National Historic Country Store Preservation Act of 2005

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

I have an amendment. I would like to offer it at a time when it would be mutually agreeable to the managers.

Very well. I will get my amendment, if the two managers will consent that I be recognized to offer it.

Mr. President, I will very shortly. In the meantime, might I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I will shortly call up an amendment. Before doing so, I would like to recall a statement by the late Reverend Peter Marshall, possibly, even probably, the most famous and well known of the Senate chaplains, who offered this prayer at the opening of the second session of the 80th Congress:

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but

give us the determination to make the right things happen.

Sometimes we can do that, sometimes we can't, but at least we can try. For too many months now, the Congress and the administration have taken a ``wait and see'' approach when it comes to today's life- altering price of gasoline.

The administration has pinned its rhetoric to an energy plan, waiting and hoping to tout a reduced dependence on foreign oil, while conceding that no energy plan will provide immediate relief to high prices at the pump.

The American people have waited and have waited and have waited for the United States to get tough on OPEC and other nations responsible for the recent spike in gasoline prices. Their elected leaders offer explanations and more explanations and still more explanations and equivocations about why such action has not reduced prices at the pump.

The American people are out there listening and they are watching; they see what is going on here on the Senate floor. They watch us through those electronic lenses behind the Chair, the Presiding Officer. The American people waited anxiously for the President's prime-time news conference, hoping to see at last that somebody would proffer some kind of relief from high gas prices. My, how they do hurt. How they do pinch, don't they? Yes. Ultimately, the American people were disappointed as their pleas for relief were again rebuffed. The people have waited, they have waited, they have waited, and they are still waiting. They waited while gas prices have gone up and up and up. The patience of the American people is running out. When will it end?

The American people watched incredulously as the House of Representatives passed an energy bill last month, including $8 billion of energy tax cuts. These are tax cuts for many of the corporate conglomerates who are enjoying record-breaking profits from today's oil prices. Yet the Congress declines--it declines, it declines, and it declines again and again--to provide relief to the workers who must bear the brunt of these price spikes at the pump. I am talking about the working people of America, people whose hands are soiled with honest toil, the working people in America. They are in South Carolina, North Carolina, and West Virginia.

While the big oil companies are making big money, hand over fist, from high gas prices, the only relief the Congress has seen fit to provide is to the very oil companies--not the people--making all the money. They are making all the money.

The irony is incredible, but not only is it incredible, it is contemptible. It is the little guy who is getting the shaft because we refuse to stand up for him or her. Well, the time has come to take a stand. This Congress continues to ignore the working man and the single mother. There are lots of them out there and they have to go through this every day when they drive up to the pumps. Think of them. Who is here to take a stand for them--the little guys? There are lots of them out there. The little guy is getting the shaft because we refuse to stand up for him. Again, this Congress continues to ignore the working man and the single mother. This administration continues to ignore the working man and the single mother, and it continues to ignore the outdoorsman who can no longer afford to fill up his pickup truck or SUV for a weekend of work--yes, they even work on the Sabbath; they have to sometimes--or for a weekend of hunting and fishing.

If the Congress cannot wave a magic wand to lower prices at the pump--and it cannot--at least we can provide short-term relief to compensate workers, and that relief ought not be delayed. We have those workers in Texas, we have them in Oklahoma, and we have them in West Virginia. I talk with them every day. The time has come; the clock is moving. Relief ought not be delayed. The time has come for the Congress to take action. We must take action. We have heard that television statement: Do it now, do it here.

I addressed the Senate last month about this issue, highlighting the impact that high gas prices have had on rural States such as mine, rural States such as New Hampshire. Yes, there are rural areas all over this country.

When gas prices soar, the impact on rural families can be devastating and can be cruel. In my State of West Virginia, the impact has been brutal. It saps the economic strength of the State. It squeezes anybody who owns a vehicle, and it chips away at the income of workers who must commute. They have to commute, there is no way around it. Think of those mountains, those stately, majestic mountains in New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Tennessee. It chips away at the income of workers who have to commute to and from and across and in between those mountains. Households must curtail essentials, and families must do without other things. They have to get that gasoline, they have to get to work, they have to get that bread and butter on the table. Businesses lose customers. Think about that. I was once in a small business. I was once a small, small businessman. I know what it is. You have to meet a one or two or three-person payroll. And business includes customers. As the pocketbook strings tighten more and more, profits decrease, operating expenses sore, workers' paychecks suffer more and more.

Residents of rural States must drive longer distances to and from work, inflicting burdensome costs on commuters. I am talking about the States of Virginia, Georgia, New Hampshire, as well as West Virginia-- not just West Virginia.

Rural States have less access to public transportation. What does that mean? That means subways and buses and car pooling are not usually available to rural commuters. I am talking about the States of South Carolina; Kansas; Iowa, where the tall corn grows; Oklahoma, as well as West Virginia. Not just West Virginia. Hear me now, it is not just West Virginia. In Appalachia--13 States are in Appalachia. West Virginia is the only one wholly in Appalachia.

In Appalachia, rural roads, twisting and winding and bending around the hills and mountains, exacerbate the financial pain. I am talking about the States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, yes, as well as West Virginia. Not just West Virginia; other States as well.

When gas prices spike, rural commuters often have no disposable income to absorb the price flux. What

does this do? It forces painful cuts in essential expenditures. I am talking about the States of Idaho, North Carolina--where I was born-- Ohio, South Dakota, as well as West Virginia. So it is not just West Virginia.

The people of these States and all across America, all across the Great Plains and the prairies, the mountains, the Ozarks, the Rocky Mountains, all throughout the land, people in these States are crying out for action by Congress. So today I offer an amendment to answer that call. We hear you, we should say. Yes, we hear you. So I have an amendment that says we hear you.

My amendment would provide a temporary $500 tax credit for commuters who travel 250 miles per week to and from work. Isn't that a reasonable approach, a temporary $500 tax credit for commuters who travel 250 miles per week, and many of them travel more than that? Oh, yes. But we put a limit on it, for commuters who travel 250 miles. If you travel 240 miles, that is not enough. So we try to be very reasonable.

Why shouldn't a man or woman who travels 240 miles a week be helped, too? We know how difficult it is to move legislatively. I have only been in this Chamber 47 years, 47 years looking around these walls. ``Novus ordo seclorum,'' it says on that wall, ``a new order for the ages.'' And ``in God we trust.'' ``In God we trust.'' I have seen these walls for 47 years. Yes, I came over from the other body where I used to say: Thank God for the Senate. I never thought of coming over here to change the Senate rules to make us another House of Representatives. No, I said thank God for the Senate.

Here we are. My amendment would provide a temporary $500 tax credit for commuters who travel 250 miles per week. What does that amount to per day? Mr. President, $50 for a 5-day week; is that what it is? It is $50 a day for a 5-day week. The credit would be available in rural, low-income States where public transportation is not readily available. Go down to Welch, WV. Travel into the hills and mountains of New Hampshire. The credit would be available in rural, low-income States where public transportation is not readily available. The credit would be limited to the tax year 2005, 1 year, and it fits within the congressional budget so as not to worsen projected deficits. That is reasonable, isn't it? This is not a complicated proposal. The arguments in favor of providing relief to workers is obvious, having been made by Members of Congress and the administration for many months now. So we put off action day to day, month to month, year to year, waiting for supposed long-term solutions to take effect while we are recreant, while we refuse to provide relief for the immediate hardship.

