Keeping American Jobs at Home Act

Mr. President, it is a privilege to join my colleagues in introducing the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004.

The attacks of September 11 changed this nation forever. Much has been done since then to combat the threat of terrorism and make America safer. But not every measure or policy adopted after 9/11 has been effective, legal, or fair. The strengthening of security has sometimes meant the weakening of civil liberties. Often, the Bush Administration has misused the fear of terrorism as an excuse to ignore basic rights in our society.

Immigrants, especially Arabs and Muslims, became targets as the Administration carried out roundups of individuals based on national origin and religion, rather than any specific assessment of danger. Abusive detention practices took place. Registration programs have made criminal suspects out of legal immigrants.

These changes were implemented without Congressional consultation or approval. They have swept much too broadly and eliminated necessary checks and balances that prevent abuse. They have squandered our limited resources and have been more successful in alienating immigrant communities than in apprehending terrorists. We cannot allow fear to trump and trample the values upon which our country was founded. Our Nation can be both secure and free.

The Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004 will provide basic civil liberties protections, and restore balance and fairness to our laws in the treatment of immigrants. It will preserve fundamental rights without endangering national security. It will restore the confidence of immigrant communities, especially those unfairly targeted by recent and current policies.

It will place reasonable limitations on closed immigration hearings. On September 21, 2001, the Attorney General ordered immigration judges to close all hearings on individuals detained in the 9/11 investigation. In a highly critical report issued by the Inspector General of the Justice Department in April 2003 we learned that many were arrested as a result of ``chance encounters or tenuous connections'' to the investigation, rather than ``any genuine indications of a possible connection with or possession of information about terrorist activity.''

Nevertheless, over 600 immigration hearings were held in secret. Visitors, the press and even family members of the detainees were excluded. Consistent with the First Amendment, our legislation authorizes the closing of immigration hearings only when the government can demonstrate a compelling privacy or national security interest.

The bill will restore other due process protections weakened after 9/ 11. Before that, the INS was required to give notice to detained non- citizens within 24 hours of arrest, informing them of the charges against them. On September 20, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a regulation extending that period to 48 hours or ``an additional reasonable period of time'' in ``emergency or other extraordinary circumstances.''

This open-ended change led to serious abuses. As the Inspector General reported, some detainees were held for more than a month after their arrest, without being told of the charges against them. Often they were held in harsh and restrictive conditions and prevented from consulting with their attorneys.

Our legislation will require a charging document to be served within 48 hours of an arrest or detention. Non-citizens held for more than 48 hours would have to be brought before an immigration judge within 72 hours of their arrest or detention, with an exception for non-citizens who are certified by the Attorney General, based on reasonable grounds, as having engaged in espionage or a terrorist offense.

After 9/11, the Bush Administration also adopted policies that deny bond to many immigrants with no individual assessment of their danger or flight risk. Two examples of this policy were the ``hold until cleared'' policy criticized by the Inspector General's report, and the Attorney General's precedent decision declaring that all Haitians arriving by sea were a national security threat and must be detained.

Unilateral executive branch decisions mandating detention violate fundamental rights. Blanket detentions of persons who pose no flight risk or harm to the community waste valuable resources that should be used to apprehend criminals and terrorists.

Our legislation will require the Secretary of Homeland Security to provide all detainees with individual assessments to determine whether they pose a flight risk or a threat to public safety, except those in categories specifically designated by Congress as posing a special threat. If the individual is eligible for release, the Secretary must set a reasonable bond or other conditions to guarantee the person's appearance at future proceedings, and this decision would be subject to review by an immigration judge.

The authority of immigration judges was further weakened by an October 2001 regulation that authorizes the Attorney General to stay a decision by an immigration judge to release an individual if bond had originally been denied, or had been set at $10,000 or more. The current regulation goes too far. It allows the government's immigration attorneys to overrule a decision by an immigration judge that an individual does not pose a risk.

The bill puts reasonable limitations on this automatic stay authority. The Board of Immigration Appeals could stay the immigration judge's bond decision for a limited time, only when the government is likely to prevail in appealing that decision and there is a risk of irreparable harm in the absence of a stay.

In early 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a series of ``procedural reforms'' purportedly designed to eliminate the backlog of cases in the Board of Immigration Appeals. Altering its practices in accordance with the new mandates, the Board has issued thousands of single-member decisions affirming without written opinions the decisions of the immigration judges. Before the changes took effect, 1 in 4 appeals was granted, now only 1 in 10 is granted. Instead of eliminating the backlog, however, the cases have shifted to the federal courts. The number of Board decisions being appealed to the federal courts has increased dramatically. The Ninth Circuit has received over 4,200 immigration appeals, more than four times the usual number.

These so-called reforms highlight the degree to which integrity and impartiality of the immigration courts have been compromised. To correct the problem, the bill establishes an independent regulatory agency within the Department of Justice to administer the immigration court system. Integrity would be restored by enabling Board Members and immigration judges to exercise independent judgment and discretion. The reforms will help ensure that individuals and families receive fair treatment in immigration decisions, which can have profound consequences for immigrants and refugees, such as permanent separation from loved ones, or deportation to countries where they may face persecution and even death.

The Act will also end the infamous National Security Entry-Exit Registration System--the NSEERS program which was launched by Attorney General Ashcroft in August 2002 and which required men from predominately Muslim or Arab countries to be fingerprinted, photographed, and interrogated, based on the absurd notion that terrorists would present themselves for registration and be caught.

