Emergency Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 2004

Madam President, as the cosponsor of this amendment with my friend and colleague, Senator Boxer, I do want to clarify for the record where we are and the view those who are sponsoring the amendment have with regard to proceeding on the TANF reauthorization legislation, which is before us.

Because we have had characterizations made about our amendment, I wish to clarify for the benefit of the Senate and, more importantly, for the American people exactly what the current situation is before the Senate.

Before the Senate, we have what we call the TANF legislation, to move people off welfare into employment. As has been mentioned on a number of occasions--I have a copy of the report--the point is made by the Republican floor manager that this amendment to increase the minimum wage is not pertinent to this legislation and, therefore, because of the fact we are offering it, we are delaying the whole process even though we indicated to the floor manager we were eager to enter into a very short time agreement, a 20-minute time agreement, time to be evenly divided, a time certain, and then move on to another amendment.

We want to make very clear, speaking for the supporters of the amendment, we are interested in coming to a resolution. The answer on the other side is, well, since this is not relevant to the subject at hand, we are not going to let a vote occur. That is a rather unusual process and procedure. As to amendments on legislation, unlike appropriations, the Senate rules permit a vote on legislation, but the majority does not choose to do so. Therefore, they refuse to let us get a vote on this and then criticize us for delaying the process even though we are prepared to vote this afternoon. It is 12:30 now; we can vote at 1, or whatever time the floor manager would permit us to do so.

I mention once again how ridiculous I think the argument is from the other side that this is not a relevant amendment. If one looks at the legislation itself dealing with TANF and looks through the report, as I have said previously, they can look under ``strengthens work,'' that is what this legislation is supposedly all about. If we take the statement of the Secretary of HHS, Tommy Thompson--listen to this--regarding the TANF reauthorization requirements:

This administration recognizes that the only way to escape

poverty is through work, and that is why we have made work

and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the

centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary

Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

Here it is, the administration spokesman talking about the centerpiece of the TANF will pay a minimum wage. That is exactly what we are trying to do. How is it possible that the floor manager can say this is not relevant when the Secretary of HHS specifically refers to a minimum wage? How can they possibly take that position? How can they say we are trying to delay it when we are prepared to go ahead with a short time limit?

The American people must be greatly confused. Here it is, the Secretary of HHS, the President's representative on this issue, saying this administration recognizes the only way to escape poverty is through work and that is why we have made work and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That is the statement he had at that time on March 6, 2002.

As the report goes on, the other references I have talked about, ``reasons for change,'' to move welfare recipients into good jobs, good jobs obviously suggest they are going to be halfway decent.

The committee refers to the reasons for the change, that the committee wants to build by increasing work and reducing the welfare and talking about good jobs. That is the reference all the way through. That is what the Secretary has said. We have indicated we are prepared to move ahead and move ahead immediately, but we are denied the opportunity to do so. And that is with regard to procedure.

I listened earlier to my friend and colleague from Oklahoma saying we really do not need a minimum wage; we ought to let the market decide and make these judgments and decisions. Well, we have heard that. I have heard that since I arrived in the Senate, not only every time we have the chance to debate the minimum wage. Then he talks about the challenges we are facing in rural areas are not the same challenges as they face in urban areas, which we have understood. That is why we have an exclusion for agricultural workers. We have a different kind of a financial situation for mom-and-pop stores rather than the large stores in many urban areas. That is why we have a cap and say if you have approximately $600,000 or less gross earnings, you do not have to observe the minimum wage provisions. We responded to these rifleshot ideas that have been constantly brought up during the debates on the minimum wage.

I would like to go back to the general kinds of themes that were brought out. As we understand, this is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage. We are talking about a minimum wage to meet minimum kinds of standards in this country. Hopefully we have gone beyond the debate about whether we were going to have the robber barons or the monopolists in this society have individuals who are in the workforce so thoroughly and completely exploited.

Many in the Senate have been up to visit the old mill towns of Massachusetts, and one can still travel up to Lowell and visit many of those old textiles and they will see the letters from children who are 7 and 8 years old who were writing and who were working in the mills 10 or 12 hours a day, in many instances 7 days a week. Some of the most moving of those letters are by these children who write looking outside the windows and seeing other children playing outside and dreaming of the time that they might be able to do so.

In the old days when we did not have any kind of protections for any workers, we had extraordinary exploitation of children in the workforce. Well, that goes back to the time where the Government was not involved. In 1938, after a great deal of struggle, sweat, and bloodshed, all that changed with the very important child labor laws. Some had been passed before. Basically, we established the minimum wage, the time and a half for overtime, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, even though the overtime issue in question is now threatened by this administration that wants to abolish overtime for some 8 million workers, mostly firefighters, policemen, and nurses who in many instances are our first responders. All one has to do is go to any hospital and talk to some of those nurses and find out how in many instances they are required to work overtime, and find out their views about quality of care.

Now imagine if overtime is eliminated and there is that kind of requirement. We have a shortage of nurses today. One can imagine what is going to happen tomorrow if that particular recommendation by the administration is put into effect. So basically we are talking about a minimum wage.

We can hear on the other side, as we heard earlier from the Senator from Oklahoma, well, it is important to get on the bottom rung of the ladder because if one gets on the bottom rung of the ladder, they develop certain kinds of skills and attitudes and will be able to move ahead and have a successful life.

Well, there are certain truths to getting on a bottom rung of the ladder if the bottom rung of the ladder is not so low it actually submerges a person and they cannot survive on the bottom rung of the ladder because they are so overwhelmed by the challenges of life, of being able to survive. That is what we are talking about, having the bottom rung of the ladder so that at least one can make a living wage, they are going to at least be treated with some sense of dignity in this country of ours, which is the richest country in the world.

There are people who are struggling. It does appear, by those who are opposed to the increase in the minimum wage, there is some dismissiveness about the individuals who are receiving it. I do not buy that. The minimum wage workers in the workforce I have met are among some of the most courageous and dignified men and women one will ever want to meet.

I am going to mention who we are really talking about. Who are these people who are earning the minimum wage? We have heard speeches on the floor. Let's put some human faces on these individuals. Shreveport, LA: It was early April, and 46-year-old Mrs. Williams was dressed in the dark blue uniform she wears at her first job caring for the aged and infirm at a nursing home. On top there was a gray apron she dons for her second job cleaning offices at night. The place where she works as a nursing assistant, Harmony House, was paying her $5.50 an hour, barely above the minimum wage, even though she had been there for 10 years as a union member and completed college courses to become certified. The cleaning job which she took up because she could not make ends meet pays right at the Federally mandated $5.15 an hour.

``You think you are moving forwards,'' adds Ms. Williams,

``but you're just moving backwards.''

Mr. Valles earns his living serving hamburgers at a McDonald's restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. He's a family man. He and his wife, Lily, have two children.

``I make $5.75 an hour. That's about $240 a week. One

hundred ninety dollars after taxes. You can't really live on

that. Lily works in a fast-food place, too. She makes the

same as me. Two weeks of my pay and two weeks of her pay

every month goes for rent. Then you have to pay the fare to

go back and forth to work. You gotta pay for your food. You

have bills. We're still paying on the sofa. . . .''

I asked if they ever went on vacation. He looked at me as

if I asked if his children could fly. ``No,'' said Mr. Valles

quietly. ``There is no money for vacation.''

The list goes on. We have this situation:

As she weighs bunches of purple grapes or rings up fat

chicken legs at the supermarket where she works, Fannie Payne

cannot keep from daydreaming.

``It's difficult to work at a grocery store all day,

looking at all the food I can't buy,'' Mrs. Payne said. ``So

I imagine filling up my cart with one of those big orders and

bringing home enough for all my kids.''

Instead, she said that she and her husband, Michael, a

factory worker, routinely go without dinner to make sure

their four children have enough to eat. They visit a private

hunger center monthly for three days' worth of free

groceries, to help stretch the $60 a week they spend on food.

``We're behind on all our bills,'' Mrs. Payne said. ``We

don't pay electricity until they threaten a cut-off. To be

honest, I'm behind two months on the mortgage--that's $600 a

month. We owe $800 on the water bill and $500 for heat.''

The Euclid Hunger Center helped her seek aid from her

parish, Saint William's Catholic Church, but it hurt that

three cars broke down in six months.

``They all died and we had to get Mike to work, so we

bought a good used car we can't afford.''

The first thing to go was money for food herself and

husband. ``Some nights Mike and I eat our kids' leftovers,

and if we don't have enough money for milk, I feed the kids

soup for breakfast,'' she said.

Living with housing hardship. Hector Cuatepotzo, a waiter

in the upscale Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, lives in a

tiny, one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Maria, 6-year-old

daughter, Ashley, and infant son, Bryan. All four sleep in

the same small room, with Bryan's crib nestled in one corner,

Ashley's bed in another.

Cuatepotzo earns about $20,000 a year in salary and tips,

equal to about $10 an hour, almost twice the minimum wage.

But with $625 a month in rent and another $80 monthly gas and

electricity, the family spends more than 40 percent of their

income for housing. Cuatepotzo works from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

and travels 40 miles round-trip to work each day because

rents in buildings closer to his job are even higher.

Since Maria took time off from her job in the restaurant to

have the baby, they received several eviction notices for

late payment.

Cuatepotzo is thinking about getting a second job, but that

would mean rarely seeing his children. Cuatepotzo, who has

worked at the Miramar since arriving from Mexico 10 years

ago, would like to own his own home someday. ``It's my

dream,'' he says. But he can't imagine how he'll ever get

there when his family lives paycheck to paycheck.

This is what is happening all across this country. These are not people who are slackers; they are hard workers.

Here is Deborah, 23, from Pennsylvania, a single mother and survivor of domestic violence. She has two daughters. She was evicted from her home in New Jersey. She now resides in Clairton, PA, where she works as a salesperson in a grocery store earning $5.35 for 30 to 35 hours a week. Deborah has no health coverage for herself or her girls. Her earnings are spread thin to cover childcare expenses, transportation, food, and $50 a month for her bedroom at her aunt's. An increase in the minimum wage would help Deborah catch up on lagging bills, come closer to making ends meet, get needed doctor appointments for her children at a pay-for-service clinic, and purchase clothing for her children, who lost everything in the eviction and the escape from domestic violence.

Pat Rodriguez lives in Washington, has worked at a laundry and drycleaners in Washington for 8 years. She earns $6.15 an hour, the minimum wage for the District of Columbia. Currently she and her colleagues are on strike over low wages and other issues. The money she earns working full time is not enough to pay the rent, pay for the basic necessities for her family. She has a 2-year-old child and is expecting a second child. She has no pension, no access to affordable health care, and relies on Medicaid. She works full time and still does not make enough to be able to save for the children's education. Pat says, ``I support raising the minimum wage, but I also want workers to be treated with respect, and for their work be valued accordingly.''

Elaine Murphy and her three children, 16, 11 and 6, recently moved to Newburgh, NY, from Oregon. Mrs. Murphy is a teacher's aide and special

needs bus aide in the local elementary school. Every morning she is in the bus yard at 6:30, waiting to escort handicapped children on the bus. Then she works in the school offices and in classrooms until around 3, when she gets back on the bus and escorts the handicapped children to their homes. In Oregon, she made $10 an hour doing similar work, but in the new job, she is paid the minimum wage.

The job suits her needs as a mother of three. She can be home in the afternoon to look after her 6-year-old, who is autistic and needs the kind of close supervision the school's afterschool program is not able to provide. There are daycare centers that could care for their son, but the cost is prohibitive. Her 16-year-old son is athletic, and after school she is able to drive him to practices and games.

Despite the fact that Elaine works full time, she is paid so little that she qualifies for food stamps and her children receive health care through Medicaid. This bothers Elaine. She doesn't want Government assistance. She wants to work hard and provide for her family. In the school district where she works, janitors and others are paid enough to support their families while Elaine has little choice but to turn to the Government for assistance. She perceives the problem as this: The assumption is that women who work as teachers' aides or do similar work are not supporting their families but, rather, working to supplement the household income. In her case, this is not true. Elaine is the sole provider for her three children.

For Elaine and her family, a higher minimum wage would mean a greater degree of self-sufficiency. Getting a second job is out of the question given her responsibilities at home. At the present rate of pay, making ends meet is impossible without Government subsidies. Elaine argues that working 40 hours a week for something as important as special needs education, she should not need Government handouts; that through hard work, she should be able to provide for her children.

This is it. These are the real faces of people who are out there, trying to make ends meet. Our proposal was to increase the minimum wage just to $7. I will show the chart here, what more has happened with regard to the minimum wage over recent years.

On the far side of the chart, this is purchasing power in the year 2000, dollar purchasing capability; in 1968 the equivalent of $8.50 for minimum wage. The red line indicates how the minimum wage has gradually dropped, how we were able to get it raised in 1990, and how we were able to get it raised in 1997 and 1998. Now we see it dropping without this increase to about its alltime low.