Let us not delay any longer. Let us not equivocate about economic theories that clearly are working to the detriment of the American workers. Now is the time, and it may be the only time, to vote to provide relief from high gas prices. Now is the time to vote to recognize the plight of workers at the gas pump.

Oh, they say, well, this amendment may not be germane. Oh, this would set a precedent. What is wrong with that? How are precedents set? What is a precedent, if it isn't something new, if it isn't something that goes against the grain of something that has gone before? That is how we get precedents. I have seen many precedents set in this Senate, so do not come here with that argument. I do not know, the Chair may rule this amendment is not germane. I suppose someone might even ask the Chair.

Now is the time to provide relief, a vote to forgo a policy of wait and see. It is time to show determination in making the right things happen.

Amendment No. 635 to Amendment No. 605

(Purpose: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to

allow a credit for rural commuters)

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 635 and ask that the clerk read the amendment.

I make that consent request, Mr. President. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield.

I will yield to the good judgment of the managers of the bill. If you would like to wait until the arrival of those two Senators, that is fine for me. May I take this moment to congratulate him and congratulate his comanager sitting by my side, the very distinguished Senator from New Hampshire. Mr. President, you are doing your duty, I say, speaking in the second person, which I am not supposed to do in the Senate. I hope they will come to the floor and make themselves heard.

Will the Senator yield for a correction?

I have done what Senators sometimes do. They make a mistake. They have done it to me, too, in referring to a Senator's State as a wrong State. Sometimes they say I am from the State of Virginia. I count that as a great compliment, but I am from the great State of West Virginia.

In this case, I have mistakenly referred to the distinguished Senator from Vermont as the Senator from New Hampshire, both great States. I am talking about the Senator from Vermont. I believe I referred to him as the Senator from New Hampshire. OK, the Senator from Vermont. I correct the Record.

And West Virginia.

Mr. President, would the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I respect the very able Senator for the position he has taken. I can understand that position, and I appreciate it. I have discussed this with the Senator. I do not have a suggestion for an offset. I commend the Senator and Senator Baucus on what they have jointly done to advance this bill and what they have jointly done to increase the amounts of money available. I understand completely the Senator's position. I do not blame him for it. He states it correctly, but I will say that the amendment does not worsen projected deficits. The amendment fits within the congressional budget. That is why it is not subject to any budget points of order. Deficit projections within the congressional budget will not worsen if this amendment passes.

I do respect the Senator. I know we are both in sympathy with what the people in the mountains, the prairies, the plains, and valleys of this great country have to deal with. I am sorry that the amendment is not germane. I understand that. At least I do not think it is. Perhaps the Senator would like to have a ruling from the Chair. I would hope the Chair would say that the amendment would be germane.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be permitted

to address a question to the distinguished minority leader without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. President, I ask my minority leader, what was his proposition that he recommended?

Mr. President, may I address a question to the distinguished Republican leader without losing my right to the floor?

Mr. Leader, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with the proposition that the minority leader has suggested?

Mr. President, I have listened to this discussion with considerable dismay. I hope that both leaders will not leave the floor.

I cannot understand why we can't proceed a little at a time. If we are seeking to--

Yes. May I retain my right to the floor?

Mr. President, I would like to avert a showdown, if we can do it. Why do we have to have a showdown?

Well, Mr. President, I have no quarrel with giving the Senators time. But I hope we will attempt, in every way possible, to avoid that showdown the distinguished minority leader has referred to.

This matter--

Well, Mr. President, I know of nothing in my 47 years in this body, in my 53 years in this Congress, that has pained me more than this issue. I am pained, pained by the political partisanship. What this country needs is not partisanship but statesmanship. I have great faith in the Senate. I have great faith in the two leaders. The minority leader has made a suggestion. Why don't we proceed with it?

I am sorrowful we have come to the point where we seemingly forget the American people. We talk about the feelings of those nominees who have not been given an up-or-down vote. I am sorry about their feelings. But Senators have a right to speak, have a right to object.

And the distinguished Republican leader talks about the need for an up-or-down vote, an up-or-down vote, an up-or-down vote. I have heard the President say something about that.

Mr. President, here is my guide, the Constitution of the United States. What does it say? Does it say that each nominee shall have an up-or-down vote? Does it say that? I ask the Senator from Tennessee, I ask any Senator to respond to that question. Does this Constitution accord to each nominee an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor?

I ask unanimous consent that I may yield without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. President, this says that he, the President, shall have the power to nominate and, by and with the consent of the United States Senate, shall appoint. To give consent, we may vote. But to deny consent doesn't require a vote. It does not require a vote and the record shows that. The record shows that Republicans and Democrats have, from time to time, the leadership has denied a vote to a nominee simply by bottling up that nominee in the committee. That denies the nominee a vote. The Senate speaks, as it were, and refuses to give its consent by just saying nothing; thus, keeping those nominees in the committee. That has been done from time immemorial and more recently in increasing measure.

Many nominees under the Clinton administration were not given an up- or-down vote. They were sent up here by the President of the United States. They were not given an up-or-down vote. They were kept in committee.

Let me finish. I will be happy to yield. They were not given an up-or-down vote. So the Senate did not give its consent. That is all right. That is within the Constitution. The Senate did not give its consent. So what is the difference, if the Senate, through its committee system, decides not to give a presidential nominee an up-or- down vote in the committee, then? The Senate may decide not to indicate its confirmation by an up-or-down vote, just simply be silent. It has not confirmed, has it? It has not given its consent, has it? So what is the difference?

If a nominee is not given confirmation by a committee, what is the difference? You are not giving consent there. If you are not given an up-or-down vote on the committee, what is the difference? I am unable to understand the difference.

Let's do what the Constitution says. Let's do what the Constitution says. When we talk about what these nominees deserve, what do the American people deserve? That should matter. What do the American people deserve? They deserve to move on. Look at the problems that confront this country.

Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.

Mr. President, if the Senator wishes me to yield, I would be glad to. I have the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished majority leader for a statement without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. President, what does the Constitution say? By and with the consent, the President shall have the power, and by and with the consent of the United States Senate, shall appoint. Now, we can wrangle until the crack of doom about why so and so and so and so were not given an up-or-down vote in the Senate. One could ask that question ad infinitum about those many nominees that were sent to the Senate by President Clinton. They never got up-or-down votes. I didn't take the floor and urge that they deserved this or that.

The Senate should be guided by this Constitution. If it elects not to confirm by simply withholding its voice, it can do so. I commend both leaders for their efforts. But I am telling you, the American people deserve something. That is what we should think about. The American people deserve action by the Senate to get on with the business of the people. Look at these high gas prices. We can talk about immigration policy. We can talk about access to health facilities. The American people deserve action on the part of the Senate, and here we are wrangling over a half-dozen nominations for judgeships. That is just a shirttail full of nominations, and they have been sent to the Senate already. In the first administration, if the Senate saw fit not to give its confirmation to them, why should the President send the same nominations back up to the Senate? There are plenty of people in this country who are able--many lawyers and judges who are able. There are plenty of people the President could nominate that would not have a problem getting confirmation in the Senate. Why do we have to send the same ones back here? That is up to the President. If he wants to send the same ones, he can.

I am saddened by this threat to use the so-called nuclear option. The distinguished majority leader prefers to call it the ``constitutional option.''

