Medicare Prescription Drug Price Reduction Act of 2004

Mr. President, first, let me compliment the Senator from Massachusetts. I fully intend to support this amendment. I have spoken about this issue on the Senate floor previously. It is in my judgment that job one for this country is to attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons around the rest of the world, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to make certain the nuclear weapons that do exist are protected and safeguarded, and then for this country to lead in this world to try to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons.

But for this country to be talking about building new nuclear weapons,

earth-penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons, and have people in this administration talk about nuclear weapons as if they are just another weapon to be used in a war--drop a nuke on a cave someplace; just another weapon, that is what they are talking about--that this country should be wanting to build more, it is absurd.

There are roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth. The stealing of one of those weapons or the acquisition of one by terrorist groups would cause an apoplectic seizure for people who live in the major cities of this country that would be targeted by the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Our job is not to be talking about building new nuclear weapons. There are plenty of nuclear weapons on this Earth--far too many, in fact. Our job is to be a world leader in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and to find ways to reduce the stockpile of existing nuclear weapons. That is the way we create a safer world, not talking about building more, not talking about resuming testing, not talking about bunker buster, earth penetrators, low-yield, usable nuclear weapons. That is, in my judgment, reckless talk. I intend to support this amendment.

Mr. President, I am going to be offering an amendment to this Defense authorization bill dealing with the White House plan to use a military aircraft to broadcast Television Marti to the Cuban people. I want to talk about that just for a moment.

It is almost unbelievable. When someone listens to the logic of all of this, they would say: Are you nuts? Is no one thinking at all about this?

Cuba, as we know, is a Communist government, run by Fidel Castro. He, I think, has lived now through 10 American Presidencies, with an embargo on the country of Cuba through 40-some years.

So we want to convince the Cubans that Fidel Castro is a bad deal for them. Well, I have been to Cuba. I do not think they need much convincing. They understand. They do not live in a free country. They understand that they live under the yoke of a Communist government. They would love to come to this country. If we had no immigration laws and Castro let them go, we would have an exodus to this country. So they do not need a great deal of convincing. But, nonetheless, we spend a lot of money on Television and Radio Marti.

So Radio Marti actually gets into Cuba, and people listen to it. I have been to Cuba. The dissidents and others in Cuba indicated that Radio Marti is effective, although they can also pick up the radio stations from Miami easily. All those commercial stations are available to be listened to by the folks in Cuba.

I support Radio Marti. It is fine with me. It gets into the Cuban broadcast range, the Cuban people listen to it, and I have been told by the Cubans in Cuba that it is effective. But TV Marti, broadcasting television signals into Cuba, let me talk about that for a moment.

All those television signals are blocked so the Cuban people can't see it. We broadcast it. I want to show you what we have been doing with the taxpayers' money. This is a picture of something called Fat Albert. It is a tethered dirigible or balloon that goes up, and using Fat Albert we send television signals at Cuba. Traditionally, we have done it from 3 until 7 in the morning. We broadcast 4 hours a day through Fat Albert. The Cuban Government blocks the signal. So we spend the money for nothing. We have a balloon-enhanced signal to Cuba and nobody can see the image.

In fact, here is how the television screen in Cuba looks. As you see, it is a scrambled screen. There is no TV picture.

The President announced recently that he is going to get much more aggressive on TV Marti. One would think if what we are doing is a colossal, tragic, complete, thorough waste of taxpayers' funds, you would stop it. No, not us, not now, not with Cuba. We want to spend more money. The President says it doesn't matter that they can't see it. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work. What we want to do is phase out these balloons because they are old. What we want to do is take an EC-130 special operations aircraft, under the control of the Department of Defense, and use it to transmit TV Marti broadcasts to Cuba. The broadcasts may well still be jammed, and the Cuban people still won't be able to see them. But the President and the White House are talking about $18 million to be able to send these television messages into Cuba that the Cubans can't see.

We have spent $180 million on TV Marti since 1989, $180 million on broadcast signals the Cubans haven't seen. One wonders if there is any depth to which foolishness will move in this Chamber, if we continue to do this. Is there anything that is beyond the pale? We just want to keep doing this? In fact, we want to get rid of the balloon, and we can put this aircraft up, run by a military special operations unit.

There are only six of these aircraft in the world. They are extraordinarily valuable in the Middle East. We have used these airplanes to great value in the Middle East. They broadcast important messages to support U.S. military operations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. But they will not be used to great value in Cuba.

So if something doesn't work, the President and the White House announce we want to do more of it, and do it with more sophisticated equipment.

We want to divert this aircraft from missions in war theaters-- Afghanistan, Iraq--and see if it can replace Fat Albert; put it up in the air and push television signals out the carcass of this airplane that the Cuban people probably cannot see or receive.

It is unbelievable to me that the White House is pushing this nonsense. I am going to offer an amendment that will say we will prohibit the use of EC-130 special operations aircraft and other aircraft for transmission of TV Marti broadcasts to Cuba or radio broadcasts to Cuba. We already get the radio broadcasts in. We don't need to do it with special operations aircraft. Having a special operations aircraft available probably will not get TV signals in effectively.

My point is, why waste the money? We were told yesterday that we are short of money for DOD. We were told we should have a $25 billion reserve fund. This Congress voted for it without a dissenting vote. Why? Because we are short of money. We need it, so the Congress provided it. Do we want to use scarce resources for flying a special ops airplane, of which there are only six in the entire world, so that we can send signals that will be jammed by Fidel Castro?

I don't have any use for Fidel Castro. I want the Cuban people to be free. But I want the American people to be free from this nonsense. These are taxpayers' moneys that come from the pocketbooks of the American people, and they ought not be wasted. This is a tragic waste of the taxpayers' money.

While I am at it, let me make one more point. We have folks who are in the Treasury Department in an organization called OFAC, Office of Foreign Assets Control. Their job is to track terrorist funds, the funds that support terrorists groups. Down at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, they have 21 people tracking American tourists who travel to Cuba. And they have fewer than four who are tracking assets that are supporting Osama bin Laden. That is unbelievable to me.

Recently I brought a picture of a woman named Joanie Scott to the Senate floor, a wonderful young woman who came to see me. She went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles. But she found out those fearless warriors in OFAC were not tracking Osama bin Laden. They were tracking Joanie Scott who was distributing free Bibles to the people of Cuba and slapping her with a $10,000 civil fine.

And it is not just Joanie Scott. It is a whole series of others, such as a man whose father died, and his last wish was that his ashes be buried at the church in which he ministered in Cuba. His son takes them there, and OFAC, instead of tracking Osama bin Laden's funding, is going after this guy with a civil fine for taking his dead father's ashes to bury them in Cuba. That is the kind of nonsense that is going on. It has nothing to do with sound public policy. It has everything to do with politics in Florida. This administration is playing it like a violin.

The fact is, this ought to stop. I will support the Defense authorization bill, but I hope my colleagues will agree

with me that diverting money from the Defense Department to put up a special operations EC-130 to broadcast television signals to the Cuban people who probably won't be able to see it is a waste of taxpayers' money, and it ought to stop.

Regulatory Agencies

Mr. President, I read in the paper a story that reminded me that we have some real problems with respect to regulatory agencies these days. I happen to think there is a significant role for effective regulation in government, especially in areas where you have monopolies or the potential of abuse of consumers and citizens. That is why you have regulatory authorities, and there is a requirement for them to regulate effectively.

I noticed in the paper that ``SEC Seeks Psychologist to Boost Morale.'' It says:

Some former SEC officials find the idea of an SEC

psychologist laughable.

This is a full-time position that will pay $147,000 a year, and they want to improve employee attitudes and job satisfaction, reduce burnout, conflict, and stress by hiring a psychologist.

I don't doubt there is plenty of need for psychologists in Washington, DC.

This came on the heels of a report in the newspaper about the Bureau of Indian Affairs sending a number of employees to Tony Robbins' motivational course in Chicago, IL, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. At a time when we don't have enough money to fund health care needs for Indian children, to fund Indian tribal colleges, to deal with the social service needs of most of these children on Indian reservations, we are sending people off to the Tony Robbins motivational course in Chicago, spending a small fortune.

