Flu Protection Act of 2004

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about the issue of reimportation of prescription drugs. I also wanted to talk for a moment about the tax bill that is being negotiated by the conference committee between the House and Senate, especially with respect to the runaway plant issue and tax incentives that now occur for those who shut down their American manufacturing plants and export jobs. I will speak about those two issues briefly.

Before I do that, I'd like to address some of the remarks of my colleague from Georgia, who was speaking when I came to the floor of the Senate.

I disagreed strongly with my colleague when I heard his speech at one of the national political conventions. He certainly had every right to give that speech. I disagree strongly with the presentation he gave on the Senate floor, but he has every right, of course, to express those opinions on the Senate floor.

I have great respect for my colleague from Georgia. I honor his service. He has provided great public service to this country in many different ways, so I honor that service.

But I, of course, reserve the right to disagree with my colleague as well, just as he came to the floor and disagreed with some of the votes that have been cast by Senator Kerry.

The last time I was on the floor when my colleague from Georgia came to speak, he was offering a proposal that we take away the right of the American people to vote for Senators. He proposed instead that Senators be appointed or selected by State legislatures, and that the right of the people to vote for Senators should be rescinded.

Well, I thought that did not sound like a very modern approach. We left that idea a long time ago in this country, and I got up and spoke and indicated I did not have quite such a pessimistic view of this country's future and certainly did not agree that we ought to revert back to the States appointing their Senators and taking away from the American people the right to elect Senators. But that was the only previous occasion I recall on which I took the floor of the Senate and disagreed with my distinguished colleague from Georgia. I must say, however, that I feel compelled to disagree once again.

I have not come to the Senate floor to be critical, ever, of President George W. Bush's military record. I would not do that. And I would not be critical of Senator Kerry's military record. Both of them served.

My colleague came to talk about Senator Kerry's record in voting for defense for this country. This is not a new technique in American politics. This is timeless. It always happens that someone stands up and points at someone else and says: You don't represent this country's interests in defense. You don't support a strong defense. You are not willing to stand up when you need to stand up and be counted and support a strong defense for this country.

Sometimes that works. But let me just say this. I don't think it works when you point at someone who decided on graduation from Yale that he would volunteer to go to Vietnam; not only that, he would volunteer to serve on a swift boat, where he was certain to be involved in hostile action. He didn't have to do that. He did that, he volunteered. He received a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, and still has fragments in his body from the wounds from which those Purple Hearts arose. I don't think it works to point fingers at that man and suggest he, somehow, is weak on defense.

My colleague's assessment of Senator Kerry has changed some. Senator Reid pointed out that in March of 2001, at a banquet in Georgia, my colleague from Georgia introduced Senator Kerry. Here is what he said about him:

My job tonight is an easy one. It's to present to you one

of this Nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best

known and greatest leaders, and a good friend.

Then he said this, my colleague from Georgia:

John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public

education, boost the economy and protect the environment.

Let me say that again because it is important. It is at odds with what we just heard from my colleague from Georgia on the floor of the Senate this afternoon. Speaking of John Kerry, my colleague from Georgia said:

John has worked to strengthen our military.

This is a speech from March 1, 2001. What is the difference between then and now? John Kerry has had the same record on defense.

Incidentally, John Kerry has supported a great amount of this country's defense: the Apache helicopter, Aegis, The Bradley, Black Hawk, B-2 bomber, C-17 cargo jets, F-16, F-18, Tomahawk missiles, C- 130s, and I could go on and on and on. Billions, tens of billions, yes, trillions of dollars for defense Senator Kerry has voted for.

What is the difference between March 1, 2001, in my colleague's assessment of Senator Kerry where he said ``John,'' speaking of Senator Kerry, ``has worked to strengthen our military,'' what is the difference between that and the discussion we have just heard today? The difference is, it's an election year and my colleague has, apparently, decided to change his mind. If there were an Olympic event called ``stretching,'' I have a couple of personal nominations for who might win the gold medal.

This ought not be, in American elections, an attempt to find out who is the worst. It ought to be a search for who is the best. Who can best lead this country? Who has a vision for the future that grows our economy, that protects our country, protects our homeland, provides for a strong defense, protects the environment? It is a search, in my judgment, for who is the best, not who is the worst.

We have two candidates running for President, both fully qualified to serve in that office. It does not serve our country well to point at one and say somehow he is weak on defense, doesn't support defense, especially when it is so at odds with the record. But it is now an election year. I guess almost anything goes.

There is a term, I suppose, for changing one's mind, and it is called flip-flop. I have not used it, but some have used it to the point of significant repetition this year. I will not use it here

except to say what we have just heard today is at significant odds, not only with the record of a member of our caucus who has served with great gallantry but also at odds with the previously stated views of the person who made the speech today.

Let me end as I began and say I honor the service of the Senator from Georgia. I disagree with him about these issues. Four weeks from today this country will see fit to make an informed choice between two men who strive to serve for the next 4 years as this country's President. Both candidates, I am sure, care about national security. Both care about homeland security. As was stated in the debate last week, both love this country.

I submit, just as one Senator, both are qualified to serve in that office. Both parties have nominated people they choose to support and support aggressively. I come to the Senate floor today to simply say this: John Kerry is someone with whom I have served for many years. I have watched him vote. The fact is, he supports a strong defense for this country. He always has and always will. When it came time to answer his call, his country's call, he left one of the prestigious colleges in this country upon graduation and said: Let me volunteer. He went to Vietnam. He went in harm's way.

There is no amount of energy or wind that can be exerted by others who will change the basic fact of a voting record that is in strong support of America's defense.

I am happy to yield.

That is correct.

I say to the Senator, I have, in fact. I serve on the appropriations subcommittee here on the Senate. I care a lot about this country's defense. And I voted against the MX missile program, because I felt it was a terrible waste of money. But I am a strong supporter of defense. I believe anyone who looks at my record will understand the weapons programs I supported, significant weapons programs, have added strength and boosted this country's capability.

Because I serve on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I watch what others do as well. From a firsthand knowledge, I say that Senator Kerry has a strong and aggressive record in supporting this country and supporting a strong defense for this country.

No question about that.

My colleague from Georgia was talking about Vice President Cheney and John Kerry. I didn't quite understand that comparison of their records on defense. I have lived a couple of doors down from Dick and Lynne Cheney for a number of years. I know them well. I would never come to suggest somehow that Dick Cheney doesn't support a strong defense. And I know John Kerry very well. I certainly wouldn't come to suggest he doesn't support a strong defense. Both of them have records that demonstrate a support for this country's defense.

Well, enough about that. I didn't come to the floor of the Senate to speak about that. But I felt that there should be some response to the statement by the Senator from Georgia this afternoon which I think, frankly, is not supported at all by the facts.

American Jobs

On May 5 of this year, we had a vote in the Senate. That vote was on an amendment that I had offered, together with my colleague, Senator Mikulski from Maryland. The intent of the vote was to shut down a loophole that rewards U.S. companies that move their manufacturing jobs overseas.

