laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, grant the Secretary of State the authority to

negotiate international agreements on these matters. Clearly, this language conflicts with the Secretary of State's statutory responsibility for carrying out a coherent foreign policy.

When appropriators first proposed such a transfer of responsibility in the FY04 CJS appropriations bill, Secretary Colin Powell explained, ``Such a provision would significantly hamper the Department's ability to address important foreign policy issues (e.g., oceans policy, marine pollution, global overfishing) to which the United States can ill afford to give short shrift.''

Considering the important role that the United States needs to maintain as a leader in the international community on ocean policy matters, I am dismayed that the appropriators would attempt to transfer these powers between government agencies without any public or expert review and debate. This is clearly a matter that needs the full attention of the Commerce and Foreign Relations Committees, and this has not happened.

A provision in the EPA portion of the VA-HUD section of this bill prohibits all States, with the exception of California, from exercising their existing authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate ``non- road'' engines to improve air quality. This language will effectively tie the hands of the State air pollution control agencies by preventing them from addressing the 120 million small engines which are a substantial and growing source of smog and soot pollution nationwide.

This provision was originally put in the VA-HUD bill at the request of a single engine manufacturer, Briggs and Stratton. The company suggested that the provision would save jobs. I find this argument very disingenuous due to the fact that, in its September 2003 filing with the SEC, the company stated, ``Briggs and Stratton does not believe that the CARB staff proposal will have a material effect on its financial condition or results of operations . . .''

Our colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, made an effective argument against the language on the Senate floor during consideration of the bill, but she was not permitted to offer an amendment to strike the language. Mr. President, what has come out of the conference may be acceptable to California and to Briggs and Stratton, but it is unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to almost every Member of this body.

If you have not heard from your State air agency yet, you certainly will soon. In the State of Arizona, for example, the potential emissions impact of these unregulated engines is equivalent to 1.4 million additional cars on the roads. This is almost certain to worsen the smog problem in the city of Phoenix, and I am sure it will be the same in many other cities in the Nation. I have no doubts that with worsening smog will come many more cases of asthma and a litany of other health problems. It is simply outrageous that States will be prohibited from exercising their responsibility to protect public health and the environment because one company was able to secure a special deal in a must-pass spending bill.

I also am very concerned that for the NASA funding portions, that the Joint Explanatory Statement to the conference report contains a list of 144 earmarks that total in excess of $300 million. These earmarks are unauthorized and unrequested by the President. Meanwhile, the international space station has been funded at $200 million below the President's request. This action comes despite news reports that have outlined numerous safety problems aboard the international space station.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), which was assigned to determine the causes of last February's tragic accident, described the results of congressional earmarking in its August report. According to the CAIB Report:

Pressure on NASA's budget has come not only from the White

House, but also from the Congress. In recent years there has

been an increasing tendency for the Congress to add

``earmarks''--congressional additions to the NASA budget

request that reflect targeted Members' interests. These

earmarks come out of already-appropriated funds, reducing the

amounts available for the original tasks.

I must question whether we have learned anything from the shuttle accident and the CAIB findings. During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last year, I questioned Admiral Gehman about the effects of the $167 million that was earmarked in fiscal year 2003 appropriations bill. He responded by saying that ``$100 million will buy a lot of safety engineers.'' Maybe we should ask what he thinks should be done with over $300 million worth of earmarks.

Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss the importance of fully funding the international space station. Again, the omnibus provides $200 million less than the President's request at a time when serious safety concerns have been raised about the space station. This underfunding could be corrected if we simply eliminated these wasteful earmarks and we'd even have money to spare.

William F. Readdy, the NASA Associate Administrator at the Office of Space Flight, testified before the Commerce Committee that the space station onboard environmental monitoring system which, ``provides very high accuracy information on atmospheric composition and presence of trace elements . . . is not operating at full capacity.'' He also testified that the crew health countermeasures, which include an onboard treadmill and associated resistive exercise devices, were ``operating at various degrees of reduced capacity and needed to be repaired, upgraded or replaced.''

Articles in the Washington Post paint an even more disturbing picture. An October 23, 2003, article describes:

The problems with monitoring environmental conditions

aboard the space station have festered for more than a year,

some NASA medical officials said. Space station astronauts

have shown such symptoms as headaches, dizziness and ``an

inability to think clearly,'' according to a medical officer

who asked not to be named. The onboard sensors designed to

provide real-time analysis of the air, water and radiation

levels have been broken for months, which has made it

impossible to determine at any given time whether there is a

buildup of trace amounts of dangerous chemical compounds that

could sicken astronauts, or worse.

A November 9, 2003, Washington Post article reports that:

A recent NASA study found that the risk of fire aboard the

station has grown because the crew is stowing large

quantities of supplies, equipment and waste in front of or

near 14 portals that would be crucial for detecting and

extinguishing a fire in any of the station's various

compartments. There is also concern that a portion of the

station's water stores supplied by the Russians may have high

levels of carbon tetrachloride, a toxic contaminant.

As far back as March, internal studies warned of a host of

dangers for six separate systems, including the thermal

controls that cool the station's computers and interiors,

that would likely grow out of trying to run the station with

limited supplies and a caretaker crew of two instead of the

normal complement of three.

Before the recent launch of Expedition 8, the Chief of NASA's Habitability and Environmental Factors Office and NASA's Chief of Space Medicine signed a dissent to the ``flight readiness certificate.'' The dissent declared that ``the continued degradation in the environmental monitoring system, exercise countermeasures system, and the health maintenance system, coupled with a planned increment duration of greater than 6 months and extremely limited resupply, all combine to increase the risk to the crew to the point where initiation of [the mission] is not recommended.''

In addition, a December 6, 2003, Washington Post, article states that one of the gyroscopes that control the space station's motion failed, and that another was showing vibrations and spikes in electrical current. NASA will be forced to use Russian thrusters onboard the space station to shift the station's position.

These are very serious issues that cannot be ignored, yet here we are, about to approve more than $300 million for unrequested earmarks while underfunding more pressing needs. How will these cuts to the President's budget request affect the safety of the space station? Are we really willing to take any risks? Mr. President, that this practice continues in the face of legitimate safety concerns is simply unacceptable given the tragedies experienced just last year.

The Statement of Administration Policy opposed this $200 million reduction in the Senate-passed VA-HUD bill, stating that: ``After diligently rebuilding reserves to place the Station on sound financial ground, this reduction

would deplete reserves deemed critical by independent cost estimates and limit the program's ability to address risks in FY 2004, including impacts from the Columbia accident.''

You know, I have to admit I am naive. I thought after the Columbia disaster we would see a reduction in the earmarks. It was an increase.

In addition, I have been informed that this reduction would place at risk actions that NASA is taking to address the Independent Management and Cost Evaluation (IMCE) Task Force recommendations to ensure a ``credible'' ISS Program.

I know there is a lot of excitement about last week's announcement by the President proposing a new agenda for human exploration of the Moon, and eventually Mars. However, let us also note that he reaffirmed the United States commitment to completing the ISS. The Commerce Committee will hold a series of hearings to discuss the proposal, but we will not lose sight of our responsibilities of ensuring the safety of the space shuttle and international space station.

Finally, it is unfortunate that the appropriators, while earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars in NASA, underfunded the Advanced Polarimeter Sensor of the Global Climate Change Research Initiative by $11 million below the President's request--a 47-percent decrease--yet could sure find funds for thousands of earmarks. This reduction would significantly impact the development of the sensor, which is designed to measure methane, tropospheric ozone, aerosols, and black carbon in the atmosphere. The proposed reduction would delay the purchase of ``long-lead'' item purchases, which could potentially delay the launch date of the satellite from 2007 to 2008.

As my colleagues know, the public is greatly concerned about the impacts of climate change on our environment and economy. Although the administration and I have a difference of opinion on the need to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we are in agreement on the need for research in this area. We should not cut this publicly significant research, so that we can simply fund local pork projects.

The bill would appropriate funding for the Advanced Technology Program, ATP, at approximately $152.2 million above the President's request. The language would ignore the President's attempt to rein in a corporate welfare program in a time of skyrocketing Federal deficits and critical national security needs. For example, the most recent ATP awards included a grant to Aqua Bounty Farms, Inc., to ``produce sterile transgenic fish that can be made fertile as needed for reproduction.'' I can assure you that the ATP program was never envisioned to fund the production of sterile transgenic fish.

I also am concerned about funding for the Scientific and Technical Research and Services account of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This account supports NIST's scientific research, including Nobel Prize winning research on the Bose-Einstein condensates. This account is funded at approximately $43 million beneath the President's request, while the appropriators have continued to earmark activities within this account. I would ask my colleagues to ask themselves if it is more important to fund a spreadsheet engineering initiative at Dartmouth University, or research to help our beleaguered manufacturing sector. Should we fund a wind demonstration project in Texas or research to improve the equipment for our Nation's first responders? In the long run, it will be considered a great tragedy that we have wasted our Nation's scientific potential of meaningless parochial projects.

This reduction is even more disturbing given the reality that NIST will have to lay off many of its scientists and engineers due to lack of funding. Let me remind my colleagues that these are the scientists and engineers that have won two Nobel Prizes for research in the past few years. These layoffs will occur even as we continue to send funding to industry through the ATP program for research that is inconsistent with the program requirements of being ``high risk.'' That does not send the right message to our award winning scientist and engineers of how we value their work.

There is also language that redirects $40 million to the Port of Philadelphia for construction of a cargo terminal that is designed to support ``high-speed military sealift and other military purposes.'' Today, these type of vessels do not even exist, nor are they being championed by the military. They are supported, however, by the private investors and their lobbyists who obviously think it makes sense to place the risk of their venture on the backs of the taxpayers. Let me also mention that the design of these vessels is based on unproven technology. And, in reviews of the proposed vessel technology by the Department of Transportation, it was determined that the project did not qualify for government backed financing. It is ridiculous that despite these facts, this legislative rider will risk wasting $40 million of the taxpayers on a terminal to support a certain type of vessel that may never exist. This is a costly example of putting the cart before the horse.

By the way, we have ample precedent. The Senator from Hawaii, the Senator from Alaska, and the Senator from Mississippi put in loan guarantees for cruise ships to be built in Pascagoula, MS, which cost the taxpayers $273 million in loan guarantees, which I fought against and predicted would fail. Only $273 million. By the way, for those of you who keep up with it, the hulls of these cruise ships in Mississippi have been towed to Europe.

Mr. President, it's time to get serious about what we are doing here. We have a deficit of $500 billion--that's half of a trillion dollars-- the largest ever. Our fiscal future can only be described as bleak. Government watchdog organizations and think tanks, both liberal and conservative, have expressed enormous concern about the level of spending in this bill.

A recent report by the Heritage Foundation states:

Following increases of 13 percent and 12 percent during the

previous two years, 2004 would mark the third consecutive

year of massive discretionary spending growth.

It further notes that:

Altogether, total Federal spending in 2003 topped $20,000

per household [I am glad we don't divide that up by States]

for the first time since World War II and is set to grow

another $1,000 per household in 2004.

According to a joint statement issued by the Committee for Economic Development of the Concord Coalition Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Without a change in current fiscal policies, the Federal

Government can expect to run a cumulative deficit of $5

trillion over the next 10 years.

These numbers are shameful and frightening.