As I was thinking about these things, which seemed to me to be a waste of the taxpayers' money, I was thinking about the issue of regulation.

Last evening, I saw the CBS report about what had happened in California with electricity prices. I held hearings and I chaired the subcommittee in Commerce holding hearings on the issue of the fleecing of west coast consumers who were paying prices for electricity that were outrageous a couple of years ago. We subpoenaed Kenneth Lay, former head of Enron. He came in and took the fifth amendment in front of our committee. We had Jeffrey Skilling. He actually testified. He is now under indictment. I was thinking about this issue of regulation, when I read last evening the transcript of Enron employees talking about going ahead and shutting down the electric plant.

That way, you have less supply of electricity out there. You inflate the price and we can maximize profits, manipulate the supply in order to maximize profits. They say: Well, all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers. The other guy says: Yes, Grandma Millie, that's Grandma Millie.

They laughed about stealing money from people by manipulating and shutting down electric plants. This all happened while we had the FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--people who are paid by the taxpayers who are supposed to regulate--sat on their hands; they did their imitation of a potted plant and did absolutely nothing.

One might ask consumers on the west coast about the $5 billion to $10 billion that was stolen from them by manipulating supply and demand and the inflating of prices by cartels, by traders who created schemes named ``get shorty,'' ``fat boy,'' ``death star,'' and ``load shift.''

These are organizations--and there is more than one--that, in my judgment, stole billions of dollars. Yes, there are some indictments, but some are still living in their gated communities and counting that money.

The Federal regulatory agency here, called FERC, did the American public an enormous disservice by deciding their job wasn't to regulate, it was to observe. If a regulatory agency is not going to regulate in cases where you have the stealing of billions of dollars, then we don't need that agency at all. We ought to dissolve it and create one that will work.

Here is another regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission. They are not regulating, either. They are content to just observe. They just came up with new rules on broadcast ownership. They said, oh, by the way, it will be all right with us if, in one major city in this country, the same company owns eight radio stations, three television stations, the cable company, and the major newspaper. That will be fine. That is what the FCC said.

You talk about abridging the rights of people in this country. This is a decision that means a handful of people--fewer and fewer people-- will decide what the American people see, hear, and read in the future. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people wrote to the FCC complaining about the proposed rule. It didn't matter a bit. They went ahead and adopted it anyway. This is not a regulatory agency. At least they are not representing the interests of the American people. It is what the big interests want; let us move in that direction. It is what the big and powerful interests want--that is what we will do. That is true with FERC, with the FCC, the Surface Transportation Board, STB, and the SEC.

The Surface Transportation Board took the place of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the ICC, which I always thought was dead from the neck up. We replaced it with something called the STB. It doesn't matter. They are supposed to look after the railroads and make sure consumers are not cheated.

In North Dakota, we are overpaying rail rates by $100 million. Does the STB care about that? They don't give a whip. They are supposed to regulate and they are content to sit on their hands and observe. I met with them yesterday; same old story.

The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to hire a psychologist because of employee stress. It is interesting to me that the investment banking firms were investigated in this country and reached a settlement because they internally, some of them, were trying to sell stocks to the public that internally they called dogs. They said, we have these stocks that are real dogs, not worth anything, but let's market them to the public. They had sales people trying to sell the stocks that they described as dogs. Do you know who uncovered all that double dealing going on, the basic conflicts of interest? Was it the SEC, the ones that have hundreds of lawyers who are supposed to be doing this? No, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which wants to hire a psychologist because they have such stress on their jobs, didn't do a thing. It was the attorney general of New York State.

How about the scandal with the mutual funds? Was that the SEC, the organization that is so stressed out they want to hire a psychologist for employees? Unfortunately not. They were busy observing. The first Chairman under this administration said it would be a kinder and gentler SEC, we are probusiness. That is the message he wanted to send.

Well, that is certainly true. They have done nothing. It was Elliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York, who unearthed both of those scandals. So much for the SEC, and so much for job stress for people who don't do anything.

The FDA is supposed to regulate as well. They seem content to represent the pharmaceutical industry. They have spent their time in recent months trying to prevent the Congress from providing for the reimportation of FDA-approved drugs from Canada. Why? Beats me. When the question is asked, whose side are you on, they come down on the side of the pharmaceutical industry, not the consumer.

We are trying to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. They are in the wrong corner. I don't need to mention much about the FTC. When gas prices are $2.10 or $2.20 a gallon, you would hope to have an agency like the FTC that would be aggressive and active, and that you would see a cloud of dust from an investigating agency trying to find out what is happening. We know some of what is happening. There is a lot of trading and speculation going on, and a great deal of concern that consumers are being taken advantage of. Do we see much activity out of the Federal Trade Commission? Not much going on there, either. It is a great place to nap, apparently.

There is a good reason, it seems to me, for us to start asking: Is there not a requirement for a regulatory authority that regulates? I know this notion

of deregulation is wonderful. But if you deregulate in the face of monopolies, the American people, in my judgment, are going to be injured severely. Ask people in California, Oregon, and Washington, who paid sky-high rates for electricity, about the need for effective regulation. Why did they pay those rates? Because a company such as Enron, and others, I might add, got involved and found ways to cheat. They created schemes, such as ``get shorty,'' ``fat boy,'' ``death star,'' and others, by which they could cheat the ratepayers, the consumers. I think there is a time when you need effective regulation.

Going back to one more point, I mentioned all of these agencies--the SEC, FDA, Federal Communications Commission, Surface Transportation Board, and others. They are all there for a purpose. If they are not serving that purpose, maybe we don't need them at all. It is a purpose, however, that I embrace.

I believe the American people deserve someone who fights for them. When the railroad overcharges somebody, in my judgment, they ought to be able to file a complaint and find due process in a regulatory body that is not on the railroad's side, or that automatically decides for the railroads, but in a way that fairly and effectively deals with those complaints.

When the FCC is looking at what the impact is of the concentration of broadcast properties, I hope they will not come up with the conclusion that it is not a problem for the consumers if one company owns eight radio stations, three television stations, the newspaper, and the cable company in the same town.

I do not know what school you go to learn that sort of nonsense, but that is not the right thing for this country.

Incidentally, on that subject, the Senate agrees with the position I have articulated. We voted on this issue and by a wide margin the Senate voted to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's rules on broadcast ownership, but it is not going anyplace because the leaders in the House of Representatives are blocking that resolution.

My hope is as we proceed through this year and work on appropriations issues we might be able to address some of these issues with regulatory agencies. If we are going to have regulatory agencies--and I think we should in a good many areas; I do not think they need psychologists, they need leadership--they need an administration that says: Your job at the FCC, FDA, FERC, and others is to effectively represent the interests of the American people, and when you have big interests confronting small interests, you need to be the fair referee here, the one that evens the score a bit.

I mentioned many times the refrain in Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys song from the 1930s, but it applies pretty well:

Little bee sucks the blossom and the big bee gets the

honey.

The little guy picks the cotton and the big guy gets the

money.

With respect to Government, there ought to be a mechanism that provides protection for the smaller interests when confronted by the larger interests that want to take advantage of it. What happened on the west coast should never have happened with respect to electric grids because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should have stepped in immediately, but they would not; they did not. The President, in fact, when he took office bragged: There will be no price caps; we won't put any caps on prices because we want the market to work.

The market was not working. There was massive stealing and cheating going on of west coast consumers by some folks who got rich in the Enron Corporation, and others. That is not speculation on my part. We now know this as a function of criminal filings that have been made in these cases. We now know it as a result of tape recordings that were made available only under duress by the U.S. Justice Department in the last couple of days. ``Enron Traders Caught on Tape,'' ``Enron Tapes Anger Lawmakers.''

The American people deserve better. The American people deserve much better than they are getting with these regulatory agencies that decide they do not want to regulate.

I wanted to visit about these regulatory agencies. Some will not like what I have to say. Frankly, I do not like their inattention to the issues facing the American people in a manner that is not fair to many people.

