A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership.

Mr. President, let me begin with a brief opening statement about why we are here and what brings us to this point. My colleague from Arizona, who will speak in opposition to this resolution of disapproval, is here to make a presentation and my colleague with whom I have worked on this resolution of disapproval, Senator Lott from Mississippi, is here and will make a statement. I believe others will arrive as well.

Let me describe what we are doing. There is a provision in Federal law that allows the Congress to effectively veto a rule offered by a Federal agency under certain circumstances. This is called the Congressional Review Act. I call it a legislative veto. It is rarely used. In fact, this is only the second occasion on which it will be used. It requires 35 signatures of Senators to discharge a proposition from a committee and bring it to the Senate floor, with 10 hours of debate. Following the 10 hours of debate, there is then a vote on the resolution of disapproval.

The specific rule that brings us to the floor today with a resolution of disapproval is a rule by the Federal Communications Commission dealing with broadcast ownership rules. This is an issue that is controversial. It is highly charged and very significant. Some

Members believe very strongly that what the Federal Communications Commission has done is horribly wrong for the interests of this country.

I said at the Commerce Committee when we discussed this, especially in the aftermath of the FCC making and announcing its rules, never have I seen a Federal agency that is supposed to be a regulatory agency cave in so quickly and so completely to the large economic interests. That is exactly what I think has happened. It has happened at the expense of the public interest.

The foundation of our democracy is information. The free flow of information is what nourishes and refreshes this democracy of ours. When what the American people see, hear, and read is controlled by fewer and fewer interests, in my judgment, it is detrimental to this government and to our country.

The ruling by the Federal Communications Commission says, among other things, this will be just fine in the future; in America's largest cities, one single company can own the dominant newspaper, the dominant television station, and two other television stations, eight radio stations, and the cable company in that same town. It is just fine. And they can do it in that town and another town and another town and another town, and that is just fine, according to the FCC rule.

Pardon my expression, but I think that is absolutely nuts. It is not fine--not fine with me, not fine with a good many of my colleagues. What we design to do is to pass a resolution of disapproval in the Senate to say to the Federal Communications Commission: Do it over, and do it right.

The Federal Communications Commission held only one public hearing before embarking on the largest rule change in the history of this country with respect to ownership of broadcast properties. Having held only one hearing, they then said: Well, let's do this Katie-bar-the- door approach to allowing the additional concentration and this new orgy of mergers that almost certainly will occur as a result of this rule. They said: Let's allow newspapers to own television stations in the same town, have the same television stations and radio stations marry up.

We know what has happened since the 1996 act. Ownership rules have changed; we have seen galloping concentrations. One company in this country now owns nearly 1,300 radio stations. In one city in North Dakota, we have eight radio stations. One of them is a religious station, one is a public broadcast station, and six are commercial stations. All six are owned by the same company.

I ask my colleagues, does anyone think there is a public outcry in this country for the need to have more concentration in broadcast ownership? Has anyone heard that public outcry? I have not.

The airwaves in this country belong to the American people. They do not belong to the broadcast companies. They do not belong to a television or radio company. They belong to the American people. We license them for use by companies that want to send a television or radio signal and we say that, attendant to that use, you have certain responsibilities and obligations: Competition, diversity, and localism.

What does localism mean? It means we anticipate that when you have a property to broadcast radio or television signals in your local community, you have a responsibility to that community to broadcast some of those local basketball games, talk to the people in the community about the local charity event this weekend, tell them about what is happening on Main Street. That is localism.

What do we have these days? All too often we have the concentration that has developed in all broadcast media. Now we have something instead of localism; it is called voice tracking.

Do you know what voice tracking is? With this massive amount of mergers, with one company owning many stations, voice tracking is that which occurs when you drive down the street in Salt Lake City, UT, and turn on your dial on the radio station and hear someone saying, ``It is sunny out here in Salt Lake City this morning,'' and that person may be in a basement in Baltimore, MD, broadcasting from a broadcast booth. Do you know what that is called? Voice tracking; ripping a sheet off the printer from the Internet that shows the sun is shining in Salt Lake City so they can pretend they are broadcasting from Salt Lake City, UT, from a Salt Lake City station, when in fact they are not 1,000 miles near Salt Lake City, they are halfway across the country pretending there is some local element to that radio station.

That is not moving in the public interest.

As we engage in this debate, I want someone to tell me that localism is old fashioned. I want someone to tell me that what I consider to be a transcendent truth about the value of requiring localism in exchange for being able to use the airwaves with a radio or television license is somehow an old-fashioned value. For me, it is not.

There is so much to say about all of this, and I will speak at great length, but I have a chart that shows where we are with respect to these broadcast properties these days. I will not attempt to tell you about all of this, but the News Corporation, of course, is Fox and Rupert Murdoch; Clear Channel; Viacom; Disney; AOL/Time Warner. Let me use Disney as an example: Ten television stations, including in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh, Fresno, Flint, Toledo; 53 radio stations. The ABC Network, Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E, SoapNet, History Channel, Lifetime, Disney Pictures, Touchstone, Hollywood, Caravan, Miramax. It goes on and on and on.

People say: What is the big deal here? We have so many more outlets in which you can get information. We now have the Internet. We didn't used to have that. You have so many different outlets. Do you know something. Go to your cable system and find out who owns the major channels. The same people. Go to the Internet and find out who owns the top sites on the Internet. The same people.

So you have many different voices; yes, from the same ventriloquist. Many voices, one ventriloquist or two or three or four--at least fewer ventriloquists in terms of what the American people see, hear, and read.

I do not accuse the Federal Communications Commission of bad faith. I happen to like the Federal Communications Commissioners. I believe I know all of them personally. The chairman is someone I have had lunch with a couple times. I like him a lot. I just think they have made a horrible mistake, and I think they did it without the due diligence that is required of those in a regulatory commission position.

We expect them to be the referees of sorts. We expect them to wear the striped shirts with the whistles that say: We are here to call the fouls. We are here on behalf of the public interest to call the game. The fact is, this regulatory agency did exactly what the big economic interests and the broadcasting industry wanted. And they did it cleanly and quickly, with minimum nuisance of public participation. There was only one hearing in Richmond, VA.

Well, they did get three-quarters of a million pieces of mail and communications over the Internet saying: Don't do this. It is against the public interest. But it did not matter to the FCC. They did it anyway.

As a result, I hope this Senate will send a message to the Federal Communications Commission: This rule is a bad rule. This rule opens the gates to massive additional concentration, mergers, and acquisition to fewer and fewer companies owning more and more properties, at least in the circumstance with respect to broadcasts and newspapers. And, by the way, they also eliminate the ban on cross ownership. At least in this circumstance, we don't think it is in the public interest. That is what I hope the Senate will tell the Federal Communications Commission today.

By this vote, it will be the first step--a big step--in a process of saying to the Federal Communications Commission: We in Congress veto this rule. You must go back and do it again. Do it over and do it right.

Mr. President, I have a lot to say today, and I know my colleagues do as well. But I think in the interest of time, having described why we are here, and the origin of this effort, I will yield the floor. My colleagues from Arizona and Mississippi want to make presentations, following which I will again then amplify my remarks.

I yield the floor.

I yield such time as he may consume to the Senator from Colorado.

Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, let me begin with a chart that I had used previously. There is the suggestion that somehow concentration is not of any significant interest and, gosh, there is nothing wrong. This is all localism and mom-and-pop operations. I used this chart before. I mentioned Disney.

Let me just say that although I picked Disney out, I happen to like Disney. Disney has given me some of the more rewarding moments of my life when I was young. Disney is a great company. But it is a very large company doing a lot of things.

Let me go to News Corp: 22 TV stations including duopolies in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, Minnesota, Houston, Orlando, Phoenix. They have newspapers: the New York Post, the Times, the Sun. They have books: Harper Collins, Regan Books, Amistad Books, William Morrow & Co. They have sports teams: the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Kings.

I could go through all of this and describe the largest media companies, and you would see these are significant concentrations, dramatic concentrations in broadcast ownership, newspapers. And I don't know. Maybe some say it doesn't matter much.

I think it does matter. Let me describe at least one part of why it matters. The issue of localism, by which we say you may use the airwaves--they belong to the American people, but you

and your radio or television company may use these airwaves--not own them, but use them--in exchange for certain requirements. One of them is localism. That means you have to serve local interests.

The question is, how do you serve local interests from a thousand miles away, where you create some homogenized music and run it through a board and play it though your radio or TV operation in that hometown. Earlier, I described voice tracking. Someone may be driving down the road in Salt Lake City listening to the radio station, and the announcer, with a sonorous voice, says, ``Good morning, the sun is shining here in Salt Lake City; what a wonderful day to wake up and be in America.'' You would think, what a great resident to have broadcasting for our radio station.

The problem is, that person isn't in Salt Lake City; he is in a basement in Baltimore, MD, in a studio, ripping off a printer something that came from the Internet that says it is sunny in Salt Lake City. It is called voice tracking--pretending there is a local announcer on that radio station. That is going on all over the country now.

There is something called central casting on television. You can turn on two television stations in two cities and see the same television personality giving the news--homogenized regional news, because they cannot quite do it locally. They are trying to convince people this is a local news person. Let's pretend there is localism. That is what it is all about.

When you have these concentrations of ownership, this orgy of mergers that has occurred in recent years in both radio and television, it hurts there isn't much localism. We have had testimony before the Commerce Committee by a man who runs a pretty substantial television station. He said:

I can't decide that my viewers don't want to watch a piece

of trash that will come down from the network. Even though it

is awful stuff they say you have to run it.

Here is an interesting letter. It is dated July 25, 2003, by a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, to someone who complained to them:

We received your letter dated June 30, 2003, regarding the

content of [a certain show] that aired on [this date].

We forwarded your letter to the . . . Network. The Network,

not [our station], decides what shows go on the air for [this

network-owned station].

So it says that they don't decide what goes on the air in Kansas City. You can complain to us, but we don't decide. The network does. Is there localism involved in that?

One of my colleagues, on the floor of the Senate a number of years ago, when we were debating all of this, said something interesting. I decided to pull it out and read it today because it relates to this issue of localism. Should we care about whether someone in Bismarck, ND, or Chattanooga, TN, has an opportunity to decide this is not a program that meets our standards? Or should we say, look, let the networks decide, and whatever they decide to produce in New York or Hollywood is going to be shown in Bismarck, ND, or Chattanooga, TN, and it doesn't matter what the local folks think. My colleague, Senator Sam Nunn, in 1995, when we were debating this prior to the 1996 act, talked about violence on television, what was on television. He said:

To follow up on this issue, one member of my staff voluntarily conducted an unscientific survey of the topics on daytime talk shows. Every hour or so, he would scan the television on his desk and see what the day's topics were for the daytime talk shows.

The reason I point this out is this:

The first day, one show was called ``Stop Pretending To Be

a Girl'' and featured young boys whose parents were upset

that their sons dressed and acted like a girl. Another show

offered a show entitled ``Boys Who Only Have Sex With

Virgins.'' Yet another show offered a girl dumping her

boyfriend on national television and asking her new

``significant other,'' another girl, to commit to her.

He said:

Mr. President, I thought that surely the next day's shows

would pale in comparison to these. I was wrong. Subsequent

days' reviews of these shows found titles such as ``One-Night

Stand Reunions.'' Another show was entitled ``I Am Ready to

Have Sex With You Right Now.'' And another show was called

``I Cheat and Am Proud Of It. One show featured a woman who

chose to tell her fiance on national television that she

cheated on him with her sister's boyfriend . . .