Not yet. I have not said much on this question, but I want to say a few things today. The Republican leader refers to it as the ``constitutional option.'' I refer to it as ``constitutional folly.'' We talk about freedom of speech in the Senate. Roots run deep with respect to freedom of speech. When the distinguished Republican leader first became leader, and even before he became leader, he visited my office and we had a good conversation. I believe he asked my thoughts on whether he might be a good leader of the Senate. I said give the Senate the opportunity to debate and to amend. That is what we are talking about here--the right to amend, the right to debate. Yet they are talking about the nuclear option.

Don't kill freedom of speech in the Senate. That great compromise that was entered into on July 16, 1787, is why we are here today. If it hadn't been for that compromise, the Senator who sits in the chair would not be sitting there. The distinguished Democratic leader would not be the leader in this body. There would be no Senate, and there probably would not be a Republic. The great compromise said there shall be two Houses, and the membership number of one shall be determined on the basis of population; the other will be a forum of the States in which each State is equal to every other State and each Senator is equal to every other Senator.

We talk a lot about tradition. I say to my good friend--and he is my friend--the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, I have heard a good many Senators on the floor talking about tradition. Well, tradition in the Senate means freedom of debate going back to the beginning of this Republic; and the Articles of Confederation, the first Constitution of the United States--going back to the Articles of Confederation, back to the House of Commons, the people of England who were in this country, especially those who decided on this Constitution, were British subjects.

So the roots of freedom of speech are deep. They go back to 1689, to the time when the English offered to William III, of Orange, and Mary the opportunity to be joint sovereigns. The proposition was that there must be freedom of speech in the Senate. Those two sovereigns--that was one of the items that was to be agreed to, freedom of speech in the House of Commons. That was on, I believe, February 13, 1689. On December 16 of that year, a statute was passed incorporating those rights into a statute. That was the Bill of Rights of our English forebears. As I say, that common thread of freedom of speech runs deep, deep in the House of Commons, and we ought to honor it here.

We are talking about cutting off the rights of Senators and about what the nominees deserve. What do the American people deserve? Well, let's adhere to tradition. There wasn't any limitation on speech until 1917 in the Senate. First, they had the previous question. Aaron Burr said in 1805, when he made his departing speech from the Senate--I am just hoping I might have the attention of Senators. I have not had much to say on this question, although it has kept me awake many nights. I

have spent sleepless hours worrying about this thing of killing debate, freedom of speech in the Senate. Who wishes, Mr. Leader, to have that kind of a legacy to confront him--to help to kill freedom of speech in the Senate? You don't want that legacy. I don't want to see you have that legacy--freedom of speech in the Senate killed.

Aaron Burr urged the Senate to do away with the previous question. They still have the previous question in the House of Representatives and in the House of Commons in England. The previous question had been on the books for a few years, but it hadn't been used, so Aaron Burr, in 1805, urged the Senate to do away with the previous question by which they could shut off debate. In 1806, in that first revision of the Senate rules, it was left out. No more could a Senator move the previous question in this body.

That was the end of it until 1917. Then, when President Wilson sought to arm merchant ships, there was a filibuster by a few Senators. Thank God. I came over here from the House like a lot of Senators have. Some want to make the Senate another House of Representatives.

The Founding Fathers did not want to do that. But when I came to the House, I did not come over here chewing at the bit to change the Senate rules and make this a second House of Representatives, only smaller. I said thank God for the U.S. Senate many times when I was in that other body. Thank God for the U.S. Senate.

Why did I do that? Because over here, a man or woman may stand on his or her feet so long as their lungs, their brass lungs, will carry their voice, and they can object.

And may I say to the distinguished majority leader, he made mention of the late Senator Smith from Maine. I was here when she was here. What a grand woman that one, a great Senator, Margaret Chase Smith. I wish she were here today, Margaret Chase Smith. I wish those Senators of that day were here. They would not stand still for a minute to throttling freedom of speech in the U.S. Senate.

May I say to the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, please think about this. Think about this. Don't leave this as your legacy. No, try to find a way around this freedom of speech in the United States Senate. Let's don't throttle it. We have come to a time, we say we are going to try to work this out. This ought not be all that difficult to work out. As I said to the President of the United States in the presence of the distinguished Senator from Tennessee: Mr. President, tell your leadership up there not to push this, not to push this on the American people. It is their freedom. The day may come when--and it has been in the past--the day may come when the Senator from Tennessee wishes to stand and use that filibuster.

The filibuster is not a very popular thing out there in the country maybe.

Not yet, if I may respectfully decline. I will shortly. The Senator from Tennessee may wish to stand on his feet and defend the beliefs, the opinions, the rights of the people of Tennessee from a majority. Over there is the majoritarian body, the House of Representatives. There is where majority rules. This is the forum of the States. It is a forum for minorities, where we can have dissent on the part of a minority. The majority is not always right. The majority has been wrong before. And so I say, let's protect the rights of the minority to filibuster, if I may use that word.

Yes, we have engaged in filibusters on judicial matters before. I was here when the President of the United States wanted to make Abe Fortas the Chief Justice. I voted on that. That was a filibuster.

Mr. President, yes, I yield. I ask unanimous consent that I can yield under the rules for a question, without losing my right to the floor.

Praise God. Here it is, freedom of speech.

I am willing to give nominees, if there is a handful of them--

I said I am willing to give them an up-or-down vote, just a handful.

I don't mean six of them, five of them, or four of them or three of them. I have never attacked the Senator's desire to be looked upon as a leader who was fair. I have never attacked him.

Just as the Senator has had a little difficulty in recalling whether I said this or that, I didn't have a written text before me when I spoke to the President. I don't remember if I said a few or all or three or four. I don't remember. I am willing to have some votes up or down.

Let's get around this Damocles sword that hangs over the Senate of the United States and act as reasonable men and women and vote some of them up or down. Whatever the leader decides is fine. Let's don't talk about this nuclear option. Let's don't bring that down at this time. I am not referring to the legacy of the distinguished Senator in a disparaging way. I am not doing that at all. The leader----

Yes, but let me finish my sentence.

The leader has it within his power to go forward on all seven or six or five or four, whatever it is, or he has the power to do it on less than that number. It seems to me that a reasonable compromise could be reached among Senators. I am interested in helping to effectuate such a compromise. If it means an up-or-down vote on one or two or three or four, whatever, it seems to me to be reasonable if we can give and take--that is what we are expected to do, give a little here, give a little there--and let's get out of this morass, this terrible threat to the freedom of speech in the Senate of Senators. That means freedom of speech on the part of my people back home who expect me to speak for them.

I hope the leader will think about that. My goodness, they have a shirt

tail full of nominees, and we are going to wreck traditions? Talking about traditions, the tradition of the Senate is freedom of speech, freedom of debate, freedom to dissent.

Mr. President, this reminds me very much of a book in the Bible, a book that is titled Esther, the Book of Esther. I think it would be especially good for the distinguished majority leader to be reminded of the Book of Esther in the Bible.

I won't go into it all here, but Esther was a Jew. She had a cousin who sat at the king's gate every day. He was a Jew. His name was Mordecai. The word went out that a man who had been favored by the king, a man named Haman--H-A-M-A-N, I believe it is. Here is my Bible. This is the King James version of the Bible. I don't read any other version of the Bible except the King James version. I speak as a born- again Christian. We hear that thrown around a lot around here. I am a born-again Christian and have been since 1946.