I come back to where I started, the amendment I discussed earlier about prohibiting the use of special operations aircraft to broadcast TV Marti signals into Cuba. My amendment is a prohibition on the use of money for that purpose.

Radio Marti is effective. I have been to Cuba. They hear those signals. It is effective. We have spent nearly $180 million on TV Marti. It has been a tragic waste of the taxpayers' money. Those signals are not able to be seen in Cuba. They are blocked. To appropriate military aircraft for the use of sending signals that will likely still be blocked and not seen by the Cuban people seems folly to me.

I ask unanimous consent that we lay the current amendment aside so I may formally offer the amendment I have described.

Let me ask the Senator from Nevada the status of the legislation in the Senate. It is my intention to offer the amendment. Of course, I will have the opportunity. Is it the intention of the floor managers not to allow amendments the rest of the day?

Let me also say--I know the managers of the bill are not here--as an observation, it would make a lot of sense to move amendments. There is always the case of people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: Boy, we don't want any delays; this is taking too long. And yet on a fair number of occasions, when I have come to the floor, there is someone--in this case it is not the Senator from Nevada himself. Well, I guess it is the Senator from Nevada at this point saying someone objects.

I would prefer we offer amendments, get them to the desk, and consider them with votes in due course. If there is a decision or an objection at this point to setting aside the current amendment, which is the course that must be taken, then I will come back, I guess, on-- on Monday or Tuesday, will we be open for amendments?

Then I will come back on Monday and offer the amendment I described and hope it may be seen by the Senate as something that represents an enhancement to this underlying Defense authorization bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I see my friend and colleague, who offered this amendment on a previous occasion, in the Chamber. We have worked closely together. Because of the necessities of time, I hope the Chair will recognize her to make remarks, and then I will try to gain recognition.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I welcome the opportunity to join with my colleague and friend, the Senator from California, offering this amendment with my other colleagues.

Just to summarize very briefly, the development of these nuclear weapons signals a dangerous direction in our nuclear policy. It weakens our ability to ask other countries to give up their nuclear programs. If we build these nuclear weapons, the costs are clear. No one will believe we are serious about nuclear nonproliferation. Developing new nuclear weapons sends a mixed message that undermines all of our calls for nonproliferation. When we criticize Iran and North Korea for their nuclear weapons development, they point back to ours.

There is little doubt that we would be starting a new arms race. Although it is too soon to tell who will follow suit, few developments in the quantity or quality of nuclear weapons have gone unmatched by other powers. To start a costly new arms race for these weapons of little utility is, I believe, a mistake.

At the same time, the benefits are not clear. Opponents will just build deeper bunkers, out of the range of new weapons. We will build weapons with deeper range and our enemies will again build deeper bunkers.

But even more compelling is the fact that conventional weapons will do the job against deeply buried targets. All bunkers must have air intakes, energy sources, and entries; and secure those through conventional means and you have essentially secured the bunker, making these new nuclear weapons programs effectively useless.

In the end, the Department of Energy would like us to buy something that we do not need, that we will never use, that endangers us by its mere existence, and that makes our important diplomatic goals much more difficult to achieve.

I hope we will have the acceptance of our amendment.

Mr. President, having outlined what I believe to be the principal reasons for the amendment, I am going to take a few moments to go into some detail now about what is at risk.

As I mentioned, we are on the threshold of a new nuclear arms race. Instead of curbing the spread and the development of nuclear arms, the Bush administration wants us to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. I believe this is a dangerous and reckless policy that will put Americans at even greater risk in an increasingly dangerous world.

The nuclear weapons the administration is developing go by such terms as ``mini-nukes'' and ``bunker busters.'' They may not possess the yield of the nuclear warheads of the cold war era, but a mushroom cloud is still a mushroom cloud. They can still cause monumental destruction, massive casualties, and long-term environmental damage to entire regions of the world. They will encourage other countries to follow our example and produce a new generation of nuclear weapons of their own. Their existence makes it even more likely that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

On issue after issue, the Bush administration has arrogantly abandoned cooperation of the allies in favor of ``my way or the highway'' policies that alienate us from the world, from its rejection of the Kyoto Treaty against global warming to misguided occupation of Iraq. This administration's policies have made the world more dangerous for Americans, and the development of a new generation of nuclear arms is another such policy. These nuclear weapons programs must be stopped.

The administration requested a total of $34.2 million for the development of these new nuclear weapons. Our amendment would stop this money from going toward these new nuclear weapons and would direct the money toward other priorities such as increasing the safety of our existing stockpile, or environmental cleanup of nuclear materials.

The administration's funding request for these programs is a continuation of the dangerous new direction this administration is taking in our nuclear weapons policy.

The administration's Nuclear Posture Review acknowledged this, stating it ``puts in motion a major change in our approach to the role of nuclear''--this is in the Nuclear Posture Review, 8 January 2002. Building on the QDR--the overall review of our defense capability--the Nuclear Posture Review ``puts in motion a major change in our approach to the role of nuclear offensive forces in our deterrent strategy and presents the blueprint for transforming our strategic posture.''

Why? Because the administration intends to go ahead not only in the research but in the development of these weapons systems. We will hear from the other side: ``Oh, no, we aren't, Senator.'' All you have to do is look in the legislation itself. There it is on page 378--the limitation of availability of funds for advanced nuclear weapons concept limitation. Under the funds authorized to be appropriated this year, they may be obligated or expended for the purpose of additional or exploratory studies under an advanced nuclear weapons concept initiative until 30 days after the date on which the Administrator for Nuclear Security submits to the congressional defense committees a detailed report on the activities for such studies on the initiatives that are planned for 2005.

There it is. Is that what the administration and is that what the Senate is relying on to say they are going to have to come back here for another action in terms of the development and the testing of nuclear weapons?

Look at what the language says--until 30 days after the date on which a report goes to the committee. They can go ahead.

Let us see what they are intending. This is a pass. Those who rely on that language said, ``Senator Kennedy, Senator Feinstein, we have effectively addressed your needs.'' They cannot go ahead in terms of development or testing because we have language in there to prohibit it.

That is not accurate. That is not accurate. I have read the operative language in the Defense authorization bill for this year's funding. They can do anything they want after they give notification. That isn't any prohibition for this year.

We can ask, What do they mean? What do they intend?

Let us look at what Linton Brooks, Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, says. He is the top person on nuclear weapons. He says on December 5, 2003: ``On behalf of the administration, I would like to thank you''--

This was a memoranda to the directors of some of the laboratories. I will include the page in the Record.

``On behalf of the administration, I would like to thank you and your staff for helping us to support this important effort. We are now free to explore a range of technical options.''

This is after Congress repealed the amendment which prohibited mini-

nukes. That was in the law. And the last Congress repealed that action. Here is the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration:

``We are now free to explore a range of technical options. We should not fail to take advantage of this opportunity.''

Look what else Linton Brooks said:

``I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable. I think that's just an inherent part of deterrence. If it is usable, they can be developed, and we ought to use it.''

You can ask, How do we know the administration is serious in pursuing the bunker buster? How do we know that? All we have to do is look at the 5-year budget the administration has submitted.

As it moves on through in the development of the bunker buster, you will find as it increases--it has a total appropriations for this whole project of some $484 million over the next 5 years. For studies? For technical research? That is for the robust nuclear penetrator. Research is $484 million and $82 million for the small nuke. If you look in their budget, that is what it has.

Look in the details of what they expect each year. And when you come to 2007, you will find it is planning development in 2007. It has the technical language.

If I am wrong, I hope those on the other side will correct me. If this language does not mean development, correct me. If applicable, RNEP will move to level 6.3 authority, given the appropriate authorization--that means effectively the development in 2007 and the testing in 2009. It is in the 5-year program. This is what they are intending to do. That is why this amendment is so important.

It is very clear what the intention of the budget proposal is from the statement of the key administration officials who are dealing with the development of nuclear weapons and by the statement of the Nuclear Posture Review in and of itself. That is the direction we are going.