Another astonishing part of this report states:

After the baby boom generation starts to retire in 2008,

the combination of demographic pressures and rising health

care costs will result in the cost of Medicare and Medicaid

and Social Security growing faster than the economy. We

project that by the time today's newborn reaches 40 years of

age, the cost of these three programs, as a percentage of the

economy, will more than double from 8.5 percent of the GDP to

over 17 percent.

I urge my colleagues to read this joint statement.

The Congressional Budget Office has issued warnings about the dangers that lie ahead if we continue to spend in this manner. In a report issued last month, CBO stated:

Because of rising health care costs in an aging population,

spending on entitlement programs, especially Medicaid,

Medicare, and Social Security, will claim a sharply

increasing share of the Nation's economic output over the

coming decades. Unless taxation reaches levels that are

unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies

will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50

years. An ever-growing burden of Federal debt held by the

public would have a corrosive effect on the economy.

That is from the Congressional Budget Office, not from any liberal or conservative think tank, as much as I value those.

Additionally, CBO projected a 10-year deficit of $4.4 trillion.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported, according to an International Monetary Fund report:

If cumulative budget deficits rise by 15 percent of gross

domestic product, as the Congressional Budget Office expects,

world interest rates would be pushed up by one-half to 1

percentage point over 10 years.

We are paying a price overseas for our reckless spending. The U.S. dollar is tumbling, and it is a result of our fiscal indiscipline and our enormous deficit. Foreign countries are losing confidence in the dollar. To underscore the

point, today the dollar stands at a 7-year low, worth 80 cents against the Euro, a 40-percent drop in under 4 years.

In his State of the Union Address last night, the President called on us to act as good stewards of taxpayers' dollars. My response to the President: Mr. President of the United States, you also must be a steward of taxpayers' dollars. Veto this bill. Veto this bill, Mr. President of the United States, and demand this pork be removed--this $11 billion in pork be removed--and send a message that it is not business as usual anymore in the Senate. We cannot do this to our children and our grandchildren. We cannot do this to them.

Sooner or later, we are going to have to make some choices around here. We are going to have to make some choices between our children's and our grandchildren's futures and having some kind of fiscal sanity and plan for the future. We cannot continue the practices of the Senate. We need to have a point of order that any unauthorized appropriation and any policy change is subject to a specific point of order, not one that brings down the whole bill, but one that brings down that provision.

I could bring a point of order against this bill, and it would lose by 99 to 1 because it brings the whole bill down. We should have the right to object, and object vociferously, to North Pole, AK, getting $200,000. We should be able to object to the brown tree snake in Alaska in which we have invested I have no idea how many tens of millions of dollars. I think Alaska and Hawaii should pay for their own statehood celebrations. We in Arizona do.

If I sound like I am angry and upset, it is because the people I represent are angry and upset. The people I talked with in my State, who I have been privileged to represent for a long period of time, are deeply disturbed. They know what is going on. They know their kids are not going to ever receive Social Security benefits as present retirees are today. They know we just laid a multitrillion-dollar debt on them in the form of a Medicare prescription drug bill, and they figured it out. By the way, the overwhelming majority, the last poll I saw, 58 to 42, don't like this prescription drug bill which no senior I know can understand, and I don't blame them because I don't understand it either.

If I sound as if I am not happy and perhaps given to flights of rhetoric, which I am from time to time, it is because my constituents are demanding that we change this system. The appropriators have become all power in this body. That is not appropriate. We need to change the rules, and we need to change the way we do business.

Last year, we stood here with an Omnibus appropriations bill. This year we stand here with an Omnibus appropriations bill. I was pleased we did not cut off debate until I heard: We are just doing this for labor, but it will pass. We are just going to do this for labor once.

How stupid is labor? If I were a labor leader, I would say: Either vote it down or vote it up, but don't throw me some kind of 4-day delay.

I understand labor just took some significant setbacks. They are about to take another one.

Mr. President, I will continue to fight. I will continue to see if we can't stop funding the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and get our thrills on Blueberry Hill, the wild turkey, and all of the other turkeys that have become part and parcel of this thousand-page piece of pork.

I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. We will be hearing about this issue for a long time to come because the American people demand we address it.

I yield the floor.

I thank the very distinguished Democratic whip for his gracious comments. He has been an inspiration to me. I once served as the majority whip in the Senate. I counted myself a good whip, but remember those lines: You are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Well, this whip from Nevada is the best whip that I can recall in my long service in this Senate, and I am a former whip.

The distinguished Senator from Nevada mentioned ball games. No ball game ever changed the course of history. With all due respect to those who like football, basketball, and baseball--and I like them, too. I used to enjoy playing baseball in the sandlot back in the days when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were in that great murderous lineup, the New York Yankees. I can remember September 1927 when the sultan of swat, Babe Ruth, broke the record with 60 home runs that year.

The Senator's mention of the line-item veto is of interest. I was right in what I had to say about the line-item veto. I know certain Senators whom I personally asked to vote against that line-item veto, and they did not. They did not heed my admonishments, but the Supreme Court of the United States called that law invalid. Thank God for the Supreme Court of the United States in that instance.

I thank the distinguished Senator.

Mr. President, this afternoon I want to talk about the 2004 omnibus conference report on those bills. The Senate opened the second session to the 108th Congress not many hours ago. While the year on the calendar has changed from the last time we met in this Chamber, the Senate finds itself handcuffed by the same authoritarian dictates from the same Bush administration that last year led to some of the most fierce partisan passions that this Senate has seen in decades. Gone is the traditional spirit of cooperation. Yes, the man in the White House who said that he was going to change the

tone in Washington, he changed that tone all right. It is the worst that I have seen in my more than 51 years in Congress. Gone is that traditional spirit of cooperation. Gone is the belief that the needs of the Nation are above the needs of any political party. In their place is an agenda driven by pure rank, raw partisanship. This is a tragic turn for this historic Chamber, a tragic turn for these United States of America.

Hope for a bipartisan Medicare prescription drug benefit was bright at the start of this Congress, but by the time the conference report returned to the Senate for final passage, all that was left was a prescription for protecting the pharmaceutical industry and a drug benefit that is a sham for American seniors.

Progress on an energy strategy for the country began in a cooperative effort but quickly the Democrats were locked out while industry lobbyists were welcomed in to write the conference report with the executive branch.

The fiscal year 2004 appropriations bills have suffered a similar fate. Between June 26 and September 4 of last year, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported all 13 appropriations bills, bills that were the result of bipartisan cooperation between the chairman and the ranking member of each subcommittee and those subcommittee members. The bills were tight and lean because of unrealistic budget limits, but Senators worked in tandem to craft balanced legislation. Despite the efforts of the chairman of the committee, the senior Senator from State of Alaska, progress on the bills waned, and as a result we faced the grim Frankenstein aberration of an Omnibus appropriations conference report.

I warned the Senate that such an Omnibus appropriations bill could grow limbs like trees, limbs like an octopus, limbs that never were contemplated by the Senate. I warned Members on both sides of the aisle that they could not control the outcome when the seed of an omnibus bill was planted in a closed conference. I warned that a Senator's right to debate controversial legislation would be lost. Finally, I warned that such an omnibus bill would invite the White House to the table.

Never was the White House invited to the table when I was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee--never. It is all right for them to be in an outside room but not at the table, no. I warned that such an omnibus bill would invite the White House to the table and that the Congress would once again forfeit its constitutional right to write legislation. Negotiations on that legislation started well enough. The House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees worked on their respective pieces of this mammoth bill. The conferees held an open session under the able leadership of Senate Chairman Ted Stevens and House Chairman Bill Young, and several of the chapters of this behemoth bill were settled. But this tale does not have a happy ending. No, this chariot, drawn by tall horses, quickly turned into a pumpkin. Have you heard that before? It quickly turned into a pumpkin, pulled by rats before the clock struck midnight.

The White House decided--the White House--the White House decided that bipartisan negotiations were unacceptable. The White House pulled the plug on the conference and took it behind closed doors. The Republican congressional leadership bowed, bowed down to White House pressure. Suddenly, Democratic Members of Congress had no voice in the legislation. Senator Graham, the Democrats had no voice, suddenly, in the legislation they had only days before helped to move to the verge of passage.

In the back rooms of the Capitol, the White House sat down with the Republican leadership and with fat-cat lobbyists representing big corporations and produced an unamendable 1,182-page, $328 billion conference report. They produced a conference report that turned the legislative process on its head.

You think Speaker Joe Martin, Republican Speaker of the House--Joe Martin of Massachusetts--would have stood for that when he was Speaker of the House? Do you think John Taber of New York, Chairman of the Senate-House Appropriations Committee, would have stood for that in his day? No.

Four of the bills contained in this omnibus did not have a recorded vote in the Senate. That is all right. A voice vote or a vote by division are just as legal and legitimate as is a rollcall vote. But one of the bills, the Commerce-Justice-State bill, was never even debated, never even debated in the Senate, let alone adopted by a vote of the Senate.

Shame. Shame on us for letting that happen.

So there you have it. The Commerce-Justice-State bill was never even debated in the Senate, let alone adopted. Scores of provisions were included in the so-called Miscellaneous Appropriations Act portion of the conference report that were never debated, never debated in this Senate. What has happened to the legislative process here under the leadership of the Republican administration, the Bush administration? Under pressure from the White House, provisions that were approved by both the House and Senate have been dropped. Get that. Under pressure from the White House, provisions that have been included, that were provisions included in both the House and Senate, have been dropped.

A point of order could be made under rule XXVIII that would kill this conference report. Under pressure from the White House, controversial provisions that were written as 1-year limitations when they were before the House or Senate have been mutated into permanent changes in authorization law. This conference report includes an across-the-board cut never debated here in this Senate, an arbitrary cut that would apply to legislation already signed into law. It would cut homeland security. It would cut counterterrorism efforts. It would cut education and health care. This across-the-board cut would reach back into laws that agencies have been operating under for 4 months.

In the view of the White House, the United States can afford $1.7 trillion in tax cuts. When it comes to the Medicare bill, we can afford $12 billion for subsidies for private insurance companies. When it comes to the Energy bill, we can afford over $25 billion of tax cuts and $5 billion of mandatory spending for big energy corporations. But when it comes to initiatives funded in these appropriations bills, initiatives that help ordinary Americans every day, the President insists on cuts.

He didn't say anything like that in his big speech last night. No, he didn't say anything about that, a cut of 0.59 percent would reduce funding for No Child Left Behind programs by more than $73 million, resulting in 24,000 fewer children being served by title I. The across- the-board cut would reduce veterans medical care funding by $159 million, resulting in 26,500 fewer veterans receiving medical care.

The President lauds the military, as he should. He applauds the soldier, the sailor, the airman, the marine. But when it comes to veterans, 26,500 fewer veterans will receive medical care, or 198,000 veterans not getting the prescription drugs they need. Was anything said about that in the speech last evening? Not a word.

The across-the-board cut will chop funding for homeland security initiatives. How many more baggage screeners will be laid off, resulting in longer lines and less security at the airports? How many fewer flights will have air marshals on board? Nothing said about that in the State of the Union speech. No, no, no. How many more containers will come into this country uninspected? How many more illegal aliens will be able to remain in this country or how many more will be able to sneak into this country? Not a word said. How many potential terrorists will never be investigated because of cuts in the FBI? The Bush tax cuts will cost $293 billion in the calendar year 2004. More than $1 out of every $4 being spent on those tax cuts is going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country. They didn't put me in office. No, those on that side of the track didn't put me in office. The Bush tax cuts-- let me say it again--the Bush tax cuts will cost $293 billion in the calendar year 2004.

