A concurrent resolution permitting the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate to designate another member of the Committee to serve on the Joint Committee on Printing in place of the Chairman.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, on this amendment, I am being joined by Senator Lieberman and Senator Zell Miller.

It is a simple issue. I want to take a few minutes to explain it. I am hopeful we will get strong support in this body as in the House. A similar bill came up earlier in the House and it passed that body 391 to 22. The same issue passed the Commerce Committee in the Senate 14 to 0 on a recorded vote.

It is an issue of fines and decency on over-the-air broadcasts-- whether it be radio or television.

I think it is important to put my comments in context today by explaining the policy history of this issue; that is, decency on over- the-air public airwaves.

At the invention of television, our Nation established a public policy of providing citizens with free over-the-air television. It gave broadcasters wishing to provide that service with the use of valuable spectrum. Not everyone can broadcast over the Nation's public airwaves. These are airwaves owned by the public. That is why the statute requires the Federal Communications Commission to evaluate not just the ability but the character of an entity to operate.

When handing out a broadcast license, in return for a license, each broadcaster agrees not to air indecent or obscene content between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The broadcaster gets a valuable piece of spectrum, which is public property. The broadcaster gets the right to use that. In exchange, one of the requirements is they not broadcast indecent or obscene content between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Fines and license revocations have always been the discipline tool available to the FCC to help enforce America's longstanding commitment to broadcast decency.

This is an issue about license. It is an issue about the use of public property, and some modest limitation of that.

We live in a nation where we hold the first amendment in high regard, as well we should. In an effort to maintain the free exchange of information, thoughts, and opinions, we strive to avoid government involvement in communications content.

At the same time, as a nation, we strive to project decency and justice for all. As a nation raising children, we do the same. With the turning of a tuning knob, or the click of a remote, minors all across America are presented with the content of the public airwaves.

Broadcasters have a legal and a moral duty to ensure that American taxpayers--and especially children--are not assaulted by explicit material.

For years, we have been asking and waiting for the broadcasters to police themselves in this effort. Unfortunately, instead of fulfilling the public interest duty, they have allowed the content to grow steadily worse and worse.

Meanwhile, the companies that own the broadcast stations have grown steadily larger--and not surprisingly. Some of these broadcasters' profit margins have made them immune to the FCC's current fine structure. Let me give you an example.

Today's maximum fine for an indecent broadcast is $27,500. That seems like a lot of money--and it is to some. But it isn't to others. Compare that fact to a 30-second commercial during the 2004 Super Bowl which cost advertisers an average of $2.3 million for a 30-second ad.

In the words of the FCC Commissioner, Michael Powell, these fines are peanuts to the big media conglomerates. That is why we are here to increase the fine structure for indecency and obscene broadcasts. The threat of these fines will be taken seriously and force broadcasters to protect their consumers from explicit content.

Nothing in this amendment forges any new ground in broadcast decency law. The intent is simple: To increase the fines for indecent broadcasts to mask the realities of today's media markets. This amendment would increase the maximum fines tenfold, from $27,500 to $270,000, with a maximum $3 million cap per incident per day.

Why do we need to do this? We need this amendment to end the growing volume of graphic content on free over-the-air broadcasts. Remember, broadcasters profit from exclusive and free use of the public airwaves which gives them unique access to all Americans, particularly America's youth. With that access to our country's intellectual, moral, and social development comes a set of moral and social responsibilities and obligations that are agreed to in the licensing process.

I am very disappointed by the apparent confusion the broadcasters are having between the right to do something and the right thing to do when it comes to the public airwaves.

Recently, FOX and VIACOM announced they were going to appeal the FCC Bono ruling so they can use the ``F'' word on broadcast television. This is their response in spite of the fact that the FCC overturned the original rule in response to a fierce public outcry.

This hostile response the public is getting from broadcasters is inexcusable. We see time and again media leaders defending their profit-driven

motives by airing explicit content and then falsely hiding behind their so-called first amendment rights. Broadcasters have joined the shock jocks of the country to shout down those who publicly question harmful content as an anti-first-amendment censor. In abandoning their duty to adhere to decency standards, broadcasters point to the absence of decency regulations on cable television. This is just a red herring. We are talking about public airwaves and a public right to air decent material.