This is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage. We hear those saying, if you are going to go for $7, why not go $10 or $15? That is missing the point. What we are trying to do is get this increased to $7. That will still put it below where it was for a period of 12 or 14 years, but at least it gets it much closer to a living wage.

That is what this amendment is all about. We should understand it. This amendment affects real people. I gave some examples of real people. I have given examples of why the Secretary of HHS believes a minimum wage job is relevant to this bill. We have indicated we are prepared to vote on it. We daresay it is those on the other side, who do not want to vote on it, who are actually filibustering.

I want to come to this issue and talk a little bit about the impact on families, and particularly the impact on children in terms of hunger, the problems of hunger.

In 1938, we had the child labor law. We had minimum wage, and we put time and a half for overtime pay in there so workers would be considered. What we have looked at in more recent times, as hunger has been a defining aspect for people as well, we have tried to take a look at what the impact is on hunger, what the impact would be.

First of all, this chart: Hunger is increasing for minimum wage families. The Agriculture Department reported more than 300,000 more families are hungry today than when President Bush first took office. More than 12 million American households are worried that they would not have enough to eat, and nearly 4 million households had someone go hungry. African-American households, Latino households, and households headed by single mothers were much more likely than the national average to experience food insecurity, and also more likely to experience hunger.

I have the household food security for the United States. This study, put out by the Department of Agriculture, shows very clearly what is happening to families, and particularly families with minimum wage. What you find out is that in 1998, there were 14 million children who were living in families where there was a real problem in terms of food security, and then that went down in 1999 to 12 million.

In the year 2000, it is 12 million. Then we see in 2001 that it began to turn around. In 2002, it is 14 million going right back up again. We were seeing the decline in terms of the impact of hunger on children in this country. Now we see as a result of the economic policies and failure to increase the minimum wage the fact that hunger is again taking off in these minimum wage households.

This is an excellent report done by the State of Massachusetts. It is called ``Walk For Hunger, Project Bread.'' I will include in the Record the appropriate parts of the study.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 425,000

people in Massachusetts lack access to adequate food. In low-

income communities in Massachusetts, 20 percent of households

cannot afford to buy enough food to meet the basic

nutritional needs of household members. The prevalence of

hunger is highest among families with children. Today, in

low-income communities, one child in three lives in a

household struggling to put food on the table.

Our State is one of the most prosperous, fortunately, in the country. This is what is happening in households in my State. If it is happening in Massachusetts, it is happening in States across this country.

We have the broad figures. As we go along, I will have the opportunity to continue to give speeches and to point this out.

Listen to this one more time.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 425,000

people in Massachusetts lack access to adequate food. In low-

income communities in Massachusetts, 20 percent of the

households cannot afford to buy enough food to meet the basic

nutritional needs of household members. The prevalence of

hunger is highest among families with children. Today, in

low-income communities, one child in three lives in a

household struggling to put food on the table.

And we have opposition to an increase in the minimum wage.

How much evidence do you need over there? How much child hunger do you need to increase the minimum wage? What more in the world do you need?

That is happening not only in my State but in States all over this country. Children are facing real hunger because the parents are falling further and further and further behind.

I have a book full of those examples, some of which I read. I have a book full of examples from all over the country. This is what is happening. The problem is getting worse.

The Department of Agriculture indicates there are 35 million Americans hungry or living on the edge of hunger for economic reasons-- 35 million of our fellow citizens. There are 290 million people in this country, and 35 million of them are facing serious challenges with hunger in the United States today.

We will have a chance in half an hour, if you want to take a very modest step to increase the minimum wage. It is not going to solve the problem, but it will sure do more about it than the current legislation which is before us. That we know.

There are 300,000 more families hungry today than when this administration first took office. Twenty-three million Americans sought emergency food assistance from the hunger relief organization Second Harvest.

Isn't that a fine description of what our country is coming to.

As I indicated, these are men and women of dignity and respect, people who are working hard. We find in a number of the hunger programs, the Food Stamp Program and others, they are vastly underutilized because men and women have a sense of pride. They don't want to take handouts from the Federal Government. Even some of the school lunch programs are underutilized in some areas because parents don't want to have their children appear to come from a poor community.

They are used to a higher degree than food stamps, but, nonetheless, that happens.

These are men and women of pride. It is a real problem. These families, as I mentioned--23 million, Second Harvest--cannot afford balanced adequate diets. Parents are skipping meals so their children can eat. Nationwide, soup kitchens and food pantries and homeless shelters are increasingly serving the working poor--not just the unemployed.

Both the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Catholic Charities report witnessing sharp increases in the use of emergency services offered by the cities and the Catholic Charity agencies.

In 2003, the survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that looks at hunger found 39 percent of adults requesting food assistance were employed.

Effectively, 40 percent of people who are trying to get some additional food assistance are employed and work hard.

This is the conclusion of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, as well as Catholic Charities--a leading cause of hunger is low-paying jobs.

How much more evidence do you need? Do we think the U.S. Conference of Mayors is a tool of just the Democratic side of the Senate when Republican and Democrat mayors alike across this country are talking about the increasing problems they are facing and the challenges that families and their communities are facing when they say one of the principal reasons there is explosion in the hunger needs of children in this country is because of low-paying jobs?

That is what this amendment is about--to do something about low- paying jobs.

We have a chance to do something about it. We have done it in the past. We are denied the chance to do something right now about it.

If cloture is successful, we ought to say it as it is. It will defeat this amendment. Evidently, the Republican leadership fears voting on this amendment, for reasons I can't possibly fathom, so much they are delaying the Senate a whole day. Here we are on Wednesday at 1 o'clock, and we are not going to be permitted to vote. We could vote on this in half an hour. No, you can't vote on it. We are going to make sure the Senate doesn't do any work this afternoon because we feel so intensely about increasing the minimum wage. We are against it going to $7 an hour over a 2-year period. We are going to insist on cloture--the unusual step of cloture in the Senate--in order to bring that amendment down so we will not even have to vote on it even though the Secretary of HHS has indicated minimum wage is essential to the success of this program.

Is there anything more ludicrous? Is there anything that makes less sense?

It is absolutely out of our imagination that Republicans feel so intensely in opposition they will refuse to let this institution vote on this measure which can make a difference in terms of children in poverty, families in poverty, proud men and women who are trying to provide for their children, a step that we have taken 11 different times since the minimum wage was passed with Republicans and Democrats alike. But what it is about is this Republican leadership that says: No, we are not even going to let you vote on it.

We had difficulties other times trying to get a vote on it. I will certainly admit that. And the record will show that. But eventually we were able to do that, and eventually we were able to get it passed. But the ferocity of opposition this time is mind-boggling to this Senator.

Listen to this, again from the U.S. Conference of Mayors: Emergency food assistance increased by 14 percent. This is just in 1 year. These are the 2003 figures. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families, children.

And then: City officials recommend raising the Federal minimum wage as a way the Federal Government can help alleviate hunger.

Here it is, the Conference of Mayors--Democrat, Republican, mayors from all over this country; North, South, East, West; Republican and Democrat--talking about hunger, talking about the particular hunger needs of children, talking about the problems of the growth of hunger for working families, and they make one single recommendation: increase the minimum wage. And we cannot even get a vote on it in the Senate.

Can you imagine people watching the Senate and hearing: Well, no, we can't vote on that. We can't vote on that. We are just not going to vote. And they say: Why? It looks as if those who are proposing it are ready to vote on it.

We are. When are you ready to vote on it? In 20 minutes, half an hour? We are prepared. We have offered time limitations.

They say: You are?

What is wrong with the other side? They say it is not relevant to the underlying bill. They say it is not relevant.

Let's see. Is that the way the Senate works?

Let me help you figure out why it is relevant because I have a statement from the President's representative on this bill. This is what the President says. The President says:

This administration recognizes that the only way to escape

poverty--

He is talking now about the underlying bill--

is through work, and that is why we have made work and jobs

that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece of

the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance for

Needy Families (TANF) program.

Well, then they say: Wait a minute, I thought the Republicans said your amendment is not relevant. And now you are saying the Secretary of HHS says you should have a good job that pays an adequate minimum wage? Yes.

And they say: It would seem to me it would be relevant.

It does to me, too. That should be understandable to any third grader or fourth grader, but it is not to the Republican leadership because they do not want to pass it because they have powerful interest groups that do not want to pass it. That is the reason: special interest groups that refuse to let this pass. That is it. That is what this is about. You cannot get around it.

So we have taken a few examples of who the people are who are affected, what kind of lives they are living, and what has been happening in one State that is a pretty prosperous State, my own State of Massachusetts, that has done a very detailed study. I will include that, as I mentioned, as a fierce indictment in terms of the failure of both our State and the Federal Government to be able to provide the help and assistance.

We have the one recommendation by Republicans and Democrats alike, the mayors all over this country, who are close to the people on it and say: We have one single recommendation. They did not recommend the extension of TANF. They recommended one thing: increasing the minimum wage. That was their single recommendation.

We heard statements just yesterday. I, very briefly, will respond to the arguments that if we raise the minimum wage we are going to contribute to the problems of unemployment in our society. I am glad to go through this issue. We have extended charts. We have debated this frequently the other times we had the increase, with the Kruger studies from New Jersey, which are probably the most extensive studies. I have the whole working paper.

It goes into great detail as to the impact, historically, on the job market.

As I mentioned before, the yellow line on this chart is the rate of unemployment in the year we increased the minimum wage, showing the rate of unemployment in October, when we had the second increase in the minimum wage, and then several months later.

So you have the cumulative two increases in the minimum wage. And what was its impact on the rate of unemployment? As you see, going back to the 1996 increase, 1997, and then several months later, the unemployment rate remained at 4.7 percent.

If you break it out with regard to African Americans, Hispanics, and teens, it is very much the same. You had 10 percent unemployment for African Americans, and 9.5 percent. If you take both the increase in that year and this year, and then take the result for those two, look at the next year; it was at 9.3 percent. If you look among Hispanic Americans, it is the same pattern. And if you look among the teens, it is the same pattern.

Strong opposition said it is going to increase unemployment, it is going to

increase teen unemployment, and minority unemployment. It does not do so.

Another factor is the issue about whether this is going to be an inflater. As I mentioned, if you look it over--for those who want to take the time, it is not very difficult to do--but if you take the increase, the total number of people who are going to be affected by the increase in the minimum wage, and take the total payroll, you will find out the impact.

We know increasing the minimum wage by $1.85, as I have pointed out, is vital to workers but a drop in the bucket to the national payroll. All Americans combined earn $5.7 trillion. And a $1.85 minimum wage increase would be less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the total national payroll. So spare us--spare us--the arguments about the adverse impact of an increase in the minimum wage on unemployment and on minorities and on teenagers, and spare us the argument that this is going to add to the issues of inflation because it does not do that.

What it will do is, it will help some extremely hard-working families. It will help many workers who work hard clearing out the buildings at nighttime, being assistants to our teachers in our high schools and elementary schools in our country, working in nursing homes as assistants. These are minimum wage workers, and they are men and women of dignity. They are not looking for Government handouts. They want to be able to work hard and raise their children and live with the respect of their children and spend time with their children.

That is why this is a women's issue because the great majority of those who receive the minimum wage are women. It is a children's issue because so many of those women have children. It is a family issue because the relationship between, primarily, single mothers--not always but primarily single mothers--and their children is dictated by whether the mother has one or two or even sometimes three minimum wage jobs. The time, or lack of time, they are able to spend with their children, obviously, is enormously important.

This minimum wage is also a civil rights issue because so many of the men and women who receive the minimum wage are men and women of color.

It is a civil rights issue, a children's issue, a family issue, a women's issue. Basically, it is a fairness issue because these men and women in this country believe if you work hard--you work hard--40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, you should not have to live in poverty.

If you look, after all is said and done, at where the poverty level is for a family of three, it will be something under $15,000. And even with our increase in the minimum wage, they are going to be well below that.

We are prepared to vote early this afternoon. We don't need more time. We can take more time, but we are prepared to vote at any particular time. This side has made its case. People in this body know what the issue is all about. It is not enormously complicated. They understand it. We are prepared to vote. It is a very simple vote. If it is finally enacted in the House--and I think with a strong vote here it will be--and if it is signed by the President--and if we have a strong vote in the House and the Senate, the President is going to sign it--it is going to make a big difference because 60 days after enactment, the first phase of it will begin to give some new hope to some of the hardest working men and women in the country.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I listened to my friend from Iowa, and he is my friend. It is amazing to hear the response to an increase in the minimum wage. They say we are going to let other Government programs look out after these proud, hard workers who are trying to provide for themselves and for their families. Effectively, if we follow the way that the Senator from Iowa suggests, we are going to have to tax more people a lot more so that those programs are going to be there because we refuse to have employers do what they should do, and that is to pay a fair wage.

Sure, everybody could be put on welfare and not have any minimum wage. What is the possible logic? Those Senators on the other side have been trying to cut those programs back for years. The programs dealing with nutrition, home heating and programs for food, they have been trying to cut those back for years. This administration has been trying to make EITC much more difficult to get.