Yes, we have that kind of loophole. It is a perverse, insidious loophole in our Tax Code that says: Shut down your U.S. manufacturing plant, get rid of your U.S. employees and outsource those jobs, and, God bless you, while you leave this country, we will give you a tax cut.

Talk about a perverse incentive to do exactly the wrong thing, that is it.

We are now seeing the conference committee between the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee meet and negotiate over a FSC/ETI bill, sometimes also called the ``jobs bill.'' If they finish putting this bill together in conference and do not include a provision to eliminate this perverse incentive, they will have done precious little to help protect, nurture, and strengthen American jobs.

Incidentally, when I offered this amendment on May 5 of this year, the amendment was tabled by a vote of 60 to 39. Sixty Members of the Senate voted to say they did not want to shut down a tax loophole that provides an incentive for companies to fire their American workers and move their U.S. jobs overseas. So that loophole still exists in tax law.

Now I read in the paper this morning they really do not want to pay for the cost of this FSC/ETI bill by shutting down loopholes. This is unbelievable.

We have American companies now that decide they want to do business through a post office box in the Bahamas or the Grand Caymans. Why? Do they want to be a citizen of the Grand Caymans? Not exactly. They just want to avoid paying U.S. taxes so everyone else can pay taxes that these folks do not pay.

I suggest that once companies have decided to move their corporation and run their business out of a mailbox in the Bahamas for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes, the next time they get in trouble maybe they ought to call the Bahamian Navy to protect them. I understand the Bahamian Navy has 20 people. Maybe the next time one of these companies gets in trouble with some expropriated assets or other issue they can call on the combined flexed muscle of the Bahamian Navy.

My point is simple. We have a real problem in this country with the outsourcing of jobs. In the last 4 years, we have actually lost jobs at a time when we are supposed to be creating jobs. We have an expanding population. We need new jobs. But we are losing jobs.

I will not give the same speech I have given previously about the Radio Flyer and Huffy bicycles, those quintessentially American products that are now being made in China. I will not talk about the all-American cookie, the Fig Newton, now being made in Monterey, Mexico, so that it is now Mexican food. I will not give the speech about the outsourcing of these jobs to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China. But if this country does not wake up soon and get rid of these pernicious loopholes in the tax law that say, ship your U.S. jobs overseas and we will give you a big tax cut, if we do not do that, we are not going to succeed.

Growing an economy requires us to do the right things. We cannot talk about growing the economy and then support tax loopholes and say, by the way, ship your U.S. jobs overseas. That does not work. We are outsourcing jobs every single day and no one seems to care much about it.

Incidentally, that also relates to the trade deficit, because when we outsource the jobs and ship the products from those jobs back into this country, it means we exacerbate the trade deficit, which is the largest deficit in human history.

One can make an argument as an economist--I used to teach a bit of economy in college--one can make an argument that the budget deficit is money we owe to ourselves. We cannot make that argument with respect to a trade deficit. We owe a trade deficit to other countries. It will be paid inevitably by a lower standard of living in our country in the future.

The largest trade deficit in history ought to be cause for substantial alarm in this Chamber and at the White

House. Yet there is almost a conspiracy of silence all around this town about a trade deficit that, in my judgment, hurts this country very badly.

Incidentally, Lou Dobbs has written a book about this trade deficit. I encourage colleagues and others to read it. His program, more than any on television these days, is talking about the danger of this trade deficit.

At any rate, as they finalize this jobs bill in conference, which is going on as I speak, they need to come back to the amendment I offered last May 5 with my colleague, Senator Mikulski. They need to shut down this perverse incentive in tax law, which gives benefits and encouragement and financial help to companies that move their jobs overseas.

Reimportation of Prescription Drugs

Let me make one other point on another subject that I think is critical. We are told we are near the end of this session. Perhaps on Friday of this week we will complete our work and then come back for a lameduck session, which happens to be a terrible idea. Perhaps, because this Congress has not done much of the right kind of work or much of the work it needs to do, we will have to have a lameduck session.

As we near the end of this session, the one relentless issue that many Members of Congress say they care about and want to do something about is the issue of the prices of prescription drugs. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and there are far too many in this country who cannot afford them.

Senior citizens are 12 percent of our population yet they consume over one-third of the prescription drugs in America. Senior citizens have reached that point in their lives when they have a fixed income. Yet one-third of the prescription drugs are taken by our senior citizens. Why? Because they must. These are lifesaving drugs, miracle drugs. My hat is off to the pharmaceutical industry and to the researchers at the National Institutes of Health and others who have helped create these new drugs, but miracle drugs offer no miracle to those who cannot afford to take them.

I sat on a bale of straw the other day at a farm in southern North Dakota with a fellow who is 87 years old. He told me: I fought cancer for 3 years and I think I finally have beaten it. This is an 87-year- old man. I fought cancer for 3 years and I think I finally won. For those 3 years, my wife and I drove to Canada to buy the prescription drugs I needed to fight this cancer.

Why? Because the same FDA approved drug, the identical pill, is put in the same bottle, made by the same company, but is priced at a dramatically lower price in Canada.

He said: For 3 years, we went to Canada to save that money because we had to. Senior citizens should not have to go to Canada to save money on prescription drugs.

He is right about that. I would prefer that pharmacist be able to go to Canada to purchase those lower priced prescription drugs from the pharmacist in Canada, come back, and pass the savings along to the consumers in our country.

By getting rid of the artificial barriers that prevent re- importation, we would put downward pressure on prescription drug prices in this country so people would not have to go anywhere but their local drugstore to purchase prescription drugs. They could purchase them here for a fair price. But we are charged the highest prices in the world for these drugs.

We are told by the Food and Drug Administration that if we reimport prescription drugs from Canada in any organized way that there would be a safety issue. We are told by the Secretary of Health and Human Services that there may be a safety issue. We are told by the President that he thinks maybe we should look at this but there might be a safety issue.

That suggests somehow that Americans are not able to do what Europeans have done everyday for years. The Europeans have something called parallel trading. Their parallel trading programs allow someone from Germany to buy a prescription drug from Spain, someone from France to buy a prescription drug from Italy.

They don't have any safety issues in Europe. The marketplace determines the price for the drug, and the market puts downward pressure so the Europeans don't pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs as we do. They do what is called parallel trading, and there are no safety issues at all. European officials have testified before our committees. The safety issues simply are not there. It is a bogus issue.

We have drafted a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act. Myself, along with Senators Snowe, McCain, Stabenow, Feingold, and others, we have drafted a bipartisan piece of legislation that systematically addresses the safety issues so that there cannot be any safety concerns. Our bill would allow the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada and from other major developed countries and would put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. The House of Representatives has passed such a bill. That bill is on the calendar at the desk. The bipartisan bill which we have introduced is similar to the bill that is at the desk. Yet we are unable to get a final vote in the Senate.