The broadcasters argue they have a right to air indecent, obscene, and profane material. But that is a disgraceful abuse of the first amendment. I support the first amendment and its guarantees of free speech. It is the basis of much of the freedoms we enjoy in our great democracy. But there are limits, and particularly here, where we are dealing with a public license and the use of public property where the licensee has agreed to not broadcast indecent material.

This principle has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Pacifica case where it was upheld that the Government had the right to protect the public airwaves. This case came to the Court in the early 1970s when George Carlin's famous ``filthy words monologue'' was broadcast during the middle of the day on a New York radio station owned by Pacifica Foundation. A father driving with his son heard the broadcast and complained to the FCC. The FCC said that if those kinds of words were used again, the radio station airing them would be fined. Just like today, the broadcasters challenged the ruling and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court upheld the FCC action and added that it could continue to fine broadcasters in the future because broadcasters had to take special care not to air material that would offend or shock children.

The majority opinion stressed that of all the forms of communication, broadcasting has the most limited first amendment protection because it extends into the privacy of the home and is uniquely accessible to children.

The FCC has been too lax for too long enforcing the law on broadcasters. A recent public outcry has been a wake-up call for the FCC. The Commission told us they do not have all the tools they need for effective enforcement. That is why we are here today.

Passing this legislation will tell the broadcasters that we are serious about protecting our airwaves and we will give the FCC updated tools to get the job done. I don't know if I need to remind my colleagues that this came to the forefront at this year's Super Bowl, an event families across the country watch together. At the halftime show, the incident between Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson set off a firestorm that had been brewing for a long period of time.

Finally people said: Look, I have had enough; I don't want to see this any more, particularly when I am watching TV with my family. That is what launched this forward.

We have been waiting for years for the broadcasters to voluntarily take care of this growing problem. They have failed. Instead, they are fighting tooth and nail for the availability to air graphic material so they can increase their profit margins.

America deserves better. That is why we need to make the consequences of broadcasting indecency punitive so the standards are no longer ignored.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. Increasing the fines will help clean up our Nation's free, over-the-air television and radio by holding accountable broadcasters who use the public airwaves and individuals who use the opportunity of a live performance to gain notoriety through indecent acts.

As I noted previously, this has been considered by the Senate Commerce Committee and it has passed unanimously in that committee. It has been considered previously by the House of Representatives, which has voted 391 in favor with only 22 against increasing these fines. They actually have some teeth in today's marketplace. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays when we vote on this Monday. I further ask unanimous consent that when we go back to this amendment on Monday that I be recognized first to speak if there are any further amendments that are proposed to this that are to be considered on Monday.

Mr. President, I have been informed that we need colleagues on the other side to respond to yeas and nays and I will not ask for that until we do get that agreement from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, in speaking to the Burns second-degree amendment, this is an amendment that was considered in the Commerce Committee and added to the base bill at that time. What he is proposing to do makes a lot of sense. I do not see a problem with that at all, so I would be supportive of doing that.

Overall, we want to get this to move it forward. The House has moved on this action. The FCC is seeking this authority. So we really want to try to get this to move on through the process, if at all possible. We are not having further rollcall votes until Monday, so we will proceed at that time, and I will ask for a rollcall vote then.

Mr. President, I am pleased to put my full support behind an agreement made between Senators Dodd, McCain, Warner, Levin, and Hollings to attach the Assistance to Firefighters Act of 2004, as amendment No. 3309, to the pending Department of Defense Authorization bill.

Each day, we entrust our lives and the safety of our families, friends, and neighbors to the capable hands of the brave men and women in our local police departments. These individuals are willing to risk their lives and safety out of a dedication to their citizens and their commitment to public service.

We ask local firefighters to risk no less than their lives, as well, every time they respond to an emergency fire alarm, a chemical spill, or as we saw on September 11--terrorist attacks. We ask them to risk their lives responding to the nearly 2 million reports of fire that they receive on an annual basis. Every 18 seconds while responding to fires, we expect them to be willing to give their lives in exchange for the lives of our families, neighbors, and friends. One hundred firefighters lost their lives in 2002 in the line of duty, and nearly 450 lost their lives in 2001. The unyielding commitment these individuals have made to public safety surely deserves an equally strong commitment from the Federal Government.