My wife and I will soon be married, the Lord willing, in about 16 or 17 more days, 68 years. We were both put under the water in that old churchyard pool under the apple orchard in West Virginia, the old Missionary Baptist Church there. Both Erma and I went under the water. So I speak as a born-again Christian. You hear that term thrown around. I have never made a big whoop-de-do about being a born-again Christian, but I speak as a born-again Christian. Hear me all you evangelicals out there, hear me.

So here we were, we were baptized. But getting back to Esther, her cousin, Mordecai, sat at the king's gate day after day, and he refused to do homage to the king. The king was Ahasuerus, and his wife's name was Vashti. The king asked Vashti to come in before all the big shots in the kingdom, and she refused to come. So his advisers advised him to put her away and get a new queen. So they brought in all the beautiful virgins--perhaps not all of them, but they brought enough to dazzle the king's eyes--and they chose Hadassah, that is Esther, after whom the book is titled.

She was the king's new queen and she got word from Mordecai that word was going out from the king's top man named Haman that all the Jews were to be killed on a certain day. So Mordecai told her that, and she told the king and the king said: Who did this? Who said that?

So the finger was put upon Haman. Haman was the chief leader there of King Ahasuerus. Well, time went on and old Haman was advised by his people to build a gallows and hang on those gallows Mordecai, and on that same day to kill all the Jews throughout the 127 provinces of Persia.

I will go to the point of the story quickly. It ended with Haman, the man who built the gallows on which to hang Mordecai, himself being hanged on those gallows. It did not stop there. The ten sons of Haman were executed on those gallows, also.

I say this to the distinguished Senator, hear me, hear me. I am willing to give some up-and-down votes on some judges. That is a little thing. But it is a big thing if it is carried too far. Judges do not have to go before the people to be voted on like the Senator from Tennessee, the Senator from Nevada, and I have to do. They are appointed for life, and this is the only place where they can be scrutinized.

Well, in the case of Haman, he was executed on his own gallows. I say to the leader of the Republican Party in this Senate, the worm turns and there will come a day when the majority leader of the Senate will be on this side of the aisle. I have seen it happen back and forth time and again. It can happen again. That worm will turn.

I say to the leader, please do not ``Hamanize,'' if I may coin a word, the Senate. Remember Haman. The leader and his party may someday be on the same gallows that we in the minority find ourselves on today, ``Hamanized.'' Do not travel that path because the leader and his party may someday be executed on the same gallows. Think about it. Do not ``Hamanize'' the Senate of the United States.

I thank the distinguished leaders for listening. I hope my words will not have been in vain. I plead with them, please do not ``Hamanize'' the Senate of the United States. Take us out of that straitjacket. I know both leaders have been working but work some more. If I can help, let me in, count me in. I want to help.

Talking about the American people, they are the ones who are suffering from this delay. We could be doing something about matters that confront most people every day. I appeal to both leaders to let reason reign for a while. Let us reach a judgment to get on with the business of the Senate, but for Heavens' sake do not kill freedom of speech in the Senate.

Do I still have the floor, Mr. President?

I say, finally, my apologies to the Republican leader and to the minority leader, and thank them for listening. But how much land does a man need? How much land does a man need? Tolstoy wrote a great story. How much land does a man need?

I thank the distinguished leader. I have the floor. Thank God for the Senate, I said, when I was in that body over there.

Finally, I say to my good leader, I will pose a rhetorical question. How much land does a man need? Leo Tolstoy wrote a story about a man named Pahom, I believe it was, but regardless of the man's name, this man had orchards and fields of grain and lands, but he had land hunger. He wanted more land. He kept getting more land, but he always wanted more land. The upshot of it was there appeared before him one day a stranger who offered him all the land that he could cover in a day, like that Tennessee land.

He offered him all the land he could cover in a day for a thousand rubles.

He thought, this is my chance. So he took off on an early morning and he had never seen land so rich as this was. So he decided he would walk 3 miles. He left his servant there with the stranger. The 64-dollar catchword was, he had to be back at the starting point before the sun went down or he would lose his thousand rubles.

So he started out and he decided he would walk 3 miles. After he walked the 3 miles, it looked so good he thought he would walk 3 more miles, and he walked 3 more miles until he had covered 27 miles before he turned up on the second side. He covered the second side, and he sat down and he ate from the humble bag of provisions that his good wife had prepared for him, a little cheese and bread, and then he launched out on the third side of the square and he covered the third side. But as the long afternoon wore on, the land became less hilly, more rocky. So he struggled to reach the end, to reach the starting point before the sun went down because otherwise he would lose all. He would lose his thousand rubles, and he would lose the land that he covered.

Mr. President, I see the leader has left. He left me all alone here. What about this? Hey, where is my adversary? Where is my worthy adversary? Come on now. Where is the leader? Am I to be left here alone to be gored by the horns of those--where is my adversary? He is not to be found.

Anyhow, let me bring this long story to an end. In the end, the man was crawling on his hands and knees. The sun was going down. He looked ahead of him and he saw the starting point. He saw the dim face of the stranger waiting on him at the starting point, the stranger who had offered him all the land that he could cover in a day for a thousand rubles. He saw a grim smile on the face of that stranger. So, painfully, he inched himself forward little by little. His arms were bleeding from the rocks and the briers and the sticks that had gone through his skin. He reached the starting point just as the Sun went down, but he fell dead on the spot.

The stranger said: I promised him all the land he could cover. You see how much it is: 6 feet long and 2 feet wide. The stranger, called Death, said: I have kept my pledge.

So, Tolstoy asked, How much more do you want? How many nominees have we confirmed in this Senate? How many? May I ask the question without losing my right to the floor.

And how many have not been confirmed?

And 7 of those are back before the Senate, out of 218? My, how much land does a man need? How many nominees do they want? Mr. President, just send up some new nominees; it is that simple.

Mr. President, I thank all Senators. I am ready to proceed on the amendment, if the Senator would like.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I may speak for 1 minute.

Mr. President, I made my case. I think it is a good case. I do recognize that some amendments that are offered are not germane. It was my hope that, by presenting the amendment, the Chair will rule it is germane. I will accept the ruling of the Chair. I will not attempt to override the Chair's ruling if he rules against my point, but I have made my case. I thank the distinguished Senator, and also I thank Senator Baucus, the manager on this side, for the consideration they have given. I will abide by the decision of the Chair.

Mr. President, those of us who are in the managing positions want to explain what it is about and why the cloture is very important. However, we do want to accommodate the Senator from Arizona, who is busy with a markup right now, and if there is no objection, I would recognize him for up to 8 minutes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be temporarily set aside in order to call up Ensign amendment No. 636.

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

I ask unanimous consent that that amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I have a couple of brief comments. I know how sincere the senior Senator from Arizona is concerning this bill, and it does demonstrate that it is very difficult when we are trying to be fair and we are trying to do a formula to make everybody happy. Probably every Senator is a little bit unhappy with it. That is what makes it, perhaps, a fair formula.

It is true--the Senator was accurate--as far as the history of the Interstate System back in the Eisenhower administration and the redistribution of funds. This is what we have to keep in mind, though: Yes, the Interstate System is complete, but it still must be maintained.

He talked about the State of Montana. Yes, it is true the State of Montana does not have the population to support the highways, and yet they have to have the highway system. That system, even though it may be complete, must be maintained.