We have had substantial discussion. I had a discussion with the majority leader on this subject at midnight one night earlier this year on the Senate floor. I had a hold on a nominee. I withdrew that hold because I believed we had an agreement that we were going to work toward an opportunity to have a vote on this legislation. I believed that agreement with the majority leader existed. He now indicates it was not an agreement for a vote. He indicates it was an agreement that a process would begin and that the authorizing committee would work on this. The authorizing committee worked on it, to be sure. They would have markups scheduled and markups cancelled, markups scheduled and markups cancelled. The fact is, they never were able to get a bill out of committee because they couldn't get consensus on anything. We have a consensus on the bill that is on the calendar. We have a consensus on the bipartisan bill. If there is a vote on that in the Senate, it will pass by a significant margin. We don't need another consensus. There is a consensus that already exists. What we need is a vote on the floor of the Senate.

I encourage the majority leader once again to allow us the opportunity to cast this vote. Senator McCain, Senator Snowe, myself, Senator Stabenow, Senator Feingold, Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy and many others have worked very hard on this issue. In my judgment, it is a disservice to those who deserve to pay fair prices for prescription drugs not to have a vote on this bill. It is a disservice to their interests for us not to complete work on this bill during this session of the Congress.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record two editorials. One is by the Chicago Tribune and it is entitled ``Shielding the Drug Industry.'' This says essentially what I have said:

While Congress dithers, States and cities skirt if not

break the law by helping seniors and others take advantage of

lower prescription-drug prices in Canada.

And the editorial talks about the desperate need for Congress to pass a law dealing with reimportation. They specifically feel that the legislation that is before the Congress would be meritorious and they talk about Peter Rost who is vice president of marketing for one of the largest drug companies who broke ranks with the drug industry in the last couple of weeks and publicly endorsed the proposal in Congress that my colleagues and I have sponsored.

Then I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a New York Times editorial that is titled ``The Senate's Chance on Drug Costs.''

If Dr. Bill Frist, the Senator majority leader, knows

what's good for the body politic, he will allow a quick floor

vote on the drug reimportation bill he has been bottling up

for the benefit of President Bush and the pharmaceutical

industry.

As I have indicated, there is a bipartisan group of Senators who have worked a long while on this issue. The House of Representatives passed this idea by a wide bipartisan margin. This is not a partisan issue. It is bipartisan.

My hope is that the majority leader will decide that as a matter of scheduling, we will, before we adjourn sine die, address this issue and resolve it for the benefit of the American people. There is no safety issue. Everyone knows that is a bogus issue. To continue to raise that issue suggests somehow that Americans are unable to do what the Europeans have done routinely year after year. That is, put together a system--we call it reimportation; in Europe it is called parallel trading--that is safe for consumers and that puts downward pressure on prescription drug prices.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, politics is politics. As we all know, it can be a contact sport. While many things can be considered fair or unfair, depending on your outlook, I think most would agree that the voting record and the printed and stated positions of a candidate or elected official are right and proper to discuss. But it is also important that those who report this discussion be correct in what they report.

I thought we were in morning business. If I may now continue.

It is also important that those who report the discussion be correct in what they report. From most of the national media, we have not had that correct reporting on John Kerry's national defense record.

From the media we have heard, from their review of national defense records, that the liberal Democrat John Kerry and the conservative Vice President Dick Cheney are, in fact, long lost ideological soul mates, separated only by birth and hair.

We hear from Wolf Blitzer and Judy Woodruff on CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, Alan Colmes of Fox, and the fact finders at the Washington Post and the LA Times that if you took Dick Cheney and substituted him for John Kerry or if you took John Kerry and substituted him for Dick Cheney the defense votes that occurred in the House and Senate and the outcomes of defense spending bills and Pentagon operations would be virtually identical.

They would have you believe that when it comes to national defense records, votes and positions, they say the very DNA of Dick Cheney and John Kerry are practically indistinguishable, that they are doves from the same nest. Or maybe it is hawks now, with Kerry's latest change.

As silly as this assertion is, the Democrats are more than happy to make it because many in the media are only too happy to parrot it. There is no better proof of this than the media's response to the speech I made at the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Now, I was inclined to let the veracity of an old man soon to be retired just go unanswered, thinking that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. And I would have, if it had been my reputation at stake instead of the safety of my family. Let me start with the LA Times which bought lock, stock, and barrel the Democrats' official line, and I quote:

The Kerry campaign responded by accusing Miller of

mischaracterizing the Senator's record, pointing out that

Cheney also voted to cut funding for some of those weapons

systems while serving in Congress. Others were targeted for

cutback by Cheney when he was Defense Secretary in the first

Bush Administration.

USA Today minimized the negative of Kerry's defense votes this way:

. . . Kerry voted against large Pentagon spending bills

that include many weapons three times in his 20-year career.

And Defense Secretary Cheney recommended ending some of the

same systems that Miller cited.

CNN's Judy Woodruff said this to me only a few minutes after my speech:

John Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets that came

through the Senate while he was in the Senate, and many of

those votes you cited, Dick Cheney also voted against.

Wolf Blitzer of CNN emphasized the similarity of Kerry and Cheney:

When the Vice President was the Secretary of Defense, he

proposed cutting back on the B-2 bomber, the F-14 Tomcat as

well. I covered him at the Pentagon during those years when

he was raising serious concerns about those two weapons

systems. . . .

And then, that citadel of sanctimony, the home of the whopper, the Washington Post, weighed in with this totally untrue statement:

Miller's list was mostly derived from a single Kerry vote

against a spending bill in 1991, rather than individual votes

against particular systems.

Later, a Washington Post analysis added:

Kerry did not cast a series of votes against individual

weapon systems, but instead Kerry voted against a Pentagon

spending package in 1990 as part of deliberations over

restructuring and downsizing the military in the post-Cold

War period.

Editorial pages began to chime in, such as the Philadelphia Daily News:

Miller charged that Kerry has voted to strip the Armed

Services of necessary weapons systems when Dick Cheney, as

Defense Secretary, proposed many of the cuts and voted for

others.

Mr. President, is this true? Are there just a handful of votes by Kerry against weapons systems? Are those votes identical to those by Dick Cheney? Did the media have their facts straight? And even more important, did they really want to have their facts straight? Or did they just simply adopt, without verification, the talking points from the Kerry campaign?

Let's start at the beginning. I said in my speech that Kerry ``opposed the very weapons systems that won the Cold War and that are now winning the war on terrorism.''

I then listed the systems that Kerry opposed, such as the B-1, the B- 2, F-14A, F-14D Tomcats, the Apache helicopter, the F-15 Eagle, the Patriot missile, Aegis cruiser, the SDI, and the Trident missile.

Did Kerry oppose the weapons systems that won the Cold War? The answer is yes.

In 1984, John Kerry ran for the Senate and built his campaign around the promise to reverse what he called ``the biggest defense buildup since World War II,'' a buildup he considered in his words, ``wasteful, useless, and dangerous.''

In a key 1984 campaign document, Kerry identified 16 weapons systems he wanted to ``cancel.''

All of those weapons systems that I stated that Kerry opposed are found in this 1984 document, except for two--the Trident missile and the B-2 bomber. But Senator Kerry's opposition to those was reported in other press interviews in 1984.

Mr. President, this 1984 campaign document is the first, but by no means the last, of Kerry's opposition to these weapons systems.