In 2000, Congress affirmed the value of having a properly trained, equipped, and staffed fire service by passing the Firefighter Investment and Response Enhancement, FIRE, Act--legislation that Senator Dodd and I introduced, along with Congressmen Pascrell, Weldon, and many others, on the House side. In the 4 years since the FIRE Act became law, fire departments have made significant progress in terms of filling the substantial needs outlined in the National Fire Protection Association's ``needs assessment.''

To date, Congress has appropriated nearly $2 billion dollars for the FIRE Act program. Virtually every penny of

that amount has gone directly to local fire departments through FIRE grants to provide firefighter personal protective equipment, training to ensure more effective firefighting practices, breathing apparatus, new firefighting vehicles, emergency medical services supplies, fire prevention programs, and other important uses.

The direct nature of the FIRE Act grant program--funds literally go straight from the Federal Government to local fire departments--is an extremely important aspect of the law, particularly in light of the difficulties we are seeing with other homeland security grant programs getting money to flow directly to the intended recipients.

FIRE Act grants are awarded based on a competitive, peer-review process that helps ensure that the most important needs are filled first and that funding will be used in an effective manner. I am proud to note that 86 of Ohio's 88 counties have received FIRE Act funding up to this point and that the fire service in my home state is much better prepared to respond to emergencies as a result. The bottom line is this: The FIRE Act program has proven to be an extremely valuable tool for fire-based first responders.

The time has come to reauthorize this important legislation--to build upon the successes of the original FIRE Act and to refine the program where improvements can be made. Amendment No. 3309, which I am offering along with Senator Dodd, accomplishes just that.

Our amendment focuses on four central themes. First, we take steps to make the grant program more accessible for fire departments serving small, rural communities and to eliminate barriers to participation faced by departments serving heavily populated jurisdictions. Second, we codify changes made in program administration since its transfer to the recently created Department of Homeland Security. Third, the amendment increases the emphasis within the program on life-saving Emergency Medical Services and technologies. And fourth, we evaluate the program through a series of reports to help ensure that resources are targeted to the areas of greatest need. These priorities have been developed jointly with the fire service, and represent a means to strengthen the FIRE Act program for years to come.

Our amendment would help the FIRE Act program more accessible for fire departments serving the very largest and smallest jurisdictions in America. Our experience over the past four years has been that a number of features in the program make participation difficult for departments serving these populations. Career fire departments, most of which serve populations well in excess of 50,000, have been receiving only a small percentage of the total grants thus far. After consulting with the fire service organizations, fire chiefs in my home State of Ohio, and officials administering the program at the Department of Homeland Security, we have found that there are two main reasons why this has been the case.

First, matching requirements for large departments, currently fixed at 30 percent, have been particularly difficult to meet. Second, current law dictates that departments--whether they serve a large city, such as Cleveland and have numerous fire stations, or a small town, such as Cedarville, OH, and have only one station--are eligible for the exact same level of funding each year: $750,000. These two elements of the current program have caused a number of large fire departments to forgo applying for FIRE grants. With respect to smaller, often volunteer-based departments serving populations of 20,000 or less, budgets are often so limited that meeting the current match is simply not possible. Many of these departments struggle with even the most basic needs, such as having an adequate number of staff available to respond to a structure fire.

Our legislation addresses each of these problems in a simple and straightforward fashion. Specifically, the amendment would reduce matching requirements by one third for departments serving communities of 50,000, and by one half for departments serving 20,000 or fewer residents in order to encourage increased participation by these departments. The amendment also would re-structure caps on grant amounts to reflect population served, with up to $2,250,000 for departments serving one million or more, $1,500,000 for departments serving between 500,000 and one million, and $1,000,000 for departments serving fewer than 500,000 residents. Together, these two changes would go a long way toward increasing the accessibility of the program for the very largest and smallest departments in the United States.