As Vincent Cannistraro, former director of Counterterrorism Operations at the CIA, has said, policies like the NSEERS program caused fear and distrust and worked ``against intelligence-gathering by law enforcement, particularly the FBI.'' At a time when we needed vital intelligence information, members of these communities were unfairly stigmatized and discouraged from coming forward to help our law enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts.

According to Department of Homeland Security officials, no one registered under the NSEERS program was ever charged with terrorism. Last December, significant parts of the NSEERS program were suspended. Our bill will terminate it completely, and it will also close removal proceedings for certain individuals targeted under it.

A related issue is the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. More than 14,000 individuals who voluntarily complied with the NSEERS program were placed in removal proceedings for technical immigration violations, even though many of them had relief available to them or were in the process of applying for permanent residence. Immigration officers routinely refused to use their discretion not to arrest these individuals, or not to initiate removal proceedings against them, or not to release them from detention. The result was a massive diversion of resources away from investigations, prosecutions, and removals of criminals and terrorists.

Our bill will codify an immigration memorandum which outlines the parameters for the responsible exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The legislation makes clear that such discretion is not an invitation to violate or ignore the law, but is intended to give the government the flexibility to maximize its allocation of resources. Exercise of such discretion is particularly appropriate in light of the complexity of the immigration laws, the harshness of the consequences of enforcement, and the importance of conserving limited enforcement resources so that they are available for use against individuals who threaten our safety and security.

Given the problems inherent in the NSEERS program, the government should reconsider all pending NSEERS cases and determine whether a favorable exercise of discretion is warranted. Family ties, humanitarian concerns, and eligibility for relief are positive factors that should be considered in assessing such cases.

Our bill also protects the integrity of the National Crime Information Center database. For decades, in maintaining the database, the Department of Justice was required to obey the Privacy Act, which requires each agency to maintain its records ``with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individuals in the determination.'' In March 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a regulation stating that these requirements no longer applied to the NCIC database, and justified the exemption because ``in the collection of information for law enforcement purposes it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete.''

Our legislation requires the Attorney General to comply with the Privacy Act in maintaining the database. Circumventing this statutory obligation poses significant risks not only for individuals whose files may be part of this data system, but also for communities that rely on law enforcement to employ effective, reliable methods for protecting public safety.

This requirement is especially important today. The Attorney General announced last year that information on more than 400,000 persons with removal orders and an unknown number of alleged NSEERS violators would be included in the database. The error rate in immigration records has always been very high--a fact confirmed by numerous reports issued by the Inspector General. Requiring the Attorney General to comply with the Privacy Act will help prevent inaccurate and unreliable information from contaminating the database and harming individuals and communities.

The bill also protects privacy by ensuring that constitutional limitations apply to secret surveillance. The Patriot Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Service Act to permit surveillance or searches when a ``significant purpose'', not just the ``primary purpose'', of the surveillance or search is foreign intelligence. Under current procedures, when such evidence is brought before a court, it is nearly impossible for a criminal defendant to contest its introduction, because the government's application for the search is kept secret. When such evidence is used in criminal cases, the court should disclose the application and related materials to the defendant, subject to the Classified Information Procedures Act, which offers a balanced and effective way to protect both national security information and the rights of defendants.

In addition, the legislation provides that when such information from electronic surveillance and other sources is introduced in a criminal case, disclosure of the surveillance application, order, or other materials is permitted under the procedures in the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Finally, the bill addresses the practice of data-mining. Through comprehensive data-mining, many records that people believe are private can be

collected by computer, fed into a database and used by the government without their knowledge. Law enforcement must have the necessary means to protect our safety, but the use of data-mining technology should not be allowed to threaten privacy and civil liberties.

The legislation will require all federal agencies to report to Congress within 90 days and annually in future years on data-mining programs used to find patterns indicating terrorist or other criminal activity and the effect of these programs on civil liberties and privacy, so that Congress can exercise its oversight authority over federal agencies using this technology.

We know that we can protect our nation's security and still respect the basic rights of both citizens and immigrants. The Civil Liberties Restoration Act is a needed effort to end the abuse that has become all too common in the past three years, and Congress has a responsibility to end them. It has been said that our laws are the wise restraints that make us free. The restraints have been weakened in recent years, and we need to make them stronger.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today Senator Johnson and I are introducing a bill that reflects the concerns of tribal leaders about the lack of progress on trust management reform and their dissatisfaction with the Department of the Interior's reorganization plan to deal with it. It offers an alternative to the Department's approach that tribal chairmen in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions believe will better serve their members.

Trust reform is a particularly vexing issue that has confounded Federal policymakers and frustrated Native Americans for years. But the bottom line is that when the United States Government divided Indian lands in 1887, it made a commitment, through solemn treaty obligations, to hold those lands in trust, to manage them wisely, and to give any income from the sale or lease of the land to its Indian owners. It has never fulfilled that promise.

The Indian trust has been so badly mismanaged, for so long, by Administrations of both political parties, that no one today has any idea how much money should even be in the trust--let alone, how much is owed to individual account holders and to tribes, and for what. Meanwhile, too many individual and tribal community needs go unmet in Indian Country because of the lack of resources. That is the contradiction that simply cannot be allowed to continue.

I know that the Interior Department has gone to great efforts to reform its internal structure to get a handle on the administration of the Indian trust fund. And I appreciate that Interior officials believe that their reorganization plan has been shaped, at least in part, by ``listening sessions'' it held in Indian Country. Yet, the fact remains that tribal leaders around the country do not accept the premise that those meetings represented true consultation, and they do not accept the Department's reorganization plan as a legitimate response to mismanagement of the Indian trust. A number of tribal leaders have told me that the Department's ``listening sessions'' were hardly that, but could more accurately be described as a notification of how the Department would proceed.