It goes on and on. He said:

Perhaps the most appropriately titled show of all was the

one entitled ``You Look Like a Freak.''

Localism. Trash on television. Should someone who owns a television station in Tennessee have the ability to say, you know, what you are sending us in this time period is a show I don't think represents any kind of standard that makes sense for us. The answer is that too often the station are not allowed do that because someone else calls the shots, not the local folks.

When you have this concentration, local standards no longer matter. Will there be more concentration as a result of what the FCC has done with its rules? Of course. In fact, I will read a letter written by W.B. Grimes & Company that was written before the FCC even ruled. They wrote it to the publisher of a newspaper in Seattle:

As you know, the FCC is considering elimination of the ban

on cross-ownership of media properties within a daily

newspaper publisher's given markets.

They can then buy the television station in the same market.

It says:

In anticipation of that ruling, several newspaper groups

are already forging alliances and cutting handshake

agreements with both radio and television broadcasters in

their markets. If you are considering broadcast acquisitions

to bolster your market presence, we believe the time to act

is now.

We would like to be your broker.

This was before the FCC acted. Most people thought the FCC was going to do what the big interests wanted them to do. Here is a broker saying, let us get involved so we can help you buy television stations. Once again, more and more concentration.

I will talk about some of the voices opposed to this. Some of my colleagues talked about this. William Safire, a very conservative columnist, who worked for President Richard Nixon as a speech writer, and for the New York Times for many years, said:

The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via

broadcast and print. Putting these outlets in fewer and

bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many. Does

that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of

power--political, corporate, media, and cultural--should be

anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through

local control, thereby encouraging individual participation,

is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of

democracy.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

Without diversity of ownership, our meaningful alternatives

to syndicated shows and info-mercials, and public affairs

programs, are in jeopardy.

NRA's executive VP Wayne LaPierre said:

Most cities have only one major newspaper to begin with.

Add ownership of the dominant local TV station, the top AM

and FM bands and the local cable TV provider. Then do the

same thing in 20 or 50 cities, and you see how a

multibillion-dollar corporation corners the market in the

marketplace of ideas.

Minority or unpopular causes--think of women's suffrage in

1914, or civil rights in 1954--would be downplayed or

dismissed to keep viewers watching and advertisers buying.

That's no way to run a democracy.

That is the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. That is not a liberal organization.

Walter Cronkite:

The gathering of more and more outlets under one owner

clearly can be an impediment to a free and independent press.

I could go on and on.

Parents Television Council:

Almost 80 percent of families rely on their hometown papers

and TV for local information. People can't turn to a national

news network over the Internet. They provide one-size-fits-

all programming, controlled from an office hundreds, perhaps

thousands, of miles from your town.

Barry Diller, former head of Universal Studios, who has acquired a rather substantial enterprise in information:

The big, bad truth is--and I don't think it is given enough

importance--the big four networks have in fact reconstituted

themselves into the oligopoly that the FCC originally set out

to curb back in the 1960s. They may have controlled 90

percent of what people saw, but they operated with a sense of

public responsibility that simply doesn't exist for these

vertically integrated media conglomerates, driven only to fit

their next piece in the puzzle of world dominance.

Let me speak for a few moments about my colleague, Senator McCain, someone for whom I have great respect.

He gave a statement and I told him I was certainly not going to be supportive of his contention that anything we are doing here or any reason to come to the floor of the Senate on this issue has to do with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That was his contention. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my judgment. I just disagree with that.

In 1996, when we rewrote the Telecommunications Act, beginning in 1995, we addressed these very issues. I offered an amendment on the floor of the Senate in 1995 to S. 652 during debate on the Telecommunications Act--an amendment by Senator Dorgan of North Dakota: To strike the provisions of the bill that would allow television networks and other chains to own no more than 35 percent of the Nation's households and take it back to 25 percent.

We had a vote on that amendment. Guess what. I won the vote by three votes. Senator Dole was standing at that chair--at that point he was majority leader--and Senator D'Amato from New York was at the desk in the back. I won the vote by three votes, to roll back the 35 percent, which was in the telecommunications bill, to say: You can't own more than 25 percent of the reach in this country when you own television stations.

Guess what happened? Dinner intervened. The worst thing in the world around here is dinner because over dinner--we call it supper back in my hometown--over that period when you eat your evening meal, although I had won by three votes at 4 in the afternoon, three of my colleagues had some sort of epiphany over their main course, apparently. Senator D'Amato came back and asked for reconsideration, and he and Senator Dole decided to overturn the vote by which I had won at 4 o'clock that would have prevented the 35 percent and gone back to 25 percent. They changed three votes. We came back 3 hours later and I lost. So I won for 3 hours.

My colleague--incidentally, Senator McCain made the point I voted for the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which I did, to be sure--my colleague Senator McCain voted against my amendment that would have rolled back the 35 percent back to 25 percent.

I was fighting then to stop this gross concentration that is going on in the broadcast industry, and I won for 3 hours. Then I forgot, when you get people out of this Chamber and get arms twisted, you can have a re-vote and several people will apparently come here with a different mind-set. Winning is temporary in those circumstances, and it certainly was that day.

This is a situation I understood then exactly what was going to happen, and it has happened wholesale. I mentioned earlier we have one company that has well over 1,200 radio stations in this country. The same is happening in television and happening very quickly.

With newspapers, this new FCC rule says: Oh, by the way, in addition to allowing more concentration in radio and television, let's let the newspapers own the television stations and more radio stations in the same marketplace. I was taught long ago never argue with anybody who buys ink by the barrel. I guess I never quite understood that lesson.

Here we take on the American Newspaper Association and the publishers, and they are lobbying furiously because they are opposed to what we are doing. They want to be able to buy television stations in the same city.

I said the extension of what the FCC is going to allow to happen as a result of their rule is this: That in the largest American cities one company will now be able to own the dominant newspaper, the dominant television station, two other television stations, eight radio stations, and the cable company, and they can do that in city after city. If you think that is in the public interest, then I say look up the term ``public interest'' in the dictionary or understand the public interest in the context of what we ask of radio and television stations, of what we need for the free flow of information in our democracy. It is not in the public interest.

I seldom ever come to the floor to say ``I told you so,'' but it is almost too tempting to avoid at this moment. In 1995, following what happened on the floor of the Senate when I was attempting to stop this orgy of mergers that was going to occur, when I won a vote for 3 hours and then lost because my colleagues left to have something to eat, this is what I said:

If these changes are enacted, the media industry in this

country will be controlled by a handful of conglomerates in

the future. The long-held principles of localism and

diversity will suffer.

I said that on June 15, 1995, when I was fighting then for the same principle I fight for today, and that is to stop the massive concentration. What the American people see, hear, and read will increasingly be controlled by a very few voices. That is not in the interest of this country.

I have more to say. I believe the Senator from Virginia wishes to speak either perhaps strongly supporting this resolution or maybe he will oppose it. Perhaps the latter. What I would like to do is allow him to speak, and I understand the Senator from New Hampshire is also going to be on the floor. I am going to make some concluding remarks this afternoon.

I yield the floor so the Senator from Virginia can make his presentation.

Mr. President, this has been an interesting discussion on the floor of the Senate today on an issue that I think is very important and one that will affect the life of every American citizen. It is complicated and difficult to understand. In some circumstances, it deals with cases of law in Federal court, ideals with arcane rules, and the history of the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast ownership. So it has all of those aspects.

I respect the fact there are those who feel strongly on the other side of the issue. I believe very strongly, of course, that the Federal Communications Commission has created a set of rules that will benefit the largest corporate interests in this country in broadcasting. I think they will, however, be a significant detriment to the American people.

I was sitting here thinking about the issue of radio and television. Of course, we have not had radio and television in the lives of humankind for very long. It is a relatively recent phenomenon. And I was thinking of the statement that was attributed once to David Sarnoff. I don't know for sure that it was his. But he was asked to comment about the advent of the radio when he was presented with this new invention, and he said: ``The wireless music box--which he called it--has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?''

That was his vision of radio. But, of course, radio has become a very significant feature in our lives, and television as well.

Television is a central part of the lives of many Americans. I am told that when children go to school in this country, by the time they are a senior in high school and graduate from school, they have spent somewhere around 12,500 hours sitting in a classroom in our schools and around 20,000

hours in front of the television set. It tells you a little something about the importance of television in the lives of at least children.

Let me respond to just a couple of the thoughts that have been expressed by my colleagues. My two colleagues who just spoke are on the Commerce Committee, and on the Commerce Committee they supported the FCC and believe these rules are appropriate. They indicated, for example, that in many ways these rules are for the purpose of protecting--they don't use the term ``mom and pop,'' but let me use it--this is really for mom and pop television stations--you know, the little guy. It is helping the little television station out there that you know is going to go by the wayside if we don't let the big guys buy them up, I guess is the contention.

In fact, Commissioner Powell has an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today. He begins his Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by saying: ``The days of free television may be numbered.''

That is Commissioner Powell in today's Wall Street Journal. And he uses the title ``And That's the Way It Is.'' I guess that suggests Walter Cronkite, who actually opposes what Commissioner Powell is doing. ``And That's the Way It Is.''

The days of free television may be numbered.

Interesting. This rule is nothing about free television. It certainly is nothing about mom and pop. It is nothing about saving small television stations. Its point is that we are in the midst of a lot of change that has a dramatic impact and the only way the television industry can make it is to allow this concentration.

Well, perhaps we could just separate some fact from fiction. There is no evidence anywhere that the television industry or television stations or mom and pop stations are in any kind of financial trouble. We have a substantial amount of evidence, in fact, that that is not the case.

Let me quote Barry Diller, who is a giant in this industry. He recently said: ``Anybody who thinks the networks are in trouble hasn't read the profit statements of those companies. The only way you can lose money in broadcasting is if somebody steals it from you.'' That is Barry Diller.

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

Fox's president for sales said, ``We all knew that it was going to be big, it just turned out to be the biggest year that we had ever had.'' The chairman of Fox Entertainment noted that Fox will generate significantly more revenue this year than in its previous 17 years, with revenue growth up more than 20%.

So free television in financial trouble? I don't think so. It is interesting to hear this discussion, that somehow the rule the FCC has developed--that is really just a high dive on behalf of the largest corporate interests--is being done in order to save the little guy. I have heard a lot of things on the floor of the Senate but never anything quite as entertaining as that. But it is so far from fact that it is almost hard to respond to.

The FCC, we are told, in another argument, did what the court said it had to do. The court said: The rules you have on broadcast ownership cannot be justified. You must change them.

That is not what the court said. I have what the court said in my hand. The court said: ``It is entirely possible that the Commission will be able to justify a decision to retain the cap.'' It just said that in the response the FCC provided, it did not provide the justification. It did not say: Go change the rule and give the largest corporate interests everything they want. It said: Justify it.

The FCC did not even appeal the court's ruling, and now has not tried to justify it. It just said: Well, apparently the court said we must cave in here and decide that there is a kind of ``Katie bar the door'' limit, and we will do what the big interests want.

Again, this is a regulatory agency that ought to be concerned about the public interest but, in my judgment, with respect to these rules, is not concerned much about the public interest.