In defense of the formula, there are two ways of doing this. One way, we could do what has been customary in the other body, and that is come out with a group of projects, take care of a certain number of people in the passed bill, and then walk away from it. That would be very easy.

I will tell my colleagues, what would be easy is to go ahead and distribute a bunch of funds to 60 Senators and then sit back and say: The rest of you guys, that is your problem. But we do not do it that way. Instead, in looking at the formula and the factors, it is an incredibly difficult thing we are dealing with. We have factors that have to do with the donor status of the State, the number of miles in the State, the age of the State, the passthrough provisions of the State, and the fatalities per capita of the State. My State of Oklahoma has a higher per capita fatality rate, and therefore one has to come to the conclusion that there is a reason for that. So all of these factors are a part of a very complicated formula.

It may be that people will look at it and say: You do not treat--it is kind of interesting. I will hear from people from the fast growing States who say, We do not get as high as we need to get in our donor status relief, and yet at the same time we hear from some of the Eastern States that are complaining because the floor is too low. So I would think that everyone should realize that there is not going to be a perfect formula that makes everybody happy.

It is a formula that is as fair as we can come up with. We have been working on this for 3 years. This is not something that just came out. When the Senator from Arizona says that last year's bill was guaranteed to raise the donor status floor to 95 percent, that is easy because we had the money to do it. This year, we do not have the money to do it. Even with the amendment that was passed, all that does is raise it from 90.5 percent to 92 percent. It is a very difficult thing.

I do not want to use up an inordinate amount of time, but I will talk about why we have to do this today. The only alternative to passing a bill is to have another extension. If we have another extension, we do not really get into the problem. We do not take care of the donor State rate of return. We do not have any of the new safety core programs. We have literally spent months putting this together. Of course, those provisions were in the Commerce Committee. We need to respond to the deaths on the highways. If we do not pass the bill, we are not going to have any kind of streamlining of environmental reviews. We are not going to have any increase in the ability to use the innovative financing systems which are included.

This bill contains the establishment of a national commission to explore how to fund transportation in the future. As the Senator from Arizona said, 50 years ago we started this system, back during the Eisenhower administration. He recognized there was a problem back when he was Major Eisenhower and he was trying to move goods and services around. He recognized there was a problem, but we have not changed the way we are funding highways for 50 years.

This bill establishes a commission to come up with more innovative ways and allows the States to participate. People are concerned about things such as Safe Routes to School. If we go on an extension instead of a bill, we are not going to have Safe Routes to School. There is uncertainty that is out there. I know my State of Oklahoma is not any different from the rest of the States. We are on our sixth extension now. If we are operating on an extension, it could be a 1-month extension, it could be a 1-year extension.

There is no certainty by which we can plan the construction and maintenance of highways and do something about the bridges. The bridges in Oklahoma are worse than any of the bridges in the Nation. It is a life-and-death situation. People are dying. We have had two deaths in Oklahoma just because of the condition of the bridges. So we are going to have to do something. If we operate on extensions, we are not going to be able to have any of those improvements.

As far as the border program, the States that are complaining about this program are actually border States. They are States that have the benefit of some of the provisions to take care of the borders. NAFTA has been passed, and there is increased road travel. We will not have a borders program if we do not pass a bill. It would just be an extension of the old program.

Lastly, the firewall protection--we need to make sure that people quit robbing the highway trust fund. I was in disagreement with the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, and I said the problem we have been having is people are taking money out of the trust fund and using it for purposes to establish and support policies that have nothing to do with transportation. These are the things that concern me.

We want to stay within our timeframe. Before turning to Senator Bond, I guess Senator Jeffords is not in the Chamber, so we will turn to Senator Baucus. After that, I ask unanimous consent that we stay on this course and first recognize Senator Baucus, and that after his completion we recognize Senator Bond for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on this side?

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

Mr. President, I have a series of amendments that have been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendments be set aside provided, further, that the list of amendments I have sent to the desk, including modifications to some of those amendments, be agreed to en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the amendments be printed in the Record.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent the two live quorums be waived.

All time is yielded back.

Mr. President, I thank those who voted the right way to come to a conclusion on this bill. This is likely the most important bill we will deal with this entire year. Right now we have a distressingly large number of

amendments out there that are germane that people could come and offer. We are not going to have enough time to do it. As is usually the case, there are many out there who are not serious about their amendments. It is currently being hotlined to try to find out who is serious and who is not. I am going to be talking to individuals, but I would say, if you are serious about your amendment, and you want it considered, bring it to the floor. I am sure I speak on behalf of Senator Jeffords as well. We want these amendments brought to the floor, and we also want to know how many are out there that may not be serious amendments.

I yield.

I suggest that it is mutually agreeable to send it to the desk and that it be considered.

Yes.

Mr. President, I commend the Senator from West Virginia for what he is attempting to do for rural America. That happens to be me, rural America. I am certainly in sympathy with this issue. The problem I think is going to be the cost. The cost is somewhere around $5 billion. Since this affects the finance title of the bill, I am looking to see if Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley can come by and visit a little bit. If the Senator would like to continue explaining his amendment, or we could try to get hold of the two Senators from the Finance Committee.

Mr. President, I appreciate that and will wait until we have an opportunity to speak to those managing the finance title of the bill. That being the case, let me renew our invitation for people to bring their amendments to the floor. Right now we have hotlined trying to determine who is serious about his or her amendment. We have a lot to get done. The sooner anyone who has an amendment gets down here for the consideration of that amendment, it will be very helpful.

Mr. President, I will just observe that they have covered bridges in both New Hampshire and Vermont.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a point of order?

I thank the Senator from West Virginia.

I inquire of the Chair, are we still on the Byrd amendment?

Let me just make one answer on the question you had, How much more land? I refer to Jabez, you are familiar, in the First Chronicles. They say: ``Expand my territory.'' So we want more.

I make a point of order the pending Byrd amendment is not germane.

Mr. President, I don't know if we have people on the floor with amendments. I am hoping that we do. While all these subjects we are addressing are important, we are operating under some real time constraints. We have been on this bill now almost 2 weeks. We have worked on the bill for 3 years. This is probably the most significant piece of legislation we will be handling, and I encourage my colleagues to confine their interests to this bill and encourage as many of them as have amendments that they seriously want to be considered that they bring those amendments to the floor. We have the list now down to about 140 amendments. I know from past experience just a fraction of those will want to have serious consideration.

I make that request and I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I inquire of my friend from Oregon how much time he is requesting as in morning business.

That is 10 minutes for each of you?

Mr. President, I will not object. Let me propound a unanimous consent request; that is, the combined remarks of the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Utah not extend beyond 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Utah. They have a great deal of passion on their subject and they have worked long hours. I appreciate the fact they recognize we are considering what many people consider to be the most significant bill this year.

Again, we will renew our request for Members to come down with their amendments. We have hotlined it

twice. I want to make sure I say that enough times for Members. Senator Jeffords joins me in this. They have hotlined it on their side. If Members want their amendments considered, if Members want floor time, if Members want a vote, come down, bring it down. I am waiting for that to happen. We are open for business. We encourage Members to come.

It is urgent. Let me state why it is urgent. We have a deadline. We are on not our fourth, fifth, but our sixth extension right now. When you operate on extensions, as we have said over and over again, you cannot get anything done, you cannot have any of the reforms, you cannot take care of donor States, you cannot have innovative methods of financing. That is all in the bill. Core safety provisions are in the bill. None of that will be a reality if we do not get this bill.