Tribal leaders in my State believe strongly that the Department's reorganization plan moves in the wrong direction. Instead of integrating the trust and ``non-trust'' functions of the Department, it separates those functions even further. They also believe the plan ignores the unique character of each region's challenges. The Great Plains Region, for example, has more Individual Indian Money Account holders than any other region and holds 33 percent of the nation's tribal trust assets.

I acknowledge that this is a difficult problem and that some in the Administration sincerely desire to solve the trust management problem in a way that ensures that stakeholders receive what is due them in a timely manner. I also greatly appreciate the attention devoted to this matter. However, I do believe some of that attention has been misdirected. And, given the recent history of the trust reform debate, I have no credible answer to tribal leaders' lament that the Department appears more interested in undercutting the Cobell v. Norton lawsuit than in considering the opinion of tribes in South Dakota or the rest of Indian Country.

Since the Department formally unveiled its reorganization proposal earlier last year, numerous questions have been raised about exactly how this reorganization, which is currently being advanced administratively, will improve the present trust fund management and accounting procedures.

What are the role and responsibilities of the Special Trustee's trust officers who will be dispatched throughout Indian Country, and how will these positions relate to the local and regional BIA offices? Is this a duplication of services?

Who has oversight over these positions, and what accountability mechanism is in place to monitor their performance? What are the lines of authority?

Will Indian preference apply to any new positions that are created by the reorganization?

Why is the reorganization effort affecting the Office of Indian Education Programs when the court mandate affects only trust fund management reform? Does the plan violate the BIA amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization?

The list of questions is long, and tribal leaders and their constituents deserve answers. Those answers cannot be gleaned from the 18 pages of organizational charts the Department has provided as a rationale for its plan to reorganize the BIA and the Office of the Special Trustee.

This past February tribal leaders from nearly every Indian Nation in America traveled to Washington for a meeting of the National Congress of American Indians to discuss a variety of issues, including trust reform. They expressed unanimous opposition to the Department of Interior's reorganization efforts, and their urgent plea to Congress was that the federal government work with Native people to find an honorable and equitable solution to the Indian trust fund dispute.

In March, in an appearance before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Tex Hall, Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and President of the National Congress of American Indians, testified that tribal leaders do not believe that their views are reflected in the Department's trust reorganization plan. And the Chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Michael Jandreau, a member of the BIA-Tribal Task Force on trust reform, told the Committee that ``meaningful involvement [of] and input from tribal leadership'' and the failure by the federal government to recognize ``obvious treaty obligations'' are contributing to the inability to reach consensus on trust reform.

This disagreement between Indian Country and Washington runs deep and cannot be solved by Interior Department officials simply re-drawing lines on organizational charts. The search for resolution must include real, meaningful, and ongoing consultation between Department officials and the tribes and tribal leaders. After all, we are talking about Indian people's money.

At the March Committee hearing, Harold Frazier, testifying in his capacities as Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and as Chairman of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association, offered both a critique of the Department's reorganization plan and an alternative to it. He emphasized that a majority of Indian tribes opposed the reorganization, not just because it was implemented without ``meaningful tribal consultation,'' but also because ``a one-size-fits- all approach to trust management reform is certain to fail.'' While acknowledging that some aspects of reform, such as land consolidation and improved record-keeping, are better managed at the national level, Chairman Frazier pointed out that basic services provided at the agency level are the key to the most efficient utilization of trust assets and that these resource decisions are best made at the local level

so they may be adapted to serve tribal beneficiaries' unique needs. And he offered the Great Plains Regional Proposal for Trust Reform as an alternative to the Department's reorganization plan.

Senator Johnson and I believe that Chairman Frazier has made a constructive contribution to breaking the trust impasse, and the bill we are introducing today codifies the Great Plains Regional Proposal for Trust Reform, as expanded by the inclusion of the Rocky Mountain Regional Tribes. It is based on the principle that differences among tribes in population, employment, revenue base, and even geographic location effect the type of trust reform suitable for each area, and it has precedent in a provision of the FY 2004 Interior Appropriations bill, Section 139, that exempted certain self-governance tribes from the Interior reorganization plan.

Our proposal exempts the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain tribes from the Department of the Interior's trust reform reorganization, excluding current efforts to reform Indian probate and encourage land consolidation, thereby precluding the Department from reorganizing the BIA at the agency level. It also stipulates that any funds appropriated to accomplish trust reform at the agency level within the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Regions can be expended only under plans developed by local tribes in cooperation with, and with the approval of, the Department of the Interior. And it authorizes $200,000 for the Great Plains Region and $200,000 for the Rocky Mountain Region to be used for the development of agency-specific reorganization plans.

The legislation Senator Johnson and I are introducing today is not intended to end the trust reform debate. We still do not have an historical accounting of trust income; we still do not know if certain records exist; and we still do not know how much the United States of America owes to Indian people and to the Tribes. Neither is the legislation intended to limit other regions searching for their own solutions; to the contrary, we and the tribes of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions respect other regions' rights to develop proposals that meet their own unique needs. But we do hope our proposal will help refocus the debate in a more constructive, substantive, cost- effective manner, acknowledging that the tribes know what is best for them and should be consulted--in a meaningful way--and play a key role in this process.

The tribes understand that the Interior and Treasury Departments, the BIA, and the Special Trustee for American Indians must be their allies in the search for a solution. But friction over reorganization has diverted attention from the more fundamental challenge of providing a full and fair accounting to Indian people, and ultimately paying the money that is owed to them and the tribes.