It is strange, but there has not been a single story that I can find in the media about this document. No one wants the American people to see what Kerry was wanting to cancel at the height of the Cold War.

This document doesn't exist as far as the national media is concerned. But it is vital to any debate about John Kerry's national defense record because it spells out in Kerry's own words his complete and total opposition to these weapons systems. This document begins and ends with the word ``cancel.''

In his own words, John Kerry says ``cancel'' the MX, the B-1, the ASAT, SDI, the Apache helicopter, the Patriot, the Aegis cruiser, the Harrier, the Tomcat, the Eagle, the Phoenix, the Sparrow, and all of the other weapons systems listed on this chart.

If you are like most people, you might read this document and say, if John Kerry wants to cancel these weapons systems, it certainly doesn't mean he is for them. So then he must oppose them. In the name of common sense, could you have any other meaning from this?

The media tells us that just because John Kerry wanted to cancel those systems, that doesn't mean he opposed those systems. Such is their strange and twisted logic.

Because the media is not convinced John Kerry meant ``cancel'' when he said ``cancel,'' they ignore this document and think the American people should, too.

Those who don't ignore this document dismiss it, basically because Kerry opposed these systems 20 years ago. So what is the big deal today?

Here is why it is a big deal. This document came out in 1984, when America was in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union. At that time, the Cold War was anything but cold, and it was certainly not over.

The premier of the Soviet Union was not Gorbachev but Konstantin Chernenko, an old Brezhnev hard-liner.

This document that outlined John Kerry's vision for our national defense, which the media ignores and doesn't want you to know about, came out about 6 months after the Soviet Union shot down Korean Airlines 747 filled with 269 civilians.

This Kerry proposal came at a time when Soviet troops were at the halfway point of their armed invasion of Afghanistan.

This Kerry proposal came at a time when Cuban troops were in Angola and Kampuchea.

This Kerry proposal came at a time when Marxists insurgents had taken power in Nicaragua and were pushing northward into El Salvador.

This Kerry proposal came at a time when insurgents and terrorists were on the attack, and the way Kerry wanted to deal with them was by canceling crucial weapons systems.

Here, at the height of the Cold War, at a time when we were playing cards with the devil himself, when our own future, the world's freedom, and the fate of half a billion souls from Poland to Siberia, from the Baltic to Crimea, were all in the pot, John Kerry said ``fold them'' to what ultimately turned out to be one of the biggest winning hands ever played for freedom.

That is why this 1984 document is a big deal, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that this document be printed in the Record.

This document is not the end of this sorry story, for with these weapons systems clearly in his crosshairs as candidate John Kerry, Senator John Kerry pulled the trigger on them his first year in the Senate in 1985, and then again at every other chance he got.

In 1985, the ``series of votes against individual weapons systems'' the Washington Post so snugly swore never took place began.

In all, 14 Senate votes took place in 1985 alone on 5 of the specific weapons systems Kerry pledged to cancel. Mr. President, 13 of his 14 votes in 1984 were to cut the defense systems he promised to cancel.

Four of those were to cut the MX peacemaker missile; two votes were to cut antisatellite weapons; two votes were to cut SDI; another vote was to restrict SDI's use; another vote was to cut battleship reactivation; and another vote was against binary weapons.

Kerry's only vote not to cut a defense program was on SDI. You know why? Because after voting three times to cut SDI by as much as $1.5 billion, Kerry voted against a cut of $160 million because he said it didn't cut SDI enough.

So when it comes to the weapons systems that won the Cold War, John Kerry said in 1985 he wanted to cancel them, and then in 1985 he voted against them 13 out of 14 times.

There were two other votes to cut back overall defense spending, for a total of 16 votes in 1985 on national defense alone; but the Mr. Magoos down at the pious Post somehow could not locate these facts.

In fact, the Washington Post could not only find ``a'' vote--one single solitary vote over 20 years--where John Kerry voted against defense. That single antidefense vote was after the Cold War in 1990 or 1991, depending upon which Washington Post report you read.

Judy Woodruff did some better. She found 19 total defense votes over Kerry's 20 years in the Senate. There were 16 votes in 1985 on defense systems and overall spending alone.

She also claimed that Cheney voted the same way as Kerry on ``many of those'' 19.

Yet how many can ``many'' be if Cheney and Kerry served simultaneously in Congress for only 4 of those 19 annual budget fights?

But Wolf Blitzer's defense of Kerry's national defense record was the most interesting. With the wave of a hand, Blitzer dismissed the numerous votes by Kerry against these weapon systems that occurred years before as well as the years after Cheney was Secretary of Defense.

Cheney's position in 1990 and Kerry's opposition in 1984 is the difference between opposing the Sherman tank and the B-29 in the year before D-day and then wanting to cut back on them the year after V-J day.

Mr. President, you could review the series of John Kerry votes on weapons systems in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1989--all that occurred before the Berlin Wall fell.

The fact is you can look at Kerry's votes during the cold war, after the cold war, before Desert Storm, after Desert Storm, after the first World Trade Center attack, before the war on terrorism and now during the war on terrorism, and you will find John Kerry was one of the most reliable ``no'' votes against the weapons our soldiers needed to defend this country and keep the U.S. safe.

The point is if the media won't tell you what the impact of Kerry's position would have been on the cold war, they sure are not going to tell you what the impact would be today on the war on terrorism.

So let me sum up what we can learn from the media's response to my speech at the Republican National Convention on John Kerry's defense record.

The media can only find John Kerry opposing defense weapon systems that Secretary Cheney opposed also.

The media will only count overall spending bills as a vote against a weapon system, and will not count the numerous votes on the systems themselves nor the overall budget plans as votes on the systems or national defense.

And the media can simply find no votes by John Kerry against any weapon systems during the height of the cold war--not a one. Not a single one.

What they found, or what they want you to believe they found is that Cheney and Kerry had practically identical national defense voting records during the cold war. And that is flagrantly wrong.

Let me take another minute to look at this.

In 1985, the House in which Cheney was a Member had a series of votes on 17 specific weapon systems.

Seventeen of Dick Cheney's seventeen votes were to protect the defense systems.

Seven ayes on seven votes to protect the MX peacekeeper missile;

Six ayes on six votes to protect SDI;

Another vote to protect the Trident II missile;

Another vote to protect binary weapons;

Another vote to protect chemical weapons; and

Another vote to protect ASAT weapons.

During the height of the cold war, essentially every vote by Dick Cheney was the mirror opposite of John Kerry.

Where Cheney repeatedly voted for weapon systems, Kerry repeatedly voted against those weapon systems.

Where Cheney supported President Reagan's announced position on each vote on these weapon systems, Kerry opposed President Reagan's announced position on each vote.

The sole vote of John Kerry against a cut in defense was because he wanted

a bigger cut--a cut as much as ten times larger in SDI.

So there are differences between Dick Cheney and John Kerry on national defense. It's the difference between the world's biggest and greatest military superpower and, well, spitballs.

Mr. President, I probably have wasted my time and just spit in the ocean because we all have learned the hard way that the elite media can do anything it wants and sell anything it wants.