More than one out of every four dollars being spent on those tax cuts is going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country. Are you in that category? Are you, Senators, in that category? I don't know. But I know a lot of people who sent me here who are not in that category.

Taxpayers with incomes that average about $1 million per year will receive an average tax cut of $85,000 in the year 2010, while those taxpayers earning less than $73,000 will receive at best 1 percent of what a millionaire will receive and at worst a paltry $98 in the year 2010.

How will we pay for this? Oh, that will be somebody else's problem. This President will be back on his ranch in Crawford, TX, living it up and having it good. What about your children and my children? They are going to be left to pay for this.

How will we pay for it? With cuts in education, cuts in veterans' programs, and cuts in homeland security.

In the dark of night, behind closed doors, the White House filled this conference report with favors for big corporations. Everywhere you look, you find the interests of corporate America coming first and the needs of working Americans coming in last.

The Senate approved a provision to block for 1 year the administration's plan to take away the rights of as many as 8 million employees to earn time and a half for extra hours worked. This administration produced a rule so biased toward industry that it even included advice to corporations on how to avoid additional wages.

Yet the Senate provision--what happened to it? What happened to that Senate provision? It is gone, obliterated under the darkness of night, taken out.

At the request of the food marketing industry, rules to allow Americans to know where their food, such as beef and vegetables, is grown are delayed for 2 years, breaking the balance crafted as part of the 2002 farm bill.

During the consideration of the 2002 farm bill, the Senate included a provision--the Senate; that is, us--included a provision to ensure that American consumers were provided with information about where their food originates--where it comes from. This so-called country-of-origin requirement became law and was immediately attacked by industry forces. When the smoke of the agriculture conference cleared, we found that industry forces had worked overtime to slip out of their statutory requirements. The country-of-origin issue was not even allowed to be discussed at the conference. The decision whether to keep or whether to kill the country-of-origin requirement was made behind closed doors after the conference was adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. I was in that conference. It was adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. They didn't have any use for me anymore. I was locked out. Senator Byrd can go home now. He will not be in on the decision. We don't need you there. You can go home now subject to the call of the Chair. Of course, the call never come.

Roy Acuff used to sing, ``I called and I called but nobody answered. I called and I called but nobody answered.''

Democrats of either the House or the Senate were not in the room.

I wonder how many of our listeners remember the first question that was ever asked in the history of man. What was the first question that was ever asked? It was asked in the cool of the day when God walked through that garden of paradise, the Garden of Eden, which we think was located somewhere between the two great rivers in old Mesopotamia, the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. God walked in that garden looking for Adam and Eve. But he couldn't find Adam. So he asked the question: Adam, Adam, where art thou? That is the first question ever recorded. Adam, where art thou? Well, Adam and Eve were hiding behind bushes and figleaves. Adam, where art thou?

Well, Democrats in either the House or the Senate were not in that room. So when their constituents ask, where were you, where were you, Senator Graham? Where were you, Senator Byrd, you who has been in Congress 51 years, where were you then? Where were you on that day?

The Democrats were locked out. We were locked out. We weren't included.

I will tell you one thing. That was never done when I was chairman.

Now we find that the delay in implementing the country-of-origin law is not just for 1 year, as the House provided and the Senate opposed, but 2 years. And that is not all. The House provision only placed a limitation on the labeling requirement for meat products. Now the agreement coming out of conference expands the limitation to all the other commodities covered by the law such as fruits and vegetables. American consumers may have thought they were going to know where their food came from, but the majority has made sure that those facts will remain a hidden secret in the deep freeze.

Also, the 1-year limitation on the FCC media ownership rule was turned into a permanent cap at 39 percent. The practical effect of changes demanded by the White House is to protect Rupert Murdoch's FOX television network and CBS-Viacom from having to comply with the lower 35 percent ownership caps, the congressional version of the bill that was put in place.

The White House is boosting special corporate interests. Why not? Look at the millions that are poured into political coffers by those special corporate interests. The White House is boosting special corporate interests at the expense of the people's interest for balanced news and information. Protections for Federal workers that were agreed to on a bipartisan basis in the public conference that would ensure fair competition with the private sector disappeared in the backroom.

The White House sent its troops to the Hill last week to press the Republican leadership to reject entreaties from Members on both sides of the aisle to make any changes to this Frankenstein of a bill.

This ``my way or the highway'' roughshod politics over the principled approach to Congress is incredible, especially from a White House that has done so much to undermine the credibility of this Nation and its Government.

One year ago, the President used the State of the Union Address before this Congress, this Nation, and the world to make his best case for taking the Nation to war in Iraq under the doctrine of preemptive strikes, under the doctrine of preemption.

In the State of the Union Address and in other speeches, he and others in the administration told Congress and the Nation that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were an imminent threat to this Nation. We were told that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons. We were told that American troops would be received as liberators. We were told that Saddam Hussein was aiding terrorists, such as the al-Qaida. What an incredible tale. What an incredible squandering of the credibility of our Government in the eyes of the world.

For this President, there seems to be no limit to his appetite for rhetoric, no recognition that there is a difference between his rhetoric and reality.

Yes, he promised Americans to leave no child behind, but this omnibus bill would cut funding by $6 billion below the level authorized for title I in the No Child Left Behind Act which this President signed with such promise in January of 2002. This omnibus bill would leave behind 2.1 million children who are eligible for title I educational services.

The President promised to secure our homeland and yet this bill would cut funding for port security and border security. On November 14, 2002, the Senate passed the Maritime Transportation Security Act without a dissenting vote. The vote was 95 to 0. The bill was signed into law by President Bush on November 25, 2002, during a celebratory White House ceremony. On that day, the President said: We will strengthen security at our Nation's 361 seaports, adding port security agents, requiring ships to provide more information about the cargo, crew, and passengers that they carry.

Despite these requirements, the President has requested no funding for port security grants and this omnibus bill would cut the funding that Congress added last fall. Sixteen million cargo containers arrive in the United States by ship, truck, and rail each year. One hundred forty million passengers travel annually by ship each year. Thousands of employees work at our ports each day. Millions of citizens live in and around our port community. A terrorist attack through our ports would produce billions of dollars of losses to our economy.

Was a thin dime requested by this President? No. No, the President did not request a dime.

On November 19, 2001, the President signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The act created the Transportation Security Administration and mandated that all cargo on passenger aircraft be screened. The administration has never requested sufficient funding to meet the goals of the law. In order to bridge a $900 million funding shortfall that it created for fiscal year 2003, the administration proposed delaying advanced firearms training for Federal air marshals at the same time that intelligence reports indicated an enhanced threat to aviation and the potential for hijacking planes transiting the United States.

Regarding air cargo security, the administration has met the requirement of screening air cargo by expanding a program referred to as the Known Shipper Program. This program does not actually physically screen cargo going into the bellies of jumbo passenger aircraft but relies on paperwork to protect our citizens. Congress added $35 million above the President's request to enhance the deployment of detection equipment, research other methods to screen cargo and otherwise expand air cargo security. This omnibus bill would reduce that funding.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, Public Law 101-173, was signed into law by President Bush on May 14, 2002. The act authorized funding for enhanced hiring of immigration inspectors and agents as well as for improvements to immigration facilities. The President did not request the authorized funds to hire additional immigration personnel, nor did he request funds to make the authorized improvements to immigration facilities or to hire the required number of Border Patrol agents. The omnibus bill would reduce funding for Border Patrol efforts.

Just last month, 4 days before Christmas, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that the Nation's terror alert level was being raised to orange. He said the strategic indicator, including al-Qaida's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, was perhaps greater than at any time since September 11. He went on to say that information indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will rival or exceed the scope and impact of those we experienced in New York.

The President promised a safer nation when he created the new Homeland Security Department. But his Secretary says we are in greater danger than at any time since September 11, 2001. At the same time, the administration urged Congress to cut funding for Homeland Security.

In May of this year the President signed into law a bill authorizing $15 billion over 5 years for international programs to combat HIV/AIDS. On July 12, while in Nigeria, the President said: The House of Representatives and the Senate must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa.

To ``fully fund this initiative'' requires $3 billion. The authorization bill, which the President explicitly referenced in his speech, authorized $3 billion in fiscal year 2004. Yet the President only requested that the Congress provide $2 billion for the program. This omnibus bill, after the across-the-board cut, would provide less than $2.4 billion for the Global AIDS Program, over $600 million below the level promised.

Democratic Senators, including myself, on three separate occasions offered amendments that would have ensured that HIV/AIDS funding reached the $3 billion level. All three of these amendments were defeated by the Republican leadership working with the Bush administration.

Rhetoric and reality are two different things. Now we understand that the President will be promising to put a man on Mars. Somewhere along the way the tail has begun to wag the dog.

The legislative process is being steered from the Oval Office. The legislative branch is being used not as the Framers envisioned, to serve as a check on the executive branch, but instead as a tool to check off accomplishments on the President's political agenda.

Whose fault is that? Shame on us for letting ourselves be used. Shame on us for letting ourselves be used. Shame on us for putting political party against the best interests of the Nation. Shame on us for putting political party above the Constitution of the United States. This is not the way the Senate should operate.

I fault no individual Senator for bringing us to this point, but I do fault the system that places meaningless message votes and staged photo-op debates before the business of the Nation. I fault politicians for their weakness, for their failure to uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Shame on us. In my 50 years in this Congress, I have never, never before seen such a Milquetoast Congress, a Congress that would cede power.

This Constitution says Congress shall have power to declare war. Yet this Senate stood speechless--speechless--when we voted in 2002 to shift this power to determine when, where, and what military forces should invade a sovereign Nation. The Senate had little to say.

That was not the Senate that was here when I came here. No, not the Senate that was here when I came here. Everett Dirksen stood at that place. Lyndon Johnson stood at that desk. There was Norris Cotton, George Aiken, Jacob Javits. Those were men. There was Senator Russell of Georgia, who stood at this place, right here at this desk, Richard Russell. Lister Hill stood there. John Pastore of Rhode Island stood here. No, not those men. They are gone.

But the Constitution is not gone. The Constitution is still with us. And many times have I stood at that desk where the Presiding Officer sits today, put my hand on the Bible, as it were, and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States--not to support this President or that President, this party or that party. I did not have any oath of that kind. I did not take any oath of that kind. I never will take an oath of that kind.

How many of us can say we have stood by that Constitution? How many of us would have to say: Oh, I have bent--I have bent, when my party, when my President--the President is the President for all of us. He is not just my President.

But I say that we have become far too deferential to all Presidents, too deferential to all Presidents. Presidents are just hired hands like the rest of us. They are here only for a while. Then they go. I have seen 11 administrations go, and I hope I get to see another one. But we act, when we come here, as though we swear to support this President or that President, a President from the Republican party or a President from the Democratic party. Why? They are mere hired hands who are here for a little while, like the rest of us.

No President sends the Presiding Officer here. No President can send that Presiding Officer home. Why so deferential to Presidents?

Under the Constitution, we have three separate but equal branches of Government. How many of us know that? How many of us know that the executive branch is but the equal of the legislative branch--not above it, not below it, but equal? Why do we treat Presidents as though they were kings, clothed in royal purple?