Why is it such a rush? This extension expires on the 31st of May. That is 19 days from now. We have to get this done. If we get this bill finished tonight, we will have time to have it over into conference and start working on it in conference in time to get the conference report back to the House and back to the Senate and to the President's desk prior to the expiration of this extension on May 31.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for an excellent statement. That historic perspective is important for a number of reasons. The whole highway system under Eisenhower came as a result of a quest for national security. That was almost 50 years ago, and we have been funding highways the same way we did 50 years ago. We have not changed at all.

We have this excise tax. In the bill we are to pass--and hopefully it will get passed today and sent on to conference--we have new and innovative ways of financing. We allow the States to use their ways. We give them more latitude toward their methods of financing highways. We also appoint a national commission to study how we could do this in the future so we will not be standing up here 6 years from now talking about the same problems we have today.

If we operate on an extension, that is not going to happen. I made a list of all these things that are not going to happen if we have just another extension. We are on the sixth extension right now.

Let me, first of all, encourage anyone who is going to offer an amendment to come down and do so.

Judicial Nominations

But while we are waiting, Mr. President, let me respond to one of the statements that was made about an hour ago--or was it 2 hours ago--when they were talking about a floor vote.

Regardless of how you interpret the Constitution on advice and consent, sometimes I say I am a very fortunate person in this body because I am one of the few Members of the Senate who is not a lawyer. So when I read the Constitution, I know what it says. It says we are supposed to advise and consent. It means a majority of us are going to have to determine whether a nominee who is presented by the President of the United States is one who is, in fact, acceptable.

What we have been asking for, as our leader articulated many times-- and apparently the senior Senator from West Virginia agreed with the President yesterday--is just an up-or-down vote. That is all we want, an up-or-down vote.

Now, is this so outrageous? I will go back and quote some of my good friends on the Democrat side who are opposed to an up-or-down vote.

Senator Biden, on March 19, 1997, said:

But I also respectfully suggest that everyone who is

nominated ought to have a shot, to have a hearing and to have

a shot to be heard on the floor and have a vote on the floor.

. . .

Senator Boxer said, on May 14, 1997:

It is not the role of the Senate to obstruct the process

and prevent numbers of highly qualified nominees from even

being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor.

Senator Durbin, who has been very outspoken, said, on September 28, 1998:

Vote the person up or down. They are qualified or they are

not.

Mrs. Feinstein, one of our fine colleagues, the senior Senator from California, on September 16, 1999, said:

A nominee is entitled to a vote. Vote them up; vote them

down. . . .

Now, apparently, their interpretation of the Constitution is what mine is.

Senator Kennedy, on January 28, 1998, said:

But we should resolve these disagreements by voting on

these nominees--yes or no.

I agree with Senator Kennedy.

Senator Kohl, on August 21, 1999, said:

These nominees, who have to put their lives on hold waiting

for us to act, deserve an ``up or down'' vote.

Senator Leahy, on October 22, 1997, said:

I hope we might reach a point where we as a Senate will

accept our responsibility--

That is us.

and vote people up or vote them down.

Senator Schumer, on March 7, 2000, said:

I also plead with my colleagues to move judges with

alacrity--vote them up or down.

So I am saying that I agree with all of my good Democrat colleagues that we should give them an up-or-down vote, and I have no question but that the American people feel the same way. You see different polling data, but when they are asked the question, Should these people be entitled to a vote up or down? they overwhelmingly believe they should.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, we have been pleading with our colleagues to bring amendments down. Will the Senator, in the event an amendment comes to the floor, then yield for consideration of that amendment?

Judicial Nominations

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his remarks. This bill is urgent. We have been, as I said, hotlining it. We have done it twice on our side. I am waiting for responses to see what kind of progress they are having on the other side of the aisle.

I want to get on record here so that Members can all be aware it appears we are down to about 10 amendments right now on this side of the aisle. I think it would be very wise to continue to talk about this because we will be getting to a point where we are going to have to draw this to a conclusion, and now it seems like it may be some workable number.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, before I suggest the absence of a quorum, let me also echo my good friend. One of the real thrills I have had since I came from the other body was when Bob Dole was here with the Senator from Hawaii, and the two of them made such a spectacular image of everything that is good about this country and how good we feel. Every time I look at the Senator from Hawaii, I see a true American hero.

Mr. President, I renew our plea for Members to bring their amendments down. We are making progress in terms of shortening the list. I would like to announce on our side we have hotlined it twice and we are down to 11 amendments by 9 different authors, different Senators. I encourage those nine to come to the floor while we have ample time. It is my understanding that after a couple of hotlines on the other side of the aisle, they only have about six amendments. That being the case, we could actually move the bill, if we can get these people down and get them to offer their amendments.

We have made progress, anyway, looking at who is serious about their amendments. I hope any staff or Members watching now would be encouraged to bring their amendments down.

I yield the floor to the senior Senator from North Carolina.

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

Mr. President, I was able to listen to the Senator from Ohio, Mr. DeWine. He has always led this body in the concern for safety. He points out the critical need to finish this bill. Hopefully, today we will finish this bill because we have the longest, most comprehensive safety core section, title, in this bill that has ever been offered in any reauthorization since Eisenhower. That is why we say, as I think Senator DeWine was pointing out, lives can be saved or lives can be lost, depending on whether we pass this bill.

We will not have the safety core programs if we merely have an extension. Right now we are on our sixth extension. An extension is nothing but a defeat, an admission that we are not able to get a bill through so let's have what we had before. That's actually an extension of what we passed 7 years ago. It doesn't have any of these things in it. If we have an extension, none of the safety core programs Senator DeWine was talking about would be included.

I can tell you--and I think everyone knows--statistically, it is an absolute that people will die; not just adults driving, but one of the things in this bill is the Safe Routes to School provision which would save young lives--kids going to school. So it is a life-or-death matter that we pass this bill and pass it very soon.

When I say ``very soon,'' we ought to pass it today because the extension, this sixth extension I refer to, is going to expire on May 31. If that happens, that means we will be forced to do another extension. What happens when you do extensions? Back in the States, they do not have any certainty in planning. It is not as if you can say: We know now that we have an extension for 6 months, we can spend X dollars for 6 months. You can't do it that way, and everyone knows that. You have to plan way in advance because you have to get the labor pool together, get the contractors together, you have to get the bids out. In this bill, we do have a provision that would have some projects that are ready to go, so the second this is signed into law we are going to start construction.

People will use this and say this is, in fact, a jobs bill--and it is. It is probably the biggest jobs bill we have had at one time since the WPA. For every $1 billion of road construction, that translates into 47,500 jobs, new jobs, good-paying jobs. Without this bill, of course, that is not going to happen.

We have a lot of people who are concerned, as I am, about donor State status. I can remember when we only had written into the law that each State would get back 75 percent of what they actually collected in their State. Slowly, over the years, I have watched it get increased. It has gotten up to the point where it is today, and this was passed 7 years ago. This was 90.5 percent; that is to say, every donor State will get back at least 90.5 percent of what they pay in.

The bill we had last year was enhanced up to $318 billion. That would provide every State got back a minimum of 95 percent. As it is now, with the smaller number, even with the enhanced number from yesterday's amendment, that brought it up by $11 billion to $295 billion. That still only brings the donor status to 92 percent. But that is better than 90.5 percent, where we are today.