We saw earlier this year the New York Times and Washington Post repeat on their front pages false allegations by Ambassador Joe Wilson about Niger uranium and his wife's role in his own activities, but they then buried the correction somewhere in the back pages.

We saw Newsweek's Evan Thomas report that: ``The media want Kerry to win'' and that support, in Thomas's words, ``is going to be worth maybe 15 points.''

We see CBS News having to admit they were pushing forgeries about President Bush's National Guard service.

The national media's all-out defense of John Kerry's indefensible defense record falls into this same sorry and disgraceful pattern of selling an agenda rather than the facts.

What I said in New York was true. It was true then. It is still true now.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today what we have seen is a fresh topic of interest, as discussed in the newspaper. I ask unanimous consent that in my hour of time, whatever time I have remaining be available to me as if it were in morning business and that I be permitted to use 15 minutes of that time at this point.

Mr. President, the topic of very active discussion is Mr. Paul Bremer's comments that are in the papers, particularly the Washington Post, today. I say this with a great deal of respect for Paul Bremer. I think he worked hard to do a very good job. He can hardly be described as a leftwing liberal, for sure. He said something that was, to use the vernacular, kind of a show stopper. He said:

We paid a big price for not stopping it (looting) because

it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. . . . We never

had enough troops on the ground.

This is our person in charge of the transition from Iraq's former government, purportedly to become a democracy. He is the fellow who was in charge in Iraq. We all, whoever went there, visited with him, listened to him. He worked very closely with the military. He is very skilled. But he said it. ``We never had enough troops on the ground,'' and that was the beginning of the problem in which we are now so deeply enmeshed.

We have had generals saying it. We had General Shinseki saying that we needed 300,000 of our troops there to do the job, and not having had enough caused us, frankly, to become mired in a situation that, at least by current appearances, seems as though it is going to hold us there for a long time at a terrible cost in life, terrible cost in family relationships, terrible cost financially as well.

The Vice President and HalliBurton

Tonight, as everyone knows, the debate will be between Vice President Cheney and Senator John Edwards, for each of them to present their credentials and their views. But I rise to discuss the Vice President's relationship with Halliburton, his financial relationship with the oil company he ran from 1995 to the year 2000, the company that is reaping the benefits of multibillion-dollar contracts from the Bush-Cheney administration.

Vice President Cheney still receives salary checks from Halliburton for well over $150,000 each year. He holds 433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options. It presents a very questionable picture when we look on this chart at the orange line which conveys the Halliburton income to Vice President Cheney from 2001 on, and his Vice Presidential salary. If one looks, we see the compensation from Halliburton exceeded that of the U.S. Government's compensation or pay for the Vice President. In the year 2002, Halliburton fell to $162,000 but then crept back up to where they are very close together. That is, the salary paid by the U.S. Government and the deferred compensation plan that gives Vice President Cheney $178,000.

When you look at this, it presents a terrible picture. Here is a Vice President of the United States, the next person in line to take over if, Heaven forbid, something happened to the President, and he is getting paid from a company he used to work for. We know this is a deferred compensation plan, that it was earned before.

I also mention the fact that Vice President Cheney, when he left Halliburton, got a $20 million termination bonus plus over $1 million in another bonus. If we looked at the deferred salary and the nontermination bonus Dick Cheney has received from Halliburton while Vice President of the United States, it is up to almost $2 million.

This is, if not corrupting in its reality, its functionality. It has the appearance that raises enormous questions. This relationship, coupled with Halliburton's no-bid contract and other contracts in Iraq, is extremely problematic.

On top of the salary, there are 433,000 shares options that are exercisable. I come out of the corporate world and I know how valuable the stock options can be. The profits are committed to a charity, purportedly, but the more you get, the more you can give away.

Why does the Vice President permit this salary arrangement to continue when he could have done away with it, as did Mr. John Snow, who was the Secretary of the Treasury. He wrapped up 6 years' worth of deferred compensation into one year and said: I want to be done with this. I don't want to have my income coming from my former employer while I work for the U.S. Government at such a high level.

By continuing this financial relationship, the Vice President undermines our Nation's ethical credibility here and abroad. On September 14, 2003, the Vice President was asked about his relationship with Halliburton and the no-bid contract on the program, ``Meet the Press.'' Vice President Cheney told Tim Russert--and I happened to be watching the program; that is what stimulated my interest--the Vice President said:

I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of

all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in

Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over 3 years.

The problem with that statement is that when he said it, he held those 433,000 Halliburton stock options and continued to receive a deferred salary from the company and still has a salary for the year coming into 2005.

I went to the Congressional Research Service to see what the definition of a ``financial interest'' might look like. The Congressional Research Service confirmed to me that holding such options and receiving deferred salary constitutes a financial interest. They agree, and so do I, that when you have deferred compensation, when you have stock options, that is a financial interest. They say if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it must be a duck. There it is, a financial interest.

Even though the exercised prices for Vice President Cheney's Halliburton stock options are above the current market price, the majority of the options extend to 2009. My goodness, what does it take to free himself from a previous business contact?

When I left the company that I helped start and at which I spent 30 years, the minute I left there all of my options were canceled, to my regret, because there was a lot of money involved.

Any option holder has to hope that the stock price surges so the value of the options increase. One way this can happen is to be sure that lucrative contracts keep coming from the U.S. Government.

In the first quarter of 2004, Halliburton's revenues were up 80 percent from the first quarter of 2003. Why? Wall Street analysts point to one simple factor: The company's massive governmental contracts in Iraq. Those are the things that are responsible for

this increase in revenue and profits, if any.

Vice President Cheney's annual deferred salary from Halliburton is significant. As I pointed out earlier, in fact, the Vice President's Halliburton salary is as high as his government pay--last year, $178,000 in salary from Halliburton. I have heard the Vice President's defense of his Halliburton deferred salary. He claims that the deal was locked in in 1999 and there is no way for him to get out of his deferred salary deal.

How about if he had an employment contract with the company for 10 years and then became Vice President of the United States, would he say he had to have both jobs at the same time because he had a contract? Come on.

Checking of the facts revealed otherwise. I obtained the terms of Vice President Cheney's deferred salary contract with Halliburton, and the bottom line is that the deferred salary agreement is not set in stone. In fact, one need only look at the ethics agreement of Treasury Secretary Snow to see what the Vice President should have done in order to avoid taking salary from private corporations while in public office. Secretary Snow took six different deferred compensation packages as a lump sum upon taking office. Get rid of any shadow of doubt, any shadow of conflict.

Worst of all, this financial relationship is going on while Halliburton is ripping off American taxpayers. I am very specific about this. Halliburton is ripping off American taxpayers. I have said it, and I will say it again. Look at the record.

The Pentagon's inspector general revealed that Halliburton, while our people were fighting for their lives, overcharged $27.4 million for meals that were never served to our troops. False records. Fraudulent.

Another Pentagon audit found Halliburton overcharged the Army by $1.09 a gallon for 57 million gallons of gasoline deferred to citizens in Iraq.

Auditors found potential overcharges of up to $61 million for gasoline that a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, delivered as part of its no-bid contract to help rebuild Iraq's oil industry.