In order to oppose the increase in minimum wage, they say, well, the EITC program is out there. We are talking about proud men and women who want to work hard and look after their children and have a sense of dignity and not depend on welfare programs. The answer for those who are opposed to us is, give them more welfare programs.

That is an insult to these working men and women. We reject that as an argument. We reject it.

We are standing for the dignity of those working men and women who ought, in the richest country in the world, in the strongest economy, to be able to work hard and bring up their children with respect and dignity and not a handout.

The Senator makes the point why we need the increase in the minimum wage. Because those workers are not receiving it today on their own. They should be able to get it. We are committed to trying to get an increase on the minimum wage.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I had not expected to hear the kind of statement with regard to the criticism of the Senator from Massachusetts, my colleague and friend John Kerry, on the energy policy. I will include in my comments a response to Senator Inhofe.

I am wondering whether the Senator could possibly tell us what was the position of the President of the United States when OPEC continued to cut back on production today. We have a statement by a colleague talking about a candidate for the President of the United States when today OPEC primarily--

I have the floor.

Regular order. Regular order.

No, I do not yield.

We have today more than 150,000 servicemen who are over there protecting the oil countries in the Middle East, and American service men and women are dying every single day. If we have a President of the United States who is lacking in sufficient influence to try and indicate to our allies that it is of vital importance to the security of the families and industry in the United States that they increase their production, what kind of influence do we have? Where is our President of the United States on this issue? Why are we hearing Members who are so eager to talk about John Kerry's policy on energy talking about what we ought to be doing over there today as OPEC is cutting back on its production?

We hear silence. We have silence about that. Where is the administration?

I remember last week we had my good friend Spencer Abraham, who is the Secretary of Energy, and I asked him the question whether this President was going to try and persuade the oil-producing countries in the Middle East to produce more energy, particularly at a time when we are faced with difficult economic significance. His answer was: This administration is not going to beg for oil.

Beg for oil? When we have 140,000 men and women over there protecting their interests and protecting their oil and they are cutting back production?

I would not think there would be many Members of the Senate who would be criticizing my colleague, who has done so, who recognize that their President should provide Presidential leadership. This election is about Presidential leadership. My colleague has been demanding that this President do something about the cutbacks in production.

We hear criticism--well, he didn't show up for a vote. Sure, he is running for the Presidency of the United States.

I will certainly respond to my colleague, but I am absolutely baffled that one of the major energy decisions being made in the world is being made within the last 24 hours by the OPEC countries, the primary producers, Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, other middle eastern countries whose security American servicemen have been fighting for and dying for, and this President and this administration has not sufficient influence to be able to stop them from cutting back in production or getting them to increase production. You talk about a bankrupt energy policy--there it is.

Every consumer ought to know when they pay those extra funds for the gasoline, they are paying it directly to countries over there in the Middle East whose security we are protecting and for which American lives are being lost. It is beyond belief to me.

Amendment No. 2945

Madam President, we have, over the course of the day, had a number of our colleagues speak about the amendment that is before us, and that is the increase in the minimum wage over a 2-year period, up to $7 an hour. I want to wrap up this evening and summarize a couple of important points because during the course of the afternoon, I followed the debate when I wasn't here for a few hours, meeting with the head of the VA about some of the challenges we are facing up in Massachusetts about veterans health.

We heard statements, speeches from some of our colleagues on the other side, that the increase in the minimum wage was delaying action on the TANF reauthorization. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. As Senator Boxer, my friend and colleague who introduced the legislation, and I have stated, we would have been willing to have a 20-minute time agreement, 10 minutes a side, and had a vote and final disposition and then moved ahead with other amendments.

But the opposition is so strong in opposition to this amendment that the Republican leadership has insisted we have, effectively, a cloture vote, delaying progress on the underlying bill for some 2\1/2\ days, so if they are successful in getting cloture, cutting off the debate, they will eliminate the possibility of even voting on an increase in the minimum wage.

Maybe there are those who are opposed to the increase in the minimum wage. We have heard some of them speak today in opposition. But the idea that this is not related and relevant to the underlying bill defies any logic and any fair understanding of what the underlying bill, the TANF bill, is all about.

I bring to their attention the statement that was made by Secretary Thompson regarding the TANF reauthorization when he testified on March 6, 2002. He said:

This administration recognizes the only way to escape

poverty is through work, and that is why we have made work

and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the

centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary

Assistance for Needy Family Program.

That will pay at least the minimum wage. There it is in the words of the President's own representative. That is exactly the issue we are attempting to address and we are being denied getting final action on it.

I am going to take a moment to review for the benefit of the Senate about where the minimum wage is now. The purchasing power of the minimum wage has dramatically decreased.

We reviewed with the Senate what the impact of the increase in the minimum wage has been on unemployment and have shown many times when we have had increase in the minium wage it had virtually no adverse impact on the question of unemployment. We reviewed the fact if we have the increase in the minimum wage it virtually has no impact on the issue of inflation. We responded to the question of different conditions and different parts of the country. There are small mom-and-pop stores that would not be able to afford the increase in the minimum wage. We responded and pointed out those stores by and large are excluded under the provisions of the existing minimum wage.

We heard: We don't want to do this because we want to encourage young people to work in agriculture. We responded: It doesn't relate to agricultural workers.

We have addressed all of these kinds of conditions.

These minimum wage workers are men and women of dignity. They work hard and long. The men and women who clean out the buildings in this country at nighttime, teachers' aides, and assistants working in homes looking after the elderly are men and women of dignity. They do not want any assistance. They want to have a wage so they can provide for themselves and their children and their families.

I want to reiterate and give some examples. I gave some examples earlier. These are the real faces of people who are going to be affected by what we do here tomorrow on the floor of the Senate, whether we are going to be able to get a vote on the increase in the minimum wage or whether we are going to be denied that opportunity to do so.

The minimum wage affects a person such as Cynthia Porter.

Cynthia Porter is not on welfare. She works as a certified

nursing assistant at a nursing home in Marian, Alabama. When

Cynthia comes on duty at 11:00 p.m., she makes rounds. She

checks the residents for skin tears and helps them go to the

toilet or use a bedpan. She has to make sure she turns the

residents every two hours or they will get bedsores, and if

bedsores are left unattended, they can get so bad that you

can put your fist in them.

But there aren't enough people on her shift. Often there

are only two nursing assistants for forty-five residents. In

addition to responding to the needs of the residents, Cynthia

must also wash the wheelchairs, clean up the dining rooms,

mop the floors and scrub out the refrigerator, drawers, and

closets during her shift. Before she leaves, she helps the

residents get dressed for breakfast.

For all of this, Cynthia makes $350 every two weeks. She is

separated from her husband, who gives her no child support.

The first two weeks each month she pays her $150 rent. The

next two weeks, she pays her water and her electric bills. It

is difficult to afford Clorox or shampoo. Ensuring that her

children are fed properly is a stretch, and she is still

paying off the bicycles she bought for her children last

Christmas.

She can't afford a car, so she ends up paying someone to

drive her the twenty-five miles to work. And there have been

a few days when she couldn't find a ride. ``I walked at

twelve o'clock at night,'' she said. ``I'd rather walk and be

a little late than call in. I'd rather make the effort. I

couldn't just sit here. I don't want to miss a day,

otherwise, I might be fired.'' There is no public

transportation that would take her to work.

I first met Cynthia at a union meeting. She had a quiet,

dignified presence with her dark suit and her hair pulled

back in a bun. She and twenty-five others from the nursing

home--all eighty of her coworkers are African American women

like her--gathered in the little brick Masonic building

outside of Marian to talk about having a union. Like Cynthia,

none has ever gotten a raise of more than 13 cents. Some who

had been there ten years were still making $6.00 an hour.

She is effectively a minimum wage worker.

These are the people this legislation is trying to help.

Linda Stevens:

The only job she could find with a high school degree and

some college courses was a part-time cashier's position at a

small market called George and Stanley's, working the night

shift from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Not surprisingly, the

$5.00 an hour she made at her retail job was not enough to

support her and her daughter, so she worked a second job from

2:00 to 5:00 p.m. as a receptionist at H&R Block, which paid

$5.50 an hour. She liked the work and would have preferred to

go full-time, but H&R Block only offered work from January

through April. The money from these two part-time jobs still

did not cover her bills, so she worked as a lunch supervisor

for the Flint public schools from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. She

had to put planners up on the wall to keep track of her

schedule. And even then, she had no benefits.

After a year, Linda left her job at George and Stanley's

after they refused to give her a 25 cent raise and went to

work at Kessell's on the day shift for $5.25 an hour. But

Kessell (which has since been purchased by Kroger) would only

give her a part-time position and without full-time status,

she still did not get benefits. Working three jobs became so

exhausting that she left her lunch supervisor position, but

had to continue to work her second job at H&R Block.

Linda's typical day started at 6:00 a.m. when she got her

daughter ready for school. Her job at Kessell started at 7:00

a.m. and ended at 3:00 p.m. She came home, changed, and went

to her job at H&R Block at 5:00 p.m. and got off at 10:00

p.m. Her schedule left little time to spend with her

daughter.

She needs a minimum wage to help that family.

Flor Segunda of Newark, NJ:

Flor lives in a primarily African-American neighborhood of

Newark, New Jersey, with her husband and three children:

Jose, who is nine years old; Luis, who is two and a half; and

Paul, who is one and a half. To reach Flor's place, you must

walk down a flight of concrete stairs, through a narrow hall,

and past the washer and dryer. Like most basement apartments,

it is damp and dark. One small window allows the only

daylight to enter. They pay $700 per month for this two-

bedroom apartment without utilities. There are no parks near

her apartment and she doesn't have a car. So most days, the

children stay inside.

At night when most workers are at home, Flor begins her

day. She cleans, dusts, vacuums, dumps trash, and straightens

the offices of law firms in a large suburban office building

in West Orange, New Jersey. Flor is a janitor. She works for

a private contractor who contracts with the owners of

commercial buildings to provide cleaning services.

She would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.

Finally, Judy Smithfield:

Judy Smithfield works in a superstore as a pharmacy

technical assistant, a ``pharmacy tech.'' Her 12:00-9:00 p.m.

shift begins with a call from a nurse in a doctor's office

dictating a prescription over the phone or a customer at the

counter giving her a prescription. Once she has the

information, she gives it to the pharmacist to process in the

computer. Then it is Judy's responsibility to check that

information and get the proper medication from the shelf. She

counts the pills that are prescribed, puts them into the

bottle, affixes the proper label to the medication, gives the

filled prescription to the pharmacist for her review, and

puts it in the proper bin for the customer to pick up.

Once the customer arrives, Judy must ensure that she has

the right prescription and that the proper forms are filled

out. She must ask the customer whether they understand the

prescription, whether they want counseling or have any

further questions. Their response must be put in writing.

There are two pharmacy techs and three pharmacists on

Judy's shift that fill over 400 prescriptions per day. If the

pharmacy gets behind in the prescriptions, Judy stays late,

sometimes until midnight. Many times she works six days a

week because they don't have enough help. Her feet and back

ache from standing all day.

This will help Judy.

I want to conclude again by talking about the impact of the minimum wage

and the failure of increasing the minimum wage on families, particularly on children.

I pointed out earlier we have 35 million Americans, according to the Department of Agriculture, who are hungry or living on the edge of hunger for economic reasons--35 million in a country of 290 million.

Today 300,000 more families are hungry than there were 3 years ago. The 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that looked at hunger found effectively 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. A leading cause of hunger is low-paying jobs.

Emergency food assistance increased by 14 percent. Of those requesting emergency food assistance, 59 percent were members of families with children and elderly parents.

City officials recommend raising of the Federal minimum wage as the way the Federal Government could alleviate hunger.

This is their No. 1 recommendation. This is the survey of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Republican and Democrat alike, for raising the minimum wage.

Finally, I have the excellent report of the National Urban League, October 2002. I will read just parts of it. In the foreword, it says:

Too often, changes in the minimum wage are viewed as poorly

targeted to the needs of America's working families. Minimum

wage workers are too often presented as teenagers, or wives

in middle class families. Yet, the clear implications of this

study are that the proposed increase in the minimum wage from

$5.15 to $6.65 an hour would move 1.4 million American

households to the level of being food secure, having enough

money to buy nutritious and safe food for their families.

And, a disproportionate share of the households that would

benefit would be African American or Hispanic. Single parent

households would also benefit disproportionately from an

increase in the minimum wage.

Again raising the minimum wage is a clear policy solution for helping meet the needs of America's poor children.

Then it goes on in the executive summary:

Second, we show that increases in the minimum wage raised

the food security of households in which the householder,

principal person in the household, has no more than a high

school diploma or is a single parent or both. The increases

in the minimum wage lessened hunger in all households, but

particularly in low-income households and in those households

in which the householder was less educated, African-American,

Hispanic or was a single parent.