We believe we should say we are not going to go in this direction. We do not want to have another nuclear arms race.

One of the great successes of Democratic and Republican Presidents over the period since the end of World War II was being able to contain the nuclear arms race. We came dangerously close during the Cuban missile crisis of a nuclear exchange. But we have been able to avoid it, and we have seen progress made with the different arms control agreements which have been signed and supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Why in the world, when we are trying to contain the nuclear capability of North Korea and Iran, are we going out and beginning to have another nuclear arms race when we have the most feared military in the world right now? That is the argument that must be addressed on the other side to those who want to support this particular program.

Development of these nuclear weapons is part of that ill-advised transformation. It returns us to the dangerous dynamics of the world when our nuclear scientists competed with our rivals to develop the latest technology, our arsenals were on highest alert, and we were only minutes away from nuclear attack.

The administration's nuclear posture review directs the Department of Defense to look into the possible modification to existing weapons to provide additional yield flexibility in the stockpile and improve the earth-penetrating weapons to counter the increased use of potential adversaries of hardened and deeply buried facilities, referring to the bunker buster. In addition, the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories were to look into the weapons that reduce collateral damage, the so- called mini-nukes.

Last year, the House Energy and Water Subcommittee raised serious concerns about our Nation's nuclear weapons program. They had extensive hearings on this. The Department of Energy is proposing, and this is their conclusion of the House committee report:

The Department [of Energy] is proposing to rebuild,

restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability

that was used over the last forty years of the Cold War and

at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded

mission for nuclear weapons.

That is what the Republican House committee concluded, after extensive hearings on this particular issue. The House Energy and Water Subcommittee thought the pursuit of a broad range of new initiatives was premature until the Department of Energy could demonstrate that it could adequately care for the nuclear weapons we already have, which makes sense.

The committee cut the funding for the mini-nukes program, refusing to ``support redirecting the management resources and attention to a series of new initiatives.''

Chairman Hobson's criticisms ring just as true today. Our amendment would similarly cut the funding for new nuclear weapons programs.

The President's budget for fiscal year 2005 contains $9 million for the Advanced Concepts Initiative, which funds research into the programs. This is an increase of 50 percent from last year's level of $6 million.

The low-yield nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons with a yield up to 5 kilotons. But these mininukes are very deadly. A 5-kiloton bomb is half the size of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima, capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people and making the target radioactive for decades to come.

Based on questions about their battlefield utility, Congress banned the research and development of these weapons for over 10 years. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first gulf war, Colin Powell asked for a review of options for using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. He rejected all of them. Colin Powell rejected all of them because he concluded they have no usefulness on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, last year, at the administration's request, Congress repealed the ban and allowed research into these weapons to go forward. I disagreed with that action and joined with my colleague from California in an amendment to retain the ban. Many supported repealing the ban because they believed the administration would not field these new weapons. This is simply not true.

The administrator's nuclear weapons chief, Linton Brooks, says, as I mentioned: ``I have a bias in favor of the lowest useable yield because I have a bias in favor of . . . things that might be useable.''

That is a clear intention of what a leading person for the administration believes and feels about the usability of small nuclear weapons.

The administration wants these weapons because it believes our existing nuclear weapons are too large to be used. It wants to develop a generation of more useable nuclear weapons. In creating a more useable nuclear weapon, the administration is making it more likely that the United States would use such a weapon, increasing the risks of escalation and nuclear war.

This chart shows a detonation outside of Damascus. This would be a 5- kiloton bomb that was detonated in a hypothetical bunker in the Middle East, in Damascus, on a typical day. Over half a million people would be wounded or killed from such explosion, and the fallout pattern would extend from Damascus into the Mediterranean Sea. The detonation of even a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of less than 50 feet will create a crater larger than the World Trade Center and spew a million cubic feet of radioactive dust into the atmosphere.

According to Michael May, the former Director of Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory, one of our premier research labs, ``Scientists say even a low-yield nuclear strike on a bio-warfare storage bunker will dig a large, hot crater and blast a witches's brew of weaponized germs and radioactive fallout into the air.''

This next chart gives some idea about what that might look like. We can realize the size of the hole only if we can see the observation post that allegedly can hold 20 people. They are right on the edge of that very substantial crater for the 1-kiloton bomb, with the thousands of tons of radioactive material which comes from that.

For those who argue that the advanced weapons concepts program is necessary to preserve the intellectual base of nuclear weapons scientists, one

of the prime reasons being recommended before our committee is because we want to keep occupied our nuclear scientists so they will be energized in their work.

This amendment would not stifle their ability to study nuclear weapons. There is plenty of work to be done on stockpile security, on the nuclear weapons capability of other nations. This amendment would leave the money available for research in the nuclear weapons field but would prevent it from being spent on nuclear weapons research.

The robust nuclear earth-penetrator, the so-called bunker buster, is a nuclear weapon that will burrow into the ground 10 to 50 feet before detonating. The administration is currently studying the feasibility of putting existing nuclear weapons with yields up to 300 kilotons into an earth-penetrating casing. The bunker buster is designed to strike deeply buried, hardened bunkers, which could be fortified below 100 to 300 feet of concrete.

Earth-penetrating weapons would spray millions of tons of radioactive waste into the atmosphere, creating a plume of deadly fallout, according to nuclear physicists.

Robert Peurifoy, the retired vice president of Sandia National Laboratories, another premier nuclear weapons laboratory, had this to say:

``If you can find somebody in a uniform in the Defense Department who can talk about the need for nuclear bunker busters without laughing, I'll buy him a cup of coffee. It's outlandish. It's stupid. It is an effort to maintain a payroll at the weapons labs.''

Opponents will argue that we are simply funding a study, that there is no intent to go any further. But last year Fred Celec, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters in the Bush administration, was asked about these bunker busters and he stated that if a hydrogen bomb can be successfully designed to survive a crash through hard rock or concrete and still explode, ``it will ultimately get fielded.''

In May 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld said the bunker buster ``is a study. It is nothing more and nothing less.'' This study was planned to cost $15 million for fiscal years 2003 to 2005. In fiscal year 2004, based on concerns about the program, Congress cut the appropriations to $7.5 million. But this year, the President's fiscal year 2005 budget request challenged that and the administration requested $27.6 million for the study and revealed that it planned to spend $485 million over the next 5 years.

Surely an investment of that magnitude is not just a study but a quantum leap towards deployment of this dangerous weapon. In fact, in that plan the administration stated its intent to move in a development stage.

Whatever their size, current deployed nuclear weapons must be detonated close to the ground in order to kill chemical or biological agents, creating a great deal of nuclear fallout. If the detonation is underground, all the debris becomes radioactive and disperses through the air. Fallout can be reduced by detonating the weapons at a higher altitude, but that reduces their effectiveness against chemical or biological weapons.

Bunker busters require pinpoint accuracy to hit deeply buried, hardened bunkers that may contain chemical or biological weapons. They require precise intelligence on the location of the target because even an enhanced radiation weapon has a very short range of effectiveness to neutralize a biological agent. If the bomb is even slightly off target, the detonation may cause the spread of chemical bioagents in addition to the radioactive fallout instead of vaporizing the agent.

In fact, the administration's own Nuclear Posture Review acknowledges that ``significant capability shortfalls currently exist in: finding and tracking mobile relocatable targets and WMD sites'' as well as ``locating, identifying, and characterizing hard and deeply buried targets.''

Given our current failure to locate WMD in Iraq, do we have sufficient confidence to drop a nuclear bomb on a suspected hardened, deeply buried bunker? According to noted Stanford physicist Sidney Drell, the blast effects of such a weapon ``extend beyond the area of very high temperatures and radiation they create for destroying such agents.'' The consequences of using such a weapon extend far beyond the limited area of a suspected bunker.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, the administration refused to rule out--isn't this interesting--in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, the administration refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. If we had mininukes last spring, would we have used them against suspected chemical or biological bunkers, bunkers which turned out not to have existed?