If we have an extension, it will be 90.5 percent. There will not be any change.

The streamlining provisions of this bill will allow us to actually pave, construct a fairly decent percentage more highways and bridges than we would otherwise be able to do. Without this, and if we have an extension, we will not have this, and none of the environmental streamlining provisions will be there.

There are two different sections of the bill that relate to the financing. We have not changed our method of financing roads in 50 years. Since the Eisenhower administration it has been the same. We know there are better ways of doing it where you can have partnership types of arrangements, something that would be very good for our system. Without a new bill, that is not going to happen.

A lot of the States are on the border. We have a border program, a recognition that since NAFTA we have a lot of traffic through no fault of the States. You have to improve the NAFTA corridors we are talking about in this bill. Without this bill, we will not have that.

The chokepoints are not currently corrected. That is why we call this an intermodal bill. It is not a highway bill, not just a transportation bill, it is an intermodal bill because it is all types of transportation and the chokepoints in between. A lot of our problems are because of the chokepoints.

Last, we have firewall protection in this bill. The firewall protection provides if you pay money into the trust fund when you are getting 1 gallon of gas, that money is ensured to go toward building new roads. There are many in this body who do not think that is necessary. Many think we can go ahead and fund any kind of programs not relating to transportation out of the trust fund, and they have been doing it.

In fact, one of the Senators the other day was saying how offended he was that we are taking some of the fix that is there that is not in use; in other words, there is about a 5-cent credit that goes in and comes out of the highway trust fund. That has nothing to do with transportation. If you are going to establish a policy, pay for the policy but do not pay for it out of the highway trust fund.

I have often said this is a moral issue. There may be loopholes that allow politics to steal money out of the trust fund, but it is still a moral issue.

This bill has the firewall protection to make sure, for the first time, people cannot raid the highway trust fund. All these things are in the bill. If we do not pass the bill, we will have an extension, and none of these things are in the bill.

This is necessary to get this done, to pass this legislation, and not just go for another extension.

Amendments Nos. 569, as modified, and 602, as Modified, En Bloc

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Chambliss amendment numbered 569 and the Cornyn amendment numbered 662 be modified with changes at the desk and agreed to, that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc.

I have left instructions if Senators arrive, interrupt us. We want to consider amendments. I am hoping I did not chase away anyone who is offering an amendment. We have about 10 amendments on the Republican side and about 10 amendments on the Democrat side. That is much better than yesterday with 173 amendments out there. We have made progress.

We agreed to two of these. If we can get the Members who are serious about their amendments to bring them down, this is the time to do it. I anticipate, as is normally the case, at the last minute Members will come down and say: I have to have time to present my amendment, and it will be too late. Now it is not too late. There is time to consider any amendment that is a germane amendment that is on the list.

What we have done is very difficult. We have worked on this bill for 3 years. We had this bill passed out of this Chamber and to conference a year ago this month. In conference, they dropped the ball, and we were unable to get it through.

This time, the conferees have learned we will be able to get it back to the House and back to the Senate, get it passed in both Houses, and have it signed by the President in time for the current extension that expires May 31. That is ambitious, but it can be done. We try to figure this out day by day and what can be done each day. I believe that will happen.

The reason this bill is better than most bills is historically we have not gone with formulas; we have gone with political projects. Some people call them pork. I don't call building a road pork.

What we could have done--we need to have 60 Senators to agree to this--we could have gone to 60 Senators and said, all right, we have a pot of money, and we will take care of your problem in Louisiana, your problem in Oklahoma, your problem in Arkansas, and get up to 60 Members, 30 States, and we will pass the bill and forget about the other Members. That is not fair. Historically, that has been done.

We tried to take every conceivable thing into consideration. The Presiding Officer represents a small northern State. We have provisions for the colder States, provisions for States out West, many of which, like my State of Oklahoma, are donor States. These are factors in the bill, in the formulas.

The formula for allocation also has such things in it as per capita fatality. My State of Oklahoma has a high fatality rate. What does that tell you? It tells you we have a problem with bridges and roads. That is a factor in how much money is distributed to the States.

The number of interstate lane miles is a consideration. The weighted nonattainment and maintenance area population is considered. The nonhighway recreation is a consideration. Regarding low-income States, mine is below the average in the State of Oklahoma. Low-population States--Senator Baucus has been very helpful in this bill. He is from Montana. Montana has less than a million people, but they have to have roads to connect all the interstate roads. Consequently, they will be in a position where it has to be a consideration that a low-population or low-density population State is going to be able to be treated fairly.

There are about 20 different considerations, but the bottom line is, you are never going to come up with a formula where everyone says this is perfect, this is just what we want, my State is being treated fairly. There are many things in the formula I do not like as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, this Senator from Oklahoma. Nonetheless, I know everyone cannot be satisfied.

We have a good bill before the Senate. Members should realize how significant it is that we pass this bill and not just go to another extension.

Let me renew my request, as we will be doing every 15 minutes, for Members to bring their amendments. I know Members are out there and hiding. We will find you. We are open for business. We want you to come down and offer your amendment. We will have plenty of time to do it.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let me just respond to some of the things the Senator is talking about. First of all, Senator Santorum has done a great job leaning on us and talking to us and is largely responsible for the fact that we made a major change in this bill. This change increased the amount that will be going to Pennsylvania by $208 million.

But I would like to say this: When you talk about the miles of substandard roads and highways, Oklahoma has a larger percentage that are substandard than Pennsylvania. I am not saying it because I am proud of it, because I have not been doing my job, I suppose, but in terms of the percentage of substandard bridges, Oklahoma is considerably higher than Pennsylvania.

Now, what it does point out, though, is the necessity for this bill because we are going to try to correct all these things. We will not be able to do it in 1 year, but by the end of this authorization period, we are going to look a lot better than we are now--but not if we have to continue to operate on extensions.

So I appreciate the comments. And I do not disagree with anything that the Senator says. I believe when you sit down with people and talk about a formula--it is interesting, the previous Presiding Officer is from Texas. I am not sure he agreed with everything that the Senator from Pennsylvania said. But it is a very difficult thing to do.

So I appreciate the cooperation the Senator has given and the influence he has put on this legislation which has helped us make this a better bill. I appreciate that very much.

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Ohio, I know you are attempting to get the floor for something other than the bill, but we do have someone coming down with an amendment. Would it be permissible, if you were to use the floor, that when someone comes with an amendment, you would yield to them, or is that something you would be uncomfortable with?

I will.

I understand. But you would attempt to do it in 10 minutes?

The Senator could wait until you are finished.

No, I suggest you go ahead. I say to the Senator, after the Senator gave his eloquent talk about

the safety problems that are out there throughout America right now, I came to the floor and talked about the safety core provisions that are in this bill, that if we are on an extension, as opposed to passing a bill, people are going to die. This is a life-or-death issue. I think you brought that out very forcefully, and I know it comes from the heart.

Very good. I yield the floor.

(The remarks of Mr. DeWine are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. President, it is my understanding the junior Senator from Virginia has an amendment he wishes to offer. It affects the commerce title of the bill. I ask if Senator Stevens would like to come down, since this is the commerce title of the bill, while he offers an amendment.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak to the Senate and those following this debate about a dramatic change that is taking place in America, even as we meet and discuss so many other important issues. One of the pillars of family security in America is crumbling. Retirement security in this country is in a crisis. The defined benefit plan, the kind of pension plan that guarantees a retirement amount to a worker who gives a lifetime of loyalty to his company or his employer, is becoming an endangered species.