Finally, I will include in the Record the findings. These are briefly the findings.

We find that:

(1) Increases in the Federal minimum wage to $4.25 in

October of 1996 and $5.15 per hour in September 1997--

That was 7 years ago--

reduced hunger among all households and in particular, in

low-income households where individuals had completed no more

than a high school degree. . . . Hunger is defined as a

psychological condition where household members experience an

uneasy or painful sensation caused by the involuntary lack of

food.

(2) Relative to the general population, food security rates

are lower among households in which the householder has no

more than a high school degree. . . .

(3) A direct relationship between food security and

increases in the minimum wage was observed following two

modest increases in the minimum wage in 1996 and 1997--when

food security rates increased slightly; and following

administration of the Food Security Supplement . . . of 1995.

Food security rates also increased modestly following 1995. .

. .

(4) Inner city households have the highest levels of food

insecurity, followed by suburban and rural households. Other

studies have demonstrated that groups most-at-risk for food

insecurity are those who are most economically vulnerable,

and whose households are most directly impacted by increases

in the minimum wage.

The failure of our increase in the minimum wage is wrong because Americans believe people who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, should not have to live in poverty in the United States of America. And it is wrong because we now have millions of children who are going hungry every night, and millions of families who are going hungry as well.

We can make some difference by increasing the minimum wage. It is now at a dramatically decreased level of purchasing power. Certainly, we can do better. We should do better. How can we possibly tolerate the conditions of our fellow Americans and not say that we need an increase in the minimum wage? I hope we will be able to do so tomorrow.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we are hopefully at a position today where there is going to be some decision made by leadership--meaning the Democrat leader and Republican leader--on proceeding on this legislation. In the meantime, we will proceed with amendments and hopefully move along as best we can without having a certain finality.

I had a chance to listen to my colleagues' statements. I will make this commentary. We have already said to the minority, the Democratic leadership, that we are prepared to vote on amendments that are before the Senate. So the issue is not voting on amendments before the Senate. There is some feeling that we are going to get this bill to finality. That doesn't mean not voting on a lot of amendments. That can be worked in as well. All we want is some certainty that we are going to get to finality. Finality means getting to conference.

We have a couple pieces of legislation that have been sitting around this body, after the body has finished work on them, not being able to go to conference. One is the CARE Act, an acronym for legislation that encourages charitable giving. Another one is the Workforce Investment Act. These are two pieces of legislation that have been before the Senate, and the minority, the Democrats, will not let us go to conference on these pieces of legislation.

So, in a sense, the Senate has worked its will, but the legislative process has been shut down. It seems to me if this legislation includes so much of what the Democrats want to accomplish in the way of reform of welfare--particularly the vote we had yesterday, very dramatically increasing by $6 billion the amount to be spent on childcare--that they would want this legislation to become law. So we need some assurance from the other side that if we agree to voting on some amendments that they want to vote on--that is no longer an issue--we want to move ahead with germane amendments.

There is not an argument about the number at this point. We can get to a vote on this, but most important is not have it stalled in the Senate as those other two pieces of legislation. It seems to me the issue isn't a whole lot different now than it was 2 years ago. The only difference is the Republicans were in the minority, then and the Democrats were in the majority. At that particular time, we saw an Energy bill taken away from the Energy Committee and brought to the floor. That bill never became law. We saw a prescription drug bill taken over by the leadership on the floor of the Senate, with the committee effectively cut out. There were 2 weeks of debate on an Energy bill but nothing happened. There was not a budget adopted that year.

We Republicans referred to the leadership at that time as having a graveyard in the Senate because they wanted issues for that election as opposed to products. We Republicans said to the electorate at that time that we want products, not issues. So when we took over in the majority in 2003, the committee system was allowed to work, developing bipartisanship. Nothing gets done in the Senate without bipartisanship. We could bring the issues to the floor and work the will of the Senate and get things through the Senate. That is what we are elected to do-- get things through the Senate and let the process work.

So there is nothing that my colleague from Montana said that I disagree with, except we ought to see light at the end of the tunnel. Is there anything wrong with saying: Are you guys--meaning the Democrats--going to do what you did on the Workforce Investment Act and the CARE Act and let the Senate become a graveyard again just because something is happening that you don't like?

It seems to me there would be a lesson learned from the last election. When the Senate became a graveyard, the people of this country sent a message that they don't want the Senate to be a graveyard. They gave the majority to the Republicans. We show that we can produce. Yet look what we are running into--the CARE Act, after a year of not going to conference. I don't know how long the Workforce Investment Act has been waiting to go to conference. We were stalled last week on a bill the Democrats agreed ought to become law, the FSC/ ETI bill. That stalled.

I would not say the Welfare Act is stalled. But what do we know is down the road? What is wrong with a little bit of transparency. The transparency is that they present an amendment on minimum wage and they want a vote. So we present a plan to get to a vote on that very important issue, but we cannot get some assurance that we may not be in the same boat as with the CARE Act and the Workforce Investment Act.

When it comes to the minimum wage being important for welfare, I suggest to the other leaders that, as chairman of the committee, in a letter I received from them last year, which is not dated--I received this letter, and it was signed by 41 Democrats--telling us the things they wanted in this legislation that the Finance Committee was going to be working on at that particular time. They were setting out priorities they believed we had not adequately dealt with. In this letter, there was never any mention of minimum wage being an important part of welfare reform legislation.

I did take what they said in this letter very seriously, and they dealt with issues such as universal engagement, ending the caseload reduction credit, strengthening child support, extending TMA, providing additional State flexibility, issues dealing with postsecondary education, no superwaiver, no increase in work without State flexibility. Of all of those provisions they raised concern about, none dealt with minimum wage. I and the majority tried to accommodate the minority members who signed this letter and put these things in this legislation. These provisions are all in this bill.

Other priorities, as stated by the Democrats, included some additional funding for childcare, and we passed that overwhelmingly yesterday. It wasn't something I could get done in committee. I, obviously, agreed with that approach because I voted for it yesterday.

We also had a request from the Democrats in this letter to increase vocational education eligibility for legal immigrants. We have not dealt with that, but that is going to be an amendment before the Senate.

What we have tried to do in this whole process of Republicans gaining control of the Senate and letting the committee system work, as opposed to 2002 when very major legislation, such as prescription drugs and the Energy bill, was taken away from the committees and brought to the floor--we do not develop bipartisanship on the floor, and they never became law--we have tried to make the committee system work. When specific requests are made, such as 41 Democrats sending us a letter raising concerns about their issues, we try to put them in the legislation and accommodate them so that we have a product instead of an issue.

The other side ought to tell us if we are going down the same road we went down in 2002 to have the Senate become a graveyard for important legislation because they need issues instead of product. Did they learn a lesson from the last election? Do they want to lose more seats in the Senate? I don't think they do. But I think they have to get a better game plan than shutting down the Senate because we are in the majority to make this place work.

I know there are a lot of Democrats who are intent upon making this place work, and I know Senator Baucus, my ranking Democrat, is committed to making this place work. There should not be any reason we have to have a cloture vote, particularly when we made overtures to the other side to vote on a lot of important issues on

which they want to vote. All we want to know is that we are going to get an opportunity to develop a product. This Senate is not the only body that passes legislation that goes to the President; it also takes the House of Representatives. We do not get to finality until there is a conference committee if there is a difference between the House and the Senate, and in most major pieces of legislation, we have to have a conference committee.

I do not understand why we can't get to conference on the CARE Act, a bill to encourage charitable giving by people who fill out the short form of the income tax by giving above-the-line deduction, or having the tax-free rollover IRAs for people who want to give some of their lifetime savings to charitable giving. There are a lot of other good provisions in that legislation as well.

Do you know what is wrong with that, Madam President? What is probably wrong with that legislation is it is one of the No. 1 goals of the President of the United States, and maybe the other side can't let him have a victory. Yet in the scheme of what the President of the United States has to do, it may be a No. 1 goal of his, but it is a very small part of the total agenda that this President has of leading this Nation and being the Chief Executive Officer for our Government.

What is wrong with the Workforce Investment Act? One would think that with the other side crying all the time about outsourcing--forgetting about insourcing; we have a $58 billion favorable balance of trade on insourcing versus outsourcing--but we all ought to be concerned about outsourcing. What does Senator Kerry, as a Democratic candidate for President, say we need to do about outsourcing? Educate our workforce. And we have opportunities to move legislation that does that, and we cannot get to conference. What is the game?

We have offered to the other side votes on important legislation they want. Can they let us see light at the end of the tunnel so we know there are not games being played? I would hope there are people on the other side of the body who want this place to work, and there are. I would hope people who want product instead of issues will rise to the top, as cream does, and as cream of the crop remind their leadership of what happened in the last election, and do they want to be a less significant minority than we presently are because I think what is good about the Senate is that it keeps the extremes from governing in America--the extreme on the left and the extreme on the right.

The Senate, when it cooperates and gets things done, governs from the center. Whether that is 60 votes or 70 votes or 80 votes, we govern from the center.

This is a body that is going to make sure that Nazis do not take over America or Communists take over America, and there are none of them in the Congress. But when you do not have the center rule, as Germany learned or as Korinsky learned and tried to show the people of Russia in 1917, when the extremes take over, democratic values are lost.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are involved in debate on a nongermane amendment the Democrats have offered on which we Republicans have said we are willing to vote, assuming we can have finality on this legislation and make sure we get to conference.

In the meantime, while those procedural issues are being worked out, I wish to express some views on the subject of minimum wage.

The proponents of this legislation claim they want to make sure that workers are able to earn a livable wage. Who doesn't know that is necessary for people to get along in this world? It is not very clear to me what the term ``livable wage'' means. But those who use the term seem to believe a person working at a minimum wage ought to earn more than the poverty level.

So let us consider that goal for a moment. Although there is more than one way to define poverty, the Department of Health and Human Services publishes the poverty guidelines each year. These guidelines are used to determine eligibility for low-income programs like food stamps. For a single individual, the poverty guideline then would be $9,310 a year. Under current law, any job subject to the Federal minimum wage must pay at least $5.15 an hour. Assuming a person worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, at a minimum wage, they would earn over $10,000 a year. Even after deducting Federal income taxes owed on this amount, a minimum wage worker is left with more money than the poverty guidelines.

I would like to repeat that a full-time minimum wage worker already earns more than the poverty level.

Now, is that a livable wage? The answer is that it depends. Even in my State of Iowa not very many people would say that is very ideal; in fact, just the opposite. Most people would look for much higher than that. According to the Census Bureau, more than 2 million workers have hourly wages at or below the minimum wage. More than one-fourth of these workers are between the ages of 16 and 19.

So is $5.15 an hour a livable wage? If one is a teenager living at home with their parents, they probably feel like they are making a lot of money. But what about other minimum wage workers? According to the Census Bureau, 85 percent of the people earning the minimum wage live with their parents, have a working spouse or live alone. Only 15 percent of the minimum wage workers are trying to support a family.

For those few who are trying to support a family, $5.15 an hour is obviously not enough income. Fortunately, these families do not have to get by on $5.15 an hour because under current law these families are eligible for Federal assistance through the earned income tax credit and through the food stamp program, two programs that are meant to encourage people into the workforce in a way that there is good return on it.

A single mom with two children working full-time at minimum wage would qualify for more than $4,000 in refundable tax credits and more than $2,000 in food stamps. On an hourly basis, that works out to more than $8 an hour. Even after Federal taxes are withheld, a single mom with two children is left with more than $15,670, which is the poverty guideline for a family of three. Thus, the debate cannot really be about getting people out of poverty.

Some people might say that these workers should not have to rely on Government programs to escape poverty, and those people working would look for a day in the future when they were making enough money that they would not qualify for the earned income tax credit or qualify for food stamps. But other people might say that employers should not be so cheap, that they ought to pay their employees more than the poverty level wages.

As I have just explained, the poverty level varies by the size of the families. Employers cannot pay their workers based on the size of their families. I do not know that they ever have. When one stops at a local donut shop, they do not charge $5 on Tuesday when the cashier is a teenager living at home with his parents and then charge $7 on Thursday when the cashier is a single mom raising two children. That is not the way the real world of economics or the business place works. Any business that tried to do things that way would no longer be in business.

The wages earned by workers are determined by the value that consumers place on the goods and services produced by the workers. Employers cannot pay their employees more than customers are willing to pay. In fact, in most cases, customers do have

choices of where to buy their goods and services. They do not have to stop at the local donut shop. If they want to, they can eat at home, or some may just decide to do without.

Those who support raising the minimum wage claim that they are helping workers earn a livable wage, but if Congress could wave a magic wand and if Congress would raise wages by legislative decree, why would they stop at $7 an hour? Why not $70? Why not $700? Then everybody could be a millionaire.

The reason supporters of a minimum wage stop at $7 is because they know if the minimum wage is raised higher it means yet higher prices and fewer jobs. To deny these facts is to deny economic reality.