The real losers in this scenario are the American people. They are not well served by a Congress that fritters away opportunity after opportunity to probe, to analyze, to exercise its independent judgment on the urgent issues of the day in favor of rushing to do the bidding of the executive branch. Shame on us. Fie on us.

The people of West Virginia and this Constitution that I hold in my hand have made me a U.S. Senator. No President made me a U.S. Senator. I came to Congress when Harry Truman was President. He did not make me a Member of Congress. Of course, I was indebted to him for coming to West Virginia and speaking on my behalf and on behalf of my colleague, Jennings Randolph, at that time. But I did not expect that to make him my boss. I admired Harry Truman. I did not like him for some of the language that he used in public, but I still admired him, and admire him to this day as a President who had courage. But he was just a President.

So I have served with 11 Presidents--not under any of them. No, no President sends me here. And by what right do the people of West Virginia send me

here if I am going to bow and scrape to a President? They expect me to speak up, and that is what I have tried to do, in the presence of Presidents, yes, but they put their pants on just like I put mine on; the same old way, no different.

Under our Constitution, our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to establish three separate, equal, coordinate branches of Government. That is under this Constitution. This Constitution--perhaps one does not think about it often, but when one stops to think about it, this Constitution has something to do with every minute, every hour, every day of every life in this country in one place or another, and in some instances more than one place.

This Constitution impacts your life, your life, and your life. Every day that you are here on this planet, this Constitution has a bearing on it. And then some would treat this as a piece of paper and put political party above the Constitution of the United States. When I do that, send me home and say: Good riddance.

This is the Constitution of the United States. Many times I have sworn by oath before God and man, with my hand on the Bible, the King James version of the Holy Bible, to support and defend this Constitution. Yet we treat it as a piece of paper. We use it only when it is of a particular benefit to us. But every day, in some way or in some ways, this Constitution bears upon your life. It may be in the delivery of your mail. It may be in the hard surfacing of the roads upon which you drive. It may have something to do with the flights that you are about to depart upon. Yes, it is this Constitution.

In this country, we don't say: God save the King. God save the King. God save the President of the United States. No. We say: God save the Constitution of the United States. This Constitution saved Congress from its error when it passed the Line-Item Veto Act. This Constitution did that.

Under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws. The President executes the laws. Under the Constitution, the power of the purse rests here, right here--not downtown, not down at the other end of the avenue, but here.

Most of the people who were in the Thirteen Colonies, in the 13 States, when the Constitution became a constitution, were British subjects. It took hundreds of years and blood spilled at the tip of the sword for Englishmen in 1688 to write that meetings of Parliament that should be held often, that there would be freedom of speech in the Parliament and in the House of Commons. Those were the men who placed the powers of the purse in the hands of the elected representatives of the people of England in Parliament. That is where the power of the purse rests, here in the legislative branch. We ought never to let the executive branch forget it. Yet we cower. We act like poodles when it comes to standing up against the Chief Executive of the United States.

Who is he? With all due respect, whether he is Republican or Democrat, this is the Congress of the United States. This is the people's branch, this body and the other. Under the Constitution, the Congress determines how to write our laws, how to protect Members' rights to debate the important issues of the day. This omnibus bill leaves those pillars of our constitutional system in shambles. It is our duty as the people's representatives to protect those pillars of our constitutional system of government.

In 1999 and in the year 2000, when President Clinton, a Democratic President, a President of my own party, supported efforts by the Republican Congress to produce Omnibus appropriations bills, I came to this floor to decry our loss of our right and our duty to write legislation. I came to this floor to stand up for Congress's power of the purse. It made no matter to me--not any, no matter--that this was a Democratic President calling for omnibus spending legislation. I stood up for the rights of this Senate as I do today.

In 1993, there was a great effort to include President Clinton's comprehensive health care reform plan in a reconciliation bill. Proponents of the President's proposal hoped that such an approach would shelter the proposal from extended debate in the Senate. My own majority leader, George Mitchell, came to me. I said, no. My own colleague from West Virginia in the Senate pleaded with me. I said, no. President Clinton, a Democratic President, called on the telephone, called on me to support this effort. I said, no. I said, no. Without regard to party, I felt compelled to protect Members' rights to a full debate.

I said: This is a comprehensive health bill. The people need to know what is in it. We Members of the Senate need to know what is in it. That is why we have the Senate, to debate and to amend. No.

And so I turned my face like flint to the request of my own friend and the President of my own party. No.

Did he think less of me? I doubt it. He thanked me. He understood what I was saying. I will say it again. How many on that side would say that to a President of their party? But with President Bush, he insists that members of his party march with him step by step. I can remember a great Republican Senator who refused to march step by step. That was Senator Mark Hatfield. He was scorned by many on that side of the aisle because he stood alone against a political party, his party. He was no coward for doing that. He was a man.

President Bush insists that members of his party march with him step by step. Today, on the other side of the aisle, voices for a strong and equal Congress fall silent.

Last week Senator Frist wrote to Senators and urged them to vote for the omnibus conference report because if the omnibus fails, then the only alternative, he said, is a full-year continuing resolution that would force the agencies for the seven outstanding appropriations bills to operate at last year's level. He argued that such a continuing resolution would produce deep cuts for food safety, veterans medical care, highway funding, and the Global AIDS Programs.

However, the Senator presents the Senate with a false choice. If the omnibus is not approved, the Senate has other options to move forward. If the only alternative is a full-year continuing resolution, then that is the choice of the Republican leadership. It would be another example of putting political posturing before the needs of the American people.

There is a clear alternative, and that is to sit down and work out a compromise that can overwhelmingly pass the Senate. If our distinguished and illustrious majority leader, Mr. Frist, had the will to do so, such negotiations could be completed, who knows, maybe even in 1 day. However, in its current form, I cannot vote for this bill. I cannot vote for this conference report that so ravages our constitutional process and puts corporate interests ahead of the people's interests. I cannot vote for a bill that undermines our credibility, undermines the credibility of the United States Senate with the American people. I urge Members to vote no when the Senate votes on the adoption of the conference report.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is a tough act to follow of the Senator from West Virginia. Is there any specified allocation of time for debate this afternoon?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia for his eloquent words, which I followed on the floor and through the television before I arrived on the floor. It is always a pleasure to hear him speak to the issues that we are challenged with as a nation.

Last night, I joined many Senators and Congressmen to walk across the Rotunda to attend the 21st State of the Union Address, which has been my honor to witness as a Congressman and as a Senator, to be on the escort committee to bring in the President for this historic moment and to hear the President's words as he addressed America, as he does each year. It is a rare chance for him to speak unencumbered to the Nation directly and to really express the feelings in his heart.

Part of what the President said I thought was particularly timely and poignant. It drew bipartisan response

and applause--particularly the part where he saluted the men and women in uniform. We have many debates on foreign policy here. Senator Byrd and I view it the same way, that perhaps our country is on the wrong track when it comes to this policy of preemption and going it alone in the world. Having said that, we both understand, as every Member of the Congress does, there are men and women in uniform who are literally risking their lives at this moment for this country. While politicians and elected officials debate the policy, we should never forget the courage, sacrifice, and dedication of those men and women in uniform, how much it means to their families that they know we stand behind them and we will not deny them the resources they need to perform their mission safely and to come home safely and as quickly as possible.

I point out one aspect that has come to my attention over the 2-month break when the Senate was in recess. I joined a couple Senators and I went out on my own to visit Walter Reed Hospital last November and meet with these wounded soldiers. It is a wonderful thing to see these brave young men and women. Also, it is sad to see some of the injuries they have sustained. Most of them wear ceramic vests that protect them in combat, but they don't protect their limbs. Many of those there are amputees who have lost a hand, an arm, legs, or, in the case of one soldier, both hands, or suffered a head injury.

Having spoken to them and asked them the circumstances of their injury, I usually said: Is there anything I can do for you? It was interesting to me how many had the same response. It wasn't personal. They didn't ask me for a favor. They said: Don't do me a favor, but do a favor for the men and women I served with. We need to have more protection in combat, particularly with Humvees, which are today's jeeps that are so prevalent in the war in Iraq. Humvees were built to be light and fast for a desert war, and now they perform a different function. They move troops through Baghdad and Fallujah, which are dangerous areas. Sadly, many of these Humvees have canvas sides. If one of these terrorists fires a rocket-propelled grenade at it, it whistles right through the vehicle causing great injuries and damage in the process. The same thing is true with the homemade bombs. So the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed said time and again that they need more armor- plating on the Humvee vehicles.

I thought this was something a Senator ought to look into. So I came back to my office and contacted the Department of the Army and said: How many Humvees in Iraq today don't have armor-plating? They said that 8,500 do not. So I said: Is it a priority to make armor-plated doors for these? They said it is the highest priority. They said: Senator, there is good news. Half of them will be built in your State at the Rock Island Arsenal, which has served America since the Civil War. I knew the men and women there were anxious to get involved and to prove themselves and to serve our Nation again, as they have time and time again in times of conflict.

During the break, I went to the Rock Island Arsenal and saw the first two armored doors for Humvees come off the assembly line. The employees were working around the clock and could not have been prouder. I said to the officer in charge at the Rock Island Arsenal: This is great. You are supposed to build about 8,000 or 9,000 of these armor-plated doors. How long will it take you to get these 9,000 armor-plated doors into Iraq on the Humvees? He said: Senator, if we work night and day, we can get this done in 2 years. Two years.

I thought to myself, what am I missing here? In World War II, we would build a bomber in 72 hours. We would build a ship in 30 days. Why is it going to take 2 years to build the armor-plated doors for the Humvees? He said: I am sorry to tell you that there is only one plant left in America that makes the steel that can protect these soldiers with armor plating in the Humvees--one plant left in America. I thought about that last night when the President said to us that jobs are growing in America--manufacturing and industrial jobs are growing in America. I have to say to the President, as I look at Illinois, that is not the case. We are losing jobs. We are losing manufacturing jobs. We have lost 20 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last 5 years and continue to do so.

Many jobs are going to China. China is a country where jobs are growing but, sadly, at the expense of American workers. China has an unfair trade policy related to the currency valuation of their local currency.

Now, the Secretary of the Treasury, who was there last night, protested this in China, but they have done nothing about it. So they have a 15- to 40-percent price advantage over American manufacturers. What it means is that manufacturers, large and small, are losing business to China. So when the time comes, when we need a steel mill to produce the armor for the Humvees so our sons and daughters come back with limbs intact and safe, we find ourselves at the mercy of these foreign producers.

Today, for every dollar of goods exported from the United States to China, we import $6 worth of goods from China, and one company in America--one company alone--imports 10 percent of all of the Chinese exports to the United States. One company sells 10 percent of all of the goods and products sent by China to the United States. That company is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, yes. It is in your neighborhood and in your hometown.

A few years ago, they proudly said ``made in America'' at Wal-Mart. But it doesn't say that anymore. Last week, if you watched the cable channels, you saw Lou Dobbs talking about exporting America. Frankly, that is a sad reality today.

So when the President talks about all the new jobs coming into America, I don't see it. For my money, a jobless recovery is no recovery at all. What good is it to talk about productivity? What good is it to talk about economic growth if we have lost 3 million jobs under the Bush administration? That is a fact of life.