The second major component of our legislation has to do with the transfer of the FIRE Act Administration from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, to the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. When FEMA's functions were transferred into the DHS, the FIRE grant program, along with the U.S. Fire Administration, also were transferred to DHS. As a part of that transfer, formal administration of the FIRE grant program has been delegated to the Department to the Office of Domestic Preparedness, ODP, which oversees all DHS grant programs. While the U.S. Fire Administration--the real fire experts within the Federal Government--remains involved, we need to take steps to formalize the management of the program following the transfer to

Mr. President, I rise to thank the chairman and ranking member for the work they and their staffs have done, along with the Senator from Missouri and myself and our staffs, to accept an amendment that addresses two issues critical to our men and women in uniform. First, through this amendment we are attempting to develop better policies and information in order to track the health of soldiers and others in uniform after a deployment overseas.

Second, we are seeking to improve the medical and dental readiness of our National Guard members and reservists.

Last month, Senator Talent and I introduced the Armed Forces Personnel Medical Readiness and Tracking Act of 2004. I am delighted that many of the ideas we have advocated are included in this legislation because of our amendment.

It has been a pleasure working with my colleague on the Armed Services Committee, Senator Talent, and with his staff.

When I was First Lady, I worked to bring attention to the problems and symptoms that many of our veterans returning from the 1991 gulf war experienced. This constellation of symptoms came to be known as the Gulf War Syndrome.

During Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in February 2003, before the current Iraq war, I asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, and each of the Service Chiefs, whether they would be monitoring and tracking the health of our soldiers who are deployed in the gulf.

They assured me they would. But I am afraid that based on reports from soldiers returning from this deployment, we have not done all we should to screen and track the health of our soldiers. Indeed, several weeks ago we had several soldiers from the 442 MP unit out of Orangeburg, NY, who are being treated at Fort Dix for injuries and symptoms they incurred in Iraq, including headache, sleeplessness, and many others.

We know very well our enemy stops at nothing. The use of Sarin in an artillery shell in Iraq last month demonstrates more than ever the need to have adequate information about the health of our young men and women.

The legislation we have championed that is being adopted seeks to establish procedures to ensure that the information is systematically collected so that, if soldiers return exhibiting certain symptoms, there will be a base of information on which we can determine what could have caused that.

The amendment requires the Department of Defense to develop a comprehensive plan to improve medical readiness and tracking before, during, and after deployment. It establishes a Joint Medical Readiness Oversight Committee to advise the Secretary of Defense on the medical readiness and health status of members of the active Reserve components.

It requires compliance of the Armed Forces with medical readiness and tracking policies. It requires that we develop and implement the annual readiness plan.

The committee will include DOD officials and experts in the military service organizations, veterans service organizations, and civilians.

Finally, current law requires the information about the health of soldiers returning from deployment to be collected, but it appears these provisions are not being enforced. So we require audits of blood serum collection programs, as well as the predeployment and postdeployment health assessment database that DOD is supposed to maintain.

These problems have come to light because of our many Guard and Reserve members who have been deployed, and we are finding too many examples where they don't have the requisite medical readiness and where they are not sufficiently tracked.

This is an effort to do what we should do--the right thing to treat our young men and women in uniform. I am hoping it provides a good base for us to learn more about what they are supposed to do during their deployment in the gulf and elsewhere around the world.

I thank my colleague from Missouri as well as the chairman and ranking member for working with us and I look forward to seeing this implemented to further the health of our young men and women.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I would like 5, but I probably will not use them.

Mr. President, I wish to say a few words on our amendment, but before I do that, let me take a minute to compliment again Senator Bond, who laid down the amendment and Senator Harkin for cosponsoring it, to assist former employees in Iowa and Missouri who were affected because they worked in plants that produced the atomic materials from which we made the atom bombs which won the war and then kept us safe.

Because of their exposure to the radiation, they have become ill and they deserve compensation. They are not getting it because of the convoluted procedures that are currently in place. We simply want to allow them to be treated separately as already occurs with employees in the four States.

I admire the way Senator Bond has fought like a tiger for those employees. I have joined him in doing that.

I appreciate the work of the managers of the bill in trying to figure out a way to accept that amendment. I hope we can, indeed, do that. It is just a matter of justice for these employees.

I also wish to speak for a moment about the amendment which Senator Clinton and I offered based on the legislation which we sponsored together some weeks ago. I want to return her kind words and say it has been a pleasure to work with her and her staff on a strong bipartisan basis to make these changes which we think are necessary to protect the health of our men and women in the military, and also to make certain they are ready to be deployed when they need to be deployed. Those are the two things we are trying to do.