Proof? There is plenty of proof. It is very evident by the fact that no one has proposed raising the minimum wage to $70 or $700 an hour. Raising the minimum wage by $7 or $70 or $700 all have ensuing ill effects. The only difference is the smaller the increase the smaller the effect. Those who support a smaller increase are hoping that by only raising the minimum wage to $7, the price increases and the job losses will be small enough that no one will complain too loudly.

Minimizing the damage will not stop the damage. Raising the minimum wage to $7 an hour is going to cost employers $6 billion a year. That is a $6 billion tax increase on a small segment of our economy, particularly the small business sector of the economy. Ironically, out of those costs of $6 billion, roughly $5 billion will go to workers who are not supporting a family while $1 billion is going to go to workers who are supporting a family.

In other words, raising the minimum wage for everyone means only $1 out of every $6 goes to those who are most in need and particularly those we are trying to help with this bill to move people from welfare to work. That is a very expensive way to help low-income families.

One might try to justify this costly and inefficient policy if it were the only way to help those in need, but as I have already discussed raising the minimum wage is not about getting people out of poverty. A single mom working full-time at the minimum wage, with one or two children, is already out of poverty, thanks to the earned income tax credit and thanks to food stamps. If we want to help low income workers, we should support policies like the earned income tax credit and food stamps that provide help to those who need it the most.

Congress does not have a magic wand. It cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.

I yield the floor.

If she is yielding the floor, then I want the floor.

Would it be OK if I take 5 minutes?

Or even 6 or 7 minutes.

That is what I would like to do.

First of all, the Senator from Connecticut asks a legitimate question of the Senator from Washington about when this might come up. There is an orderly way of doing things around here. And usually in the Senate, the leader--and that is not me; that is Senator Frist from Tennessee-- sets the agenda for the Senate.

It is my understanding that right now we are working on it. I do not know whether the Senator from Washington or the Senator from Connecticut has been in contact with the leadership of the Senate so we can do things in an orderly way or whether they want to make political points. But I hope they want to do it in an orderly way because that is the way things get done around here. So it is not with pleasure that I object right now, and look like a bad person to the Senator from Washington--because she has always treated me very fairly in her service in the Senate--and to object particularly when we are probably, in a matter of hours or a few days, going to pass this legislation. I am sure it is going to be passed in a way so that the unemployment compensation is seamless for those who are otherwise entitled to it.

That is all I can do to answer the question of the Senator from Connecticut. It is my firm conviction it is going to happen.

Now, maybe I think things are going to happen, but they might not because of something beyond what I know now. But I think they are going to happen. I know there have already been suggestions made between the two leaders of the Senate's political parties--our respective caucuses--to move some of these important issues along.

But do the members of the Democratic Party in the Senate think only Democrats have important issues they want to bring up? Don't they think there might be a few Republicans who have something they want to bring up? So you work these accommodations out. That is what I think we ought to do.

But what I would like to do, for just a few minutes, is speak to--not to challenge anything the Senator from Washington said about unemployment because, factually, I do not think you can do that--but there are other thoughts that need to be put on the table at the same time.

I made a presentation here 2 weeks ago to try to bring into this debate points of view that are made by the intellectual wing of the Democratic Party to offset what we have just heard from the political wing of the Democratic Party. And I quoted a former Democratic Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich. I want to quote him again because he writes very eloquently about job changes going on in America and about job loss in America.

I will quote this long paragraph:

It's true that U.S. manufacturing employment has been

dropping for many years, but that's not primarily due to

foreigners taking these jobs. Factory jobs are vanishing all

over the world. Economists at Alliance Capital Management

took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and

found that between 1995 and 2002, 22 million factory jobs had

disappeared.

Now get this:

The U.S. wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11

percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the

Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations

lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline,

China a 15 percent drop. What happened to factory jobs? In

two words, higher productivity.

He says:

I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees

and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front

of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years

this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for

an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades

the robots, like the gas man changing your meter.

The points about productivity she made very well, I believe. But here is the other side of that. You can create jobs and not have productivity--be inefficient, be uncompetitive, and not have a business after a while. Or you can be productive because enhancing productivity in America is what it takes to raise wages. If you want to increase the standard of living in America, you have to raise wages. To raise wages, you have to enhance productivity.

So are they suggesting we ought to turn the clock back and forget about productivity, forget about raising the standard of living in America? Do they want us to become some Third World economy over the period of the next 50 years, if you went down that road, or do you want to do what America can do best, the other things Secretary Reich is referring to? We have a knowledge base in America. Take advantage of that knowledge base. Create jobs that are more productive and, in the process, raise wages and raise the standard of living. Those are the choices we have.

America is a dynamic economy. Every month 7 million jobs go out of existence, and 7 million jobs come into existence. It would be ideal if it were more than 7 million jobs coming on board. That hasn't happened, and that is why we have the 2.3 million jobs that are referred to all the time.

Do you think it is always going to be this way in America? Absolutely not, because of the dynamic economy we have. It is because we are always enhancing productivity that we are going to do better.

You don't have to be a defeatist when it comes to the economy. We have gone through tougher times. We have gone through tougher times when unemployment was 25 percent, not 5.6 percent. We got through it. America is stronger today. Don't lose faith in America.

Yes, I will yield for a question.

The Senator asks a very legitimate question. For my part, eventually we have to face this. I don't care how we face it, as a separate bill or as an amendment. I think she has to ask somebody just one step above my

pay grade to get an answer to that. I am not prepared to answer that. I do not have an answer from the people that give it because, as I said, the leader sets the schedule. I respect the leader, and I don't want to put him in a position. I might be able to say, but I don't have certainty of it. So I don't want to put him in a bad position.

Reserving the right to object, I don't think I need to object, but I think there ought to be some consideration that if other Republicans come to the Chamber, we don't have Democrats ganging up on us to give one point of view. There ought to be some accommodation to Republicans if they would come over here. I don't expect anybody beyond the Senator from Texas to come over and speak, but if they do, I would hope you will be a gentleman and try to work them in so we let America know there are two sides to every story.

With that consideration, I do not object.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his leadership in the presentation he just made to the Senate. I would like at this time to address an issue that is extremely topical in Illinois and across the Nation, more so in some States than others, but it is the escalating gasoline prices people are facing.

Global crude oil prices are as high as they have been in a year. Domestically, retail gasoline prices are as high as they ever were, with the average price of gasoline $1.738, higher than a year ago. In Illinois, the current sale price of gas is $1.756 cents, which is higher than the current national average, higher than a month ago, and 4 cents higher than the average a year ago.

Gasoline prices affect Americans in the pocketbook. On the average, the cost of gasoline is about half of a family's transportation expenses. We love our cars, we love our trucks, we are in them a lot, and when gasoline prices go up, we pay more. The low-income families are hit the hardest by high transportation costs. The poorest 20 percent of American households, those earning less than $13,908 after taxes per year, spend 40 percent of their take-home pay on transportation.

There are many factors that have led to these high prices, some of them on the supply side and some on the demand side. U.S. crude oil inventories hit a 28-year low in January of this year. OPEC has been very prudent in putting oil on the market. I will get to the most current announcement on OPEC policy in a few minutes. In addition, refinery capacity in the United States has been down for years.

In the United States, cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans account for 40 percent of oil consumption, and the transportation sector itself accounts for 60 percent overall. Almost nothing has been done to curb this demand. The best way to address rising gasoline prices is to curb our Nation's insatiable thirst for guzzling gas.

I am leading the fight in the Senate to try to lessen overall demand for gas by improving the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks. Last year, I offered an amendment to the energy bill which would have increased the Corporate Average Fuel Economy--or CAFE--law's standard for cars and SUVs to 40 miles a gallon by the year 2015, and the standard for trucks to 27.5 gallons in the same year.

I also introduced legislation that would discourage the building of more SUVs that achieve less than 15 miles per gallon, and to address the tax credit currently given to these SUVs, these gas guzzlers, and instead create a tax credit for consumers who purchase more fuel- efficient cars.

The Bush administration finalized regulations for SUVs and pickup trucks that would save at the most 20 billion gallons by 2015. This is one-sixth of the savings that would have occurred under the proposal I am offering--one-sixth. What I offered would have saved 123 billion gallons of gasoline by the year 2015--123 billion by reducing demand.

I urged my colleagues at the time to read the writing on the wall and realize if we didn't reduce the demand for gasoline for cars and trucks, we would not only have skyrocketing gasoline prices but even more pollution.

The New York Times editorial, Monday, March 22, 2004:

A much better way to strengthen America's leverage . . . is

for the United States to limit its own consumption of energy

. . . [T]he most straightforward [way] is to raise fuel

economy standards by significant amounts. This is exactly

what the country did after the oil shocks of the 1970's,

resulting in huge savings in imported oil.

Thanks to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE, oil consumption is about 2.8 million barrels per day lower than it otherwise would be.

Studies have shown consumers can save as much as $2,000 over the lifetime of a car from higher fuel efficiency, even accounting for the cost of new vehicle technology.

Raising fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon would save consumers a cumulative $45.8 billion within about 10 years.

Unfortunately, since peaking at 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 and 1998, average fuel economy declined nearly 8 percent to 20.4 in 2001, lower than it has been at any time since 1980.

Consider that for a moment. Instead of having more fuel efficiency and more fuel economy and less demand for foreign oil, our cars and trucks are less efficient burning gasoline, cause more pollution, and increase our dependence on foreign oil.

The Energy bill brought to us by the Bush administration didn't include any provision whatsoever to improve efficiency.

I will add, in all honesty and candor, that the automobile manufacturers in the United States and their unions also oppose increasing the fuel efficiency in cars. I think their reasoning is wrong. I think their excuses are lame. I think they are so shortsighted to believe that we can continue to build the most fuel-inefficient cars and trucks in the world and not run into the same problem we face today of increasing costs for fuel. As our demand increases, we can't produce enough fuel on our own. We import more and become more dependent on foreign fuel and, frankly, enslaved to OPEC. In a minute I will tell you what that enslaved position resulted in.

I say to my colleagues and many who have come to the floor to talk about gasoline prices, go back and check the Congressional Record. How did you vote when it came to making cars and trucks more fuel efficient? Sadly, very few of my colleagues joined me. It did not win a majority vote. I think those who complain today ought to take an inventory of their own voting record on this issue.

There are many things we should do. If we don't start fuel conservation and fuel efficiency and fuel economy, frankly, we will continue to be captives of the oil cartel. We will continue to watch these prices rise at the pump with very little we can do in response.

The next time we debate energy policy, I will be offering this amendment again. I hope we will do the right thing.

In the meantime, what do we do about the current prices? It is interesting what some have said when it comes to the current prices.

During the Republican primary debate in Manchester, NH, in the year 2000, in January, then-Governor Bush of Texas said:

What I think the President ought to do is he ought to get

on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to

open your

spigots. One reason why the price is so high is because

the price of crude oil has been driven up. OPEC has gotten

its supply act together and it is driving the price like

it did in the past, and the President of the United States

must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price.

Faced with these skyrocketing gasoline prices, the obvious question is, Did President Bush do what candidate Bush suggested? The answer is no.

Listen to what the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, had to say on March 24, just a few days ago, when he was asked about whether the administration should put pressure on OPEC not to cut the supply of oil and raise prices in America.

I quote the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, from the Washington Times.

Abraham said the administration would not temporarily stop

filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help lower oil

prices and it would not publicly call on OPEC to roll back

production cuts scheduled for April 1st.

Here are the words of Secretary Abraham:

We've . . . made clear we are not going to beg them for

oil.

What it means is when candidate Bush went to Manchester, NH, and said we need a forceful President who will stand up to OPEC to defend businesses and families and individuals across America who are paying the price of higher gasoline prices, candidate Bush when he became President Bush suffered severe political amnesia. He forgot what he said. Look where we are today.

The unfortunate reality is that we have a press release today from Vienna, Austria, from Reuters, which said:

'`OPEC agreed Wednesday to endorse tighter curbs on oil

production, ignoring concerns in some countries about crude

oil prices near their highest level in 13 years,'' ministers

said.

``The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided

to implement a deal cutting 1 million barrels a day from

April 1,'' Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said. Libyian

Oil Minister Fethi bin Chetwane also said that the cartel

formally agreed Wednesday to implement the cuts, which were

first proposed in Algiers in February.

Benchmark U.S. crude traded up 25 cents to $36.50 a barrel with the New York Mercantile Exchange's gasoline contracts sitting at an all- time high of $1.177 a gallon.

What is happening? Because this administration refuses to confront OPEC, because as Secretary of Energy Abraham said, we are not going to beg for oil, because President Bush forgot what he promised when he ran for President 4 years ago, American families and businesses will face oil prices at record high and historic levels.

What has been the response of the Bush administration to this reality? The response was to prepare a campaign ad attacking John Kerry. The campaign ad just started to run. It is an ad which criticizes Senator John Kerry, the purported Democratic nominee for President of United States, for supporting a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax, saying that the tax increase will cause the average consumer to pay $657 more a year, and that he supported high gasoline taxes 11 times.