Now that the Department has been given authorization to proceed administratively with its reorganization plan, I hope the Department will submit to Congress a legislative proposal on how to address the underlying, substantive problem that we have been wrestling with for far too long. I also hope the Department will embrace the pilot program Senator Johnson and I are proposing today, with the support of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Tribal Chairmen's Associations.

In closing, I think it is extremely important to reflect on two central facts about the Indian trust debate as we consider the proposed reorganization of the BIA and the OST, and the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains Tribal Chairmen's Associations' ideas for localizing trust reform.

First, residents of Indian Country have been victimized for generations by persistent mismanagement of trust assets by the federal government. Far too many families for far too long have been denied trust assets to which they are entitled because of Federal mismanagement. And this situation has adversely affected their quality of life.

Second, frustration with the Federal Government's failure to come to grips with this problem has not only led to litigation (Cobell v. Norton), it has also solidified the tribes' determination to be part of the solution to the problem. Effective trust management reform will remain an elusive goal if the tribes are not full participants in this exercise.

We need to recognize the human dimension and consequences of trust mismanagement, and we need to accept that tribal leaders must be equal partners in its reform. The bottom line is that the tribes do not have the resources they need to adequately address the full range of socio- economic challenges they face. In the case of trust reform, the issue is not simply boxes on an organizational chart, but lives that literally hang in the balance.

Yesterday I met with Chairman Frazier, Chairman Jandreau, and Oglala Sioux Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele. Their frustrations with the Department's reorganization proposal could be summed up with the comments made by one chairman and echoed by the other two: ``They left us out of the equation. We have many of the records, and we know what adjustments need to be made at the agency level to address our local needs. Whether it's historical accounting or reorganization, we have to be part of the solution.''

It's a concept so simple that it should go without saying, but the Administration has not adhered to it. But we still have a chance to turn that around. The tribes of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming have stepped up to the plate. They aren't just complaining about the Administration's proposal; they're offering their own. They've developed regional proposals to fit their unique regional needs. We should respect their judgment, and the judgment of other regions that will undoubtedly follow with their own proposals.

The history of trust management has been a travesty, and, without a concerted and open-minded effort to address the issue, the future will not be any better. The United States has a fiduciary responsibility to Indian Country based on numerous treaty obligations. We must satisfy our obligations. We must work together to craft a solution to the underlying trust problem. Let's start by granting the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Regions greater autonomy to fashion their own trust solutions.

Mr. President, the death last week of President Ronald Reagan has focused our attention on the ravages that Alzheimer's inflicts not only on the person with the disease, but the entire family.

Alzheimer's disease currently affects 4.5 million Americans. As the baby boom generation ages that number is expected to explode. Without advances in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, we can not only expect a growing emotional toll on those suffering from the disease and their families, but also a significant drain on the already strained resources of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

However, there is reason to be hopeful. We now know that Alzheimer's Disease is not a normal part of aging, and that there may be ways to prevent the disease. Scientists are beginning to focus on the protective effects of mental, physical and social activity, and believe that following a diet and exercise program similar to that for people with heart disease may delay the onset of Alzheimer's.

The legislation will accelerate important prevention research, in part by putting the National Institute of Aging Alzheimer's Disease Prevention Initiative into law.

In addition, this legislation includes two important changes to our tax laws that would provide greater Federal assistance to those who bear the burden of assisting patients with Alzheimer's and other conditions requiring long-term care. Over 13 million people in the United States need help with basic activities of daily living such as eating, getting in and out of bed, getting around inside, dressing, bathing and using the toilet. While many Americans believe that long- term care is an issue primarily affecting seniors, the reality is that 5.2 million adults between the ages of 18-64 and over 450,000 children need long-term care services today. These numbers are expected to double as the baby boom generation begins to retire.

Most long-term care is provided at home or in the community by informal caregivers. However, in situations where individuals must enter nursing homes or other institutional facilities, costs are paid largely out-of-pocket. Such a financing structure jeopardizes the retirement security of many Americans who have worked hard their entire lives.

The Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's Breakthrough Act provides two important tools to help Americans and their families meet their immediate and future long-term care needs--an above-the-line income tax deduction for the purchase of long-term care insurance and a caregiver tax credit.

First, the bill provides an above-the-line deduction for long-term care premiums to make long-term care insurance more affordable for a greater number of Americans. Today, such premiums are deductible, but the availability of the deduction is severely limited. First, the current deduction is available only for the thirty percent of taxpayers who itemize their deductions. That leaves the remaining seventy percent of taxpayers with absolutely no benefit. Second, the deduction is limited to an amount, which in addition to other medical expenses exceeds 7.5 percent the taxpayers adjusted gross income. This AGI limit further decreases the utilization of the current deduction.

Our legislation removes these restrictions and makes the deduction for long-term care premiums available to all taxpayers.

In order to provide sufficient incentives for families to maintain long-term care coverage, the deduction allowed under this bill increases the longer the policy is maintained. The deduction starts at 60 percent for premiums paid during the first year of coverage and gradually increases each year thereafter until the deduction reaches 100 percent after at least four years of continuous coverage. This schedule is accelerated for those age 55 or older. For those individuals, the deduction starts at 70 percent for the first year and increases to 100 percent after at least two years of continuous coverage.

Second, the bill provides an income tax credit for taxpayers with long-term care needs. The credit is phased in over 4 years, starting at $1,000 for 2003 and eventually reaching $3,000. To target assistance to those most in need, the credit phases out for married couples with income above $150,000 $75,000 for single taxpayers)''

The bill also updates the requirements that long-term care policies must meet in order to qualify for the income tax deduction. These updated requirements reflect the most recent model regulations and code issued by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

I urge my colleagues to join Senators Mikulski, Bond, Grassley, Clinton, Warner and me in cosponsoring this legislation.