Under its cost-plus contract with the Pentagon, the more Halliburton spends, the more profit it makes regardless of whether that spending is necessary. Several former Halliburton employees have come forward to reveal how the company has taken advantage of this sweetheart deal by spending millions on nonexistent or vastly overpriced goods and services.

According to these former employees, Halliburton engaged in the following wasteful practices: They had its employees drive empty trucks back and forth across Iraq in order to bill for the trips despite the obvious risks that this practice posed to both truck drivers and the 85,000 trucks. Halliburton, under their arrangement, whatever they spent, came up with a profit for them.

If they needed an oil change they would buy a new truck. Halliburton removed all of the spare tires from its trucks and failed to provide basic maintenance supplies like oil filters. This is not something I am making up. It is in the record. As a result, when tires went flat or trucks broke down, they were abandoned or torched, with Halliburton making a profit on the replacements. This is the most sinister of behavior.

When a Halliburton employee needed one drill, his supervisor told him to order four. When the employee said he did not need four drills, the supervisor responded: Don't worry about it, it is a cost-plus contract.

One employee discovered that Halliburton was paying $45 for a case of soda in Kuwait when local supermarkets charged only $7.

I remind the Chair that according to the rules under cloture I have an hour of time to be used if I can get an agreement for unanimous consent.

I ask unanimous consent, because the time is going to be used by me, that I be allowed a few more minutes until I finish my remarks.

Mr. President, I thank the manager. The Senator from Maine has worked very hard on this intelligence reform bill. I supported her as a member of that committee. I know this might be a diversion to her, but I appreciate her consent.

One employee discovered that Halliburton was paying $45 for cases of soda in Kuwait when local supermarkets charged about only $7. And then there are the kickbacks. Halliburton admitted to the Pentagon that two employees took kickbacks, valued at approximately $6 million, in return for awarding a Kuwaiti-based company with lucrative subcontracts.

The scandal is playing itself out in the real world, while this Senate sleeps. It is neglect on everybody's part that this was permitted to continue.

This kind of corporate behavior resembles that of Enron and other corporations that have sought to defraud the Government with kickbacks and bribes and overcharges.

Profiteering during war is an outrageous action, if not a crime. When I served in World War II, if a company profiteered as people were losing their lives, they would be punished. They would have jail sentences in front of them.

That is not what I am suggesting. What I am suggesting is that this is abominable behavior and it ought not be permitted.

When I think of the debate that is going on and John Kerry is accused of being soft on defense, when he served so bravely, when even though he disagreed with the policy of the Government, he served the country loyally, bravely, and was wounded. The assertions that maybe the wounds weren't deep enough were challenged by statements in the paper yesterday where it said that he still has shrapnel in his body from those wounds. Anyone who would suggest that because Senator John Kerry examined the question on moneys being spent for the war, because it included tax relief for some of the richest among us, the fact is, he served without question, without any reservation whatsoever, except he had a difference in policy. But he put his life on the line, which we haven't seen around here, I can tell you, as I have described in past speeches.

I used the identification of the chicken hawk. The chicken hawk is someone who makes war that other people are to fight. I don't think it is fair to tear apart the loyalty, the heroism of Senator John Kerry anymore than it was fair to challenge the heroism or the loyalty of former Senator Max Cleland.

I hope this assault on character can stop and we can discuss the issues that affect the American people.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time from my hour when I come back to the floor.

Mr. President, may I challenge whether this is part of the debate on the intelligence reform bill or is this discussing a different matter?

I have made my request, but I have no objection.

Mr. President, may I inquire as to the parliamentary situation in the Senate?

I thank the Chair. I wish to make some remarks on an amendment that I have filed. I will not ask that that amendment be brought before the Senate this evening, but I look toward doing so at an appropriate time.

Mr. President, 3 years have passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Largely because of the anger and the concern and the desire to show that the lives of those 3,000 Americans who were sacrificed on that day had meaning, we are nearing passage of a meaningful intelligence reform plan. But as we commit ourselves to implementing this plan, I remain convinced that we still will not be doing all we can do, all we should do to win the war on terror and to hold our adversaries to account.

Why do I hold those views?

It is my view that we have allowed to escape at least one and possibly more make-believe allies that have and may be today supporting terrorists with financial, logistical, and even diplomatic resources. These allies are saying one thing in their public relations campaign but doing quite another in their palaces, in the halls of government when it comes to nurturing al-Qaida and other terrorist networks.

Let me give a little explanation of why I think this issue is so important. For 19 relatively young men, most of whom were strangers to each other, to be able to come into the United States without much command of the English language and almost no knowledge of American culture and practices, stay in this country for, in some cases, 18 months, to be able to refine a plan that had been developed prior to their entry, to deal with unexpected complications, such as the detaining of the 20th hijacker, and to be able to practice that plan and finally execute it with the tragic consequences of September 11 is not an easy task. Many have asked how could they have done it.

I believe, for one thing, these 19 people were more capable than we may have originally thought, and that itself is a chilling observation, because it says something about the adversary we are going to continue to be facing once we restart the war on terror.

But second, I also believe they were not here alone. In that famous August 2001 briefing which the President received at Crawford, TX, one of the items in that briefing which has, in my opinion, been inadequately observed was that the President was told that al-Qaida had a network inside the United States.

Supplementing that network, I believe the Saudis were given license to take advantage of a network that was already in existence in the United States for another purpose, primarily the purpose of surveilling countrymen who were in the United States to determine if they were fulminating any plots that might be adverse to the interests of the royal family. That network was then made available to at least 2 and maybe more, possibly all, of the 19 hijackers.

I will remind my colleagues again, as I have previously, that much of the information that makes this case is contained in the 27 pages of the final report of the House and Senate inquiry into 9/11, the 27 pages which were censored by the administration and, therefore, have never been made available to the American people. But I can say this: A California-based former employee of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, a then 42-year-old Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi, had extensive contacts with two of the Saudi national hijackers, Khalid al

Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi. These two men had entered the United States in January of 2000 after having attended a summit of terrorists in Malaysia a few weeks earlier.

Bayoumi was paid $40,000 a year by a Saudi Government subcontractor, but he never showed up for work. He was what is referred to as a ghost employee. Indeed, a CIA agent described him as a spy of the Saudi Government assigned to keep track of Saudi citizens in southern California, particularly the large number of Saudi students studying at higher education institutions there.

The day that al-Bayoumi met the two hijackers at a Los Angeles restaurant, he had first attended a meeting at the Saudi consulate with a Saudi official who subsequently was denied reentry into the United States because of his alleged terrorist background.

He then, over lunch, invited the two terrorists to come from Los Angeles to San Diego where he proceeded to first allow them to live with him until they could arrange for an apartment, he cosigned their lease, paid their first month's rent, hosted a welcome party, and helped them get a variety of services, including driver's licenses and flight school applications. He introduced them to others who served as their translator and other support roles.

This is just one strand in the web of connections between hijackers and the Saudi Government. But, again, I am restricted in terms of how fulsome the details can be.