My colleagues say: This is all about the market system and the Constitution. The first amendment says you have the right of free speech and the right to buy what you want to buy. One of my colleagues talked about being able to acquire property you want to acquire.

That is not an inalienable right in this country. We have things such as antitrust. We have laws dealing with antitrust. When somebody wants to steal from you by creating a cartel and jacking up the price, that is called stealing. It violates the law, and we put people in jail for it. So you do not have an absolute right to do whatever you want in the marketplace.

We have had some experience with this over time. The most recent experience, of course, is the Enron Corporation. And I suppose some of those Enron folks are going to get 2 years of hard tennis at some minimum-security institution some place.

Some of them are still waiting to see if indictments and charges will come. Hundreds of millions of dollars were bilked from people because of concentration in the marketplace monopoly, pricing, and so forth.

Look, the point is this: If, in this circumstance, what people see, read, and think is controlled by fewer and fewer interests, it is, in my judgment, detrimental to the democratic way of life and system of government that we have because the foundation of this system of government is the free flow of information.

Now, if somebody decided tomorrow, look, we are going to buy up all the hamburger stands in America, and instead of driving down the street and seeing a McDonald's or a Burger King or a Wendy's, one company decides we want all the hamburger stands in our name. We just want to call all those hamburger stands ``The World's Best Burger Stands,'' and we are going to buy them all. That would be awful, would it not? It would not affect our lives very much. We might have indigestion once in a while, and there would be no variety. Somebody would probably say it violates the antitrust laws for a company to own them all, but I wouldn't have an apoplectic seizure on the Senate floor because I don't stop at those stands much.

But what about instead of hamburger stands, we talk about information? Information is what makes a democracy work. What about the control of information in fewer and fewer and fewer hands? Is that something we should be concerned about? Yes, of course. That is something that is important. They say, well, but the market system should make this judgment. Look, that market system is wonderful; it is a great thing.

I used to teach economics briefly. I taught about the market system. I love the market system. It is a wonderful allocator of goods and services. But it is not perfect. That is why we have regulators and regulations. Under the market system--Judge Judy, that woman on television with an attitude, gets $25 million a year. Good for her. That is the market system. Judge Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, gets $180,000 a year. That is the market system.

A shortstop for a Texas baseball team makes the same amount of money in a year as 1,000 elementary school teachers. Good for him. Is that a market system judgment that you think makes sense? I don't. But that is the market system.

The market system is not perfect. In circumstances where you are dealing with ideas, and the free flow of information in a democracy, we need to be concerned about making certain that we don't have fewer and fewer people, fewer companies or institutions, determining what we see, read, and hear in this, the greatest democracy on Earth. That is what this is about.

I mentioned earlier that there are some trashy things in the media. I talked about the television programs that my colleague, Senator Nunn, talked about on the floor of the Senate. I could have updated it and used the same things for this year or last year. I should hasten to say, however, there are also some wonderful things. I don't want to just tarnish an industry. I think there are wonderful things, gripping things, things with such incredible, utter beauty that you can hardly describe them, on television and on the radio. It is really quite remarkable.

Some of the things that we are able to see and experience are great. I don't want anybody to think that I am somebody who doesn't watch television, doesn't appreciate television, or radio. I just want there to be some vibrancy with respect to the use of the airwaves,

which belong to the American people and are licensed to companies. I want there to be vibrancy with respect to serving the local communities they serve. The reason we license a radio station in a community is to be responsive to local needs and interests in that community. It doesn't attach at all when properties are purchased by companies that only want to run homogenized music from a thousand miles away. They are selling advertising and making profits, but they don't do anything with respect to the localism requirements in those local communities. That bothers me.

I offered this amendment with my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats. This isn't a partisan or political issue in any way. Senator Lott from Mississippi and I, and many others, including Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others, have been very concerned about what is going on with respect to concentration in the media. This battle that has shaped up in the FCC to write a new rule is a battle between the public interest and the special interests.

Frankly, the special interests won everything. They won the whole pot. By that, I mean it was put in the middle of the table and they turned over a card and the FCC said: You win, big interests; you get it all.

We have a procedure called the Congressional Review Act by which we can, as the Senate, vote on whether we want to disapprove this rule. I want the Senate to decide that now in this time we will say to the FCC that we disapprove of that rule. That rule is not in the public's interest. That rule is not what we expect this regulatory agency to do on behalf of the American people.

I mentioned earlier, I come from a very small town. We didn't have a radio or television station. I come from a town of 350 people in a southwestern corner of a sparsely populated State. North Dakota is a wonderful place, but we have 640,000 people spread out in a landmass the size of 10 Massachusettes. The nearest television station to where I grew up was 125 miles away. The first television in our little town was at a place called the Regent Garage. The people in town--at night, especially, because that is when you can catch disparate signals being broadcast--would gather at the Regent Garage. With this one television set--the only one in our town, they would all peer into that set and see this grainy, snowy vision coming from Bismarck, ND, 125 miles away.

Occasionally, there would be some sort of a skip and they would pick up professional wrestling from West Virginia, or a strange program from way out East. The people in my hometown thought it was just incredible. The people began to get television sets. It wasn't just the Regent Garage; they got sets in their homes. So it has gone for some 60 years.

There wasn't any question years ago about localism. When stations were developed, one developed closer to my hometown. It is still the closest television station now. It was 60 miles away--KDIX television in Dickinson. As television stations developed, they were locally owned. The only way they got a television station in Dickinson is folks in the region put in money. They asked people to contribute $100. So my dad contributed $100. He was one of a lot of people who contributed to building a television station in Dickinson, ND. So we had localism, local ownership.

But that has changed dramatically. The question is, Do we want it to change more? Do we want most of our properties in broadcast radio and television to be owned from a thousand miles away? Do we want, in most of our big cities, the dominant newspaper to own the dominant television station? Do we want, in most big cities, to have one company own three television stations, eight radio stations, the dominant newspaper, and the cable system? Does anybody think that will benefit the consumers of this country? The answer ought to be no to those questions.

That is not what we want or expect from the FCC. It is not the direction that we anticipated when we created the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Mr. President, there is a lot to say. I want to correct one other thing with regards to the discussion about the quality of programming. Somebody talked about the quality of programming and said network-owned stations, where you have one big owner, you get higher quality programming from those folks because they have the money and they are big shots and they have it all going. They are producing great things.

Well, here is something I think is interesting. Two organizations, NASA (Network Affiliated Stations Alliance) and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), were highly critical of a study that the FCC did on the quality of news programming between affiliates and network-owned stations. While the original study indicated that network-owned stations did better than affiliates because they won more awards, NASA and NAB demonstrated that the conclusion was untrue once the study was adjusted to take market size into account. After controlling for market size the data showed that independent affiliates outperformed network-owned stations on all measures of news quality. Affiliates win substantially more Dupont awards and substantially more Peabody awards. In addition, the Project for Excellence in Journalism study showed that affiliates are superior to network-owned stations in terms of news quality. I think that is important.

Finally, it is also important in the context of what kind of program is going to come into your community. Is it going to be programming that someone in your community can decide they do not want? We see the programming these days on some of the national shows. It is almost embarrassing to read the names of the programming, and yet if you tune in some evening, when your television set comes on you will see someone standing in front of a bowl of maggots and they are beginning to eat this bowl of maggots. I forget the name, ``Fear Factor''--it is one of those shows. I have only seen it momentarily.

When I saw somebody trying to eat a bowl of maggots, I thought: It is a good thing there is an off button on the television set. Maybe there ought to be an off button with the person who owns the local broadcasting company saying: I happen to think that is not the program I want to sell in Tallahassee, FL, or Chattanooga, TN. What I would like to do is put on an alternative program that I think is better than someone eating maggots.

You know what. They cannot do that. I described earlier letters from local stations who say: We can't do that. So the more stations you get under this umbrella, under single ownership, the less opportunity anybody anywhere at any time will have to say: I don't happen to like that program. You might have put it together in the recesses of a closet in Hollywood someplace where you thought it was wonderful, but back in our hometown, we think it is trashy. I don't want to play it. I want to play something that more reflects the values of our hometown.

They cannot change it. If you want more of that, if you want to move more in that direction, then you ought to vote to sustain the FCC. Like a cheerleader, shake some pom-poms, jump up in the air and say: We really like what you do; bigger is better. Katie bar the door, let them have anything. Let's have one big company give us a crooked smile every morning and say: We are for America, and we decide what you ought to see, what you ought to hear, and what you ought to read from Sunday to Saturday. Don't like it? Tough luck, we own it all.

If that is your philosophy, then you need to vote for this resolution of disapproval. But if you believe in enterprise, in local control, in owning up to the responsibility we have given those who own local stations, if you believe in that, then you ought to vote for this resolution of disapproval.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to speak on another matter related to health care. I commend the distinguished Senators from Maryland and Maine for their legislation which I will be proud to cosponsor.

It is a matter I wish to address regarding the health and safety and well-being of thousands of people in the area of my State of Minnesota surrounding the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization conference report which was signed before the recess by 24 Republican conferees and none of the 14 Democrat conferees from either the Senate or the House contains some very significant measures that were not provided for in either the Senate or the House legislation. One of those which directly affects my State very adversely would prohibit the use of airport improvement program funds for the insulation of homes and apartments surrounding the metropolitan airport that is in a DNL decibel range of 60 to 64 DNL. That is a technical term. But it basically means that those who are most severely impacted, most of whom have received some mitigation over the last few years through a pool of funds, including airport improvement funds, passenger facility funds, as well as the Metropolitan Airport Commission's own fees and the like, achieved a certain measure of mitigation. But there are many thousands--over 8,000 homeowners and an estimated 3,200 apartment dwellers--who are in the next phase scheduled to be insulated. And since the airport's location decision was made, the Federal Aviation Administration, as a matter of its record and decision, insisted that this program continue.

At the last minute, in a measure that was not considered by or voted on by

either the House or the Senate in this conference report, a Senate conferee reportedly inserted this language into the report. Now it comes back and is scheduled to come at some near date before this body to be voted up or down, which is, of course, the purpose of these circumventions of the legislative process. They do not go through committee for up-and-down votes nor a public debate back and forth. They don't go to the Senate floor for debate back and forth and a vote up or down. Instead, they are stuck in at the last minute in secret proceedings with not even all of the conferees present--certainly not all of the Senators present--and then it comes back in a matter that adversely affects thousands of people in my home State; a measure inserted without any notification to me, without any discussion by a Member of this body at the behest of a lobbyist for Northwest Airlines, which opposes this mitigation measure, and has done so and is within its rights to do so but is responsible for altering an agreement that has been reached; a record of decision made by the FAA as part of the approval of this airport expansion which, if Northwest Airlines wants to alter or eliminate, as they say they do, it is responsible for doing so in a public process before a public body, and not by sneaking in an amendment or language into a conference report that was not considered or voted on by either the Senate or the House.

I find it highly objectionable that a Senator from another State would act in such a way as to adversely affect, to cause potential harm, if this were to go through, to thousands of constituents in my State without consultation, without discussion or forewarning.

Regretfully, this is not the only instance in this legislation of matters that were added to it in conference that received no consideration in either the House of Representatives or in the Senate, language that runs directly contrary to what the Senate adopted. I speak specifically of the Senate adopting the Lautenberg amendment which prohibited privatization of our air traffic control system.