Mr. President, as Ranking Member of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation I

introduce today, the proposed ``G.I. Bill for the 21st Century,'' a bill to improve home-buying and education options for America's veterans.

We have reached a milestone in American history. The pending measure is a fitting tribute to our nation's veterans as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the ``G.I. Bill.'' The G.I. Bill, for veterans of World War II, is recognized as one of the most important acts of Congress.

The G.I. Bill ensured that all who sacrificed through service would not be penalized as a result of their war service and upon their return would be aided in reaching the positions which they might have occupied had their lives not been interrupted by war. This legendary piece of legislation alleviated postwar troubles and anticipated economic depression. During the past six decades, this government has invested billions of dollars in education and training for veterans. America has received a return on its investments many times over, resulting in a better educated, better trained, and dramatically changed society. In fact, many Members of this Senate have benefited from its far-reaching impact. In addition to its provisions for education and training, the G.I. Bill allowed millions of veterans the opportunity to purchase homes, transforming the majority of Americans from renters to homeowners.

The G.I. Bill not only eased the transition of servicemen and women back into civilian life, it transformed American society. The social and economic class structure of the United States was forever changed and the boundaries that once encompassed class status were blurred. The bill expanded opportunities for lower- and middle-class families to own their own homes and to attend college. This expansion led to the evolution of the higher education system and paved the way for future individuals from all cultural and economic backgrounds to have access to higher education. The 7.8 million men and women who used their G.I. Bill benefits cultivated a new and progressive workforce that placed more people in professional career roles, especially in critical-need areas such as education, engineering, and health care.

We must continue to ensure that veterans' education benefits change to meet the needs of veterans and their families who use them. We should continue with the original intent of the G.I. Bill to increase the ability of our veterans to acquire higher education. We have servicemembers fighting the war on terrorism world-wide and a whole new generation of combat veterans being created, as was the situation during World War II. We should make every effort to accommodate the educational needs of our veterans, and these changes to the Montgomery G.I. Bill, known as MGIB, are an important step in doing so.

``The G.I. Bill for the 21st Century'' would exclude MGIB benefits from computation as income when calculating campus-based student financial aid, such as Perkins Loans. This, importantly, draws the distinction between a benefit that has been earned, and paid for, by the veteran, and other types of income. This end is furthered by allowing the individual applying for financial aid to subtract $1200 from the expected family contribution. This $1200 represents the money that the individual paid to participate in the MGIB program. Clearly it should not be counted as part of the veteran's income to pay for school. This legislation is in keeping with legislation that I introduced, and that became law, in 1998 that excluded veterans education benefits from being considered as income in the computation of some forms of financial aid.

This legislation also offers an opportunity for enrollment in the MGIB education program for servicemembers who participated in or were eligible to participate in the post-Vietnam era educational assistance program, known as VEAP. Congress created an enrollment window for VEAP- eligible servicemembers to convert to the far more comprehensive MGIB. However, some servicemembers were not able to participate because of financial reasons or did not learn of the enrollment period in time to make the deadline. These individuals have contacted Members of Congress to create another window. As my colleagues know, education can be the key to a successful transition to civilian life. This bill creates a one-year window and requires the servicemember to pay $2700, which was the VEAP contribution.

I have spoken with many veterans and widows of veterans who were not able to immediately go to school. By the time they enrolled, their benefits were expiring. That is why this legislation maintains the 10- year delimiting period for veterans, surviving spouses, and dependents that enroll in training programs, which does not begin to toll until the individual begins the program of study. This would allow eligible participants to utilize the benefit when best for them.

In keeping with my commitment to evolve the educational assistance benefit to meet the needs of those using it, the bill that I introduce today would make national admissions exams such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT, and national exams for credit at institutions of higher education, such as the AP exam covered by MGIB. This would greatly aid the individuals who have been absent from an academic setting for a long period of time and would go a long way in preparing them for their educational endeavors.

As we face the greatest mobilization of troops since World War II, it is only fitting that we act in the spirit of the G.I. Bill to dramatically increase the ability of our veterans and their families to buy homes in competitive housing markets throughout the nation. This bill would change the method by which Congress establishes the maximum amount veterans may borrow through the VA home loan guaranty program.

This legislation would index the maximum VA guaranty loan amount at 100 percent of the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. Under the current system, a specific dollar figure for the VA maximum loan amount is set by legislation. The maximum loan limit has not been changed since 2001. The current maximum guaranty is $60,000, which allows veterans to secure loans to purchase homes costing up to $240,000. Since that time, the Freddie Mac conforming loan rate has increased by over 18 percent. Sadly, the VA loan limit has not kept pace and currently represents only 74 percent of the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. The change would also allow for annual adjustments to the amounts available to veterans, without annual legislation, ensuring that the VA home loan guaranty benefit remain viable in competitive housing markets.

In 1999, Congress passed legislation that changed the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loan Program and permanently indexed FHA loans at 87 percent of the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. Why should we penalize the buying power of our veterans by maintaining a system that has failed to keep pace with annual increases in housing costs throughout the United States? To recognize this service and sacrifice, it only seems right that the loan limit available to veterans be set at a higher rate than the FHA limit. By indexing the VA loan limit at 100 percent, the current VA maximum loan amount would increase from $240,000 to $333,700 and give our veterans greater buying power in a national housing market where the cost of a home continues to rise.