Before employees, service men and women are deployed to combat theaters, we require that a blood sample be drawn from them, and after they return that another blood sample be drawn from them.

The point is, it has happened too often in the past where service men and women coming back from active duty show signs and symptoms of illness, and we can't figure out what is wrong. We need baseline blood tests so we can tell the extent to which their blood is deviate and their health symptoms are deviating from what they were before deployment. This will give us a clue as to what is wrong with them so we can avoid another gulf war syndrome episode.

I have had vets from Missouri over several years talking to me about this issue. We allow the military to do it today, particularly with regard to reservists and guardsmen because it is often not done because local commanders want to get them deployed and into the theater.

This is very important and now it will be the law. I am grateful to the managers of the amendment for accepting that part of the amendment.

The other point is to simply improve the health of our Active and Reserve component service men and women. We put in place a joint committee to oversee the medical tracking system that is supposed to be in place but isn't implemented as well as it should be.

We require that reservists receive detailed health assessments at least every 2 years. Right now they only get exams every 5 years.

We require routine health baselines for all our recruits entering the armed services so we will know the health status of people when they enter the military.

There are a number of other good measures as well.

I only have 5 minutes. I imagine I have used most of that.

Let us say it has been a pleasure to work with the Senator from New York and her staff. We are jointly grateful to the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Michigan for their openness on this amendment, and we are pleased that it was agreed to and look forward to holding it through the rest of the process.

I yield my time.

Mr. President, I rise to address amendment No. 3279 to the pending bill. This amendment asks the administration to report on any relationships between foreign governments or groups operating within their territories and foreign terrorist organizations in Colombia. It also asks the administration to describe United States policies that are designed to address such relationships.

This amendment, tragically, is extremely timely in light of today's news. This morning's Miami Herald reported that in Little River, Colombia, in the province of Norte de Santander, over 30 peasants were murdered in cold blood. Terrorists entered their residencies and shot them to death with automatic weapons. The FARC is suspected to have committed this crime. While Colombia, with tremendous support of the U.S., has made great strides in fighting narcoterrorism under President Uribe, there is still much work to be done, as is underscored by yesterday's events.

The FARC and the ELN, Colombia's two main rebel groups, both of which have been designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations, continue to conduct terrorist attacks against civilians in their campaign against the Colombian government. These groups are also heavily involved in the drug trade that does so

much harm to Colombia and to our own country. At a time when Colombia is making slow but steady gains in its long struggle against the FARC, the last thing it needs is to have neighboring countries providing assistance to these brutal adversaries.

To be perfectly blunt, my primary concern is with Venezuela. On my visit to Colombia and Venezuela in April, I heard some disturbing accounts from various U.S. officials of instances in which the FARC had been able to cross the line into Venezuela and conduct operations from that side of the border from virtual safe havens. Colombian authorities are also suspicious that the Chavez government has been willing to, at a minimum, look the other way while FARC elements operate in Venezuela, if not actually permitting some level of coordination.

Threatening to compound the ``safe haven'' problem for the United States and Colombia is the fact that Venezuela also harbors a potent market in false documentation, such as passports and other identity cards. I am increasingly concerned at the ease with which, simply by buying off officials for $800 or $900, one can acquire fully legitimate, yet false, documents in Venezuela--everything from a passport to a driver's license. I am certainly concerned that international terrorist groups will discover their ability to acquire and make use of forged Venezuela documents to conduct terrorist attacks, and I raised these important issues with Venezuelan officials during my visit.

Naturallly, the Venezuelan government disputes these serious allegations. What this amendment would do is help us establish the facts. If groups in Colombia that our government has designated as foreign terrorist organizations are receiving support or assistance from Venezuela, or any of Colombia's other neighbors, or any other state for that matter, we need to know about it and adjust our policies accordingly.

Right now, Colombia needs all the help it can get from its neighbors. In asking the administration to report on whether terrorist groups may have relationships with or be operating in neighboring countries such as Venezuela, perhaps we can address this problem in a more regional context and better understand what Colombia is up against.

I thank the chairman and ranking member and their staffs for their support.

amendment no. 3401