Despite that amendment being added to the Senate bill, being the official position of the Senate, despite the fact that the House did not consider the matter, as the House bill was silent on it, out of this conference committee comes a report which would immediately, upon enactment, provide for partial privatization, for the privatization, first, of smaller airports around the country.

Curiously enough, certain States, those that are proponents of this measure, were exempted from inclusion because I suspect they recognized that this is a highly speculative, highly risky, highly irresponsible action, taken with no debate or forethought but simply to fit some groups' rigid ideological biases that the private sector does everything right and the public sector does everything wrong.

The trouble is, when they get elected with that ideology, they then go about running Government so as to prove themselves right, and they systematically dismantle functions, such as air traffic control, which in this country is about as perfect as a human system can be, which has a nearly impeccable record of performance over the years, by far and away the best, most safety conscious, life-protecting, life-preserving air traffic system anywhere in the world.

Yet this administration wants to start to dismantle it for no cause whatsoever other than, as I said, to fit its own ideology. Rather than coming to this body and having that debate, rather than going to the House of Representatives and having that debate, they would rather wait and have conference committee time where they can sneak back in with 24 of their caucus Representatives and Senators and put this matter before 535 elected representatives of the people, myself being one, who don't have then any opportunity to delete it but simply to vote it up or down.

I find this to be an egregious abuse of the legislative process, one that consistently excludes Members such as myself who don't have the necessary years of seniority to be appointed to these conference committees. It is bad enough that the process is so skewed in favor of those who simply, by the basis of having been here for more years than others, get to dominate that critical phase of the process. But it is intolerable to me, to this Senator--it is intolerable--when that authority is abused and those conferees contrive to write legislation that supersedes the legitimate authority of 100 Senators to decide upon--by voting, by majority rule decisionmaking--what will and what will not become part of those reports which then, if they are passed and signed by the President, become law.

That is fundamentally a violation of the trust that the American people put equally in each 1 of the 100 Members of this body. The people of Minnesota, who sent me here, and who sent my colleague from across the aisle, have the same rights to full representation from us as do the constituents of the Senators from any other State regardless of whether they have been here a longer or lesser time than I.

For my constituents' own vital interests to be harmed by a contrivance of the process that has nothing to do with its integrity but simply is a reflection of who has the power, who has the money, who has the ability to hire full-time lobbyists to hang around these Chambers and to slip into conference committees, at the last second, where no one else is looking or can do anything about it, measures that abrogate the public process in my State--I think in any State, but certainly in my State--that is unacceptable and intolerable.

With all due respect to this institution, I cannot and will not allow that measure to proceed. As I stated just before the beginning of the August recess, I will do whatever I must do to prevent the proceedings of this body leading up to the consideration of that measure. I hope we can find 41 Members of the Senate who will oppose the conference report for the 2 reasons I have just cited here and other measures that were also added in conference that have an adverse effect, such matters as regional airline operations.

It also adversely affects one city, Thief River Falls, in my State of Minnesota. It imposes an additional $70,000-a-year funding requirement on them. Again, it is not something that this body adopted. It is not something that the House adopted. It is something that somebody else decided they wanted to add for whatever reasons.

If this bill is not sufficient reason for the Senate to stand up and put a stop to this kind of legislative freelancing through conference committees, then I think the fundamental premise of equal representation and the equal rights of each one of us as Members has been fundamentally decimated, if not nearly destroyed--in some instances is destroyed. And I, for one, am not going to be able to go back and explain to the people of Minnesota why I sat quietly by while their rights in this process were abrogated by somebody else usurping that power and abusing it.

So, Madam President, I will be heard from on this matter again. I don't know when the majority leader intends to bring this matter, the conference report, to the Senate, but prior to that time, if this matter is not satisfactorily resolved, then I am going to have to continue to assert the rights of my constituents to the process that this body established and should be following rather than some kind of legislative freelancing, at the last split second, which totally abrogates their rights and my responsibilities to protect those rights.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, will the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for a question? If he is looking for

amendments, would the Senator be willing to entertain one from this Senator when this discussion is concluded?

I have an amendment. Recognizing the generous offer of the chairman of the subcommittee with the 3:59 deadline racing to a conclusion, the magnitude of the offer by the Senator from North Dakota is so modest by comparison that it should enhance his chances.

The Senator is correct. It relates to funding for the

Yes. The Senator is correct. It relates to the funding for IDEA.

I will gladly step aside for the Senator from West Virginia at any time. I hope the 3:59 offer might be extended to include 30 seconds after the Senator concludes his remarks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, this amendment would meet a 27-year-old promise made by the Federal Government to the States and to the school districts when IDEA was established. The promise was that the Federal Government would provide for 40 percent of the costs, the additional costs of providing special education services to every eligible schoolchild. It is one of the most important commitments the Federal Government has made for public education, especially at the elementary and secondary levels, and the money could not be better spent on behalf of leaving no child behind.

Sadly, at least in the State of Minnesota--and I know, from the observations of other Senators, in many other States--the funding presently is seriously inadequate to provide all of those services.

In Minnesota, some $250 million a year shortfall exists in funding for special education which results in education dollars having to be shifted from regular programs and services to special education to meet the statutory requirement of school districts to provide services to every qualified schoolchild. The result is that in Minnesota all the students are harmed by the underfunding of special education, those who are the recipients of those services, as well as those who see dollars shifted from other programs for their benefit.

IDEA funding for part B for States in the current legislation before us is set at $9.858 billion. To bring that funding up to the 40-percent level, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would require an additional IDEA part B funding of $11.082 billion. It is noteworthy that the increase exceeds the appropriated amount. Another way of looking at that is that the current level of appropriated dollars is less than half--less than half--of what is necessary to meet that 40- percent level that was committed to by the Congress 27 years ago.

I heard the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire earlier on the Senate floor reference the increases in funding for special education that President Bush has proposed, and I commend the President for doing so. I have not served during the period of time which the Senator from New Hampshire referenced, so I do not have the basis for comparing the period of time during the 1990s that he referenced under the former administration with the circumstances that this President is faced with, but it is enough for me that President Bush has proposed in each of his budgets an increase in funding for special education, and he should be credited for doing so.

But the fact remains that even with those increases up until this year, the Federal share of funding for special education nationwide is approximately 17 percent of those total costs. In other words, still, despite those increases over the last 3 years, it is less than half of what the Federal Government promised over a quarter century ago.

I recognize that the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, with his responsibilities to the budget and to an allotment for the subcommittee's appropriations, has to or is likely to object to this amendment, despite it being inserted just before the 3:59 deadline. I recognize this is an amount that goes way beyond the current mandate of the subcommittee. But as my colleague from North Dakota said so eloquently just a few minutes ago, what we are really talking about as we consider these different amendments in a broader sense is, What are our priorities as a Senate?

What are our priorities as a Nation? Do we really mean what we say, that no child shall be left behind? Are we willing to put forward the necessary resources to accomplish that? Or is that just a rhetorical statement without proper attribution from the Children's Defense Fund and, whereas that esteemed organization has championed the resources and the commitments that would be necessary to actualize that statement, we in this Congress and, with due respect, the administration have still fallen short of that responsibility.

We had, when I came into office, an incredible opportunity because we were looking at projected surpluses for the next decade of some $5.4 trillion. That is a marked difference from the circumstances which President Clinton faced throughout most of his administration when he was bringing the Nation out of the previous era of deficit spending, when he finally, through collaboration with the Congress--the Senate and the House--during the last 4 years of his administration succeeded in balancing the combined Federal budget. In fiscal year 2000, he achieved for the first time in 4 years--and probably for the last time in 40 or more years--a surplus in the non-Social Security part of the Federal budget; in other words, education, health care, and the like-- everything except for Social Security, which at this point, this year, is running about a $155 billion projected surplus; the rest of the Federal budget was balanced. We had the resources projected that would have kept that operating budget in a surplus mode for each of the next 10 years, according to both the CBO and the OMB when President Bush's administration

took office in January of 2001. I thought then, as I offered this amendment at that time, that we had a tremendous opportunity we should not let go by to bring this funding immediately up to the 40 percent promised level.

That year, in a bipartisan and very genuinely committed way, there was an amendment that was adopted by the Senate that would have brought full funding for special education up to the promised 40 percent level over 6 years--5 years too long in my estimation, but it passed the Senate. It went to conference with the House. It resulted in a protracted conference committee of almost 6 months.

My esteemed former colleague, the departed Senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, was championing this measure, among others, in that conference committee and insisting that the Senate position of building to 40 percent funding for special education over 6 years be honored and kept in the conference report. The House resisted and was adamant, and, unfortunately, at the very end of the conference, the Senate conferees agreed to the House position, causing my colleague, Senator Wellstone, to vote against that conference report, as did I.

Since then, we have all recognized that the fiscal circumstances of the Federal Government have changed dramatically. I find it a little bit disingenuous for the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire to be taking credit for the spending increases for education, which he ascribes to this administration and this Congress; yet, every time somebody from this side of the aisle proposes also to increase spending for education, suddenly our side of the spending equation is bad spending and his side of the spending equation seems to be good spending. As far as I am concerned, it can be Republican spending, Democratic spending, or independent spending for education, and it is good spending. I don't care which administration, which session of Congress, or which Members of Congress can claim credit for that. I just want the credit to be there to be claimed because I know the beneficiaries are the students of Minnesota and, I suspect, all over the rest of the country.

I am also perplexed when I hear the Senator from New Hampshire, who chairs the HELP Committee of the Senate--his expertise and knowledge of these matters is widely respected by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. But when he says, in effect, as he did earlier today, we have put so much additional Federal money into public education at the K through 12 level that the school districts aren't able to spend that money fast enough--a couple of months ago, I heard the Senator state on the Senate floor there was a surplus of Head Start positions available nationwide, so there were more slots available than there were people who wanted to get their children into a Head Start program.

I truly hope if those surplus funds are available, be it from New Hampshire or any other State, they will be put into a reservoir that could be drawn from by other States. I know in the case of Minnesota--I heard the Senator from North Dakota state the same and I heard a number of other colleagues, including Senator Pryor of Arkansas--I ask unanimous consent that he be added as a cosponsor to this amendment.

He also shared the circumstances with me of the State of Arkansas. When I run by the educators in Minnesota the assertion made on the Senate floor that there is a surplus of Federal funding for these programs, I get absolutely incredulous looks. I find far more concurrence with the Senator from North Dakota, who observed teachers in his State who are reaching into their own pockets for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, who go without expenses for basic program materials, educational materials, trips to educational enrichment opportunities, and the like that cannot be funded out of regular budgets.

In Minnesota, there is an estimated $250 million shortfall of special education money because of this underfunding of the Federal commitment, which I can assure my colleagues every one of those dollars would be spent swiftly and necessarily and would benefit students throughout my State if they were made available. So where these surplus dollars are that States and school districts elsewhere don't need, where the additional slots for programs such as Head Start are residing that are not being filled, I guess I would certainly like to see where that exists.

I urge the Secretary of Education, if it is in fact the case, that those funds and those slots be reallocated as swiftly as possible to States like Minnesota, who need them and could benefit from them.