In addition, the Congressional Budget Office, known as CBO, has informally projected that from 2005 to 2009 this increase will help over 10,000 new buyers participate in the VA Loan Guaranty Program. The Budget Office has also projected that the increase in new veteran buyers would generate savings of more than $200 million over the next five years. These savings will then be passed on to our veterans in the form of increased education and training opportunities.

We must fight to ensure that veterans' education benefits are as flexible as those who left their homes and served freedom around the globe at their country's call to service. And, in keeping with the original intent of the G.I. Bill, raising the VA home loan guaranty limit would help more veterans realize the American dream of owning a home of their own. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting these worthwhile efforts.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as many as half a million Americans in the services sector have lost their jobs in the past three years; off- shoring threatens to wipe out 3.3 million more jobs in the coming decade. An off-shoring tsunami is bearing down on workers in the information technology and services sector. The most vulnerable jobs are those considered the cream of the new economy: highly paid database managers, software coders, financial analysts and accountants.

In places like my own State of Oregon, the prolonged jobless recovery is causing many people real pain. Highly educated and experienced workers are being forced to walk an economic tightrope. Displaced software workers with advanced degrees are forced to search for entry- level positions, but employers won't hire them because they're overqualified. In Oregon and elsewhere, the number of discouraged workers leaving the workforce altogether is unprecedented. If these folks were counted the national unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent rather than the current 5.6 percent.

Something in the country's tax and trade policy is seriously awry when productivity is generating wealth for a few, but not employment for the many who want to work. Something just isn't right when people can't find jobs but productivity is growing faster now than in the late 1990's, corporate profits as a share of national income are at an all- time high and all of the extra $220 billion in GDP has gone into corporate profits. In my view part of problem can be traced to U.S. tax and trade policies that actually encourage U.S. corporations to move jobs overseas rather than encourage American business to invest in American workers. These policies need to be changed.

The legislation that I am introducing today, the Keep American Jobs at Home Act, takes a first step toward eliminating tax and trade policies that favor off-shoring and overseas outsourcing at the expense of American workers. It will eliminate tax breaks for off-shoring and extend wage and training and health care premium assistance to serviceworkers who lose their jobs because of trade.

The first key feature of the bill will eliminate tax breaks for U.S. corporate off-shoring so that corporations cannot ship millions of jobs overseas courtesy of the American taxpayer. The average American probably does not know that his or her taxes are used to offset the off-shoring of their own jobs. That's right: current law allows the taxes of hard-working Americans to go right into the pockets of corporations to help them offshore and outsource American jobs. No corporation should get such a tax break, and no American taxpayer should be asked to foot the bill for their own pink slip.

Today, when a corporation sends executives and staff overseas to scope out a new facility, to buy an existing firm, or to hire foreign workers to replace employees in the United States the corporation can deduct the costs from its gross income. This means that the corporation gets a tax break on the compensation of the executives, the salaries and wages of workers, travel, lodging, meals, the cost of Internet access, computer time, copies, faxes and anything else that falls into the broad category of deductions from gross income for trade and business expenses. This means a corporation get a business expense write-off for just about any item imaginable related to off-shoring.

The bill says the costs of off-shoring and outsourcing will no longer be ``ordinary and necessary expenses.'' When is it ever necessary that a taxpayer foot the bill for her own pink slip? When is it ever necessary that taxpayer dollars subsidize the traveling expenses of a group of executives looking to relocate a manufacturing facility in a foreign country?

A respected industry research group predicts that by the end of this year, one of out every ten jobs in the U.S. IT provider industry will move to emerging markets and one out of every 20 IT jobs within user enterprises. And these figures cover jobs only in the IT sector. Under current law, all of the ``ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred'' in moving these millions of jobs overseas would be deductible from corporate gross income.

If a corporation opts to fire U.S. workers here at home and instead hire workers overseas, then the company should make that business decision based on the full cost of the transaction, not the cost subsidized by tax deductions courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Another important part of the bill will put in place a safety net for displaced IT and other service workers. Such a safety net, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, has been in place since l962 for displaced manufacturing workers. This provision will make service sector workers displaced by trade eligible for TAA, giving them retraining, income support and a health insurance tax credit.

I was disappointed when this part of the legislation won a majority vote in the United States Senate recently, but failed to reach the 60 vote threshold needed to overcome a point of order raised by opponents. I believe it is more necessary than ever to provide assistance to workers who lose their jobs because of policies the Federal Government has adopted.

Globalization of technology is globalizing the technology workforce. Geography is increasingly less important in determining where a job can be done. The transformation from an economy built on smokestacks to one built on packets of light has come at a heavy price. Today, a software programmer in Beijing or Bangalore can perform the same tasks as a programmer in Beaverton, OR, but the programmer in Beijing or Bangalore will cost the company as little as one-fifth to one-tenth what the American programmer will be paid.

The irony is that some of the very same workers who launched the technology revolution have now become its victims. Hardly a day goes by without a front page story about an American programmer on his way out having to train a foreign worker who will replace him.

The average American may think the Federal Government is helping those tech workers displaced by trade. But it is not. That's because U.S. trade assistance laws were designed for the manufacturing era. Since 1962, when a worker lost his job in a manufacturing plant as a result of trade, he could get help through the TAA. TAA has helped hundreds of thousands of displaced workers.

But workers in the services sector--which now accounts for four- fifths of the U.S. workforce--are not eligible for TAA. Time after time, when a displaced software developer, accountant, or telemedicine support staff has gone knocking on TAA's door for help, they have been turned away. Our bill will open TAA's door to these and other displaced service sector workers. All of these workers who have been displaced by trade deserve the same benefits.