Using a low-yield nuclear weapon against a suspected bunker around Baghdad could have killed a half a million people or more. Imagine the geometric increase in the resentment of the Iraqi people to our occupation, what it would have been had we done so.

Couple the administration's interest in these weapons with its newly declared preventive war doctrine and we face the potential of a nuclear first strike against a nonnuclear nation. This would violate our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Use of a nuclear weapon against a country preemptively would instantly transform America from the great beacon of hope in the world to a pariah.

So, as I mentioned, the development of these new weapons signals a dangerous direction in our nuclear policy. It weakens our ability to ask other countries to give up their nuclear programs. And the costs are clear. No one will believe we are serious about nuclear nonproliferation. Developing the new nuclear weapon sends a mixed message that undermines all of our calls for nonproliferation. When we criticize Iran and North Korea for their nuclear weapons development, they point back to ours. There is little doubt that we would be starting a new arms race. Though it is too soon to tell who will follow suit, few developments in the quantity or quality of nuclear weapons have gone unmatched by other powers. To start an arms race with these weapons of little utility is a mistake.

Opponents, as mentioned, will just build deeper bunkers, but even more compelling is the fact that conventional weapons will do the job against deeply buried targets. We have not heard on the Armed Services Committee testimony that we do not have the capacity or capability to deal with the deep bunkers with conventional weapons today. I will wait for those who are opposed to this amendment to justify that position.

So this is a matter of enormous importance and consequence. The materials I mentioned are here on my desk. It is quite clear the direction this administration is intending to go. It is clear not only from the statements of those who have the prime responsibility for the development of nuclear weapons, it is clear in their statement for their 5-year proposal. You cannot read that proposal and not see where they are looking for development and testing. It is all out there for everyone to see.

For those to suggest on the floor of the Senate that under the existing Defense authorization bill we have effectively prohibited that kind of conduct in terms of the testing and the development defies the language I have read previously. The only hindrance would be the fact that the Department of Defense is required to send studies here to the appropriate Defense committees and then, after 30 days, is free this year to take whatever action they want. That is not the way for us to move into another nuclear arms race. That is what this amendment is meant to address. That is why I hope it will be accepted.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, September 11, 2001, was a day that changed America forever. It taught us that oceans cannot protect us from those who are fanatically devoted to harming us. The world has changed after September 11. The American experience, realities, changed after September 11. We live with greater uncertainty. We live with greater fear and concern about attack. We have, even those in this Chamber, gone through the process of thinking the unthinkable, thinking about attacks on our soil, on our towns, on our country.

The good news is that in the last 2\1/2\ years since September 11, America has not experienced another experience like that. It appears as if the measures we have taken have had some effect. The PATRIOT Act was passed with overwhelming support. It is now the subject of some debate, but let's not debate the importance of doing those things that protect this country from attack. The PATRIOT Act has clearly been part of that.

The efforts of our President in rooting out the Taliban and getting rid of Saddam have all had an impact on making this country safer. But there are no guarantees. Clearly, even today--we have the September 11 Commission report coming out tomorrow; we have the Senate Intelligence Committee report coming out, reviewing what we did, should have done, and what we could do better.

The bottom line is we want to make sure this never happens again. The effort to improve our safety and security is important. This is not a game. This is not to raise the fear for political purposes; this is the reality of the world in which we live.

But I do believe there is at least one area where our policy regarding security and measures we are taking to improve security should be examined and changed. That is why today I am introducing the International Student and Scholar Access Act.

Again, we all know there is absolutely no such thing as an absolute guarantee of absolute security in a free society, so what we do is measure the level of threat against the loss of certain other values and then we try to strike a balance. In the area of student visas, I believe we have pushed security concerns beyond the logical point and

need to make adjustments to our policy.

This is what I am talking about. America has been home to foreign students in great numbers for many years. If you go to the University of Minnesota, you see students from all over the world. The same is true in our private schools in Minnesota. The University of St. Thomas has a great international student program. Those are good programs.

What those programs do is provide young people from around the world an opportunity to study in America, to understand the American experience, to understand American values, to understand the American way of life. That is a good thing.

Unfortunately, I believe one of the terrorist hijackers on September 11 was an individual who had a student visa. He did not attend school. No one followed up. As a result of that, what happened is we looked at that student visa policy and said: We have to make changes.

I understand that. I understand we have to tighten up standards. I understand we have to be more careful about those who claim to be students who come into our country.

But I believe the result of what has been well intentioned--what is important, the security of our country; nothing is more important than the role of Government to make sure we are secure--in regard to student visas has been to push the ball a little too far. I think what we are seeing now is there are scores of young people who would like to be part of the American experience, who would like to study in our schools, who would like to understand American culture and American values, young people who, 20 or 30 years from now, when they are the Presidents and Vice Presidents and Ambassadors and Ministers of their country, would have a relationship, saying: I went to the University of Minnesota. I went to the University of Maine. I went to the University of Saint Thomas. I went to Bowdoin College. I understand what you are about and would like to be a partner with you.

I think we are at a point now where, in reaction to 9/11, what we are doing with student visas is to have kind of turned it around. Now that it is a national security issue, I think we are missing the opportunity for a lot of young people to become part of and understand and share in the American experience.

So now we have visa processes that are structured in a way that produces results that I don't think we want. They require that consular officers in our Embassies spend far too much time on people who do not threaten this country and excluding too many of them. That does not leave them enough time to deal with those folks who are a genuine threat.

It is the equivalent of a police roadblock. We are stopping so many innocent people that it calls into question if this is a good use of Government resources and power.

Again, it is in the interest of the United States of America to bring in the best and brightest foreign students to study in America. These are people who will lead their nations one day. The experience they gain with our democratic system and our values gives them a better understanding of what America is and who Americans are.

I had an opportunity the other day to spend time with a young woman from Iraq, a Kurd from Kirkuk. She was there to kind of shadow us and understand a little bit about American--this system of government. I thought--she had 1 day--just think if we had 4 years of her being here, or 5 years, and she came to understand this country and its history and its people and its culture and its ways and its values, and she carried that in her heart back to her country, with the opportunities we would have along the way to strengthen those relationships.

We hear so much today about anger at Americans, about hate directed toward Americans. But this is in a world that, at times, I think may hate us because they don't know us. They don't know us. They know what they see on Al-Jazeera or they know what they hear from some political leader who may disagree with the kind of government and the democracy and the values we have.

International education represents an opportunity to break down those barriers. I think some who hate this Nation do so out of ignorance. Foreign students who return to their nations many times become ambassadors of good will and understanding.

And don't discount the personal relationships. In our lives, we may see friends who we met back in college, people we have not seen in 20 years. When we run into those friends, there is a bond. Our young educated people become our leaders, not just in Government but in business, in industry, in education. The same is true throughout the world. The world is not such a big place. It is not such a big place when you have these human connections.

So these young people go back to their countries, young people who studied here, who learned of our ways, and they become ambassadors of good will and understanding, and they speak with credibility about the freedoms that spur American success.

Foreign students also help our economy. Higher education is a major service sector export, bringing in $12 billion to the U.S. economy every year. Competitors, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia are gaining market share while the United States is losing. Total international applications to U.S. graduate schools for the fall of 2004 declined 32 percent from the fall of 2003. Fifty-four percent of English as a second language programs have reported declines in applications.

When you think about the economy, it is not just a tourist economy. People are coming here to spend money. I had an opportunity to be involved in a series of meetings with some of my colleagues, chaired by Senator Baucus, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, and bringing in leaders of American industry, the CEOs of some of the largest corporations in America, to talk about what we have to do to ensure American competitiveness in this global economy. One of the issues these CEOs mentioned was the difficulty in having foreign students come to our country and the impact it has on their opportunities for success and innovation, and the impact that has on the American economy.

It is not just a long-term national security issue; it is an economic development and opportunity issue. We are shortchanging ourselves by losing access to talent.

The legislation I introduce today is an effort to reverse the decline in foreign access to U.S. education. My legislation seeks to promote foreign study in America by urging strategic thinking and by making commonsense changes to the way we process visa applications.