This morning, the Washington Post decided to look at the charges, the negative ad, that is being run against John Kerry. Here is what they had to say:

Unlike three previous negative ads, this spot softens its

charges with a mocking tone and funny footage against the

``wacky'' Kerry.

This is from the Washington Post.

But it unfairly presents a gas-tax hike as if it were the

Senator's current position, when most of the examples are a

decade old. Kerry voted in 1993 for the Clinton economic

package, which included a 4.3 cent increase in the gas tax,

and is widely credited with boosting the economy. He also

opposed several Republican efforts to repeal the tax.

The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush negative ad:

Kerry spoke in favor of a 50-cent hike in 1994 and as a

possible way of cutting the deficit, but no such proposal

came to a vote and he later changed his mind. His only recent

vote was in 2000, when Kerry opposed the GOP effort to

suspend 18 cents in gas taxes for five months.

The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush attack ad:

The ad fails to mention that the President, who promised in

2000 to trim gas taxes, has never proposed such a cut. Bush

campaign manager Ken Mehlman said Kerry last year opposed

Bush's energy bill, designed to boost oil in part by allowing

drilling in Alaska. Kerry's spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter

called the measure ``a giveaway'' to the oil companies and a

Republican-controlled Congress killed it. The Kerry camp

dug out a quote in which Bush's top economic adviser [the

ever-present and almost infamous] N. Gregory Mankiw,

backed a 50-cent gas tax in 1999.

You may remember Mr. Mankiw. Mr. Mankiw was the man, the President's economic adviser, who sent the economic report to Congress. In it Mr. Mankiw, with his own insight as the top economist of the Bush administration, said that the outsourcing of jobs to India and China was a good thing. Now we were trading in new things like call centers. It was a good thing--Mankiw's own words.

So Mr. Mankiw, top economic adviser to George Bush, it turns out, was supporting a 50-cent increase in the gasoline tax in 1999. Interesting. And President Bush and his campaign continue to run ads attacking John Kerry and saying that the real reason for the gasoline price increases that we are seeing across America is John Kerry voting for a 4.3-cent gasoline tax increase 11 years ago.

Is that as good as they can get? Is that the best they can come up with? What they are ignoring is the obvious. They are ignoring the fact that this President has the power, as President of the United States, to put the pressure on OPEC, and refuses to do it. Why? Why is this President backing away? Is it this oil connection with the President and Vice President Cheney? Is it the fact that some of the OPEC cartel countries have been some of the favorites of this administration for political and other reasons?

What is it all about? Why wouldn't this President, facing a gasoline crisis in America today, do what he said he would do when he ran for office in the year 2000? It is an answer I cannot come up with. But I will tell you, the American people will come up with it. They understand what this is all about.

The President can promise tiny little tax cuts for working families and massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and then turn around and fail to show leadership on gasoline prices, and watch whatever benefit those small tax cuts meant to lower-income families disappear.

The Bush administration's failed policies have created record high prices for gasoline. Americans are paying 12 percent more for gasoline since former oil industry executives President Bush and Vice President Cheney took office on the pledge that their ties to the oil industry would lead to lower gas prices.

Well, it did not work, just as the President's economic policy did not work. Here we have a President who, in a matter of 3 years and a few months, has lost more jobs in America than any President in the last 70 years, and that includes Republicans and Democrats alike. Tax cuts to the wealthy did not create jobs. And the President's cozy relationship with the oil companies and the oil sector certainly has not kept gasoline prices under control. The President refuses to confront OPEC and tell them they have to stop taking advantage of American families and businesses.

Secretary Abraham: ``We won't beg for oil.''

Well, I do not think you have to beg. Many of these countries in the Middle East, as part of the OPEC cartel, depend on the United States for an important and valuable market. They depend on the United States for many security items. They depend on the United States and its friendship and alliance when things get tough, such as the instance in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf crisis.

Why wouldn't this President go to the leaders in OPEC and tell them what they were doing to America and the American economy, gripped with this so-called jobless recovery. Frankly, a jobless recovery is no recovery at all. We all know that. Facing a jobless recovery, this President will not confront OPEC and tell them: Keep gasoline prices low; increase your exports of crude oil so we do not run up the cost of business for small and large businesses alike, and run up the cost of living for average working families.

Economist David Rosenberg told CNN's Lou Dobbs:

[P]ain at the pump has wiped out more than $20 billion of

the coming $40 billion in tax refund checks.

How did he come to that conclusion? On January 5, American consumers

paid $1.51 for an average gallon of gas. As of today, less than 3 months later, they are paying $1.75 a gallon--a 24-cent increase since January.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

[E]very penny increase in a gallon of gas costs consumers

$1 billion a year.

So if prices remain high, that means a $24 billion gas tax hike has been placed on the American people, for the failure of the Bush administration to confront the OPEC cartel, as he promised to do.

But that is not all.

Nationwide gas prices have risen 12 percent since the year 2000 and are expected to skyrocket upwards to $1.83 a gallon this summer when gasoline prices usually peak--a 17-percent increase in gasoline prices since President Bush took office.

So what is wrong with this picture? When it comes to employment, there is nothing but bad news in statistics. The unemployment rates continue to go up. When it comes to gasoline prices and its cost to families and businesses, more bad news from the Bush administration: a 17-percent anticipated increase by this summer.

Guy Caruso, the administrator of the Energy Information Administration, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that an average family will spend about $1,700 for gasoline in 2004. At today's gas prices, this means the average family will spend over $300 more for gas than they would have if prices were at the level they were the week President George W. Bush took office.

As I said, candidate Bush knew what to do. President Bush refused to do it. Candidate Bush said: Confront the OPEC cartel. President Bush said: We are not going to dirty our hands by ``begging for oil.''

Because the Bush administration did not follow its own advice from 2000, OPEC has decided to pursue additional cuts, leaving American consumers more susceptible to higher gas prices.

Let me say, gas prices have been an issue for the Vice President, too. On October 9, 1986--since President Bush's campaign is dredging up history when it comes to John Kerry--as a Member of the House of Representatives, Dick Cheney, our Vice President, introduced a bill to establish a $24-per-barrel price floor on imported crude oil--a mandatory minimum price, indexed to inflation, that today would have reached as high as $36.12 a gallon. If Vice President Cheney's bill had passed in 1986, consumers would have paid over $1.2 trillion in increased gas prices since that year, with $600 billion going to oil companies.

In 2001, as Vice President, former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney led an energy task force that met with energy industry officials in closed meetings to write the energy bill of this administration. The meetings led to the administration's energy policy, which has failed on the Senate floor. The administration has refused to release detailed records of the meetings to the General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of Congress. The secrecy surrounding the meetings is so unusual and unprecedented that the Supreme Court on April 27-- just a few weeks from now--will hear arguments that the records for the meetings should be opened.

Republicans have criticized John Kerry for supporting gas taxes in his Senate career, but, as I have said, these charges are grossly exaggerated and a distortion. This, frankly, is what I am afraid we can expect more of during this campaign. But I think the American people know, while Republicans make a lot of noise about opposing a gas tax, the record tells a different story.

Ronald Reagan said of the gas tax:

The cost to the average motorist will be small, but the

benefit to our transportation system will be immense.

Republican leaders in the House have pushed for a gas tax hike this year. In fact, House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young of Alaska proposed a 5.4-cent-per-gallon gas increase this Congress. And President Bush, who promised to cut the gas tax as a candidate, has never acted to do so once in office.

So I think what faces America is clear. We need leadership in the White House that is not afraid to confront OPEC. We need a President who is not afraid to get on the phone, through his Secretary of State, Secretary of Energy, and say to those in the OPEC cartel that they cannot unilaterally put us in a position where our economy--struggling to come out of recession, struggling to recover, struggling to create jobs--is going to end up hat in hand, in a situation where we have no recourse for families and for businesses.

But the Bush administration failed. They failed to do what the President should have done in showing leadership on this issue. The President said one thing in the campaign and has done another thing now in the White House.

American families are going to have to face that cost. When you look at this record, sadly, it is not too much of a surprise. Here we are faced with a struggling economy and an administration which, despite losing more jobs than any President in 7 years, refuses to support a payout of unemployment compensation to the workers and families who have lost their jobs, an administration which understands that more workers are working longer hours to make ends meet and comes up with a proposal to eliminate overtime pay for 8 million American workers.

We created the overtime law in 1938. Since we said that after you work 40 hours, you are going to be paid more under the law, every administration that has addressed this law has increased the eligibility of American workers until this administration. With the Bush administration, for the first time in history, a President has proposed cutting overtime pay for 8 million workers in America.

Think about that. If he is successful in doing that, it means that the workers who are going to work today will have to work longer hours just to keep up with the lost pay from this Bush administration policy. So who are these workers? They are policemen, firefighters, nurses, and people, frankly, who we count on every single day. This is an administration which won't provide unemployment compensation despite losing millions of jobs since the President was elected, an administration which cuts overtime pay for some 8 million workers, and an administration which has decided as a matter of policy it will not support an increase in the minimum wage for workers in America.

We are in the midst of debating the welfare bill. I voted for welfare reform. I hope I can vote for this bill. There are many positive aspects to it. But if we want to keep people off welfare, if we want to reward work and reward the right decisions, then we certainly should give fair and adequate compensation to those who struggle. Can you think of what life would be like if you faced $5.15 an hour, a little over $10,000 a year, as your total income, and then add on to that a second job, if you could get it, that has you working 16 hours a day and doubles your income to $20,000 or $22,000 a year?

These proud and hard-working people get up and go to work every single day. They are the visible Americans who make the beds in our hotel rooms, bus our tables in the restaurants, wash the dishes in back of the kitchen, deal with tending our children in daycare facilities. We have said, because of the refusal of this administration and Congress to increase the minimum wage, that we have so little respect for their work ethic we will not allow the minimum wage to be increased in America.

The insensitivity of this administration to working families and to the sad state of the economy has been documented again, not just with unemployment compensation, not just with overtime pay, not just with its resistance to increasing the minimum wage, but with the refusal of this President to keep his campaign promise from the year 2000 and to put pressure on OPEC not to cut the production of oil, forcing an increase in gasoline prices across America.

We need more compassion from this administration. We need more of a connection between this administration and working families across America. We need a change.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: We are under a cloture motion that has been filed on this amendment?

Since I have been recognized and I have the floor, is there a time limit on how long this Senator can speak?

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, first I ask unanimous consent I be added as a cosponsor on this amendment to raise the minimum wage. I strongly support the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and Senator Kennedy.

Let's be clear at the outset. The current level of $5.15 an hour as a minimum wage is a poverty wage--actually less than a poverty wage, which I will show in a minute. It is a wage that does not respect the dignity of work, including the most humble work in this country. That is wrong. I say the President of the United States ought to be ashamed of himself, this Senate ought to be ashamed of itself, the House of Representatives ought to be ashamed of itself, that we would let the minimum wage get as low as it has gotten, forcing more and more families into poverty and on food stamps.

I just heard my colleague from Iowa saying, rather than raising the minimum wage, we ought to be putting more into food stamps. What kind of a solution is that? I thought we were going to give people the dignity of work. We ought to get them off welfare and get them into jobs. Now I hear some people say the best thing is giving them more food stamps. I am all for food stamps. It has been a real blessing to our society. But that is sort of a welfare answer. It sounds as if we turned the clock back and we go back on welfare again.

The economic policies of this administration are simply not working as advertised. It is still sputtering. The recovery remains fragile. The President has assured us again and again that tax cuts overwhelmingly for the wealthy will stimulate the economy and create more jobs and get this country moving. Over the last 3 years we have had nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts, but we have lost more than 2 million jobs. The President's economic policies, including tax cuts, outsourcing of jobs, not increasing the minimum wage, refusing to extend unemployment benefits, are not working. Trickle-down economics simply, again, is not working.

You don't have to be from Iowa or Nebraska to know you don't fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots, and that is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus to the roots, not to the treetops.

There are obvious ways to do this. No. 1, instead of the tax cuts for the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people who need the money and who will actually spend the extra money here in America.

No. 2, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the pockets of people who will spend the money because they have to, out of necessity.

No. 3, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed. Today, March 31, a record 1.1 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits--this quarter. This is unfair. It is indecent. It is foolish, because it will create more drag on the economy. Again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not extending the unemployment benefits to all these people who have now lost them.

I strongly support the Boxer amendment as one step we need to take in addressing the fact we have too many people out of work, and that people on the bottom of the economic ladder are falling further and further behind.

No one in America who works for a living should live in poverty. Yet for the millions of hard-working Americans with minimum wage jobs, that is exactly what is happening. In fact, if you look at what has happened over the last few years, you can see if this is the poverty line right here for a family of three, going back here to 1971, 1974, 1977, the minimum wage was pretty darned close to the poverty line. Then during the Reagan years it started coming down. During the Clinton years it went up a little bit. Now we are back down again. Look at this gap compared to where we were before, or even before 1970 when the minimum wage was actually above the poverty line. When you look at that, it is no wonder our society has problems. No wonder we are being torn apart in this country. We have more people working, yet falling further below the poverty line because we don't increase the minimum wage.