There is other evidence of Saudi complicity, especially when it comes to financing al-Qaida. In a monograph on the finances of al-Qaida prepared by the 9/11 Commission, staff investigators found government- sponsored Islamic charities had helped provide funds for Osama bin Laden. The monograph states:

Fund-raisers and facilitators throughout Saudi Arabia and

the Gulf raised money for al Qaeda from witting and unwitting

donors and diverted funds from Islamic charities and mosques.

It attributed this thriving network to ``a lack of awareness and a failure to conduct oversight over institutions [which] created an environment in which such activity has flourished.''

The 9/11 Commission investigators concluded:

It appears that the Saudis have accepted that terrorist

financing is a serious issue and are making progress in

addressing it. It remains to be seen whether they will (and

are able to do) enough, and whether the U.S. Government will

push them hard enough, to substantially eliminate al Qaeda

financing by Saudi sources.

At least one other authority body is even more skeptical. The Council on Foreign Relations established a task force on terrorist financing, and representatives of the task force testified last week on the 29th of September before a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee.

Mallory Factor, vice chairman of the Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing, said this:

The Saudi Government has clearly allowed individual and

institutional financiers of terror to operate and prosper

within Saudi borders.

Let me repeat that statement:

The Saudi government has clearly allowed individuals and

institutional financiers of terror to operate and prosper

within Saudi borders.

He continued:

Saudi Arabia has enacted a new anti-money laundering law

designed to impede the flow from Saudi Arabia to terrorist

groups. However, significant enforcement by Saudi Arabia of

several of these new laws appears to be lacking. . . .

He continued:

Furthermore, even if these laws were fully implemented,

they contain a number of exceptions and flaws which weaken

their effectiveness in curbing terror financing. . . . Quite

simply, Saudi Arabia continues to allow many key financiers

of global terror to operate, remain free and go unpunished

within Saudi borders.

Lee Wolosky, the codirector of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, added:

There is no evidence . . . that since September 11, 2001,

Saudi Arabia has taken public punitive actions against any

individual for financing terror.

That directly contradicts the statements made by this administration that the Saudis have been cooperating and continue to deserve to be considered as allies.

Despite all of the evidence, President Bush has said nothing to suggest that he is reconsidering the assurance he offered to the American people in the Rose Garden on September 24, 2001, when he said:

As far as the Saudi Arabians go . . . they've been nothing

but cooperative. Our dialogue has been one of--as you would

expect friends to be, able to discuss issues.

On Sunday, like several million Americans, I watched the Sunday interview programs and I saw a lady I admire, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, as she attempted to explain why she and other key members of this administration, aware of the fact that there was a considerable disagreement as to whether aluminum tubes which were destined for Iraq but had been intercepted, but which had been determined by the best experts in the United States, those in the Department of Energy, to not be appropriate for the construction of a centrifuge, one of the preliminary steps in the development of weaponizable material--she said any prudent policymaker would have to take the most conservative view if there was a disagreement, take the view that would best protect the American people.

I say this: If we have the kinds of comments that have come from responsible citizens who served on the 9/11 Commission, statements that have been made by a respected independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the recommendations of the joint House-Senate task force, why do we not take the same conservative position as relates to Saudi Arabia?

This is what our colleagues in this Chamber and the House said in December of 2002. Recommendation 19 of the final report of the joint inquiry stated: The intelligence community, and particularly the FBI and the CIA, should aggressively address the possibility that foreign governments are providing support to or are involved in terrorist activity targeting the United States and U.S. interests. State- sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more lethal attacks against the United States. This issue must be addressed.

If we believe that we should take the stance which is most protective of the security of the people of the United States of America, why have we taken this position of coddling passivity and deference to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with this record of their support of terrorism?

My lack of confidence in both Saudis and the administration, my lack of confidence in their ability to level with the American people, leads me to offer this amendment on behalf of the families of those who died on 9/11.

Several groups of families and survivors have filed lawsuits against the Saudi Government, members of the Saudi Royal Family, other Saudi entities, alleging that they were part of a conspiracy that led to the successful attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

The Saudi Government, in Federal court, has moved to strike not only the Royal Family, not only individuals but also to strike virtually every entity under the umbrella, that those entities are a part of the sovereign immunity in Saudi Arabia and therefore come under the umbrella of sovereign immunity from their acts.

The effect of this position is to prevent the victims' families from proceeding to the discovery portion of the trial which could yield valuable information about the Saudi Government's activities. This amendment would waive sovereign immunity protections for foreign governments involved in lawsuits related to the September 11 attacks. It would not automatically declare that the Saudi Government or any other government is responsible for the attacks or was complicit in the attacks, but it would give victims' families a chance to have their day in court. While exceptions like this are rare, this is because terrorist attacks of the magnitude of September 11 are rare.

Congress has waived sovereign immunity before. In the case of the Iran hostage-taking, sovereign immunity was waived because there was reason to suspect that the hostage-takers had received support from the Iranian Government. We decided an exception to the law was necessary in this case in order to both get to the truth and see that justice was provided for innocent American families.

I believe the family members of the victims of 9/11 deserve to have an equal opportunity to get to the truth, especially in light of the coverup our Government has engaged in and which has prevented the American people from a full understanding of the extent of that complicity.

For all we know, the network which functioned prior to 9/11 and which contributed to the ability of these 19 people who were new to the United States, woefully deficient in the English language, to be able to hide out for 18 months and then refine, practice, and execute a plan of terror, that infrastructure is still in place. This amendment would help these families and the people of the United States better understand what has happened to us in the past, what the threat might be today, and to hold those responsible and accountable for their actions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. President, I know the issue the Senator from California raised is very important and will be considered as we go forward in our debates, as our session wraps up. The Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Maine have done an outstanding job in managing the underlying bill and helping us come to grips with some of the new fundamental changes necessary to reorganize our intelligence communities to face the challenges confronting our Nation. I do not want to take too much time away from that very important debate. But I did feel compelled to come to the floor and raise an issue regarding our military families, especially the families of our National Guardsmen and Reservists. They, too, are so critical to meeting and defeating enemies on the home-front and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because we call on thousands of Active men and women in our armed forces, as well as reservists in our Guard and Reserve, to be in the forefront of the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought it was important to come to the floor to share some information that will disappoint people in Louisiana and across the United States.

Right now, somewhere in this Capitol, there is a conference meeting trying to finalize a tax relief package that we refer to around here as FSC/ETI. It is a necessary change in our Tax Code because of some trade decisions that were made relative to the way Europe and America conduct trade and impose taxes and fees on imports and exports. For several months, members of the Senate Finance Committee and Members of the House Ways and Means Committee have been working to reach a final agreement. Different amendments have been added and subtracted as a means to bring the bill closer to final passage.

One of the amendments that I thought was one of the most important amendments in that bill--one that my colleagues in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, agreed to unanimously called for tax credits to be made available to employers who continued to pay the salaries of their employees if those employees had been activated for duty in the National Guard and Reserves. The Senate agreed that if we were going to give tax relief and a trade fix for corporations and for businesses, then we should also find space in that bill to provide tax relief in some way to the patriotic employers who are trying to help their employees in the Guard and Reserve make ends meet. We should do that so the men and women who put the uniform on every morning and run those patrols ferreting out insurgents and terrorists in Iraq would not have to take a pay cut to do their job to defend America. We want those troops focused on the war-front, not whether bills have been paid on the home-front.