This legislation would help to clarify the often overlapping roles between lead agencies that work on international education--the Departments of State, Commerce, Homeland Security, and Education.

It proposes improvements related to SEVIS fees for tracking foreign students, by prorating fees for short-term students and allowing them to make payments in their local currencies. There is a process of payments that are made. If you are here for a short term, you pay as much as for a long term. It is another barrier, another impediment to providing an opportunity for foreign students to be here.

It would set goals for more timeliness and certainty in the visa process. It would press the State Department for commonsense improvements to give more discretion on personal appearance requirements and on the duration of security clearances. It would improve the interoperability between databases of the FBI and the State Department.

Perhaps the most critical part of my bill deals with the criteria for student visas. Currently, consular officers have to prove that a student visa applicant has essential ties which will ensure his or her return to his or her own country after study is complete. This requirement poses an unrealistic burden on students who are typically not yet sufficiently well established in their societies to be able to demonstrate a likelihood of return. In reality, international students are often encouraged to stay in the U.S. after they have completed their studies, by changing their status to that of H-1B, for example.

An observation on this, and let me go just a little bit more about the legislation, because what it does is it calls for

a more realistic standard for student visas. That is what we really need.

My legislation replaces the criteria of expected return with two other criteria. Students would have to demonstrate that they intend to come to the U.S. to complete a legitimate course of study, and that they have the financial means for doing so.

Let me explain why that makes so much more sense. The reality is, if we have a bright and enterprising student from Africa, from Uganda, or from Argentina, from Latin America somewhere, the issue we need to be concerned about is whether they are really coming here to study. The concern over 9/11 is, you had folks who came here who were using that to gain entry into this country. Are they coming here to study? Is it a legitimate course of study? Do they have the means to do so? Are they coming here for the purpose they intended?

Afterwards, if we have a highly trained and highly qualified college graduate from Uganda and they do whatever has to be done legally in terms of dealing with immigration, what is the issue? Why would you not want to have them here a little longer if they are going to contribute to the economic growth, to the increase in brainpower, to all the things that need to be done to make sure America stays competitive in this new global economy?

America is never going to compete with low-scale wages. We are past that. There is no way we can compete with China. Mexico can't compete with China today. America's economic success is tied to innovation and brainpower. That is our future. What we do to encourage that, certainly among folks here but also students from other countries who become part of that pool, who help us become more creative and entrepreneurial, is important.

I have to say--and I wouldn't be surprised if the Senator from Maine has not had the same experience--this issue consumes a lot of my time and that of my case workers back in Minnesota. Time and again they are asked by Minnesota colleges and universities to make a plea to the State Department to help process a foreign student's visa. These are students who want to come to the United States, who have the intellectual assets that all can gain from, who have scholarships or other resources to take care of themselves while in America. But because they don't have spouses or homes in their native lands, they are rejected for their student visas. What sense does that make? How does that further the interests of those in the United States? How does it further the interests of our colleges and universities that benefit from quality students, benefit from the diversity brought by students from Africa or from Asia, benefit from having a broader kind of dialog and exchange about what this world is all about?

I had a particular case of a talented young man from Uganda named Humphrey. Humphrey had a full ride to St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN, which--I note with great pride--my son entered. He had his orientation just the other day. I have a personal interest in St. Thomas, but that is not the reason I advocated for Humphrey. Humphrey was a research assistant with Professor Martin O'Reilly at Uganda Martyrs University. Dr. O'Reilly stated:

With service for 22 years in African countries, this is the

most impressive student and human being I have ever known. He

is one in a million.

Humphrey is a psychology student. His goal is to return to Africa and offer counseling services on a continent where the psychological scars are so deep. We just heard my friend and colleague from Illinois talking about the brutality, the genocide in Sudan. We know of what happened in Rwanda. We know the scars that need to be healed. Humphrey wants to go back and offer services where psychological scars are deep. Yet his visa application was rejected more than once because he could not prove to a consular officer that he intended to return to Uganda. I called that consular officer at one time, not to pressure as a Senator but just to ask them to take a look at the application. Don't let it just kind of get processed run of the mill because we have a process now that makes it difficult for students to come here. Take a look at it and then make a judgment, if the judgment is pretty clear.

I am happy to say that Humphrey's visa application was finally accepted and he began study in January. I fear that there are too many people like him who will not be educated in America. We will lose not only their wisdom but also the chance to show them what makes America so great. I believe in the tougher measures we implemented after September 11, but I think we have to be smarter with how we use these tools. I think we can strike a better balance between security and the value of bringing the world here to be educated. And that is in America's long-term interest.

I urge my colleagues to consider this important issue and to support this legislation. It is in many ways a national security issue, national security not just in having a process in place that weeds out those who shouldn't be here but long-term national security, making sure that America has those relationships and those contacts with the future leaders of countries around this world and gives them the opportunity to be educated here. Right now they are being educated in other places, in England and France and Germany. We are missing an opportunity. There is no reason. We can do better than that.

Let us look at this issue. It is still my first term, and I haven't finished yet. I haven't finished the second year. I know it takes a while to get things done. But I think the clock is ticking on this issue. Each and every day we are missing an opportunity. Each and every day as we see the numbers of international student applications decline, as we see less and less of the opportunities to establish those relationships because of the policies we have in place, it cries out for change.

My legislation offers that change. I hope this body considers it, and I hope we make the change. As a result, I know we will build a stronger America. We will build a better America. That is the reason I think we are all here.

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

Yes.

Morning business.

Mr. President, I have a set of amendments to the Defense bill that have been cleared by both managers. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be considered and agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, 1 year ago, I shared my thoughts on the Senate floor on a matter that weighs heavily on my mind. I reserved my maiden speech for a topic I chose to make one of my top priorities as a Senator. Hunger is the silent enemy lurking within too many American homes and a tragedy I have seen firsthand far too many times throughout my life in public service.

Today, on National Hunger Awareness Day, I call once again for a hunger-free America. The battle to end hunger in our country is a campaign that cannot be won in months or even a few years, but it is a victory within reach. What we need is to help our fellow Americans understand the terrible reality of hunger and how to put a stop to it.

As Washington Post columnist David Broder said:

America has some problems that defy solution. This one does

not. It just needs caring people and a caring government

working together.

We are fortunate, indeed, to have a President who strives to lead our Government and our Nation in a compassionate direction. President Bush has said poverty runs deep in this country, and we need to take the war on poverty a step further by recognizing the power and promise of faith-based and community-based groups that exist not because of Government, but because they have heard the universal call to love somebody in need.

I am curious if the majority of the American public knows how many of their fellow citizens go hungry each and every day. The number is astounding. The Census Bureau reports that in the year 2002, 34.6 million Americans were living in poverty. Within that figure, over 7 million families, families with children, young little ones fall asleep with an empty stomach. It is hard to believe that here in America, where we are desperately trying to get a handle on obesity, there are literally millions of children who do not have enough to eat.

Families in my home State of North Carolina are especially struggling. According to the most recent studies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we are one of the few States that has an increasing rate of food insecurity. From 1996 to 2002, food insecurity among North Carolina households rose from 9.6 percent to 12.3 percent. That means tens of thousands of families have difficulty affording food at some point each year.

A great deal of this can be attributed to the significant economic hardship we have faced over the last few years. Once-thriving towns have been decimated by the closing of furniture and textile mills. In the summer of 2003, less than 1 year ago, North Carolina experienced the largest layoff in State history when textile giant Pillowtex closed its doors forever. That day alone, 4,400 people lost their jobs, and eventually nearly 5,000 were laid off.

In eastern North Carolina, plant closures have resulted in more than 2,200 layoffs since last summer, and in the last few months, the western region of North Carolina has lost more than 1,500 jobs.

Now there are signs that the situation is improving, but even as our employment numbers rise, there are families struggling to put a balanced meal on their table. Sadly, their story is not unlike so many others across the country. There are many Americans who, after being laid off, were fortunate enough to find new employment. But in the changing climate of today's workforce, simply being able to hold down a job will not necessarily guarantee your family three square meals a day.