Yes, Mr. President, my amendment exceeds the budget as it exists today. I note that when the budget for this fiscal year began, we were looking at a deficit, we were told, of about $260 billion, if memory serves me. Now we are told that we will exceed $500 billion. We are asked rhetorically where will the money come from for these expenditures. I answer rhetorically, from the same place the other $240 billion that has been added to the deficit this year will come from. And the Senator from New Hampshire is right--that will come from payments made by taxpayers in the future. But if we are going to spend $100 billion, as some experts estimate we will, over the next year in Iraq, if we are going to spend 10 percent or 15 percent of that amount in Afghanistan, if we are going to spend $15 billion to address the AIDS crisis in Africa over the next few years, as the President proposed--and those are all either necessary or very worthwhile humanitarian and strategic expenditures, but if we are talking about additional spending on the magnitude of $15 billion, $100 billion over the course of a year, how is it that we always run out of resources when it comes to children, when it comes to especially schoolchildren with special needs, when it comes to those who will be left behind in Minnesota and I suspect will be left behind in 49 other States if these additional resources are not provided?

I thank the chairman of the subcommittee for the opportunity to offer this amendment. I hope it will be considered in the broader context of the priorities of this body for the children of today and tomorrow. I respectfully suggest it is money that will be extremely well spent. I yield the floor.

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

Also, Mr. President, I have been here this afternoon and have expressed my concern for the measures in the Federal Aviation Administration conference report.

I am not going to consume time since we are proceeding to a time of voting on some of these important education amendments, including one of my own for funding for special education. But I do want to say again that this matter, before it comes before the Senate, must be resolved, or I will have to be back here in more of an obstructionist mode than I was called upon to do today. And that would be something I would prefer to avoid and see this matter resolved in some other way. I will be working with my colleagues to see that occurs.

I yield the floor.

May I ask the Chair, the intent is to have the vote on the Dorgan-Inhofe amendment followed by 2 minutes equally divided between myself and whoever, followed by a vote on waiving the Budget Act on my amendment.

Mr. President, my amendment increases funding for IDEA part B by $11.8467 billion for fiscal year 2004, which is the amount the Congressional Budget Office has determined is necessary to bring Federal funding up to the 40-percent level that was promised 27 years ago. The funding being allocated for fiscal year 2004 would provide 18.8 percent, or less than half of that 40 percent promised over a quarter century ago.

President Bush deserves credit for increasing the funding for IDEA in each of his three budgets. The Senate deserves credit, along with President Bush, for increasing that funding. But the fact remains that we are still less than half of what was promised 27 years ago. I know for my State of Minnesota that is money that is desperately needed not only for better special education but for better quality education for all schoolchildren because money has to be diverted from regular programs over to special education. This is money we can find.

I propose that the budget point of order be waived, and I thank the Chair.

Madam President, I wish to speak to this bill, and in a moment I will have supportive charts to discuss this bill's efforts in the area of education.

Let me begin by congratulating the chairman of the committee, Senator Specter, for bringing to the floor a bill which has made major strides every year since President Bush has been President, but especially this year, under Chairman Specter's leadership, major strides on the issue of educational funding. In the context of that funding, relative to what was done when the Democratic membership controlled this Senate, or when the President was a member of the Democrat Party, the difference is startling.

President Bush and the Republican Senate have made spectacular strides in assisting and supporting education in this country while, at the same time, doing so during a very difficult period of America's history, a period when we are fighting a war, a war which has required huge resources, and a war which has required extreme attention by the administration, and at a time that we have been in a period of economic recession, in a period when the revenues to the Federal Government have been dropping precipitously because of that recession. Even in the context of those two very severe restraining events relative to domestic program activity, this President has been willing to step forward and focus on the issue of education, try to improve the education of America's children and support that effort with dollars.

I think before we get into a discussion of the dollars, because that is critical to the pending Byrd amendment, I will begin by saying this goes beyond the issue of dollars, this goes into the question of the attitude and approach to education.

What President Bush has said is we can no longer afford an educational system which, year in and year out, in generation after generation, leaves behind especially low-income children, takes those children and runs them through the educational system and, at the end of their schooling period, leaves them without the skills they need in order to compete for and participate in the American dream. President Bush has sounded a call to end that system and do something about the failures of that system.

There are a lot of good-faith people, a lot of hard-working people in the educational community in this country. A lot of teachers spend an extraordinary amount of hours, time, and extra effort to try to make sure their students succeed. Unfortunately, the fact is that, even though we have radically increased the dollars in education over the last 20 years, the performance of our children has not improved-- especially the performance of low-income children.

So President Bush said let's try a different way. That is where the bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, came in. It says, rather than controlling the input of legislation, rather than telling local school districts how to run their schools, let's take a different look at this and say, what are the children learning? Let's find out what they are learning; let's shine a light on it. If they are not learning enough to be competitive with their peers, or with what they need to be successful in society, then let's put in the remedial efforts to try to correct those problems.

It is an unusual approach in our educational system because, basically, it calls on the educational community to be accountable, to actually have to look at what a child is learning and determine whether what they are learning is what the community expects them to learn. The President's program, as passed by the Congress in a bipartisan initiative, doesn't set a Federal standard for what a child in the fourth grade in Epping, NH, knows; it rather says to the people in Epping, you set the standard for what your children should know in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Once you have set that standard, you are going to have to determine whether your children are learning to that standard, and especially whether your low-income children, who have historically been left behind, are learning to that standard. If they are not, you are going to have to tell the parents they are not. You will have to disclose to the community at large that a certain percentage of the children are not reaching the standards the community set for those children.

It is a radical idea for education to be held accountable, but it is an idea whose time has come. So far, the response of the educational community has been very positive. Most teachers understand this is a law directed not in a negative way toward their efforts but in a supportive way, trying to make sure school systems are more accountable--especially in those areas where you have schools that have not made the grade, where a majority of low-income kids are failing. In other words, they are not reaching the standards of ability a fifth grader should know in math or in English. In those schools, we are going to try to improve their efforts.

There is a lot of remedial activity to accomplish that. The President not only set out this new initiative in the concept and the way we approach education--when somebody comes up with a good idea for smaller classrooms, more computers, and throws out ideas without any accountability as to whether it produces results, instead of taking that input approach, but an output approach, where you actually expect kids to learn and you find out if they are learning, and if they are not, you do something about it, especially with low-income kids, not only did he initiate that approach but he was willing to put the dollars into the programs that succeed in this area.

I think it is important to understand, as we view the debate of this amendment specifically before us--the Byrd amendment--that the dollars the President has proposed, and which the Congress passed under the Republican Congress, at least, have been a radical increase in funding for education at the Federal level.

The most significant reflection is that, as a function of the Federal Government, education has received more funding in the way of increases than any other function in the Federal Government. You would not believe that if you listened to the other side of the aisle. You would think it was actually being cut or not maintained. But, in fact, what the President has proposed, and what we have passed as a Republican Congress, has been a dramatic increase in funding in education.

This chart reflects that. It shows that in 1996, when the Republicans took control of the Congress, but most of the burst occurred in the last 3 years since President Bush has come into office. The increase in education has been 145 percent, whereas the increase in health and human services is 100 percent. And in defense funding, if you ask a person on the street what part the Federal Government expanded fastest in the last 5 years, they would probably say defense because that is all you hear about--especially from the other side of the aisle. But that is not true. Defense funding increased only a third as fast as education funding.

That really tells only part of the story. The story is what has happened in the context of this President's efforts versus that of the prior administration, this Republican Congress's efforts versus the prior Democratic Congress's efforts, because we are now hearing all these amendments being thrown at us from the other side about how we are underfunding this or that and not doing enough funding here or there.

But you have to ask yourself, what did they do when they were in charge? Did they make the type of commitments they are now asking be made by the Congress or did they maybe do substantially less and come forward today because it is politically enticing to do so and claim these accounts are underfunded and, therefore, we have to add these additional moneys?

Well, I think there are a couple of facts that need to be addressed right now. The first is President Bush's funding in comparison with President Clinton's funding. In the last year of the Clinton administration, $42 billion was spent on education in this country. This year, after 3 years in office, President Bush will have increased education funding by 60 percent over the last Clinton budget, to $67 billion. That is a huge increase and a huge commitment.

It goes beyond that. If you look at it by accounts, you will see what President Bush has done is stand behind his words, especially in comparison to what the prior administration did. For example, in the entire period when the Democrats controlled the Congress and had a Democratic President, their increases in title I spending were $286 million. Since the Republicans have controlled Congress--and primarily since President Bush has come into office--it has gone to $1.2 billion. If you total these in special education and also Pell grants--and we have heard a lot of misrepresentation on the issue of Pell grants on this floor--the difference is that in the period of a Republican- controlled Congress--especially since President Bush has become President--the average annual increase has been $4 billion. That compares to about half a

billion dollars during the period President Clinton was in office and when there was a Democratic Congress.

A Republican Congress and a Republican President have basically made the commitments not only in the area of policy improvement but also in the area of dollars to back up that new policy.

It is instructive, for example, to take a look at some of the percentage differences between what the Republicans have done and what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle did when they were in control.

In the area, for example, of title I, our increases are 320 percent higher than the increases of the Democratic membership. In the area of IDEA grants, our increases are 770 percent higher than the increases when the Democratic Party controlled Congress. In the area of Pell grants--actually during the Clinton administration, Pell grants were cut; they fell in funding--under this administration, the increases have been on an annual basis about 10 times higher than what the Democrats did during their period. It is dramatic.

Overall, if you were to put it into gross terms, that $4.1 billion annual increase in educational funding, which has come about as a result of the commitment of this President to improving education and backing up those improvements with dollars, represents about an 858- percent increase on an annual basis over what happened when our predecessors were controlling the Congress and we had a different administration.

The practical effect of this has been that we have created so much more money flowing into the educational accounts at the Federal level, unlike what is represented across the other side of the aisle that more money is needed. In fact, what is happening is that we have put so much money into these accounts so fast under President Bush and the Republican Senate that we now have a situation where a large percentage of the dollars which we have already appropriated cannot be spent and have not been spent. In fact, of the $31 billion which has been appropriated under title I or the No Child Left Behind Act, $9 billion remains unspent. It is sitting at the Department of Education waiting for the States to get to a position where they are able to draw down those dollars. And this is not just from last year, this is from 2 to 3 years back, the whole period of President Bush's Presidency.

It is not an issue of lack of dollars. In fact, it is just the opposite. We are putting so many dollars into the educational accounts at the Federal level so fast that, to make sure they are spent correctly, it has made it difficult for the money to actually be spent. We, obviously, do not want to throw the money out there. It has to be spent pursuant to a plan. Every State has to file a plan. But as a result of the increased spending coming through the Bush initiatives, as supported by this Congress and especially by the chairman of this committee, Chairman Specter, who has been funding these accounts, we now find there is approximately $9 billion of funds which has not been drawn down.

Today we have before us an amendment proposed by the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee--a man whom I greatly respect and who I think all Senators respect because of his extraordinary history in the Senate--which is proposing to add $6 billion of spending on to the educational accounts. But how is it paid for? I think we need to address that, too, because, of course, all these kids we are educating and trying to make ready to participate in the American dream are going to have to pay the bills we run up on them if we run them up as a deficit.

So we put in place this year a budget. It was an idea that has been brought back, so to say, because when the colleagues across the aisle controlled the Senate last year, they did not put in place a budget. Why? Because a budget requires fiscal discipline and there were, I suspect, some who did not want fiscal discipline, did not want rules which drive fiscal discipline to be put in place so that spending could be controlled through budget points of order.