I told you the story of the Humvees. I will tell you one other.

In my apartment in Chicago, at 4 o'clock on Saturday, I received a phone call. It is interesting that I received a similar call 3 weeks before. The voice on the other end of the phone said: Mr. Durbin, this is Nancy, and I am happy to inform you that your Discover Card is on the way to your apartment.

I said: Nancy, I didn't order a Discover Card.

She said: Yes, but you have qualified for one and we are going to send you a credit card.

I said: Nancy, may I ask you a question? Where are you calling from?

She said: Delaware.

I said: What city in Delaware?

She said: Just a minute.

I heard papers shuffling. I said: New Delhi?

She said: No, Bangalore.

As you know, that is a city in India. I tell you those stories because I think they demonstrate the anxiety and concern of Americans from one coast to the other.

The President may believe that we are deep into a recovery. The President may see new jobs coming, but America looks at the current evolution of our economy with concern. We are giving up our basic industries. We are giving up manufacturing to the Chinese, and now we are giving up service jobs to India and other countries.

IBM announced 4,000 jobs will be lost in the United States for computer programs that will be sent overseas to India. If you buy a Dell Computer and you need instructions on setting up your computer and you call the 800 number, you will generally speak to someone in India.

The question that raises is this: What will be the job for the next generation of Americans? What occupation or profession would you recommend to a young person for a future in America?

There are some that are obvious, but when you look at how we have built this country with a strong middle class, raising good strong families with strong values, you have to wonder, with the challenges we are going to face in the years ahead, whether this administration and this Congress are looking at the state of the American economy honestly.

What was President Bush's proposal last night to deal with the future of America's economy? He made it clear. He believes that if you make the tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America permanent law, then, in fact, we

will have a strong economy. In other words, if you will give more money to the wealthiest people in America, somehow the economy lifts and everyone will succeed.

History is not on his side. In fact, this anemic recovery in which we are presently involved is proof positive that his tax cuts did little or nothing to stimulate this economy and creating a deficit of historic proportions. This President took a surplus in the Treasury and turned it into the biggest deficit in the history of the United States. He took over from an administration that had created over 20 million new jobs, and this President, unless something dramatic happens in the next few months, will go down in history as having lost more jobs under his administration than any President since the Great Depression--3 million jobs lost in America. And his answer to get America back on its feet and working again: Give the wealthiest people in America a tax break.

The President, when he talks about the tax cuts, zeros in on the $300 for individuals, $600 for families, the marriage penalty, but he ignores the biggest tax breaks, which are not included in that group but go to the wealthiest people in this country. Those are the ones who have brought us into this deficit situation.

To make matters worse, the conference report to accompany the Omnibus appropriations bill, which we have before us, includes a provision which says when it comes to those currently working in America, people who are struggling to keep their jobs and to keep their families together, this bill contains a provision which will eliminate overtime pay for 8 million Americans.

Mr. President, 8 million Americans today working overtime hours--away from their families, to make ends meet, to put some money away for college education, to deal with medical bills they can't handle otherwise--because of language insisted by the Republican leadership in the White House and in the Congress will lose their overtime pay.

That is the record of the Bush administration when it comes to jobs: 3 million jobs lost; 8 million working Americans denied overtime pay.

What does it mean? It means these men and women who are working these jobs will be told by their employers: You will show up and you will work instead of 40 hours this week, you will work 50 hours this week, and the extra 10 hours you work, you will be paid the same hourly wage, and if you don't like it, leave.

Perhaps that is the President's vision of America. From my point of view, that is not a vision that most families would appreciate. If we truly value work and we truly value families, wouldn't we take a different approach?

Didn't we hear the President last night talk about the family values of America and protecting those traditional values? While he spoke, we were considering a bill that says for 8 million Americans, the likelihood that your family will succeed is diminished, and it is reduced because we believe employers, at least those who support this bill, believe that employers should make more money at the expense of their employees.

We have had overtime pay since 1938. The Fair Labor Standards Act required employers to pay time and a half, and usually Presidents, Democrats and Republicans, would extend overtime protection and overtime benefits to more and more employees. This President will go down in history as the first to take overtime pay away from working Americans--8 million Americans.

The administration's proposal would strip 8 million workers of their overtime rights, including 375,000 workers in my State of Illinois. For workers who receive overtime pay, that overtime compensation usually accounts for 25 percent of their paycheck. The administration's proposal would slash the paychecks of 8 million hard-working Americans by 25 percent.

I haven't spoken about increasing the minimum wage in this country, which this administration has steadfastly opposed and Republicans in Congress have adamantly opposed. So at $5.15 an hour, more and more low-income workers find themselves falling behind and have to take a second job.

I went to a high school in Du Page County over the break. Du Page County is a great diverse, strong, and generally prosperous county in my State, just west of Chicago. When I sat down with the educators, we looked at No Child Left Behind test scores, and I said: Why is it that only 92 percent of the students took the test for No Child Left Behind at this high school?

The principal said to me: Senator, a lot of our kids are from poor families, single parent families, and they have brothers and sisters. If a little brother or a little sister gets sick and can't go to day care that day, mom is going to have to stay home from work and give up her paycheck or that older brother is going to have to stay home and watch the sick baby. That is what happens. He said that is reality.

Think about that kind of life where the sickness of the baby keeps an older brother out of school; where the mother, making $5.15 an hour, doesn't work an 8-hour day, but perhaps a 12- and 14-hour day or, if she is lucky, she has a job that used to pay overtime for those extra hours and now, because of the Bush administration's proposal, she is about to lose her overtime. She is struggling to keep her little family together under extraordinary circumstances, and we make it worse.

We do not increase the minimum wage. We do not protect her right to earn overtime pay, which has been on the books for over 65 years in America. Is that an administration with family values, sensitive to families and what they face?

What kind of employees will be hit hard by the President's determination to cut overtime pay? Let me give you a few categories: Police officers, firefighters, and safety coordinators. The International Union of Police Associations estimated this proposal will take overtime pay from 50 percent of those law enforcement officers currently guaranteed overtime. A minimum of 200,000 law enforcement officers will lose their overtime pay because of this appropriations proposal that came to us from the Bush administration.

I can go through the list: Prison guards from my State will no longer receive overtime pay; first responders, nurses, medical assistants, social workers, computer technicians, engineering technicians--the list goes on and on.

I think the list tells a story. It is one thing to talk about the goodness of America and the confidence we have in our future, and quite another for us to pass legislation, such as included in this appropriations bill, which destroys the confidence of working families in this Congress and this administration, unwilling to stand up and fight for them defending their rights to keep their families together.

Let me speak for a moment about education because at the heart of the issue of tomorrow's generation and their jobs is the question of education and training. The President made a very modest proposal last night to help community colleges. I thought it was good. When we assess the value for each community college, it is going to be symbolic, as most things are from this administration when it comes to helping America. It won't be the billions of dollars we are sending to Iraq. It will be $230 million, $240 million which is going to be allocated to community colleges. Mr. President, $230 million is hardly going to change education in America when we consider we are a nation of roughly 300 million people.

When we take a look at No Child Left Behind, we may note that this bill we are about to pass provides the smallest increase in education funding in 8 years, and it shortchanges No Child Left Behind, the President's premier policy on education, by $6 billion under the authorized funding level.

So we have said to schools, test your kids, and the President repeated it last night, continue to test, we want to know how you are doing. That is valuable. That is the diagnosis. But when it comes to the treatment, when it comes to tutoring, mentoring, after-school programs and summer school programs, this administration refuses to put the money on the table. They will identify the problem but they will not invest in solving the problem. In fact, what they have created is an unfunded mandate on schools at the absolute worst time possible. Where States are struggling to make ends meet, where local property payers are pushed to the limit on their property taxes, the President has imposed a mandate on

the schools and refuses by $6 billion in this bill to provide the funding the schools need to succeed.

So what will happen? Tests will be taken and tests will be reported, both within the Department of Education and publicly. Schools which people respected will now be branded as failing schools. Schools which frankly are doing a good job will find that if one group of students, for example, the kids in the special education class, who have special physical and mental challenges, cannot meet the test scores we have mandated in No Child Left Behind, the school will be graded as a failing school.

Imagine, you and your husband, your family, have made a sacrifice to buy a home in a very expensive subdivision which you know to be safe and near a good school, so that there is going to be a great education for your kids. You are starting to make the mortgage payments, it is not an easy thing to do, and you pick up the paper and you say, did you realize the high school our kids are about to go to has been graded a failing school?

That is going to happen. It is going to happen across Illinois. It is going to happen across America. When it comes to the resources and money to help those schools and to help those students, this administration refuses to put the money on the table. I think that is unfortunate and tragic, and it hardly suggests that this President is looking forward to the next generation.

The same President who a week ago looked up to the heavens and said the vision for America is manned space flight to Mars is a President who is not looking around America at the neighborhoods and towns that need a helping hand, that need more jobs, that need better schools, and need affordable health insurance. Had that same President, instead of casting his eyes to the heavens and outer space, looked to our Nation and said, in the next 10 years we are going to bring America's schools up to the highest world quality standards, and if it takes the trillion dollars that is necessary, we will spend it, that President would have been applauded across America. Instead, he projects someone in a manned space flight to Mars that will cost us $1 trillion.

I am not against the space program. Many good things have come from the space program, and they continue to come from the space program, but to think that we are going to look beyond Mother Earth, look beyond our own home into the heavens to spend a trillion dollars just strikes me as a complete misstatement of priorities for America.

In the few minutes I have remaining, I will mention two or three other things I find troublesome in this bill. One of the major disappointments was the deletion of funding in the Commerce-Justice- State-Judiciary appropriations for the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasting for Eastern Europe. The Senate bill included this funding, as did the Senate version of the authorization bill: $9 million for broadcasts to Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania, and Moldova. Unfortunately, this bill will cut off those broadcasts, and that is not the right thing to do. These are new democracies. They are still subject to instability. There is still gang and Soviet influence. I refer to the old Soviet gangs that still are alive and well and reborn in the form of syndicate operations. These democracies need the help of Radio Free Europe. I think putting that voice, as well as Radio Liberty, in a broadcast is an important thing to strengthen those democracies. Unfortunately, it was cut.

Then, of course, there is the provision in this bill regarding one of the controversial rules of the Federal Communications Commission. Do my colleagues think it is a better country if one company owns more and more television and radio stations? I do not. I think the diversity of message, the opportunities for Americans to hear different points of view, is really kind of key to our democracy. Yet, despite our votes on the floor of the Senate, at the last minute Chairman Stevens and the White House put a provision in this appropriations bill which allows a greater concentration of ownership of television stations.

The obvious question is: What is that doing in an appropriations bill? The obvious answer is: The special interests won and they won big. Viacom was a big winner. Rupert Murdoch and Fox Broadcasting were all big winners by this provision being slipped in the bill. It is no surprise that some of these conglomerates have a conservative bent to them and agree with the President's party. Well, they were handsomely rewarded in this appropriations bill.

The last point I will make is that of all of the things in this bill which will make life tougher, more difficult and challenging in America, there is one that is very basic. When one turns on the television news tonight, what is likely to be the lead story? Well, in Chicago, sadly, it is likely to be a violent crime, maybe a murder. We are showing some improvement there. We are reducing violent crime, but it is still a national scourge. Unfortunately, it is the result of the fact that guns often end up in the hands of the wrong people.