A recent report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that many of the jobs lost between the years 2001 and 2003 will be replaced by jobs paying at least 20-percent less. The face of the hungry has changed over the last 10 years. While many associate those who struggle with hunger as being unemployed Americans, the sad truth is that the number of the working poor has escalated in the last decade.

There are 43 million people in low-income families. That means millions of those lining up at soup kitchens, low-priced pantries, and other charitable organizations are men and women working anywhere from one to three jobs, raising children, and under daily pressure to make ends meet. They have been called the new poor in the editorial sections of our newspapers.

I think of families such as Danny and Shirley Palmer of rural Ohio, a State such as North Carolina that has been devastated by thousands of job losses. Danny worked for a quarter of a century at a local power company until he was let go in November 2002. After over a year of job searches, he obtained a union card as a pipefitter. He pays union dues but has yet to be tapped for a job. He works now as a Wal-Mart employee, but with bills, including a $343-a-month mortgage, their savings account is almost empty. Their frustration is not being able to find suitable employment, and that frustration is growing rapidly.

Our food banks are having a hard time finding food to feed these families. As America struggles in today's economic hardships, financial donations have dropped off or corporations have scaled back on food donations. As recent numbers have shown, many times there are just too many people and not enough food.

In the year 2003, at least 23 million Americans stood in food lines. In any given week, it is estimated that 7 million people are served at emergency feeding sites around the country. The numbers in specific parts of our country are just as disheartening.

In western North Carolina, the Manna Food Bank says over 68,000 people seek food assistance throughout the year, with over 20,000 seeking assistance each week. This means many of the same people are coming back again and again.

Since I came to Congress, I have visited homeless and hunger shelters, food distribution sites and soup kitchens. I went through the process of applying for Government assistance through the WIC Program, helping women, infants and children. As I learned more about the efforts to combat hunger, I gained a great respect for groups such as the Society of St. Andrew.

For the last 25 years, this organization has been doing yeoman's work in the area of gleaning. That is when excess crops that would otherwise be thrown out or taken from farms, packing houses, and warehouses are distributed to the needy. Gleaning also helps the farmer because he does not have to haul off or plow under crops that do not meet exact specifications of grocery chains, and certainly it helps the hungry by giving them not just any food but food that is both nutritious and fresh.

Last year, the Society of St. Andrew told me $100,000 would provide at least 10 million servings of food for hungry North Carolinians. Just before last year's National Hunger Awareness Day, I set out to raise that amount for the society. Thanks to the compassionate hearts of several individuals, companies, and organizations, we surpassed the original goal and raised $187,000 in 2 weeks. That money was enough for at least 18 million servings of food.

The Society of St. Andrew is the only comprehensive program in North Carolina that gleans available produce and then sorts, packages, processes, transports, and delivers excess food to feed the hungry. In the first few months of this year, the society hosted over 168 events, gleaning 4.2 million pounds of food. Between January and March, they gleaned 12.8 million servings.

Incredibly, it only cost one penny a serving to glean and deliver this food to those in need. All of this work is done by the hands of the 9,200 volunteers and a minimal staff.

Like any humanitarian effort, the gleaning system works because of cooperative efforts. Clearly, private organizations and individuals are doing a great job, but they are doing so with limited resources. It is up to us to make some changes on the public side and help leverage scarce dollars to feed the hungry.

Transportation is the single biggest concern for gleaners. As the numbers tell us, the food is there. The issue is simply how to transport such a large volume. I am proud to say that with the help of organizations such as the American Trucking Association and America's Second Harvest we are making progress at easing that transportation concern.

I have introduced a bill with cosponsor Senators Chris Dodd, Richard Lugar, and Lamar Alexander that will change the Tax Code to give transportation companies tax incentives for volunteering trucks to transfer gleaned food. Such tax incentives would be especially helpful to organizations such as Relief Fleet. This food distribution system is run through transportation companies who donate empty trailer space to move food donations to the proper sites.

Last fiscal year, Relief Fleet moved 16.7 million pounds of food free of charge. More than 555 truckloads traveled to 130 food banks, generating a savings of $382,000 in shipping costs.

Gleaning and transportation efforts are just some of the possible initiatives to help end hunger. There is so much more that can be done. Take, for example, child nutrition programs. There is no question that far too many of our children are going hungry each and every day. Of the 23 million Americans being fed at soup kitchens, 9 million of those are hungry children under the age of 18. This is why the School Lunch Program is so important.

In fact, recent research at Tufts University indicates that even mild undernutrition experienced by young children during critical periods of growth may affect brain development and lead to reductions in physical growth. Under the current School Lunch Program, children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty are eligible for free meals.

Additionally, children from families with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced price meals, no more than 40 cents per meal. This may seem like a nominal amount, but for struggling families with several children, the costs add up. School administrators in my State tell me they hear from parents who just do not know how they will be able to pay for their child's school meals. These income eligibility guidelines are not consistent with the WIC Program and other Federal assistance.

For example, families whose incomes are at or below 185 percent of poverty are eligible for free benefits through WIC. It makes sense to harmonize these income eligibility guidelines, allowing us to clarify this bureaucratic situation. Doing so would enable us to immediately certify children from WIC families for the national school lunch and breakfast programs.

Difficulty paying the reduced price fee is an issue that is real across America. More than 500 State and local school boards have passed resolutions urging the Congress to eliminate the reduced price category, thereby expanding free lunches and breakfasts to all of those children whose families' incomes are at or below 185 percent of poverty.

In addition, the American School Food Service Association, the Association of School Business Officials, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and the American Public Health Association have endorsed this idea. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.

I was pleased when the Senate agriculture panel went on record in the child nutrition reauthorization bill in favor of eliminating the reduced price meal program. This initiative will begin through a pilot program in five States. I thank Chairman Cochran, Ranking Member Harkin, and my colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee for their support and assistance. Since introducing this legislation, colleagues on both sides of the aisle have joined me and two bills have been introduced in the House of Representatives. Of course, this is only the first step. There is far more to be done.

Our work to end hunger stretches outside of our own country, of course. There are more than 300 million chronically hungry children in the world. More than half of these children go to school on an empty stomach and almost as many do not attend school at all but might if food were available. I believe the distribution of food in schools is one of the most effective strategies to fight hunger and malnutrition among children. Studies have shown this encourages better school attendance which in turn improves literacy rates and helps fight poverty. This increased school attendance for students in poor countries may very well protect some children who would otherwise be susceptible to recruitment by groups that would offer them food in return for attending extremist schools or participating in terrorist training camps.

I was proud to introduce a joint resolution with Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts that recognizes the worldwide problem of hunger and acknowledges the vital significance of food distribution to millions of starving children. This resolution recognizes the benefits of increased school attendance due to food availability for needy children, benefits ranging from improved literacy rates and job opportunities to protection from root causes of terrorism. In short, children who attend school on a regular basis have a much brighter future. Let us build on this foundation.

On this third annual Hunger Awareness Day, I urge Americans to join me in the campaign to end hunger. As I have said before, hunger does not differentiate between Democrats and Republicans, and just as it stretches across so many ethnicities, so many areas, so must we.

Bill Shore, director of Share Our Strength, an antihunger organization, said it best.

There are two kinds of poverty in America. There are those

who don't have and there are those who don't know. The

majority of Americans are fortunate not to be in the category

of those who don't have. Too many have been willing to remain

in the category of those who don't know. Men and women of

conscience must do more than accept or reject allegations

about the conditions of the society in which they live. They

must find out for themselves. Those who do will learn that

hunger is a serious but solvable problem. It is only as

invisible as Americans allow it to be.

It is a privilege to work with colleagues from both sides of the aisle toward the goal of ending hunger.

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

Madam President, I rise today with Senator Collins to introduce legislation that would promote the sharing of homeland security information across all levels of our Government, and to provide funding and support necessary to enable our first responders to communicate better with one another than they are able to do now during a terrorist attack.

I am delighted that the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Collins, is my lead cosponsor on this legislation, and that another member of the committee, Senator Akaka, is a cosponsor, as is Senator Clinton.