We had no budget last year. It was sort of a shock really. Here is the Government of the United States functioning without a budget. It was chaos--in fact, such chaos that not only did we not have a budget, we did not have any appropriations passed under the leadership of the last Congress, my colleagues across the aisle.

The first order of business when we took responsibility for this Chamber, under the leadership of Senator Frist, was to pass all the appropriations bills from the prior year--almost all of them, 11 of the 13 had to be passed in this year rather than last year when they should have been passed. At any rate, we produced a budget this year, and we passed it.

What is the purpose of the budget? The purpose of the budget is to put in place some reasonable fiscal controls so that in a time when we are obviously running very high deficits as a result of a number of factors--primarily the slow economy which has slowed revenues, the war in Iraq, and the war against terrorism--in that context where we are driving, unfortunately, large deficits, not historically extraordinary deficits but still very large deficits--we need to control the rate of growth in those deficits by having in place a budget which at least in some accounts gives fiscal discipline. So we put in place a budget.

The budget allocates to each area a certain amount of money to be spent. Even in the context of the very severe deficit which we have-- and it is significant--the Budget Committee, under the leadership of Senator Nickles, agreed to significantly increase the funding for education to try to meet the goals set out by the President.

In the area of special education, we increased funding by over $1 billion; in the area of title I, we increased funding by over $1 billion in the budget; and in the area of Pell grants, we increased funding by almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in the budget even though that meant that other accounts had to be reduced because to get the budget in place and have it be fiscally responsible, that required, if we were going to increase some accounts, we were most likely going to have to reduce others. We did a budget, and we passed it in the Senate, and it was passed by the House.

We have in place a budget for this country, finally. We renewed the concept of fiscal discipline through a budget after having abandoned it for a year under the prior leadership of the Senate.

That budget sets out these spending goals, these spending limits which are called caps, the amounts which should be spent in these accounts. The leadership of this committee, Senator Specter, met those caps and significantly increased by over $1 billion the spending on special education, over $1 billion the spending on title I, low-income kids, and almost $1 billion in spending on Pell grants.

Now we see these amendments coming from the other side saying: Even though we have a budget, we should ignore it and we should fund all these programs, not at the level that has been set by the budget or the level that has been set by the Appropriations Committee, but at the level set by the authorizing committee outside of the budget.

They are using a gimmick of classic proportions, advance funding, to claim that they are really doing it in a fiscally responsible way. Let me explain what advance funding is.

When a Senator offers an amendment which increases spending by $6 billion over what the budget allows, and then that person claims it is paid for because they borrow the $6 billion from next year's budget, that is not fiscal responsibility. That is a game. Anybody sees that as a gimmick. What happens next year? You are $6 billion in the hole. So next year you not only have to pay that $6 billion, you have to pay on top of that whatever you are going to pay for the increase in those accounts.

As a practical matter, it is doubling up the deficit. It would probably be better from a practical standpoint if you did not advance fund and you just said: All right, we are going to add to the deficit $6 billion outside the budget, and we are not going to advance fund.

Advance funding is the worst of both worlds because it takes money from next year, which creates havoc with next year, and at the same time it aggravates the budget deficit issue. So as a practical matter, the $6 billion that

is proposed in this amendment will add $6 billion to the deficit, if not this year, next year.

Who pays for that? Who pays for going outside the budget? Well, deficits are paid for by the folks who come here to work, who are students in high school, who are pages. When they get out of college-- and I presume most of them will want to go to college--they are going to get a job and that job is going to have a tax burden tied to it. That tax burden is going to be directly related by how much we increase the deficit today, because they are going to have to pay that bill down the road. It is going to come to them, not to us, not to my generation, most likely, but to my children's generation and to my children's children's generation.

So every time we break the budget, we are adding costs to our children. These are the same children we are trying to help. These are the same people we are trying to help as they move through their educational experience. How are we going to help them when we first-- well, unless we follow the President's program, we will not give them a great education but, more importantly, when you pass on to them a debt that is outside the discipline which is put in place to live by.

We put this budget in place so we would have fiscal discipline, so we would not be passing on more of a deficit to our kids than is reasonable. Yet these amendments keep coming at us, one after another, saying just add to the deficit, if not this year, next year; don't worry about it; it does not matter; it is for education.

I think it is ironic because the kids who are supposedly going to benefit are the kids who are going to have to pay the costs, and as a practical matter it is not going to benefit them that much. Why is it not going to benefit them that much? Because we already have $9.3 billion of unspent money in these accounts. We have increased them so fast that they cannot be drawn down effectively.

Now let's go to another issue, this concept that the authorized level has to be funded. This is a very unusual concept for Congress, because for all intents and purposes Congress does not fund anything to authorized levels.

Authorized levels are statements of intent, purpose, goodwill. What Congress funds is a budget and appropriated levels. But now we hear, almost as a matter of sanctity, from the other side of the aisle that we have to reach the authorized level or we have abandoned the children of America.

That is a very interesting concept, but they did not subscribe to that concept when they were in control of the Senate. Last time the Democratic membership controlled this body, which happened to be a year ago, they brought forward an appropriations bill under Labor-HHS, which is the bill we are dealing with today, and they funded education. Did they fund to the authorized level? No, they did not. They did not even come close to funding to the authorized level.

This is the difference. This is the authorized level, the black line. This is what the Democratic budget proposed. It is a pretty big gap, about $4 billion. This was what was actually funded in the Democratic bill, which never passed, by the way, nor did the budget because they decided they did not want a budget and they could not pass their bill.

Suddenly there has been an epiphany on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, the authorized levels are sacrosanct and we must fund the authorized level. Well, I suggest there is a touch of inconsistency, especially in light of the track record we confront when we look at the facts.

So we are turning to the basic underlying point, and that is this: For the first time in at least a decade, and really longer, we have a President who even in a period of extreme national difficulty--war against terrorists who are set on destroying our Nation and killing Americans, and have already done so--and a difficult economic period, although we are coming out of it, hopefully, a President who even during those hard times, where his attention has obviously been drawn off, and appropriately so, to defending America and trying to get us back to work, has continued his focus on making sure children are properly educated in this country, and he is especially focused on low- income kids. That is the uniqueness of what he has done.

Most of us understand that a child from a better-off family is probably going to be taken care of in the educational system, but the low-income child, who comes mostly from broken homes and disproportionately lives in urban areas, has been left behind for generation after generation.

Now we have a President who has said no longer and who is willing to make this his purpose, even during these very difficult times when his attention might and has been drawn off otherwise. He has supported that purpose with huge increases in funding. In fact, in the first 3 years of the Bush administration, he increased funding more for title I in 3 years than the prior administration did in 8 years by a factor of almost 70 percent. The same is true in the special education accounts, and to a lesser extent but to a significant point in the Pell accounts. This is a President who has not only put forward creative and imaginative policy to try to finally get a handle on the fact that so many kids are not learning what they need to know in order to compete for the American dream, has not only put together that policy but has backed it up with real, hard dollars. In the budget this Congress passed, we backed up the President.

Today, the issue is whether we are going to hold that budget, which has these very significant increases in education, or whether we are going to dramatically expand the deficit in what seems to me to be a bit of inconsistency in relationship to what was proposed when our colleagues across the aisle were in control.

This committee, under the leadership of Senator Specter, this President, has done the work that needs to be done, lifted the weights that need to be lifted in the area of funding education, and we should be supporting this committee's mark in this area.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that one of the underlying amendments is the amendment offered by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

During the August recess, I visited many of my State's cities and home school districts, stopping in to meet with principals, teachers, parents, and students to talk about the state of education in Illinois. We have many fine schools, there is no question about it. But we are also being challenged by the fact that we face a sizable State deficit. This year our Governor, Rod Blagojevich, had to find $5 billion in savings out of our State budget, a substantial amount, making cuts in many areas. He tried his best not to cut into State funding for education. Despite his best efforts and the efforts of the general assembly, most of the school districts I visited are facing serious hardships.

Let me give one illustration. In Elgin, IL, they recently constructed four new school buildings that were to be opened this year. But because the Elgin School District has fallen so far behind in State and local assistance, they will be unable to open those buildings. So there sit four brand new schools which don't have the staffing and certainly don't offer better amenities than the older schools offered; they just cannot be opened. It is an indication of the problems faced by many school districts in my State and across the Nation.

When President Bush was elected, he came to Congress and said he wanted to be the education President. He suggested that we try a bipartisan national approach to establishing better standards of accountability for education across America. The President proposed No Child Left Behind. It was a unique concept, one which called for regular testing of students to determine whether they were making progress and, absent that progress, changes would have to take place in the school district. You would have to find better teachers or a better school environment, principals who were more efficient in delivering educational quality, and certainly demands would be made for better teachers. All of these objectives were very positive.

I sat on the Senate floor and behind me at this seat was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Paul had a passion for education, a teacher by his own profession. He was a great critic of No Child Left Behind. Despite the fact that there was strong bipartisan support for the President's program, Paul Wellstone would stand there with his microphone day after day and speak to the Senate and the people watching across America and say: Listen, tests are important, but education is about more than just testing. He would say, incidentally, if you pass the President's bill, you are going to have to come up with the money to make certain these kids have a chance. If the scores don't meet the norms or standards you expect, what are you going to do? Are you going to help them or merely diagnose the problem and walk away from it? He was skeptical that when the time came, we in the Congress would appropriate the money to make No Child Left Behind work.

That was Paul Wellstone's speech day after day, week after week, month after month. Ultimately, he voted against the bill. I voted for it, but I remembered what he said. Then I went back to Illinois and visited school district, large and small, rural and urban, districts in growing areas of our State and districts in economically depressed areas of our State. I found that many of them were echoing what Paul Wellstone said in opposing No Child Left Behind. They were talking about the burden on a teacher who comes to a classroom at the beginning of the school year realizing that teacher will ultimately be tested in a high-stakes test at the end of the year. What that test meant to the students, to the school, and to the teacher was that in order to get good grades on the test, teachers were kind of changing the way they taught. They were no longer teaching in a creative and innovative fashion, but they were focusing on answers to the test questions. School administrators, incidentally, said: Senator, we are a little concerned that the promises made by the Bush administration to send money to school districts to meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind are not going to be fulfilled. The promised money that was to come down to the school districts under title I, which is money to help reach the students who are not doing well on tests and help them to reach grade level and to succeed, the title I funds promised by the Bush administration under No Child Left Behind, is not going to be there. That is the money that is supposed to be there for afterschool programs, so that some of these same students running into difficulties would have a helping hand after school; and summer school programs for the same purpose are not going to be funded under the Bush budget.

The same school administrators in Illinois said, incidentally, this idea of making certain that teachers meet certain levels of qualifications and certification is a good idea, but it takes money to reach those goals, to send some of these teachers back for additional college classes in science, math, or whatever their specialty might be. There is no money for the school district to deal with that.

So I heard the story over and over. It came to my mind that Paul Wellstone was right; No Child Left Behind was a great promise, but it is an unfulfilled promise because when the budget was delivered to us, unfortunately, the money wasn't delivered with it. Title I, which would help the No Child Left Behind Program, is underfunded by more than $6 billion in the Senate bill we are considering on the floor. Six million kids across America are at risk of not meeting the standards if we don't come to the rescue with the amendment by the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Byrd. In my State, it would add $255 million in title I funding to help more than 740,000 low-income kids meet the standards we imposed--Federal standards we mandated under No Child Left Behind that were mandated, but the program was not funded.