The other side filed a cloture motion, I understand. I asked the Presiding Officer. He said a cloture motion has been filed on this amendment. This bill we have before us is TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The other side has filed a cloture motion, saying an increase in the minimum wage is not germane, it is not pertinent to the TANF bill, to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They are saying it is not pertinent because if the cloture motion is successful tomorrow, this amendment will fall. So they say it is not pertinent.

Why don't they tell that to Secretary Thompson? Here is what he said regarding TANF reauthorization:

This administration recognizes that the only way to escape

poverty is through work and that is why we have made work and

jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece

of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance

for Needy Families Program.

It is the centerpiece. And they say it is not pertinent. Somebody better get hold of Mr. Thompson. You better start getting your story straight. He says it is the centerpiece.

If minimum wage is the centerpiece for TANF reauthorization, then we ought to be about discussing how much of a minimum wage--not whether it is pertinent but how much.

Bear in mind again, I heard some talk about teenagers. I keep hearing about teenagers making minimum wage. They are living at home, they have this and that. Teenagers, teenagers, teenagers, I hear that all the time. But you have to look at the facts. Facts are stubborn. Sometimes facts get in the way of stories. The fact is, 7 million workers would directly benefit from a minimum wage increase; 35 percent are the sole earners in their families--35 percent. Maybe some of them are teenagers. Maybe they are married and out of school, maybe they are 18, 19 years old. Mr. President, 61 percent of those affected are women and one-third of them are raising children; 15 percent are African American and 19 percent are Hispanic Americans.

What is this all about teenagers? This is not about teenagers. This is about Americans who go to work every day. As I said, they do some of the most humble work in America.

I think I heard my colleague from Iowa saying something about if you raise the minimum wage, it is bad for business because people will shop elsewhere because they will raise the price of goods and people still have choices. We are not putting the minimum wage on one company and not another, one employer and not another. This is across the board. So if all of them go up, then there is still competition out there. Maybe through the competitive urges of the free marketplace they will find other places to cut costs, be more productive. But don't take it out of the hides of those who work for a minimum wage.

That is what we are basically saying. That is what Congress is saying. That is what this President is saying, when we don't increase the minimum wage. They are saying to businesses all over America: If you want to cut costs, if you want to increase your profit margins, we will help you by keeping your minimum wage as low as possible.

If we raise the minimum wage, maybe businesses will find some other ways of cutting costs and being more productive.

I also heard that if you increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, it is a drain on business. It doesn't help the family that much. There would be more help with food stamps, for example. An increase to $7 an hour for full-time, year-round workers would add about $3,800 to their income.

Maybe for Senators and Congressmen who make $150,000 a year--I assume most of us have stocks and different investments--when you look at the net worth of the Members of the House and the Senate, what is it? Is it 500 times more than the average American? Maybe $3,800 doesn't seem like a lot to people here, but to a family on minimum wage, for a low- income family, $3,800 would be more than a year of groceries. It would pay 9 months of rent, a year and a half of heat or electricity, or full tuition at a community college for one of the kids. That is nothing to scoff at.

People say, Well, it will impact business. Again, facts are stubborn things. History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has never had an impact on jobs, employment, or inflation. In the 4 years after the last minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced the strongest growth in over three decades. Nearly 11 million new jobs were added at a pace of 218,000 per month. There were 6 million new service industry jobs, including more than 112 million retail jobs of which nearly 600,000 were restaurant jobs.

This was after we raised the minimum wage last time. It sure made a bad impact on this country, didn't it?

It is long overdue. We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it fall so low.

Now we are being told we can't have a vote on the TANF bill because it is not germane. That is exactly what Secretary Thompson said.

Work and jobs that will pay at least a minimum wage is the

centerpiece to the reauthorization proposal of TANF.

Those are Secretary Thompson's words.

We also have to keep in mind that a great majority--61 percent, as I have pointed out--who would be affected are single parents, mostly women with children. Unfortunately, the kind of jobs that women who leave welfare find are minimum wage jobs, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain families and meet the demands of raising children. For these people, survival is a daily goal. They work hard enough. Their hours are long enough to make ends meet, but only barely.

What this means is they don't have time for their families. They cannot participate in activities with their children, especially school-related activities that most of us take for granted.

I would like to do a survey in the Senate of everyone here. I wonder how many Senators know someone or a family living on the minimum wage. I wonder how many Senators would actually have some friends who are families on the minimum wage. I bet you would not find very many who would actually know anyone. They read about them, but I mean actually know them or maybe have them as neighbors or friends and meet with them and talk with them about how they are living on a minimum wage. That would be an interesting survey to take.

For these people, as I said, survival is their daily goal.

Bear in mind the real value of the minimum wage has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years. Here is the real value of the minimum wage shown earlier by Senators Kennedy and Boxer. We have to keep showing them because these facts are stubborn things. People are working the same.

Back in 1968, in real 2003 dollars, the minimum wage was $8.50.

In other words, if we had indexed to inflation the minimum wage in 1968, it would be $8.50 an hour. That is just indexed for inflation. But if you look at where people were back in 1968, look where we are now. The people who were working back in 1968 at minimum wage jobs are the same people, the same kind of people, the same class of people who are working today. They are doing the same kind of jobs. Why was that job worth $8.50 in 1968, but that same job today is only worth $4.98 an hour?

You might say the minimum wage is $5.15. But if we don't increase it by the end of this year, the real value of that will be $4.98 an hour.

Why? It is the same job, the same work. Why was it worth $8.50 an hour then, and it is only worth $4.98 an hour now? It is because we haven't done our job about keeping up the minimum wage. We keep pushing people down.

That is why there is unrest in America. That is why low-wage people are saying there is nothing in the system for them because it is so skewed against them. They work hard and never can get ahead because the minimum wage is stuck.

The minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earns $10,700 a year. That is $5,000 a year below the poverty line for a family of three.

Again, here is the poverty line. The red line is for a family of three. Here is where we were in the past. Before 1970, the minimum wage was above the poverty line. Now look at the gap. Look how far down it is.

Poll after poll after poll taken of low-income Americans show that they don't believe the system is fair. You can read the polls. Look at what happened to them. You add on to that they don't have health insurance. You add on to that they do not have any retirement benefits. You add on to that their pay goes for high heating bills this last winter. You add on to that many of these people earning the minimum wage are paying one-third to one-half of their paychecks just for rent.

How many of us pay one-half of our paycheck for rent?

As I said earlier, the minimum wage--I stand corrected. It is not a poverty wage; it is less than a subsistence wage. And we can't ignore it any longer.

Three million more Americans are in poverty today than when President Bush first took office.

I am not saying that to blame it all on the President. I am not going to say that. Of course not. I am just saying it is a fact.

Today, more than 34 million people live in poverty including 12 million children.

I am not blaming it on the President, or anybody else. I am just stating a fact.

Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has doubled since the late 1970s--from about 1.3 million to 2.6 million in 2002. Poverty has doubled since the late 1970s.

There is a lot of blame to go around. Rather than blaming anybody, let's fix it. The best way to fix it is to raise the minimum wage. That is at the heart of this problem.

An increase to $7 an hour would affect nearly 7 million workers.

I just saw the figures as to what it would mean in Iowa. I have the figures here as to an increase in the minimum wage in Iowa. If we were to increase this minimum wage, there would be 104,000 workers in my State of Iowa who would be making more money--104,000 workers. Do you know what? They will spend that money. They will spend that money because they have to spend it, because their rent is high, their heating bills are high; if they have any health insurance at all, that is skyrocketing. They are paying for food, paying for the kids. That money gets spun around in the economy. It would be a shock of stimulus for the economy.

I am proud to cosponsor the amendment. To say it again, at the heart of this problem is the fact we are just not paying people for the work they do. Why is it people who do the dirtiest kind of work, the humblest kind of work--the kind of people you walk by, and you never notice them; you go into a restaurant, you go in to eat, and then walk out, and you do not notice them; a lot of times you go into stores, they are there, but you kind of walk by them--well, it is time we noticed them. They deserve to be noticed. They are Americans, and they are working hard. They are trying to raise their families and do the right thing, and what do we say to them? Forget it.

I almost hear echoes from some of the comments I have heard on this floor. I have heard echoes there should not even be a minimum wage. Now, I did not hear anybody say that. I said I sort of heard echoes of that: Well, if we set the minimum wage at $7, why can't we set it at $70 an hour or $700 an hour or $7,000 an hour or something like that? Well, that is sort of scoffing at these poor people who are working because it is almost like saying maybe we should not have a minimum wage at all.

There are a lot of countries that do not have the minimum wage. I suppose we could be like them. I always tell people: When it comes to things like having a minimum wage, just keep in mind, there is always someone poorer than you, more desperate than you, lower down on the ladder than you, who will work for less than you are going to work for because they need it. There is always someone poorer, more needy, more desperate.

Is that what our society says: The law of the jungle? Turn the clock backward and just have a welfare system? As Senator Kennedy said, rather than taxing the American people to provide food stamps and welfare benefits and things like that, it is better to raise the minimum wage and give them a decent living wage rather than putting them on welfare. That is bad for the people on welfare.

I supported welfare to work. I believe in it. But in order to move people from welfare to work, they need some health care benefits; they need some childcare. Fortunately, we passed the Snowe amendment. We need an increase in the minimum wage, and they need housing. But keeping them at this less-than-subsistence wage will not do it.

I have almost heard some echoes, also, that this is some kind of a partisan issue. I went back to look at this issue. Senator Kennedy pointed this out, and I have a chart to point it out again. I think it is very instructive. Since Franklin Roosevelt, when we got our first minimum wage in 1938, almost every President has raised the minimum wage, including Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. Interestingly, Reagan and this President Bush are both missing. But it has been bipartisan in the past. We have had Republican Presidents who have raised the minimum wage, as well as Democratic Presidents. So I do not think it is a partisan issue at all. It is an economic issue. And it is how you view the value of work.

Now if you believe people ought to go out there and work for whatever an employer wants to pay you, and if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else and try to get something better. We have tried that before in our country. We see that happening in other Third World countries because there is always some poor sucker worse off than you who will work for less than you will.

I really do not think that is the kind of country we want to become. Work should have honor and dignity, and the minimum wage today is not giving dignity to the work these people do.

I will close. I see the Senator from Idaho wants to speak. I will wrap up in a second.

We are talking about Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The bill on the floor is food assistance.

Listen to this. A 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors--these are not Democrats--looked at the hunger issue, and here is what they found: 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. Thirty-nine percent seeking food assistance were employed. This is from the Conference of Mayors.

They found a leading cause of hunger was low-paying jobs. The Conference of Mayors found emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families--children and their parents. Fifty-nine percent of those who sought emergency food assistance--which means they were at wits end; they had no money, and they had no other place to go, so they requested emergency food assistance--59 percent were members of families--children and their parents.

What did the mayors recommend? What did the Conference of Mayors recommend? They recommended raising the Federal minimum wage as a way the Federal Government could help alleviate hunger. We are being told we cannot do that; we cannot add it to this bill; we cannot even vote on it.

We saw the same thing on overtime: No, we can't vote on that. Put it someplace else. No, we can't vote on minimum wage either.

What is the Senate coming to? Why don't we do as the House of Representatives did, where we used to serve--have a rule where you can't do anything, just pass it. That is why the Senate is different than the House. That is why we are supposed to have open and free-form debate and be able to vote on these issues. But these parliamentary tactics keeping us from

voting on things such as overtime, extending unemployment benefits, and now the minimum wage are unworthy of the Senate, unworthy of this country, unworthy of our jobs.

I close by saying again, this is an issue that cuts very deeply. I remember I was in my home State in the last year, and I found an interesting thing, that more people were relying upon the food banks in Iowa. I thought to myself: Why is that happening? Our unemployment is not that high. It went up a little bit, but why were more people going to food banks in increasing numbers than the unemployment rate was rising?

I found out these are low-income workers. They are minimum-wage workers. They get food stamps. But because we have cut back on food stamps, their food stamps run out about the 20th of the month, and they have to go to the food banks for the rest of the month. I have to believe if it is happening in Iowa, it is happening all over the country.

It is time to give dignity to the people who do the humblest work in our country. Let's get them back up to what they had in the past. If their job in the past was worth what today would be $8.50 an hour, it is at least worth $7 an hour now.

What if we took corporate CEO salaries from 1968 and said they have to now have the same percentage reduction this year as those on minimum wage? Boy, the hue and cry that would go up on that one.

I have made my point. I hope we defeat the cloture petition. I hope we have a vote on increasing the minimum wage, and I hope it passes overwhelmingly. I hope the President will be on board and support it so we can give dignity to our workers.