One of the most painful and enduring lessons we should have learned from the September 11 attacks is that information about terrorist activities must be shared among Federal and other agencies to protect the American people's security. Unfortunately, almost 3 years after the attacks we have still not seen the kind of improvement and information sharing at all levels we need to have.

The widely respected, nonpartisan Markle Foundation, in alliance with the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has looked at this problem at length and concluded that an entirely new approach is needed to the sharing of security information.

According to the Markle Foundation, the cold war paradigm that strictly limited access to information is simply ill-suited to the challenges we face today in an age of terrorism. Sharing information among relevant law enforcement agencies and other public agencies is vital to protecting our people's security precisely because we cannot predict from which direction the first signs of potential attack will come as we pretty much could during

the cold war. Yet the Federal Government has still developed neither a comprehensive strategy nor actual policies to change the 50-year-old cold war paradigm. We have to catch up quickly to win the war on terrorism.

Equally troubling is that too many first responders still lack, believe it or not, the basic ability to talk to one another when responding to emergencies, including, of course, a terrorist attack, because their equipment does not communicate directly. We use a complicated term called ``interoperability'' to describe this situation.

One of the most painful parts of the September 11 attacks in New York was the loss of more than 300 New York City firefighters and other law enforcement personnel who perished inside the collapsing Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The look-backs at that day, probably including the one we will hear tomorrow from the September 11 Commission, lead a lot of people to conclude that we lost a lot of New York's finest-- firefighters, police officers, other public servants--because they could not communicate with one another on the equipment they had. That is no longer acceptable.

The legislation we are introducing today addresses those challenges. First, we authorize $3.3 billion over 5 years to provide reliable and consistent funding to help law enforcement agencies around the country find solutions to this so-called interoperability problem. We create an Office of Information Sharing within the Department of Homeland Security to develop and implement a national strategy to achieve that goal. It simply is outrageous that those who are in uniform every day to protect our security cannot communicate with one another in a time of emergency because we have not given them good enough equipment to do that.

Second, our legislation would require the Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the intelligence community and other Federal agencies, to establish a broad information exchange network modeled after the Markle Foundation recommendations which would break out of the cold war paradigm and allow full sharing of security information.

Third, our legislation requires implementation of performance measures and genuine incentives to encourage employees to implement the changes that are necessary.

As part of the continuing fight to keep America safe from terrorism, the test of our generation, all the cultural, technological, and administrative barriers that impede the flow of critically important homeland security information among different levels of Government and among agencies at the same level simply must be broken down. That requires an act of will and leadership, and then it requires funding. It is not going to come cheaply, but security of the American people never does come cheaply. We have the best military in the history of the world because we have invested in it. We are only going to have the best security at home from terrorism if we invest with similar generosity.

A nonpartisan task force of the Council on Foreign Relations recommended that the Nation spend double what Senator Collins and I are proposing in this bill to ensure dependable interoperable communications. What we are asking seems like a lot of money, but it is half of what an independent group thinks is necessary to protect our Nation. This legislation will help us develop a new structure, a new paradigm of information sharing to guarantee that first responders and preventers can communicate effectively with one another and with other governmental agencies when they respond to terrorist attacks or any other emergencies that threaten the safety or well-being of people throughout our country.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that text of the legislation Senator Collins and I are introducing today be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to forge a comprehensive and effective strategy for our homeland security.

Before 9/11, we did not truly perceive the threat of terrorism on our own soil, and what homeland security efforts we did have underway were badly divided. Dozens of agencies responsible for pieces of our homeland security were scattered across the Federal Government, and were largely unconnected to state and local officials and first responders on the front lines in our Nation's cities and towns. There were confusing overlaps and, more critically, treacherous gaps. And because everyone was responsible for parts of the effort, no one was ultimately in charge.

We took one large step to remedy these weaknesses by creating the Department of Homeland Security. The Department brings more than two dozen of the Federal Government's critical homeland security agencies and programs under one roof, allowing for unprecedented coordination and cooperation. It also created a Cabinet Secretary charged with managing the budgets and personnel of these agencies, and capable of providing a focal point for homeland programs and issues in the Cabinet and beyond.

But we knew that in addition to creating a better organization, we would need to lay out a clear roadmap to galvanize our homeland defenses--at all levels of government and the private sector. That is what many of us called for and, regretfully, it is something this Nation still sorely lacks.

The Administration did produce a ``National Strategy for Homeland Security'' in July 2002 that correctly identified many of the challenges we face in preparing to meet the threat of terrorism. But that document predates the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and is already out of date. More significantly, it failed to set priorities, clear deadlines and accountability for the vast array of homeland security tasks we face.

As the highly regarded Gilmore Commission on terrorism noted in its final report last December: ``Much is still required in order to achieve an effective, comprehensive, unified national strategy and to translate vision into action. Notably absent is a clear prioritization for the use of scarce resources against a diffuse, unclear threat as part of the spectrum of threats--some significantly more common than terrorism. The panel has serious concern about the current state of homeland security efforts along the full spectrum from awareness to recovery, worried that efforts by the government may provide the perception of enhanced security that causes the Nation to become complacent about the many critical actions still required.''

While it is true that the Department of Homeland Security is proceeding with some more targeted strategies regarding specific areas of concern, these cannot replace a comprehensive strategy that sets the ultimate policies and priorities for our homeland effort.

That is why I am introducing legislation requiring a new homeland security strategy that can provide the strong, precise national guidance we need on this critical issue.

In a February 3, 2004 report, the General Accounting Office surveyed seven existing Federal strategies related to terrorism--including the National Strategy for Homeland Security--and laid out guiding principles to improve these strategies. My legislation incorporates these principles, which stress accountability and prioritization as requirements for a new homeland security strategy. The new strategy must include a hierarchy of strategic goals and indicate the specific activities needed to achieve those goals, as well as the likely costs, and how such funds should be generated. In other words, the strategy must make real choices about priorities and resources. The current strategy identifies many goals, but rarely provides deadlines for action, standards or performance measures to assess progress, or details on the resources required for stated initiatives.

The strategy must clearly spell out organizational roles and responsibilities, including the proper roles of State, local, private and international actors and the coordinating mechanisms to bring these actors together. Almost three years after 9/11, we still too often must ask ``who is in charge?'' of key pieces of our homeland security agenda. And, critically, the homeland security strategy must address how it relates to other Federal strategies regarding terrorist threats, and how the strategies will be integrated.

The legislation also highlights certain substantive areas that should be addressed, such as a thoroughgoing strategy to maximize information sharing related to homeland security throughout the Federal Government and with state and local officials and, where appropriate, the private sector. The strategy must look at preparing the public health sector to detect and respond to terrorist attacks, at integrating military capabilities into our homeland security planning, at building all- hazards preparedness throughout all levels of government and the private sector, and securing our critical infrastructure, much of which is in private hands.

The bill would require that the strategy be written every four years, with updates every two years and annual progress reports to be submitted in conjunction with the President's annual budget request. Recognizing that many Federal agencies outside the Department of Homeland Security play a critical part in homeland security, it calls on the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security to help the Secretary construct the strategy.

Importantly, it would create an independent panel of experts to review the strategy and offer alternative proposals as appropriate--a so-called ``Team B'' to provide decision makers with alternative perspectives and solutions for consideration. This nonpartisan panel, to be called the Homeland Security Commission, would consist of nine members appointed by the Secretary in consultation with Congress. The members would be recognized experts in the field of homeland security and cannot be current officers or employees of the Federal Government. This Commission is modeled on the successful National Defense Panel, which helped guide strategic planning for our military forces. This Commission can help ensure that we marshal all the best ideas to defend our homeland and do not fall into complacent, or narrow ways of thinking about the threats we face. We know that terrorists are always adapting their strategies and techniques. We must do no less.

We meet today amid ongoing, and indeed heightened, threats of terrorist attacks on our homeland. We need not be intimidated, but we must be prepared. A new and more forceful national strategy will help energize and organize our resources--at all levels of government and within the private sector--to meet this threat. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation to give us such a strategy.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.