Over the last decade, the enrollment of low-income students in Illinois public schools has increased from 32 percent to more than 37 percent.

Districts across the State are really trying to comply with No Child Left Behind standards, but they need the full amount of the funds promised to be sent to these school districts, as well as the full mandate of the Federal law.

Illinois has done a number of school funding studies, and every one of them shows definitively that it will take much more money to help kids become proficient in reading and math. It stands to reason. If you have a child struggling to learn to read, that child needs more personal attention. But if you have a large classroom with 30 kids or more, the likelihood of personal attention is diminished. So if you do not send the funds to the school district for smaller class sizes, that child who is

going to face the reading test has less of a chance of succeeding.

The State superintendent in Illinois testified this winter before the Illinois House Appropriations Committee that it will take even more funding to help low-income and non-English speaking students to keep pace with their peers academically.

Our State superintendent, Dr. Robert Schiller, also stated:

Based on current trends, Illinois will fall short of

meeting the Federal goal, set forth in No Child Left Behind,

of all children meeting or exceeding reading and math

standards by 2014.

Thirty-seven percent of Illinois students fail to meet State reading and math standards.

As is the trend nationally, Illinois has significant gaps between white and minority student achievement and between low-income students and their more affluent peers.

Last month, the Illinois State Board of Education released its early warning list of school districts required to provide school choice, supplemental tutoring, or take corrective action this school year. More than 500 schools in my State are on the list, and the number might go up by the end of the month when the final calculations are made.

Compared to other States, Illinois has been pretty lucky as far as education funding at the State level. For this next fiscal year, which started in July, the State was able to increase per pupil and categorical funding to keep school districts on the road to improvement. But beneath the surface, the Illinois State Board of Education and our local school districts are struggling to implement the requirements of the federally mandated No Child Left Behind.

District budgets are straining under these unfunded requirements addressed by the Byrd amendment. How many Senators in this Chamber stood up with great pride and said we are voting for No Child Left Behind because we believe in accountability, education is the highest priority in our country, and we need to be there for our kids and their families? All of us who voted for the bill gave that speech.

Look what happened when the Bush budget came down. The money was not there--a $6 billion shortfall in money needed in schools across America.

We sent out all these wonderful speeches out to be printed in newspapers, and we posed for pictures with students and teachers. But months later, when it comes to funding the bill we passed, the Bush administration refuses to put the money down and this Congress followed suit and put together the bill before us today which also fails to keep that promise. This title I money was supposed to be the pool of resources from which districts would implement school improvement provisions necessary to meet adequate yearly progress. Districts now have to use State and local funds to try to reach those goals.

Despite an overall increase for K-12 education, more than $30 million in cuts and reallocations were made at the State level in my State this year. This includes a significant reduction in the number of State board employees, the elimination of State gifted education programs, the elimination of the State family literacy initiative, and the statewide math education initiative.

While Illinois has been successful in keeping budget cuts out of the classroom, that may not be the case if our State remains in its current financial straits.

The impact of the Federal Government's failure to fund title I as we promised is more deeply felt at the school district level where the financial picture is bleaker.

Across Illinois, school districts are laying off teachers, cutting programs, and reducing the hours of operation. Sixty-one percent of our school districts are operating with deficits, and here we have a Federal mandate from the Bush administration under No Child Left Behind that imposes new responsibilities on these school districts operating in a deficit and fails to fund the program.

Many of these school districts have had deficits for several years in a row. This number is expected to rise about 80 percent next year. This spring, 62 percent of local bond proposals failed, and 55 percent of local tax referenda failed. Those are hard to pass in good times. In a recession, they are particularly difficult to pass. And we had a recession which began before this President came to office by a few months and which has continued unabated ever since.

Our State unemployment rate is about 6.6 percent in Illinois. We have lost 120,000 manufacturing jobs while President Bush has been in office, and those numbers are duplicated across America. There is little wonder taxpayers resist the idea of increasing their property taxes at a time when we are facing this recession.

In many areas of our State, local revenue increases have been less than 5 percent because they are limited by tax caps. When local resources cannot be increased, it makes title I money even more important to these cash-strapped school districts.

For example, in my hometown of Springfield, Public School District 186 has 36 elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. Just over 15,000 kids attend school in that district. Springfield has had financial challenges over the last several years and has cut more than $30 million from the district budget in the wake of the failed tax referendum. This year, six Springfield elementary schools failed to make adequate yearly progress, and they must offer public school choice. Springfield needs every title I dollar the district can get to improve student achievement and get the schools moving forward making progress.

What would Springfield do with the money? I asked the superintendent, Dr. Dianne Rutledge. She said, with more Federal funding, if Washington kept its promise to send money for No Child Left Behind, this is what they would do with it. She would hire additional teachers to reduce class sizes, and that on its face is a good idea. I have yet to meet a teacher who has prayed for a larger class. They want smaller classes so they can focus more attention on students who need help and even more attention on students who are gifted who, with additional time, can do extraordinary things.

She would also operate reading recovery, and hire a school improvement coach for each school to provide intensive and personalized year-round professional development to teachers and staff.

If the Senate fails to adopt the Byrd amendment, there will be less money for Springfield. They will not be able to hire the teachers, and fewer kids will have tutors.

Let's look at a larger school district in my State, the Chicago public school system. They educate more than 438,000 kids in K-12 in 602 schools.

Eighty-five percent of the children in Chicago public schools are defined as living in poverty. Roughly 90 percent are minority.

The Chicago public school system is, in many ways, the poster district for setting high academic standards and adopting an aggressive program for school improvement. Ten years ago, 48 percent of Chicago's schoolchildren were performing in the bottom quarter of national achievement in reading and math. Today that number has been cut in half, first by Paul Vallis, who came in under the direction of Mayor Daley and brought real reform to the Chicago public school system, and then followed by Arne Duncan, our current CEO of Chicago public schools, an extraordinary educator who is doing a great job. He reported last week for the first time that number has been cut in half, and Chicago public schools are performing above the Nation as a whole. That is an amazing achievement in a district that diverse with so many challenges.

Despite the Chicago public school system's dramatic recovery over the last decade, 365 of its 602 schools have been labeled as failing to make yearly adequate progress. That is more than half.

The Chicago public schools' budget increased this year over last. The district has managed to avoid drastic cuts. Most of the increased funds are committed to certain projects, and several of the initiatives are specifically to comply with Federal requirements.

To comply with the highly qualified teachers mandate in No Child Left Behind, Chicago public schools has just completed work on a brandnew $2 million database to track the qualifications of each of their 25,000 teachers. The Chicago public school system is

likely to have to create a similar system to track the qualifications of thousands of paraprofessionals.

Complying with the Federal mandates of President Bush's No Child Left Behind has led to some terrible challenges for this major city school district. The Chicago public school system wants to invest title I dollars in afterschool, summer school, and extended week programs. It is required to use a large portion of its limited Federal resources to move kids from schools that are failing to other schools.

What would the Chicago school system do with the money in the Byrd amendment? We asked the finance director, John Maiorca. He would expand afterschool and summer school opportunities for students at risk in failing the test. He would invest in supplemental education services and additional tutoring for these struggling students, and hire additional teachers to reduce class size.

Two days ago, I was at the opening of the schools in Chicago. I went to a school on the west side known as Dodge Academy. Dodge Academy closed 2 years ago because it was a failing school, but there was a promise made that it would improve and reopen. It has, and it is an exceptionally good school.

One can tell, walking in the door, that this is a school that is destined to succeed. Not only do they have a wonderful, bright, and remodeled building because of a lot of hard work by the local school district but they also have some of the brightest teachers. They are a school that is trying a new concept, under the leadership of Mike Koldyke, that is going to bring to each of these classrooms two resident teachers. So for a year they are going to have teachers in residence who are training to become teachers, working with veteran teachers, and then they will move these newly qualified teachers with experience to the failing schools in the Chicago public school systems and try to turn them around. It is a great model. It works in hospitals. It can certainly work in schools. But it costs money.

The money from title I, which would be part of No Child Left Behind had the Bush administration and this bill adequately funded it, could have been used for that purpose, but it is not there. With the Byrd amendment, it would be there, and so the Chicago public school system would have that opportunity.

So right now we are dealing with the broken promises of No Child Left Behind, unfunded mandates at a time when school districts in Illinois and across America are struggling to survive. How can we, in good conscience, impose these ideas and mandates on the school districts, as good as they may be, and then refuse to pay for them?

Senator Byrd really is calling to task all of us who voted on No Child Left Behind, those of us who stood so proudly by this bill and said this is the answer to America's education needs. The question now is: Will we produce the money it takes to make this succeed? Quite honestly, if the Byrd amendment fails, the answer is no.

Many of the same people who took great pride in saying they co- authored this program, cosponsored it, and voted for it, will turn around and vote against the funding for the mandates they are creating in school districts across America. These are unfunded mandates in the middle of a recession, at a time of State deficits, when schools are struggling to survive, unfunded mandates from the Bush administration in No Child Left Behind.

The only thing the Bush administration guarantees it will pay for is the test. So the test will be administered but any effort to improve the scores of students will be hampered, hindered with additional obstacles because of the refusal of this Congress to appropriate the adequate funds. We need to make certain that the $6 billion shortfall in title I in No Child Left Behind is a shortfall that is filled, and filled soon.

I rise in support of the Byrd amendment, commend Senator Byrd for his leadership, and urge all of my colleagues to put their money where their press release was. It is not just a matter of taking credit for a program. Stand up now and appropriate the funds to make it work in Philadelphia, in Iowa, in Chicago, all across America.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Dorgan resolution. This is a debate and an issue that does bring us in touch with a number of the important issues discussed by the Senator from Virginia: free speech, media concentration, consolidation. It certainly affects our media markets and the shape of those media markets for years to come. But, at its heart, this is really a question of regulation, a new set of regulations, a different set of regulations put forward by the FCC, dealing with who can buy, who can own different kinds of media outlets--newspapers, TV, radio stations, and the like-- and what kind of limits we are going to put on them.

So it is a debate about regulation and how much regulation is the appropriate amount on the part of the Federal Government. To what degree do we want the Federal Government interfering with, limiting, and manipulating the media that we as consumers enjoy and use in our daily lives? What level of regulation is appropriate and is really required to uphold some very important principles that you have heard the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from North Dakota and many others speak of--principles of localism, competition, and diversity, principles that we support, that the FCC works to support anytime it looks at a regulatory issue such as this one?

How much regulation do we really require to protect these important principles? This is not a debate about the poor quality of the TV that we might go home and look at, or look away from, every night. In some ways, I wish this were a debate about improving the quality of television because if we could just do that by a simple adjustment of these regulations, then we probably would all feel much better about the quality of television. But we can't.

To suggest this is about the quality of the television we see in any part of the country is to suggest that you believe limiting, say, Fox Corporation to the 35 stations it owns today versus the 40 or 42 or 44, or some number it might own at a future date with the new regulations, that somehow that would affect the quality of the programming we see. I think that is ridiculous. I don't think that program quality would be improved if we forced NBC to get rid of 8 of its 29 stations or 10 or 12 stations within the limits that we are talking about that any one of these companies owns. I don't think it would in any way affect the quality of television.

I am the father of three children. I am as frustrated as any parent about the search for good quality programming. I am frustrated about the poor quality of programming that is often put on television in the prime time hour. But that is the nature of modern media--whether it is cable or radio or television or even newspapers. We are not all going to be happy as Americans with everything that comes across the channels.