Under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, firearm dealers are prohibited from transferring firearms to anybody until there has been a search in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and it is determined that selling this gun to this person would not violate the law. The kind of people who would be prohibited from buying guns are obvious: convicted felons, somebody convicted of a crime of domestic violence or under a domestic violence restraining order, or a fugitive. We do not want to sell guns to people who have demonstrated that they misuse them. That is a smart thing to do. So we submit the name of the person to the NICS system for a computer check to see if this person would be prohibited from having a firearm. If so, then we do not sell them the gun.

In addition, under the current regulations, the Department of Justice retains records of approved firearm sales for up to 90 days. If during the course of those 90 days, it obtains information that a gun has been sold to someone improperly, we are going to go get the gun.

So I asked the General Accounting Office what would happen if the Department of Justice was required to destroy these computer records of gun purchases within 24 hours. In other words, the Department of Justice is given only 24 hours to obtain additional information on a person's background, and they were not given the full 90 days that they have under the current law. What if it is limited to 24 hours? The General Accounting Office did a study for me. They came back and said the FBI would lose its ability to initiate firearm retrieval actions when new information reveals individuals who were approved to purchase firearms should not have been. Specifically, the GAO said during the first 6 months of the 90-day retention policy, the FBI used retained records to initiate 235 firearm retrieval actions, of which 228 could not have been initiated if there were a next-day destruction requirement.

Let me boil this down. If I want to buy a gun and I pass through the computer check, they have 90 days to obtain additional information regarding whether I should have been able to buy the gun. If they are told they have only 24 hours to gather this information, it means that 228 guns in a 6-month period would be given to convicted felons, people guilty of domestic violence, and fugitives, exactly the wrong people in America to have guns.

Now, who in the world would want to limit the ability of the Government to check on someone's background to make sure that criminals did not buy guns? One special interest group--the National Rifle Association. And they won, in this bill. They have a provision in this bill which will prohibit the FBI from obtaining information on a purchaser's background more than 24 hours after a sale is approved. What it means in this case is 228 felons and other prohibited persons in a 6-month period would end up with guns on the street.

Does that make you feel safer, America? It doesn't make me feel safer at all. It is the kind of mindless pressure by a special interest group that is being paid off for its political support with this provision in the appropriations bill, and that makes no sense at all. It is not going to make the streets of my State any safer. It isn't going to make it safer for the policemen who

get up every morning, who put that badge on over their heart and risk their lives for us every single day. It isn't going to make it safer for our children who are walking home from the bus or from the CTA train. It is not going to make it safer for America.

But there are smiles on the faces of the special interest group, the National Rifle Association. They won in this appropriations bill. They were able to limit the opportunity for Government to do its work, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. That is another unfortunate outcome of this legislation.

So we will face this Omnibus appropriations bill after having defeated a motion to close down debate yesterday. I hope in the process a lot of Americans will pay close attention. This is one of the latest times I can remember major appropriations bills being enacted since I served in Congress. The fact is, the longer the bill languishes, the more likely it is subject to mischief. That is what happened here. Time and time again we saw the overtime pay issue, the issue of media ownership concentration, the issue of the background checks on guns, as well as the issue of country-of-origin labeling--all of these became victim to this debate that went on and on, on the appropriations bills, and ultimately the special interests won, Americans lost, and American families lost as well. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, one of the worst provisions in this shameful bill is the provision that will take away the right of overtime pay to millions of loyal and hard-working Americans. That provision also shows the enormous gulf between what the Bush administration says and what it does.

Again and again, President Bush talks about providing economic security for all Americans, and then he

quietly tries to deny millions of workers their basic right to overtime.

If you have to work overtime, you deserve overtime pay. No employer should deny you that right, and no President and no Congress should take it away from you.

In his State of the Union speech last night, the President said his jobs and growth agenda would include ``relief from needless Federal regulation.'' Apparently, he believes protecting employees' overtime pay is a needless regulation.

Millions of employees across America disagree with that. This proposal makes clear that the Bush administration is working overtime for the corporations and against the workers of America. We are fighting a war in Iraq, and this President and this administration is also waging a war on workers here at home.

Thirteen million children are going hungry every day; 8 million Americans are unemployed with no jobs in sight; 7 million workers have been waiting since 1997 for the raise they deserve in the minimum wage; 90,000 workers a week are losing their unemployment benefits. They can't find jobs in the Bush economy, and the President took away their unemployment benefits, too. And more than 8 million workers will lose their overtime pay because President Bush says they don't deserve it.

Majorities in both the Senate and the House agreed that the Bush administration was wrong to deny overtime protections to workers, and by a vote in the Senate and a vote in the House of Representatives, we said to the President: You are wrong. But here it is. They took it out of this bill behind closed doors at the last minute, and now they expect Congress to accept that because the vote is on this larger bill.

We could change this bill in a minute and send it on to the President, and that is what we ought to do. We know for whom we are fighting on this issue, and we know why we are fighting--for their right to keep the overtime pay they deserve.

We are fighting for the nurse who burns the midnight oil day in and day out caring for the sick and the elderly. We are fighting for the firefighters, the law enforcement officers, the first responders--the heroes of homeland security--the men and women standing watch and working night and day to protect our safety. They are our generation of Paul Reveres prepared to act when danger comes. They deserve fair pay for all they do.

We are fighting for our veterans and for our men and women serving so bravely now in Iraq and across the world who return to civilian life only to find that the training they learned in the military will now be used to deny them their right to overtime pay.

I want to point out what this proposed regulation under professional employees is all about and what it states. I will include the whole provision but included in the provision--listen to this, Mr. President--is:

The word ``customary'' means that exemption is also available to the employees in such professions--these will be the people who are included in the rule and, therefore, ineligible for overtime--it says:

The exemption is also available to employees in such

professions who have substantially the same knowledge level

as the degreed employees--

Those are generally the 4-year degree employees to whom they are referring.

but who attained such knowledge through a combination of work

experience, training in the Armed Forces--

Training in the Armed Forces. This is the first time they have included that you can be ineligible for overtime pay if you have been trained in the Armed Forces.

I say to my colleagues, what are the kinds of training they get in the Armed Forces? The Army, for example, offers new recruits a choice of over 200 occupations, each of which includes training and a listing of the civilian occupations for which training could help them find a job. This proposal would punish the veterans with loss of overtime protection precisely because they have received the exact same training that is used as a recruitment incentive.

The military trains service members for hundreds of occupations, including lab technicians and other health care occupations, information technology, engineers, drafters, designers, air traffic controllers, communications specialists, law enforcement, firefighters, security personnel, journalists, and the list goes on.

If you go into the Armed Forces, you serve in Iraq, you come back, you have received training programs. Under these regulations, you are ineligible for overtime.

That is unconscionable. Why did they put in the service members' training programs in the Armed Forces for the first time? This is put in for the first time in changes to the rules. This is the first time in the history of overtime, going back to the Fair Labor Standards Act, that they have included this training.

I am absolutely amazed, at a time when we are asking our service men and women to do so much and while they are in Iraq and elsewhere, we are passing a regulation in this omnibus bill that is going to say when they come back that if they have been trained in any of these areas, they will be considered, under these regulations, a professional and be ineligible for overtime, after they have been risking their lives for the American people. Does that make sense? Permit us to have an up-or- down vote on that, Mr. Republican Leadership? Permit the Senate to vote on that and see what the sentiment is? Oh, no. Just tuck it into the regulation, behind closed doors; put it in there with everything else and let it become law without giving Congress a say.

I do not know what that will mean in the future if that happens because we know that the incentives--one of the reasons that many young people go into the Armed Forces is because of the various training and educational benefits. Effectively, the Bush plan would do away with the standard requirement and allow equivalent training in the Armed Forces to substitute for the 4-year degree and therefore make these veterans ineligible. These training programs, as I say, have been a primary incentive for attracting people into the Armed Forces.

Do my colleagues understand that? It says here--I am reading right from it--training in the Armed Forces, and it goes on: Comma, or other intellectual instructions, training in the Armed Forces.

So that is what would happen to thousands of those men and women who are over in Iraq and Afghanistan, scattered around the world. They come on back. This proposal goes into effect. Their employer is going to look down and say, oh, Jim, by the way, you were in a training program before you went over to Iraq and you were trained, and it says in these rules here I do not have to pay you overtime because that is right in these rules.

So we are fighting for our veterans and fighting for our men and women serving bravely now in Iraq and across the world, who return to civilian life only to find that the training they earned in the military will now be used to deny them their right to overtime pay.

Most cynical of all, the Bush administration claims that its plan would actually entitle low-income workers to qualify for overtime. The Department of Labor has distributed guidelines to employers on the steps that they can take to avoid the need to pay that overtime. Just calculate the pay an employee now gets with overtime included and then cut the employee's basic pay enough to reduce the total to what it was before.

Is there anybody who doubts what is going on? This is basically a sop to companies and corporations around the country in order to squeeze employees even further. There are more than eight million out of work. Last quarter we found employment increased by only 1,000. They expected close to 300,000. It increased by only 1,000. There are so many workers who are eligible for unemployment insurance even though they have paid in for it, 90,000 at the end of this week which will be the end of all of their unemployment compensation. Did we hear anything about that last evening? I did not.

So is that cynical or what? How redhanded do we have to catch this administration before the American people understand what is being done to them? Always it is the Bush administration putting corporate profits over the well-being of American workers. The Department of Labor's mission is to promote the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the

United States, and that is what it says on the Department's Web site. It does not say promote the bottom line for businesses.

The last thing American workers need in today's troubled economy is a pay cut like that. Staff Sergeant John Miller, who performs homeland security and other public safety duties in the District of Columbia National Guard, is concerned that he and many in his department will lose their overtime pay because of the Bush plan. He recently testified that eliminating overtime pay will have a devastating impact on his department's ability to perform vital public safety responsibilities. Without his overtime pay, he said his family could no longer afford their current mortgage or save for college for their two teenage children.

Thousands of veterans will lose their overtime pay as well. Under current law, workers can be denied overtime protection if they are in the category of the professional employees. In general, it is only workers with a 4-year degree in a professional field who will be classified as professional. The Bush plan will abolish this standard and allow equivalent training in the Armed Forces to be routinely substituted for a 4-year degree. How is that for a slap in the face to our courageous men and women fighting in Iraq?

Cutbacks in overtime pay are a nightmare that no worker should have to bear. Nationwide overtime pay makes up a quarter of a worker's total pay. The administration's policy will mean an average pay cut of $160 a week for every worker. That is an outrage.

Hard-working Americans deserve a pay raise, not a pay cut.

It is wrong for the administration to try to force the unfair pay cut on them. More than 2 million jobs have been lost since President Bush took office. Unemployment is a massive problem, especially in hard times such as these. Overtime pay is exactly the incentive needed for job creation, because it encourages employers to hire more workers, instead of requiring current employees to work longer hours. We need a job creation policy, but all the Bush administration proposes is a job destruction policy.

The overtime pay requirement and the Fair Labor Standards Act has been a fundamental right of American workers for more than half a century. That basic law was enacted in the 1930s to create the 40-hour week. It says workers have to be paid time and a half for extra hours. Since 1938, that has been the law.

According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, employees without overtime protection are twice as likely to work overtime as those covered by protection. Americans are working longer hours today than ever before, longer than any industrialized nation. I will show this in the following illustrations.