I thank the Senator from Idaho for his patience and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss with my colleagues two bills that I believe we are being negligent as a body in not taking up and passing. I am sure many of my colleagues are heading to the airport feeling like this week we accomplished a lot, or maybe they feel they gave a lot of speeches. The world is obviously a very dangerous and threatening place right now, and maybe my colleagues think if we get up and we communicate about that, we have done our job in Washington, DC. Well, the discussion is good, but action is even better when it comes to the American people. And there are two critical issues--two critical issues we have bipartisan support on, two critical issues both the House and Senate have passed legislation in the past to deal with and on which we could pass legislation today--that we cannot put on the priority list to take up and take action to help the American people.

The first one is on the electricity grid and reliability. Now, some of my colleagues may remember that the blackout of last August 14 led to a report from a commission that was released more than two weeks ago. When the blackout occurred last summer, we said that we were going to get to the bottom of how it happened and what we should do about it. The No. 1 recommendation from that commission was to make reliability standards mandatory and enforceable, with penalties for noncompliance. People across America probably woke up after that blackout and thought, what happened? How did this whole situation happen to us?

I can tell them how it happened. We do not have any mandatory rules in place for the electricity grid to make sure we protect consumers, that there is a reliability backstop governing actions by these energy companies.

Why is there not? The independent system operators and utilities have rules, but they are not mandatory. In fact, the commission's report said First Energy, one of the key companies involved in last August's blackout, was not complying with the voluntary rules.

Well, I am sure they did not feel there was much penalty in not complying with these rules because they were voluntary. So the commission's report is being very specific about what we should do. Congress needs to get about our business in passing legislation to make these rules mandatory.

Now I know some people think, I have sat a night at home with candles or gotten the flashlight out or my fuse box goes out and it is not so bad. Well, I tell my colleagues, last August's blackout was a bad situation. We had people in New York who could not get down elevators and lived many flights up in apartments. We had an increase of people going to emergency rooms in New York because they were having heart attacks or other kinds of things were happening to them physically. Under the stress of trying to vacate many of the facilities in New York, we had major gridlock for hours. We lost $4 billion to $10 billion economically as the result of the blackout, and we put our senior citizens at great risk of harm because they did not have access to electricity on a hot summer day.

So the question is, what are we going to do about this and are we going to move ahead? Well, I came to speak about this a couple of weeks ago, before we adjourned for the recess. And since then, I find we have now 20 different newspapers across America that basically have asked, why hasn't Congress operated and gotten this done?

For example, the Miami Herald--it is starting to get warm in Miami. People are realizing summer is not that far off and the Miami Herald stated that, ``Another long, hot summer is looming.'' These reliability bills should be enacted and they should be enacted now. That is not surprising since they know what a blackout can do in the heat of a summer.

Another newspaper, the Boston Globe, stated that ``at the top of the commission's proposals is legislation that would make mandatory the grid reliability standards that are now voluntary. Congress should quickly pass a bill . . . that would do just that.''

There is another newspaper that knows about this because its readers were impacted by that electricity grid blackout last August. They know the commission came back and recommended this is what we should do.

The reason I am bringing this issue up now is because I think some people on the other side of the aisle think we are just going to take another stab at the good old Energy bill. We are going to make another attempt to pass legislation that just about every newspaper in America has editorialized against--a bill that myself and my colleagues have called legislation for hooters, polluters, and corporate looters, because those are the kinds of provisions that were included in the Energy bill that drowned out the more notable items such as the reliability standards also buried in there.

Why are we going to continue to hold hostage legislation on reliability standards that would protect consumers across America from future blackouts, just to getting a big, fat energy bill for which there is never enough support? My colleagues know how bad that legislation is.

My colleagues want to continue to use the reliability standards, which all the blackout commissions and various organizations across America have said consumers deserve as protection, as the train driving the energy bill. My colleagues are going to say, no, we are going to keep holding reliability hostage. We want to see if Congress blinks and maybe will go ahead and pass that big energy bill.

Well, do not come to blame this side of the aisle when we do not get the Energy bill and we do not have reliability standards, because we are trying to pass these standards, just as various newspapers across the country are saying. In fact, I think the Detroit Free Press said it best. They said `` . . . the solution lies with Congress. Nearly 8 months post-blackout, it still has not passed mandatory standards. Voters should turn on their power and demand it.''

I think what they mean is that voters should be demanding that we do our job. Reliability legislation could have been brought up any day this week--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I understand my colleagues have probably now gone to catch planes and meet other schedules, but this could be brought up next week. We could make a commitment to have it brought up. I do not think there is controversy over this particular legislation or the original provision as it was included in the Energy bill. It is just being used as bait and being held hostage.

So there are other newspapers across the country that say, ``a responsible energy policy would be to strip out the mandatory federal [reliability] standards and pass them as a stand-alone bill.'' This is from the Memphis newspaper. The people in Memphis, TN, are asking, why are you doing this? Why are you continuing not to pass good legislation just so you can get bad legislation attached to it? When people across America are asking, what is

going on here, we ought to come together as a body and figure this out.

I do not like to be partisan about it because I would rather get it done. I would rather pass it. But newspapers are starting to realize that it is getting partisan. The Philadelphia Inquirer said that Republicans were happy to consider the bill--meaning the Energy bill-- happy to consider taking up some of the Energy bill's tax incentives as part of a corporate tax bill. That meant we took those tax credits out of the Energy bill or were willing to consider some energy tax credit on the FSC/ETI bill. So if we can do that, why can we not break out the reliability measure, why can we not take the reliability measure as stand-alone legislation?

Now, the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council came and spoke before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee just before this report was being released. I asked him this very question. Their job is to try to provide reliability of energy to Americans throughout this country. I asked: Should we pass a stand-alone bill? His response was yes. Now, he was interrupted by the chairman, who then said: We do not need to do that now.

Well, I disagree with the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and I think we should consider moving ahead. I think that is what The Washington Post is saying. It said it would be a shame if there is insistence on the whole bill or nothing. That means holding reliability hostage. It means Congress would never get around to shoring up the electricity grid, and perhaps that is a shame, or perhaps shame is too mild a word.

Well, I know I think it is too mild a word because we have been waiting since 1999 to get this legislation passed. By that, I mean we have had blackouts in various parts of America since 1996, and every time we have had one of those blackouts in those regions, people have come to us in Congress and said that we ought to pass some rules so we can get a mandatory reliability scheme in place and so utilities have to comply.

We have had multiple blackouts since 1996. This picture shows across America where we have had blackouts since then. You can see the huge amounts of territory in various States: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Washington, up now to the northeastern part of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. I ask my colleagues, are we going to wait until every State in the country has a blackout and then finally say, ``Oh, I guess we get the message, I guess we ought to do something about it?''

I think the newspaper that said it best was the Indianapolis Star. These newspapers across America have shone a bright light on what has been an issue that most Members would like to get away from and not pay attention to. The Indianapolis Star said it best:

. . . if the lights go out again this summer, spare the

investigation. Congress is to blame.

I think that paper said it best. This is about us doing our job. This is about the attempt to bring up other legislation that may or may not have the agreement necessary for it to be passed, or to pass a cloture motion. There is support for this legislation. There is a report that demands our attention. There are consumers who are waiting for protection. We should do our job.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate now turn to Calendar No. 465, S. 2236, a bill to enhance the reliability of the electric system, that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, without any intervening action or debate.

How much time do I have, Mr. President?

Mr. President, that sums it up. I am going to be here every day next week that we are in session, asking to pass this bill and asking my colleagues why, in the name of the American consumer and the assurance of our economy that cannot afford to have an unstable electricity grid with no rules and regulations, and energy companies that do not have to meet mandatory requirements--why we are not protecting these consumers.

Many of my colleagues know there is another issue this Senator believes has not gotten the attention of this body. Each month another set of unemployment and job creation numbers come out. And each month the American public becomes more and more convinced that we are not living up to the prediction and promise of 2.6 million jobs that were supposed to be created this year. And because of that empty promise, the American people want to know when this body will take up and pass legislation to reinstate the unemployment compensation program.

This program was designed for times just like these. The Federal government has an obligation to make sure this program is in place. What do you do during tough economic situations? You pass a Federal program to help ease the pain of those who are unemployed and cannot find work.

In the Economic Report of the President, Mr. Bush's Administration projected that this year we were going to create 2.6 million jobs. We are nowhere near that projection. In fact, last month was the first month we saw any real job growth at all. But, after just one month of decent growth some people are saying that the economy is all better. But, there are many economists who disagree. The Miami Herald ran this headline:

Jobs Report: Mixed Messages. The White House gets a boost

from strong job growth, but economists say unemployment will

remain a problem.

Economists are saying it will remain a problem because the number of jobs being created is a long way away from what we need to get America back to work. There are 8.4 million Americans out of work. After the job creation in March, 8.1 million of those Americans will still be out of work.

Here's what the Dayton Daily News said:

Maybe there are brighter days ahead. But that's no comfort

now to the unprecedented number of laid-off workers, who have

scrambled without success to find a job and . . . [they have]

lost the little bit of help given under the State

unemployment benefits programs.

So now those laid-off workers are looking to us for help. They want to know why they and their employers paid into the unemployment insurance system if there's no program to help them when they need it. There is $15.4 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund--a fund that was created for economic times like these--and the federal government is not going to help us through this unemployment crisis.

What is really happening in this recovery is that there are 1.1 million jobless workers who have exhausted their benefits and are not receiving additional support. That is the number. Those 1.1 million people and the people who are following behind them want to point out to this Congress that the economy is not getting better at a fast enough pace to help them put food on the table today.

I think that drawing a comparison to the first Bush administration is helpful because the first Bush administration faced a similar problem with the economy in the early 1990s. That recession was not as deep as the one we are dealing with today. In fact, during that recession we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs, while in this recession we lost a total of 2.6 million. But in the last recession, even after the economy had started to create jobs, George H.W. Bush still extended unemployment benefits. The reason that administration passed an extension, even though job creation had started, was because they knew that it was going to be a long road to get to a place where there were enough jobs for Americans who wanted and needed to work. They also knew that unemployment benefits are a stimulus for the economy--the people pay their mortgage, keep their health insurance, keep food on the table, until the job creation engine of the private sector started going again. That is what the temporary federal benefits are. They are insurance until the economy gets going again.

We have had this debate back and forth, too, about who is to blame about this issue, or what is the big holdup. We have the Treasury Secretary who actually came to my State and said: We don't really believe that 2.6 million job creation number. Yes, the administration said it, but we don't think it is really going to happen. We don't know what the number is going to be.

So, we have the administration saying they really don't know how many jobs will be created this year. Then we have had Mr. Greenspan, who most people respect, come before a variety of committees. He just came before the Joint Economic Committee this week. When he was asked if we should extend unemployment benefits, he said:

I do think it's a good idea, largely because of the size of

exhaustions.

What he is saying is that those 1.1 million people who have exhausted their jobs are out there to demonstrate that the economy isn't getting better at a fast enough pace. Therefore, we should continue the Federal program until we see more job creation.

That is what I think should happen. I see lots of people across the country who are very frustrated by this.

In fact, the Dayton News just in the last few weeks said:

GOP leaders still dodging jobless.

That is not this Democratic Senator saying this. This is a newspaper in a State that has been as hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs as my State has. Ohio and Washington are among the highest unemployment States. They are saying GOP leaders are dodging the jobless. Why are they saying that? Here's the answer of the Dayton paper:

What's troubling . . . is how some Republican leaders are

hoisting another ``Mission Accomplished'' banner, this one to

hide the struggle of more than a million unemployed workers

who have exhausted State benefits without finding another

job.

That is the Dayton paper saying that. That is not this

Senator.

I happen to agree with the paper's point, that we should take care of these 1.1 million people Greenspan says are not getting help. The economists are saying we are not recovering fast enough; give these people the benefit. I believe the Senate must act.

That is what Business Week said:

Government actions will act as a bridge that will help the

economy cross over this extended valley of almost nonexistent

hiring.

That is Business Week.

Why do they say that? Because they know the best thing for us to do is pass the unemployment benefits and create a bridge until we see substantial job creation.

I can't think of a better source to listen to than Business Week, which analyzes business trends, or Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, when they say we ought to pass these benefits.

This is about the 16th or 17th time we have been to the floor. I know people say we are working on something. People say, Let's compromise. Let us cut the program in half. But, Alan Greenspan didn't say cut the program in half. The Dayton newspaper didn't say cut it in half.

Unanimous Consent Request

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now turn to Calendar No. 470, which is S. 2250, a bill to extend unemployment insurance benefits for displaced workers, that the bill be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table without intervening action or debate.

Thank you, Mr. President.

How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 30 seconds.

The Presiding Officer has been so kind to listen with interest to these two issues. I hope he and my other colleagues will take these two issues to heart. I am being pointed in my remarks today because I believe these are two issues this body has the responsibility to deal with. These are two issues we can't get done and we are holding the American people hostage by not addressing our basic domestic economic security needs by giving people jobs and the reliable security of electricity grids.

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