At the same time, I very much support the process that the Senator from North Dakota is using here, the Congressional Review Act. I think it does bear some emphasis because some people have come to the floor and have been somewhat critical of the process being used here--using the Congressional Review Act resolution to repeal a regulation that a Member of Congress or a Member of the Senate doesn't like. But that is exactly what the law was intended to do.

It is a law that was passed, I am pleased to say, when Republicans took control of Congress back in 1995. They said we ought to have as a Congress--as a House or as a Senate--a way to register disapproval; to repeal regulations that are put forward all the time

by very large bureaucracies, or different branches of the executive regulating commerce, or regulating the environment, or regulating the forestry issues, or, in this case, regulating the media. It is a very appropriate use of the act, but it is a resolution with which I strongly disagree. I will talk about those reasons this afternoon.

We are here obviously because the Senator from North Dakota has submitted this resolution of disapproval, or rejection of these new regulations, but the regulations were put forward in the first place primarily because of a couple of issues.

The first was in 1996. The Telecommunications Act sets the guidelines under which the FCC acts; that calls on the FCC to reconsider regulations that do not serve the principles of localism, competition, or diversity, and doesn't seem necessary to promote these competitive forces, or to serve the public.

The 1996 act actually calls on the members of the FCC to do exactly what they did; that is, reconsider these regulations and modify them if they believe it is in the public interest and the right thing to do.

Second, related to that legislation but even more current is the action of the courts recently. The courts struck down or remanded several of the media regulations--in particular, the 35-percent cap which we will talk about--and called on the FCC to either revise or justify the regulations that were on the books.

So you have two forces coming to bear. I am sure the FCC Commissioners weren't dying to throw themselves into the issue, but they were called upon effectively to do so by the courts and by the legislation that this very Congress passed in 1996.

These are proposals--I think as the Senator from Virginia discussed-- which were very long in the making. It was not a spur of the moment recommendation or a spur of the moment change in regulations. For 20 months, there were deliberations, collecting comments, soliciting comments, and several hearings that took place. People came forward and spoke for and against different rules and for and against different concepts for changing those rules and to argue their point of view--to argue the very reasons they thought a change in the existing rules might be in keeping with the goals of the 1996 act and the three principles of localism, competition, and diversity.

There was a thorough process, not one that was without any disagreement but a great country, a strong country, and one where we take great pride in our ability to debate and discuss these issues with one another.

Let me talk about three of the proposals and the reasons I think at the end of this very thorough and very complete process, resulting in the rules put forward by the FCC, the reason I think the rules make sense, and why I don't think we should be rushing to repeal them or reject them. I believe there are several negative consequences of repealing these rules, which I will speak about at the end of my presentation.

First, we are talking about a proposal that will take the current 35- percent cap to 45 percent.

What does the 35-percent cap mean? Is it 35 percent of the television market share? It is not 35 percent of the television viewers on any particular night or any particular hour. It is not 35 percent of the television station. It is a cap on owning stations that can reach 35 percent of the population, the immense concentration that we hear about. Take NBC, for example, which owns 29 television stations. That is less than 2 percent of the number of full-power television stations in the country. I think they are the largest owner of stations. Perhaps Fox Corporation may own 35 stations, close to 2.5 percent of the full- power television stations. This is just a limit on the amount of viewers you can reach if every viewer out there happens to be watching your station.

If you look at, as I said, the number of stations that are owned, we are talking about a very small number on a percentage basis. Opponents of the rules and supporters of this resolution will say, well, let us talk about the six big companies. Those six big companies control 75 percent of the television viewers.

First, to suggest you are being controlled when you choose what you want to watch on television any given night, I think, misunderstands what television viewers are all about. But even if you look at those numbers--six companies, 75 percent of the viewers--let us go back 20 or 30 years; it used to be that there were three companies which had 90 percent of the viewers. I think things have changed in that regard for the better. But the numbers are even more striking if you break them apart further.

Those six companies may have 75 percent of the viewers because their shows happen to be popular, but they have fewer than 25 percent of the channels that would typically come through your cable or your satellite outlet.

On that cable dial, all channels are created equal. We used to be segmented in VHF and UHF. But today a majority of people receive their television through cable or through satellite. Channel 85 and channel 42 are just as likely to attract viewers, depending on the quality of their program.

It is a pretty fair fight when you think about it--pretty fair competition among the dozens of stations on the dial. Those six companies only control or own fewer than 25 percent of the channels. There is greater competition in that regard and greater diversity in that regard not only than we had 30 years ago but, quite frankly, than most people could have imagined 30 years ago.

With all the discussion about localism--it is a very important thing, indeed--there has been no connection shown between localism and a larger concentrated owner of these stations. Simply because a TV station is owned by one of the larger corporations does not mean it shows less local programming. It is a very important point. This has been studied. You can look at it empirically, look at NBC, Fox, or ABC- owned stations, and measure how much local programming they put on any given day and compare it to independently owned stations around the country and measure how much local programming there is on any given day. There is no difference. To the extent there is a difference, one of the most comprehensive studies the FCC relied upon showed a slight increase in local programming among those owned by the larger media entities.

Localism is important. To be sure, the FCC maintains its ability to press for and emphasize localism, diversity, and competition when they make decisions of who can and cannot purchase a license. And all of the purchases of licenses--radio, TV--are still subject to FCC review and still subject to antitrust laws that govern monopoly power in this country. So that is one of their regulations. Probably the one that gets the most discussion is the movement from a path of 35 to 45 percent of the audience that could be reached by all the stations.

The second regulation that received a lot of discussion is the issue of cross-ownership, whether you can allow a company that has a newspaper to also own a TV or radio station. Here we actually have cases we can look at. The FCC did look at it and asked the question, Where cross-ownership occurs, are localism, competition, and diversity poorly served? Do we have problems? Do we have conflicts of interest? Do we see a reduction in the responsiveness of the media outlets to local community needs? We can look at existing evidence because there were 40 markets that were grandfatherd by the FCC, 40 markets where entities already engage in cross-ownership. There was no harm found by the FCC. That certainly does not mean everyone is happy with everything that newspaper or radio station or TV that has cross-ownership produced. I am sure we will hear from Members that might in their remarks speak to personal experiences where they do not feel they were treated well by a newspaper or radio station. That is unfortunate for them.

But that is the nature of the country's free media and free markets. It is something that ultimately, when we get over the personal feelings, every member of this Chamber is proud of, that this country allows such a free and open media.

Again, where cross-ownership issues come into play and purchases of TV or radio station and all spectrum come into play, the principles of localism, competition, and diversity will be protected, but antitrust provisions still hold. That is important to remember.

A third and final area of regulatory change or regulations that has been discussed in this debate is radio ownership. There is a little bit of irony here because this is something that cuts close to home for the Senator from North Dakota, the celebrated case in his State where one company was able to acquire six or seven radio stations that all covered one particular region of the State, a very clear case of dominance of radio in a particular region of the State. But with regard to radio ownership limits, the FCC actually tightened the regulations. There is no change to the regulations on the number of stations you can own in a particular market in an attempt by the FCC to actually tighten the definition of market areas in order to prevent that unfortunate situation from happening again.

We can critique the radio stations or the large radio station owners, talk about their business practices or things we liked or disliked about them, and there are important points to make, but they do not really have any bearing on this debate because even if this CRA provision offered and were to pass, there would be no significant modification to the radio ownership structures.

If the resolution passes, it does have a number of other counterproductive effects that concern me. First and foremost, it would surely send these issues back to the courts. That is one of the reasons--not the only reason but one of the reasons--the FCC acted in the first place because the courts had said there is no justification for the regulations as currently structured. So if this resolution passes and were to pass the House and get signed into law--which is unlikely to happen, and I certainly do not support it--if it were to be signed into law, this would all be thrown back into the courts and we would have a very uncertain environment for ownership, for media, for evaluation, and for business. Whether you are an entity large or small, independent or corporately owned, it would create an uncertain marketplace.

Second, this resolution turns back the clock. I don't believe that is a good thing, in that turning back the clock would ignore the enormous changes we have seen to the industry over the last 10 years, let alone the last 20 or 30 years. A number of the regulations that are modified or adjusted by the FCC date back 30 or 40 years to their original crafting.

I know it is difficult to picture what the state of television was for many of the younger Members of the Chamber, but I amaze my children constantly when I describe it in a world where you had to walk across the room to change the channel on your television. I am old enough to remember those days and they seem not so long ago, indeed. Times have changed enormously. Regulations dealing with this industry and with the media markets need to be updated to keep pace with the evolution of technology, to protect the values of localism, competition, and diversity, but they do need to evolve with the changes in technology.

A third and final concern if this resolution were to pass was raised by FCC Chairman Michael Powell in a piece he authored yesterday or today for publication. That is, it could well portend the end of free TV. Rolling back these regulations with the passage of this act could result in the end of free TV. It sounds like a pretty dramatic claim. I think it bears some additional description. How could that be?

Free TV depends on advertising for its revenues. Cable TV depends on both advertising revenue and cable subscriptions--monthly fees or per- show fees paid to watch programming. Simply put, that is a better business model. Anyone can see that. Pay TV has a better, stronger, more robust business model. If you do not believe it, look at the migration of so-called quality programming--sports, entertainment, even certain forms of news programming from free TV to cable TV over the last 3 or 4 or 5 years, let alone the last 10 or 15 years. Go back 10 or 15 years, it is a wholesale migration, but you can see changes in the last 3, 4, or 5 years.

If we repeal the rules, we create a tougher competitive environment and more restrictive competitive environment for the free TV networks or stations. You put them at a competitive disadvantage relative to cable and pay TV. So the acceleration and the movement of that so- called quality programming to cable TV will only accelerate and make it tougher and tougher to sustain any level of quality among free TV in the marketplace.

I could be cynical and say, That is fine with me. I don't care. I have cable TV and I will still continue to get lots of channels, lots of entertainment, lots of news, and lots of sports. Many people would argue, and part of me certainly would argue, that there is a value and a benefit to free TV especially in those areas of our country that are at an economic disadvantage, where cable TV does not have the penetration of urban areas and where people simply cannot afford to pay for cable TV.

Those are serious considerations. The effect of free TV, turning back the clock with regard to the evolution of technology and throwing the issues back into the courts, all of those would be cause to reject this resolution in and of themselves.

But on top of that, we see that the radio ownership regulations are effectively untouched. Cross-ownership has already proven its ability to work in the marketplace without harming the principles of localism, competition, and diversity. And the adjustment from 35 percent to 45 percent of national ownership cap, I would contend, is modest. It is very modest, indeed, when you look at what the true market share numbers are and the number of channels.

This is an important debate. I appreciate being given time to talk on these issues. I do hope my colleagues step forward to reject this resolution, although, as I say, I certainly respect the way in which it has been offered and the process the Senator from North Dakota has gone through to get us to this debate.

We respect the ideals of free speech, of democracy, and we work to promote the idea of competition and diversity in media ownership. I believe that is exactly what the FCC has done and attempted to do in crafting these regulations. I hope we will reject this resolution and continue to move forward in a thoughtful way, and to a world and to an age of technology and media that, frankly, we can't quite picture today which will be exciting, will provide opportunities, and will continue to promote the ideals of free speech upon which this country was founded.

I thank you, Mr. President, and yield the floor.