This part of the bill will establish equity in the Trade Adjustment Assistance program between manufacturing and service workers. It will cover three categories of trade-impacted service workers: 1. those who lose their jobs when their employer closes or lays off because of import competition; 2. public and private sector service workers who lose their jobs when their facility moves overseas; and 3. secondary service workers who provide services to a primary firm where workers are eligible for TAA and whose closure causes the layoff or closure at the secondary firm.

Why is TAA so important? Because it provides retraining, income support, health insurance tax credit and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs due to trade. It can also help ``secondary workers''-- those supplying parts or services and who may lose their jobs when the facility they service shuts down due to import competition or moves overseas.

Another innovative way to encourage the unemployed to reenter the workforce is to provide wage insurance for qualifying displaced workers upon reemployment. Eligible workers receive up to $10,000 over two years to cover up to 50 percent of the difference in salary between a new, lower paying job and their former position. The bill also would lower the qualifying age from 50 to 40. Wage insurance helps ease the burden of reentry for eligible workers who cannot find new employment at wages comparable to their previous positions.

Workers reeling from the off-shoring of service sector jobs cannot afford to wait for the higher-skilled jobs economists promise are around the corner. Higher-value, higher-paid systems integration jobs may come along, but in this jobless recovery unemployed IT professionals are more likely to see Elvis than a sudden proliferation of help wanted ads for new, highly-skilled IT jobs. The wage insurance and TAA pieces of this legislation address what American workers really need: a fighting chance to survive in a relentlessly global economy.

This provision offers corporate boards of directors and officers a safe harbor against shareholder lawsuits involving a business decision not to outsource or off-shore American jobs. A corporation that chooses to keep its workers out of breadlines over the numbers on its bottom line should not run the risk that it could be sued for potentially lower profits or return to shareholders.

In 2002, Congress offered TAA workers help in paying for health insurance while they pursue TAA training or retraining. The vast majority of unemployed workers just don't have the money to afford health care for themselves and their families. The Health Care Tax Credit program was intended to help workers keep coverage until they are reemployed. Unfortunately, the level of premium assistance and bureaucratic obstacles led to fewer than five percent of eligible workers taking advantage of the health care tax credit.

The provisions in Title II of the bill seek to remove these barriers to participation. The bill would boost the premium coverage from 65 percent to 75 percent, clarify that any TAA worker who had three months coverage prior to losing his job is eligible for the HCTC, allow workers to get less expensive group coverage, give coverage to spouses of Medicare-eligible TAA recipients workers, and require the IRS to expedite refunds of the first month's tax credit.

In closing, I recall that the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors just a few months ago called off-shoring ``just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing. When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically.''

If this is the ``new way of doing international trade,'' the United States needs a new policy to help the nearly 4 million Americans whose information technology and related jobs have been or are expected to be moved overseas. The country needs a tax and trade policy that promotes rather than discourages investment in American workers. The country needs a tax and trade policy that eases rather than increases the pain of worker dislocation and that eliminates the tax breaks that entice U.S. businesses to move overseas. These are the goals of the Keep American Jobs at Home Act, and I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as many as half a million Americans in the services sector have lost their jobs in the past three years; off- shoring threatens to wipe out 3.3 million more jobs in the coming decade. An off-shoring tsunami is bearing down on workers in the information technology and services sector. The most vulnerable jobs are those considered the cream of the new economy: highly paid database managers, software coders, financial analysts and accountants.

In places like my own State of Oregon, the prolonged jobless recovery is causing many people real pain. Highly educated and experienced workers are being forced to walk an economic tightrope. Displaced software workers with advanced degrees are forced to search for entry- level positions, but employers won't hire them because they're overqualified. In Oregon and elsewhere, the number of discouraged workers leaving the workforce altogether is unprecedented. If these folks were counted the national unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent rather than the current 5.6 percent.

Something in the country's tax and trade policy is seriously awry when productivity is generating wealth for a few, but not employment for the many who want to work. Something just isn't right when people can't find jobs but productivity is growing faster now than in the late 1990's, corporate profits as a share of national income are at an all- time high and all of the extra $220 billion in GDP has gone into corporate profits. In my view part of problem can be traced to U.S. tax and trade policies that actually encourage U.S. corporations to move jobs overseas rather than encourage American business to invest in American workers. These policies need to be changed.

The legislation that I am introducing today, the Keep American Jobs at Home Act, takes a first step toward eliminating tax and trade policies that favor off-shoring and overseas outsourcing at the expense of American workers. It will eliminate tax breaks for off-shoring and extend wage and training and health care premium assistance to serviceworkers who lose their jobs because of trade.

The first key feature of the bill will eliminate tax breaks for U.S. corporate off-shoring so that corporations cannot ship millions of jobs overseas courtesy of the American taxpayer. The average American probably does not know that his or her taxes are used to offset the off-shoring of their own jobs. That's right: current law allows the taxes of hard-working Americans to go right into the pockets of corporations to help them offshore and outsource American jobs. No corporation should get such a tax break, and no American taxpayer should be asked to foot the bill for their own pink slip.

Today, when a corporation sends executives and staff overseas to scope out a new facility, to buy an existing firm, or to hire foreign workers to replace employees in the United States the corporation can deduct the costs from its gross income. This means that the corporation gets a tax break on the compensation of the executives, the salaries and wages of workers, travel, lodging, meals, the cost of Internet access, computer time, copies, faxes and anything else that falls into the broad category of deductions from gross income for trade and business expenses. This means a corporation get a business expense write-off for just about any item imaginable related to off-shoring.