This chart shows that Americans work more hours than workers in any other industrialized nation in the world. The United States is right over here on this chart. We can also compare Denmark, France, Ireland, Netherlands, the UK, Italy, and Germany. This was in 2001. It is still relevant in terms of the current time. We can see workers in the United States work considerably more than any other country in the world. So they are No. 1 in the workplace.

The second chart shows that if one does not have overtime protection, this is what happens: Workers without the overtime protections are more than twice as likely to work longer hours, more than 40 hours a week without protection. Forty-four percent of workers who had no overtime protection worked more than 40 hours a week, compared to 19 percent of those with the overtime protection, well more than double. If it is more than 50 hours a week, those without overtime protection work three times longer than those who have the protection.

Who is affected by this? All one has to do is see under the recommendation of the Bush administration of the 8 million people, what are the classifications? It is very interesting. We are talking about police officers. We are talking about nurses. We are talking about firefighters. They are the backbone of the homeland security, the front line responders. The dangers we are facing from bioterrorism, who is out there first? The firefighters, policemen, and nurses. This proposal will effectively eliminate their overtime. We should not be eliminating it.

We ask them to take vaccines in a number of instances where we are unsure about what the outcomes are going to be. We do not even provide them with adequate compensation if they are going to get ill or sick as a result of it. We ask them to do all kinds of things.

Now their reward will be we will find that, under the proposal that is in this legislation, their overtime pay will be effectively eliminated.

The same department that is tasked to protect American workers and enhance the employer's workplace and enhance the opportunity for work in this country put out the proposal about how to avoid paying your employees overtime. That is courtesy of the Bush Department of Labor.

There it is. They just spell it out for us. The Department of Labor spells out how the employer can circumvent paying any kind of overtime if they are doing it even today, and gives every employer who wants to the way in which they can undermine it.

Congress cannot stay silent and roll over while more and more Americans lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes, their dignity, and their hope. We will be fighting other battles in this session, battles to restore jobs, guarantee fair unemployment benefits, raise the minimum wage. The place to start is here. Let's at least not allow the Bush administration to take the country backwards on this fundamental issue, the right to overtime pay when workers are forced to work overtime by their employers. Let's preserve the overtime protections on which so many millions of working families across the country depend today. Why should their standard of living have to go down so employers can make higher profits by squeezing workers harder?

I would like to address one other issue that is related to the workers of this country, and that is the issue of the unemployment compensation. The Federal extension of unemployment benefits expired December 31 and 90,000 workers a week have been running out of benefits. The economy lost 2.4 million jobs since President Bush took office and at the December rate of job growth it would take 200 years to return to prerecession jobs levels. American workers can't wait that long. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, including discouraged and underemployed workers, and the number of long-term unemployed remains unacceptably high at 2 million.

Historically, job loss during a recession is about 50 percent temporary and 50 percent permanent. Today, nearly 80 percent of the job loss is permanent. As a result, many of the unemployed will not return to work soon.

Today, there is only one job opening for every three out-of-work Americans. The Republican leadership continues to paint a rosy picture of the economy while ignoring these workers. House majority leader Tom DeLay has said he sees ``no reason'' to extend unemployment benefits and the Bush administration has been silent on the issue. Democratic Senators have asked for unanimous consent to take up and pass a Federal unemployment extension more than a dozen times. Each time the Republicans say no.

The program was enacted in March 2002 and extended in January 2003 and May 2003. It provided 13 weeks of unemployment benefits in most States, and 26 weeks in high unemployment States. Today, due to the criteria used to define high unemployment, only one state qualifies as a high unemployment State, Alaska, despite continuing unemployment in many other States.

The bill would reinstitute and extend the Federal Unemployment Insurance Program for 6 months, and ensure that high unemployment States continue to be covered.

I see my friend and colleague on the other side. I have just mentioned to the Senate we are now at the point where we are losing 90,000 workers a week, those who are losing coverage on unemployment. We still have some 15 million Americans out of work, including the discouraged and underemployed workers. And the number of long-term unemployed remains unacceptably high--nearly 2 million.

Historically, as I mentioned, the job loss during a recession is about 50 percent temporary and 50 percent permanent. Today it is 80 percent permanent.

These are real people with real needs--families, mortgages to pay, food to put on the table. If we are going to have an expanding economy, it should not be done at the expense of one sector of our economy. It should be a tide that raises all the boats. There is no question that Wall Street is doing well. There is no question that a number of our companies are having extraordinary profits.

But we have these two issues, one denying the 8 million Americans the overtime, including veterans. And now we have a proposal to permit the extension of the unemployment compensation for those who have paid into the program and who are in dire need.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2006, a bill to extend unemployment benefits for 6 months, which I introduced yesterday; that the bill be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements appear in the Record as though read.

I say to the Senator, it is essentially the same plan we passed before. The bill will reinstate the insurance program for 6 months, ensure that higher unemployment States continue to be covered-- 13 weeks; 13 weeks. It is the narrower program.

Mr. President, just to respond briefly, as this chart indicates, our economy has lost 2.4 million jobs since the President took office. The job creation has been anemic. The economy created only 1,000 jobs in December. At the December rate of job growth, it would take 200 years to return to the level of jobs we had when President Bush first took office.

The reality is that the estimate of the administration was that we were going to create 300,000 jobs as a result of the tax cut. It is down to 1,000. The reason we have seen the move from 5.9 to 5.7 percent in unemployment is basically that so many people have been disillusioned. They have given up. We put this program in, which I support, at a time when unemployment was 5.7 percent, the exact same percent that it is now. But it is objected to.

It is true the plans are costly, but we know that the fund itself which the workers have paid into has nearly $20 billion. This would cost about $7 billion. That represents funds the workers have paid in for just this kind of rainy day. But no, we are being objected to.

In the early 1990s, Congress extended the unemployment benefit five times. That program did not end until the economy had more jobs than before the recession began.

This is a fair enough test, it seems to me. But when you have 90,000 Americans who have worked--these are Americans who have worked hard, played by the rules, have families, mortgages, and paid into the fund. The fund is in surplus, and we have 90,000 who are losing their coverage. This is a temporary program. It is short term--6 months, about $7 billion, with nearly $20 billion in surplus.

Workers are entitled to this kind of protection. They are entitled to a minimum wage. They work 40 hours a week 52 weeks of the year so they don't have to live in poverty. Most Americans believe that. They understand, for example, when we have the chance to increase the minimum wage that we have been blocked for 7 years. For 7 years, Republicans have blocked it. They block increasing the minimum wage. They block extending unemployment compensation. They initiate rules to eliminate overtime.

This is the record. When we talk about the minimum wage, it is obviously a women's issue because most of the people who receive the minimum wage are women. It is a children's issue because great numbers of those women have children. It is a civil rights issue because many of those who work at minimum wage are men and women of color. And it is a fairness issue.

We can't get the chance to vote on these matters. There is objection. How long did we hear last fall about, we ought to be able to vote on Medicare? Let the people vote up and down. But no, no, we can't with regard to the unemployment compensation. We can't get a vote on increasing the minimum wage. They have refused to permit this institution to have a vote again on the overtime limitations for 8 million people because there is objection. I think that is wrong.

We look forward to another opportunity to come back and address these issues in a way where hopefully we will be able to get a vote.

Mr. President, very briefly, we will have an opportunity to debate this further. We were denied an up-and-down vote on the minimum wage just last year when the Republican leadership pulled the State Department bill from the floor rather than let us vote on the minimum wage amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to consume as much time as I will.

Mr. President, I listened to my colleague, Senator Frist, who is the majority leader. I have great respect for him. His call for bipartisanship is certainly welcome. I say to him and to others that those of us who serve in the Senate come here wanting to do good things for our country. We have a passion for good public policy that will advance America's interests.

But I must say, in the past year or so the evidence of bipartisanship is hard to find with respect to the way the White House and the majority in this Senate have dealt with the minority. We would welcome true bipartisanship.

I must also point out, while I think there are areas where we have made progress in this country, there are some very significant issues with which we must deal.

We have the largest budget deficit in history, and, no, it is not because of a war, it is not because of a recession. We had testimony at a hearing yesterday that said the largest part of this deficit is as a result of recurring tax cuts, very large tax cuts, the bulk of which went to the largest income earners in this country. If you earn $1 million a year, good for you; you are very fortunate. You, also, under this administration's tax plan, get nearly $100,000 in a tax cut each year as well.

We have a very large and growing Federal budget deficit, the largest in history. The President proposes increased defense spending, increased homeland security spending, and then decreased revenue. I went to a really small school, but mathematics is still the same. One and one equals two. That fiscal policy equals very large budget deficits.

We have a responsibility--all of us, Republicans and Democrats--to our children to put this fiscal policy back on track. This President inherited a large and growing budget surplus. We now have the largest budget deficit in history, and we must fix it.

We have the largest trade deficit in history, and we have to fix that. This administration is negotiating new trade agreements that, incidentally, will once again ship more American jobs overseas. It makes no sense to me for us to do that. We do have a global economy, but we ought not set American workers and American businesses up for competition against those around the world who will work 12-year-olds 12 hours a day for 12 cents an hour and then ship their products to the store shelves in America. That is not fair competition for American workers and American business. That is only about larger profits for multinationals. We need a better trade policy and to reduce those trade deficits as well.

We have many problems, significant problems, we have to address. I welcome bipartisanship. I hope Republicans and Democrats, who seek the same goal, who have the same interests and urges to improve this country, can work together.

But I want to talk a little about this Omnibus appropriations bill and describe why some of us are concerned about the lack of bipartisanship at the end of the last session and about the partisanship, especially that was exhibited. I want to talk about things that were put in this Omnibus appropriations bill, or things that were taken out, and how that was done, and why that was done, and why we think it is bad public policy.

First, let me talk about country-of-origin labeling. That is just a slogan. Not many people, perhaps, know what that is about. Let me describe it.

Upton Sinclair in 1906 wrote a book called ``The Jungle.'' He was describing what happened in America's meatpacking plants. They had a rat problem, and so what they did to control the rats was they would take loaves of bread and lace them with poison and lay them around these meat plants so the rats would eat the poison. The rats would die and they would put the bread and the rats down the same hole, and out the back of those packing plants came sausage sent to the American consumer.

Well, Upton Sinclair wrote about that, exposed it in a book called ``The Jungle.'' That led to tough new laws, inspections, saying you cannot do that. This is about the health and safety of the American people and the health and safety of America's food supply.

Country-of-origin labeling is about labeling food in this country. The necktie I am wearing has a label on it. I looked at it this morning. All neckties have labels. Why? Because they are required to have labels. I know where this necktie was made. In fact, I know where the shoes I am wearing were made.

But not everything is labeled. And especially in the advent of a case of mad cow disease, discovered in the State of Washington, with a cow that came into this country from Canada, or the case of the people who died from hepatitis in this country, and the hundreds who remain ill by hepatitis as a result of spring onions that came into this country from Mexico, the American consumers ought to have the right to have their food labeled.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to show a piece of meat on the floor of the Senate.

This happens to be a steak. I would ask if there is anyone who could tell me where this particular steak came from? The answer is no. It is not labeled. Did it come from Canada? You do not know. Did it come from Mexico? You will not know. Guatemala? No. This meat is not labeled.