Americans might be shocked, because I am shocked, and I am disappointed, that our Government has not yet found a way to make sure that when we call up the men and women basically out of their regular life--as doctors or lawyers or truck drivers or nurses or teachers or government workers or firefighters or police officers--and ask them to leave their families, leave their jobs, leave their businesses and go fight on the front line for us, that we have not found a way to make sure they can do that without taking a pay cut. The GAO has documented that 41 percent of the Guardsmen and Reservists fighting for us--being called away from their homes, away from their families, and putting their lives in peril and great danger--are doing so with a pay cut. We need to provide them a helmet and a gun and a flak jacket and some protection. But I think we also should make every effort to ensure their families back-home have some stability. We should take steps so that the troop in Falujah knows his employer can take care of his family.

If this Congress and the President were not already enacting trillions in tax cuts and we were adhering to a plan of fiscal responsibility, I might be able to look these families in the eye and say, ``Sorry we have a budget deficit. We are doing the best we can.''

But do you know what the shame of it is? There is a conference meeting somewhere in this Capitol giving out tax relief to people who already have a lot of money, to corporations some of which may be on the front line but many of which are not, and we have the Republican leadership on the House that says we cannot afford a tax credit to benefit patriotic employers, our Guardsmen and Reservists, and their families. We are asking our men and women in unifrom to bear 100 percent of the risk and burden of fighting the war on terror. Yet in all the tax relief in the Republican-drafted plan, the Republican- leadership plan drafted by Chairman Thomas, we can't find one penny to make sure the military families get a full paycheck. The cost of my amendment amounts to less than .1 percent of all the Bush/Republican tax cuts enacted since 2001. My amendment is even offset, but the Republican leadership simply refuses to help military families.

Since 2001, the Republican leadership has passed over $2.1 trillion in tax cuts and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. I supported some of these tax cuts but the major beneficiaries have been wealthy individuals who had already accumulated great assets, and corporations. Direct support for military families has been less than .1 percent, or $1.37 billion, of the $2.1 trillion in tax cuts.

If you remember, in 2001, we had one bill for tax cuts which we called the Military Family Relief Act. It amounted to $1.37 billion out of $2.1 trillion. So the bulk of the tax relief is going to people who are not on the front line. Only limited help is going to the people on the front line.

You can see the graph here, $2.1 trillion to everybody else who is not in uniform and $1.37 billion to the military families who are fighting the battle. I don't understand how we are fighting this war. Maybe somebody can explain it to me.

At least people say: Senator, you must not understand that much of these tax cuts get to the military families; it is just not directly. If they have children, they might get the child tax credit. I understand that. But 75 percent of the enlisted men and women in our armed services make less than $30,000 a year. A staff sergeant with 8 years of experience makes $30,000 a year. So if you don't write them directly into the bills--because the bills are skewed to those individuals and families making over $75,000, mostly $100,000, $200,000, $300,000--the military families don't get to take advantage of tax cuts.

Time and time again, every time a tax bill passes this Congress, the military family is left on the cutting room floor. In 2001, we passed the Economic Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, $1.6 trillion-- direct support for military families was $0.

In 2002, we passed the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, $41 billion--military families, $0.

In 2003, we passed the Jobs and Growth Reconciliation Act, $230 billion--direct support for military, $0.

This year we passed the Working Families Tax Relief Act, $146 billion--direct support for military families, $0. This $146 billion had no offsets.

Now we have a conference in this Capitol putting together an $81 billion tax bill. And the amendment, the one little amendment we put on to encourage employers to keep the salaries up

for the Guard and Reserve when they are fighting in Iraq, was taken out because we can't afford it. When it left the Senate, we had paid for it. There are plenty of ways the House Republicans could pay for it, today, but helping military families is not in their interests. We could close a loophole that allows companies to leave the United States for the purpose of reorganizing themselves so they do not have to pay taxes. We could close that loophole and gave it to the men and women putting on the uniform to defend our country. These soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines aren't fleeing the country to avoid paying taxes, yet we don't get tough on the corporations that are leaving the country to avoid taxes. They take every benefit of what this nation has to offer, including the blood and sweat of our troops, and pay nothing in return. But, some in Congress want to put these corporations in front of our men and women in uniform.

Let me also say I am ashamed for our Government that we have not yet closed our own loophole when a Federal Government worker takes off the Government suit or dress or uniform and puts on the military uniform and goes to fight on the front lines of Iraq. The US Government, as an employer, does not fill the pay gap for Federal employees.

Mr. President, 41 percent of the guardsmen and reservists who are fighting in Iraq take a pay cut to fight and we keep passing appropriations bills and tax cuts to give everyone in the world a tax break, except our military families. And, our poor military families ask for help and we have the Republican leadership in the House telling them: Sorry, there is no more money.

I just got back from Fort Polk a couple of weeks ago, where I have 4,000 maybe 5,000 families in Louisiana whose primary breadwinner has stopped winning bread at home and gone over to Iraq to help fight this war. I promised them that I was not going to just come on home without a fight or without raising this issue for the 5,000 families in my State and for the thousands of families around this country who do not ask for much. They ask for good training. They ask for equipment. And they are asking that they don't take a pay cut when they go to fight. They are not asking for a pay raise; they just don't want a pay cut. They'll get that pay cut if we let this last tax bill go out of here without fixing this provision or without giving some tax credit to companies, many of them small businesses, who continue to pay their activated Guard and Reserve employees.

You can understand why a small business sometimes can't afford to continue to pay the guardsmen and reservists 100 percent of their salary and then have to pay 100 percent of the salary for a replacement.

We are asking for a tax credit for these employers so they can voluntarily, if they want, continue to pay the salary of their Guard and Reserve, take a tax credit so we would basically share that expense among everyone and allow that guardsman and reservist to get a full paycheck.

I repeat for the record, the GAO reports that 41 percent of the guardsmen and reservists called to active duty take a pay cut. We could fix that, but for some reason we do not want to, we do not think we should, or we do not have the money. Yet at the same time we are fixing a lot of things for a lot of people and passing one appropriations bill and one tax bill after another.

Forty percent of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are Guard and Reserve; 410,000 families or individuals have been activated since September 11. We probably have a few more thousand to activate until we get it right in Iraq.

We can pay for this, as I said, by closing loopholes, but the Republican leadership said, ``No.'' We cannot not pay for it. They have passed tax bills out of here and chalked it up to more debt. This would not be that much to add for people assuming 100 percent of the risk to defend this Nation, but they do not choose to do that, either. Right now, as I speak, 3 o'clock today, it is not in the bill.

I hope these words are traveling through this Capitol. I hope there are people listening and phones start ringing to include the military families in this FSC/ETI bill that is moving through conference so this tax relief can be given and the pay gap can be closed. If you are on the front line, taking 100 percent of the risk, the last thing you need to take is a pay cut.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.