The bill says the costs of off-shoring and outsourcing will no longer be ``ordinary and necessary expenses.'' When is it ever necessary that a taxpayer foot the bill for her own pink slip? When is it ever necessary that taxpayer dollars subsidize the traveling expenses of a group of executives looking to relocate a manufacturing facility in a foreign country?

A respected industry research group predicts that by the end of this year, one of out every ten jobs in the U.S. IT provider industry will move to emerging markets and one out of every 20 IT jobs within user enterprises. And these figures cover jobs only in the IT sector. Under current law, all of the ``ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred'' in moving these millions of jobs overseas would be deductible from corporate gross income.

If a corporation opts to fire U.S. workers here at home and instead hire workers overseas, then the company should make that business decision based on the full cost of the transaction, not the cost subsidized by tax deductions courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Another important part of the bill will put in place a safety net for displaced IT and other service workers. Such a safety net, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, has been in place since l962 for displaced manufacturing workers. This provision will make service sector workers displaced by trade eligible for TAA, giving them retraining, income support and a health insurance tax credit.

I was disappointed when this part of the legislation won a majority vote in the United States Senate recently, but failed to reach the 60 vote threshold needed to overcome a point of order raised by opponents. I believe it is more necessary than ever to provide assistance to workers who lose their jobs because of policies the Federal Government has adopted.

Globalization of technology is globalizing the technology workforce. Geography is increasingly less important in determining where a job can be done. The transformation from an economy built on smokestacks to one built on packets of light has come at a heavy price. Today, a software programmer in Beijing or Bangalore can perform the same tasks as a programmer in Beaverton, OR, but the programmer in Beijing or Bangalore will cost the company as little as one-fifth to one-tenth what the American programmer will be paid.

The irony is that some of the very same workers who launched the technology revolution have now become its victims. Hardly a day goes by without a front page story about an American programmer on his way out having to train a foreign worker who will replace him.

The average American may think the Federal Government is helping those tech workers displaced by trade. But it is not. That's because U.S. trade assistance laws were designed for the manufacturing era. Since 1962, when a worker lost his job in a manufacturing plant as a result of trade, he could get help through the TAA. TAA has helped hundreds of thousands of displaced workers.

But workers in the services sector--which now accounts for four- fifths of the U.S. workforce--are not eligible for TAA. Time after time, when a displaced software developer, accountant, or telemedicine support staff has gone knocking on TAA's door for help, they have been turned away. Our bill will open TAA's door to these and other displaced service sector workers. All of these workers who have been displaced by trade deserve the same benefits.

This part of the bill will establish equity in the Trade Adjustment Assistance program between manufacturing and service workers. It will cover three categories of trade-impacted service workers: 1. those who lose their jobs when their employer closes or lays off because of import competition; 2. public and private sector service workers who lose their jobs when their facility moves overseas; and 3. secondary service workers who provide services to a primary firm where workers are eligible for TAA and whose closure causes the layoff or closure at the secondary firm.

Why is TAA so important? Because it provides retraining, income support, health insurance tax credit and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs due to trade. It can also help ``secondary workers''-- those supplying parts or services and who may lose their jobs when the facility they service shuts down due to import competition or moves overseas.

Another innovative way to encourage the unemployed to reenter the workforce is to provide wage insurance for qualifying displaced workers upon reemployment. Eligible workers receive up to $10,000 over two years to cover up to 50 percent of the difference in salary between a new, lower paying job and their former position. The bill also would lower the qualifying age from 50 to 40. Wage insurance helps ease the burden of reentry for eligible workers who cannot find new employment at wages comparable to their previous positions.

Workers reeling from the off-shoring of service sector jobs cannot afford to wait for the higher-skilled jobs economists promise are around the corner. Higher-value, higher-paid systems integration jobs may come along, but in this jobless recovery unemployed IT professionals are more likely to see Elvis than a sudden proliferation of help wanted ads for new, highly-skilled IT jobs. The wage insurance and TAA pieces of this legislation address what American workers really need: a fighting chance to survive in a relentlessly global economy.

This provision offers corporate boards of directors and officers a safe harbor against shareholder lawsuits involving a business decision not to outsource or off-shore American jobs. A corporation that chooses to keep its workers out of breadlines over the numbers on its bottom line should not run the risk that it could be sued for potentially lower profits or return to shareholders.

In 2002, Congress offered TAA workers help in paying for health insurance while they pursue TAA training or retraining. The vast majority of unemployed workers just don't have the money to afford health care for themselves and their families. The Health Care Tax Credit program was intended to help workers keep coverage until they are reemployed. Unfortunately, the level of premium assistance and bureaucratic obstacles led to fewer than five percent of eligible workers taking advantage of the health care tax credit.

The provisions in Title II of the bill seek to remove these barriers to participation. The bill would boost the premium coverage from 65 percent to 75 percent, clarify that any TAA worker who had three months coverage prior to losing his job is eligible for the HCTC, allow workers to get less expensive group coverage, give coverage to spouses of Medicare-eligible TAA recipients workers, and require the IRS to expedite refunds of the first month's tax credit.

In closing, I recall that the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors just a few months ago called off-shoring ``just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing. When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically.''

If this is the ``new way of doing international trade,'' the United States needs a new policy to help the nearly 4 million Americans whose information technology and related jobs have been or are expected to be moved overseas. The country needs a tax and trade policy that promotes rather than discourages investment in American workers. The country needs a tax and trade policy that eases rather than increases the pain of worker dislocation and that eliminates the tax breaks that entice U.S. businesses to move overseas. These are the goals of the Keep American Jobs at Home Act, and I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.