Let me read something about a packing plant in Mexico for the interest of the consumers in this country. In May of 1999, one inspector paid a surprise visit to a meatpacking plant in Mexico. This is what he said he found: ``Shanks and briskets were contaminated with feces . . . diseased-condemned carcass was observed ready for boning and distribution in commerce.'' But then the Mexican officials went to work to restore that plant's ability to sell meat into America. The Mexican plant regained its export license. It switched owners. It changed its name. It sells meat into America. And USDA has never returned. It has never again been inspected.

Do you want to know whether this meat came from that plant? I do. The American consumer ought to know.

This Omnibus appropriations bill contains something that is pernicious on this issue. We passed a law that is the law of the land that requires food labeling, meat labeling, and the Department of Agriculture will not implement it. This appropriations bill, with no debate and no discussion in the Congress, put a provision in this appropriations bill that says we shall delay, by 2 years, the implementation of this act. Why? Because they want to kill it. Why? Because the big packing plants got to them, and they don't like this.

The USDA says it is hard to implement. Nonsense. We can drive a vehicle on the surface of Mars and we cannot put labels on meat? Total nonsense. This is about big interests versus others. It is about consumers and farmers and ranchers being together in whose interest it is that we label meat and food.

On the other side are the big grocery manufacturers, the big packing houses that have fought this tooth and nail, and this administration and the majority in this Congress who listen to only one voice; and that is the biggest interests--the bigger interests. They are the winners. They are always the winners in this fight.

So the country-of-origin labeling provision in this bill is wrong. It was never debated. It was never agreed to. It ought to come out. Those who went into a room and wrote these provisions and stuck them into this appropriations bill ought to go back into the same room and fix it. We do not know which room it is. We do not know who they are because this was a partisan exercise. They did not invite Democrats. It was a partisan exercise. What they did is they served big business interests by sticking this sort of nonsense in the bill. That is country-of-origin labeling.

Let me describe something else. How about overtime? This is not about meat. I will put the meat away. I thank the Presiding Officer for allowing me to show a piece of steak on the floor of the Senate. There is not one Member of the Senate who would know where that meat came from because it is not labeled. It might have come from a plant in Mexico. It might have come from Guatemala. You do not know. I do not know. We do not know, but we ought to know. That is what the majority wants to prevent us and all consumers from knowing; and that is why they are wrong.

Let me talk about overtime. Let me talk about workers in this country. Do you know, for 65 years we have had a kind of pact in this country, a rule and a law that says if you want to work somebody overtime, you have a responsibility to pay them overtime pay? It is called the 40-hour workweek. We say, if you want to tell your employees you are going to work overtime, 10 hours of overtime every week, yours is a 50-hour week, you have a responsibility to pay them overtime pay.

The Department of Labor is now preparing to decide that they are going to change the overtime rules. Why? To make it easier for business to work people overtime without having to pay them. People whose judgments I respect say that up to 8 million Americans would be required to work overtime with no pay under this provision.

So we in the Senate and in the House, on a bipartisan basis, put a provision in this appropriations bill that says you cannot do that, Department of Labor; you cannot do that to the American worker. Guess what. In that same closed room, they took that provision out. It was bipartisan, voted on in both the House and Senate, but big business didn't like it, so it is gone. It is just gone.

The American workers deserve better than that. Do we really want to say to 8 million workers out there that we don't care about their families, about their income needs? We just care that after 65 years we want to change the overtime requirements so if their employer wants to work them overtime, they can. They don't have to hire more people. Why would they have to do that? They could just work people 50 hours a week because it doesn't cost any more. They can work them 50 hours a week with no overtime pay, or they can get rid of their job and hire somebody else.

For 65 years, we have had this overtime rule. These folks want to change it and hurt up to 8 million American workers.

That is in this Omnibus bill--the exclusion of the provision that Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate put in. It was wrong to do that. They ought to put that exclusion in so we can block these rules and stand on the side of the American worker.

Let me talk about one more: Broadcast ownership. I will tell you why I am talking about these. It may be that those who do this have ear plugs; maybe they hear nothing. I don't know. I have told often of my hometown of 400 people, a tiny town in the southwest ranching country of North Dakota. I used to go down to see a blacksmith, John Krebs. I was fascinated to watch him work. He wore these big gloves and he had this forge. He would pump that thing and get a fire going, and then I would watch him put a piece of steel in this fire. The steel would heat up until it was almost white hot, and they would take it out with a big tool and go over to an anvil

and start to pound on it and bend it. You can bend it when you put heat on steel.

That is a lot like politics. When you apply heat, that is when things bend in politics. That is what this is about, trying to apply heat to those who went into a room and said we are going to get rid of meat labeling, or we are going to let the Labor Department tell 8 million people they have to work without overtime pay for more than 40 hours a week, or broadcast ownership, which is interesting for me.

Broadcast ownership. Who owns America's radio and television stations? That is a big issue. We voted on that issue in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. The judgment and decision we made was taken out of this conference after the conference made the decision and closed the title by unanimous consent. I was a conferee; that is how I know. The conference report on this Omnibus bill dealt with what both the House and Senate had decided, and that is that we will restrict to 35 percent national ownership, the ownership of television stations. And that was standing up to the big interests, taking on the big broadcast interests. We did it, Republicans and Democrats together. We passed legislation in both the House and the Senate, with Republican and Democratic support.

When we finished, we went to conference. Sitting in the conference, when we came to that title, I asked the chairman of the conference: Let me understand what you now intend to put in this conference report because they were about to close the title. I said: On the broadcast ownership issue, will this conference report include the 35-percent restriction that passed the House and Senate on a bipartisan basis? The answer was that, yes, it includes the position of the House and Senate, the 35 percent. I said that I will then have no objection to closing this title. Bang, the gavel came down, the title was closed, and the conference resolved that issue. It was done.

Mr. President, that is not what is in this bill. That is not what came from the conference. I was driving down the road in my car about a week later and I heard on the radio that the Senate was negotiating with the President on a different number. That is what is in this bill. Apparently, conferences don't matter. The gavel doesn't matter. The chairman closing a title doesn't matter. None of it mattered. None of it was on the level. What is in this conference report expands the ownership capability of broadcast ownership in television and radio-- television with respect to this issue--in a way it abridges the decision made first by the House, then by the Senate, then by the conference.

I would like just one person to explain to me that process, or the rules that allow that process to bring that to the floor of the Senate. What is this about? It is about whether you are going to stand up in this country for broad-based economic ownership, or whether you believe in the area of broadcast properties--those who determine what we see and what we hear and read, which increasingly are just a few people in this country--whether you believe they ought to be bigger and bigger and bigger. One company now owns over 1,200 radio stations in this country. I could bring out charts about all the broadcast properties in television and radio. You would see there is this orgy of mergers and acquisitions and a dramatic and damaging concentration.

That is what this fight was about in the Senate and House. In fact, the Senate passed a resolution of disapproval that I, along with Senator Lott and others, on a bipartisan basis, passed in the Senate--a resolution that disapproved the entire Federal communications rule dealing with expanding the ownership capabilities of the big groups for radio and television and allowing cross ownership of newspapers and broadcast media. We passed that resolution of disapproval in the Senate that would disapprove the entire rule. That is now pending in the House of Representatives at the desk. It is only about 10 signatures short of passing there. They have, I think, 208 signatures.

You know what. Somewhere in a closed room, with just a few folks deciding, they abridged the decision by the House, the decision by the Senate, and explicit decision by the conference committee of which I was a member, with respect to broadcast ownership in television. I think that is a horrible policy choice, aside from the fact that, in my judgment, it casts aside all the rules as to how we do business.

It is fundamentally wrong for this Congress to weigh in and say, by the way, the sky is the limit; own everything you want. Let's have one company owning 3,000 radio stations. Let's have two companies owning all the TV stations. You know that the FCC rule says that in one big American city it will be just fine if you own three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable company, and the major newspaper. That is fine.

It is not fine with me. It is not the way things ought to be in this country. Yet it doesn't matter how we vote in the Congress. What matters is what a few people stick in an omnibus report that comes to us, which contains provisions that were not debated and not supported by either the House or the Senate. Why? I will tell you why. On virtually all of these issues, the White House says if you mess around with what we don't like, we will veto this.

We have compliant folks who bow and say if you say ``veto,'' let us take it out. By all means, let us satisfy the White House, forgetting, I guess, that there are separate branches in the Government. We are not the White House.

The President has not vetoed a thing since he has been President. If he wants to, that is fine. Does he want to make his first veto the country-of-origin labeling, or the issue of overtime? Does he want to make his first veto broadcast ownership limits? Maybe he wants to explain that to the American people, when the question is whose side are you on? The answer from the White House must always be that they are on the side of the big interests. Maybe he should explain that. But we will never, apparently, confront those issues of the veto threats because in every circumstance in this Omnibus, things were put in, or things were left out that thwart the will of the U.S. Congress.

What happened here is arrogant, just plain arrogant. So if you wonder why we are upset, I have explained three of them: overtime, country-of- origin labeling for food, and broadcast ownership. There are six or eight. I could go through more, but I will not. This is wrong, what happened to this conference report, flat wrong.

The majority leader is a good man. I am proud to serve with him. When he says to us let's have some bipartisanship, I say to him absolutely. But what they did on a partisan basis is arrogant.

There are provisions in this conference report that shouldn't be here, and provisions that should be here that were taken out. It was arrogant. They know it. This is not something we are going to allow to happen again. This place cannot and will not function this way.

I want this to be a bipartisan institution as well. While we might disagree from time to time, and we have people of good character having a raucous debate, that is just fine. This country will get, in my judgment, the benefit of what all of us have to offer if we have a good debate. I think Republicans have something significant to offer our country, as do Democrats.

There are times when we have aggressive debate about issues, and we pick the best of a competition of ideas. There are other times when we work together where we are near unanimous agreement. But this is not the way to work. This mistreats the minority. We are a significant minority at this point, just a vote short of a 50/50 Senate.

What happened here will not be allowed to happen again. I say that to the White House and to the majority. We insist on some semblance of bipartisanship.

Let me make one final point. Not only on this but on other issues, the majority decided not to have conferences. They would have what is called ``a virtual conference,'' in which they would conference with themselves and exclude Democrats. That will not happen again in this Congress either. We will not appoint conferees unless there is a commitment from the chairman of the committee that the conference will meet with both members of the conference, Republican and Democratic caucuses.

Even more than that, we will not allow again something like this to happen: seven appropriations bills put in one omnibus and then in the middle, a little folder is stuck in that abridges the rights of the majority and minority with respect to specific votes in the Congress. It is not the right way to do business.

I accept the majority leader's call for bipartisanship. As far as I am concerned, sign me up on things on which we can work together. I want to do that. People of good will should do that for the good of this country. But we cannot call for bipartisanship unless we renounce the tactics that created this conference report with respect to overtime, country-of-origin labeling, broadcast ownership, and other issues. Those people have a voice in this Chamber as well--people who work hard, people who are consumers. They have a right to be heard in this Congress, and they were not with respect to those provisions in this Omnibus bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a concurrent resolution which I shall send to the desk correcting the enrollment of the omnibus conference report restoring the media ownership language to that which the conferees had originally agreed to; that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, my colleague from Missouri and my colleague from Rhode Island are waiting. I thank them for their indulgence. I yield the floor.