The number of employees covered by employer-paid defined benefit plans has fallen from 30 million to 22 million in the last 20 years. By contrast, the number of people in defined contribution plans, into which both worker and employer pay with no guaranteed payout, has grown to about 55 million from 19 million.

This trend, along with the steep losses that people with defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, have experienced in the last few years, and President Bush's plan to shift part of the Social Security guarantee into private accounts, frankly, means that we are going to put at risk retirement security in America, more than we have seen in modern times.

Tuesday night, a bankruptcy court decided to allow United Airlines to shift responsibility for its defined benefit pension plan to the Federal pension insurance system. United Airlines moved all four of its pension plans into the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation with the promise that United Airlines would pay that corporation $1.5 billion. The willingness of PBGC to accept this arrangement, unfortunately, rings the death knell for defined benefit pension plans in America.

United is the latest and the largest example of the fact that corporations are no longer keeping their promises to employees, and the Government insurance system that was designed to protect employees in the case of such catastrophe has become overused and underfunded to a critical State. And this, coupled with the lack of personal savings, with the dramatic increase in consumer debt of families across America, with the growing vulnerability of families to medical bills, and with the assault on guaranteeing benefits of Social Security by this administration, is leading this Nation to a point that could not even have been imagined just a few years ago.

There used to be a three-legged stool that you could count on for your future. Everybody knew it. You went to work; every payroll you paid into Social Security, which would be there when it came time to retire; you took some of your paycheck and you paid into your pension system, if the company provided one, and then, if you could, put some money into savings. The idea is that all three would come together to give you a sense of security and comfort in your old age.

The Chicago bankruptcy court that decided Tuesday night that United Airlines could walk away from its pension commitments unfortunately foreshadows many changes to come, and none of them positive, for working people and working families across America.

United Airlines, the second largest airline in America, is in bankruptcy. It took the pension liability which it had into the bankruptcy court and said: We have to walk away from it. The bankruptcy court agreed. And when United Airlines turned over all of its pension plans to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, it basically said it would save $645 million a year that it would not have to put into the promised payments to pension plans for its employees.

Judge Eugene Wedoff presided over that decision. To an overflow courtroom on Tuesday, he said this was unavoidable. To quote him exactly:

The least bad of the available choices here has got to be

the one that keeps an airline functioning, that keeps

employees being paid.

And that was the choice. From his point of view, to ask United to pay what it promised to pay to its employees and to its retirees would mean that the airline may cease to exist. But to walk away from those responsibilities for the employees and to say instead that the airline would survive certainly raises many troublesome questions.

The way that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is structured, it only guarantees that a part of pension plans it took over from United and other companies based on a pretty complicated formula would actually be paid to the employees. So many employees, whether United Airlines employees or others whose plans are taken over by this corporation, lose part of their pensions. In this case, it is estimated that United employees will lose an average of 25 percent of their pensions under this arrangement.

Keep in mind what these employees have been through. They have been battered by record layoffs. They have made voluntary pay and benefit reductions for years. They have increased their hours. They have made a lot of personal sacrifices to reach this point. And now, as it appears their airline was nearing the end of bankruptcy, comes this decision to walk away from the pension obligation.

United is the second largest airline. It operates more than 3,400 flights a day to more than 200 destinations. It is based in my home State of Illinois. It has 60,000 employees and thousands of retirees, all of whom will be affected by this decision.

Let us take a look at each of the groups of employees at United and how they will be impacted. The United flight attendants pension plan covers 28,600 participants. Under this Government takeover of the pension plan, the most senior flight attendants will receive about $500 less a month than the $2,500 they were promised in pension payments, about a 20-percent cut. This is significant because most of them have never earned more than $40,000 a year. Flight attendants who are less senior and have less flying hours with the company could lose up to half of what they would receive with their promised pension plan. They have said

they may strike on this. I hope it does not come to that, not just because of the fact that it is a corporation in my State but because I am a loyal customer of United.

Sixteen Senators recently joined me in a letter to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation asking for that agency to explain why it agreed with United to turn over all four pension plans since as recently as 2 weeks ago officials of the same agency told negotiators they thought each plan should be considered separately. The flight attendants were told at the time their pension plan might have been saved, but now, sadly, it has been lumped in with all the pension plans at United and faces dramatic cuts.

Take a look at the ground employees, the mechanics, the people who fix the airplanes and maintain them and handle the bags. There are 36,100 of them at United, both active and retired. They were promised benefits of $4 billion. Their plan has only $1.3 billion in assets. So based on this agreement with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, on average, they will lose about 25 to 27 percent of their pension benefits. Retired members were promised an average benefit of $1,400 a month, and they could lose on average 19 percent of that promise.

While United was back in court on Wednesday asking for further concessions from the unions on their contracts, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced that 94 percent of its United members had authorized a strike if their contract to work was cancelled. The machinists may feel they have no choice. This, of course, would throw United's financial future into more uncertainty and jeopardy.

The United pilots have a pension plan that covers 14,100 people. The pilots reached a deal with United last year to save much of their benefit, but it is unclear how that will be affected by this new agreement with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Pilots have generous pensions. They fly some of the most demanding routes. They have to be well trained and well skilled, and they, of course, are examined constantly to make certain they have the skills to be pilots. They would normally expect to see anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 of pension benefits after a lifetime of service to the airline, but if this Government agency takes over, the maximum guarantee the Government offers is no more than $45,613 per person for those who retire at age 65 in the year 2005. Keep in mind, pilots are forced to retire at age 60 under rules governing pilots in America, so they would receive less than $45,613. A Government takeover would cut most of their anticipated pension benefits by as much as half.

Under the management plan, there are 42,700 participants encompassing administrative and public contact employees. This is more difficult to quantify in terms of their pension loss. However, the machinists union, which represents some of these workers, says the ramp employees could lose up to 59 percent of their promised pensions, and public contact representatives could lose up to 55 percent. These estimates take into account the likelihood that United will offer a 401(k)-type plan once it emerges from bankruptcy. As we know, there are no guarantees with a 401(k) any more than there is a guarantee that if one buys a mutual fund or a stock today that it will be worth more tomorrow. It is a gamble. It is a risk. It can play an important part in savings toward retirement, but it certainly does not provide any guaranteed benefits such as those that existed for employees who worked at United for decades. It is a gamble that the President is contemplating to bring to Social Security by privatizing Social Security: Let us move from guaranteed benefits in Social Security to the possibility that one will do well in the stock market.

Well, if a person's pension is in trouble now, and it may not survive the bankruptcy court, and the future of Social Security under the President's plan puts one at that same risk when it comes to investment, how can a person be certain they will ever be able to retire? How did we reach this point?

Pension promises that in hindsight may have been unrealistic were made. The terrorism of 9/11 changed the market for airlines across America. High fuel costs, increased competition from startup carriers all contributed to the losses that brought United into bankruptcy.

Last year, I supported a measure known as the Pension Funding Equity Act. We passed it hoping that we could temporarily use an alternative calculation to lower pension liability payments and to make our way through this stormy situation. It did not work. Now United Airlines is not alone in this predicament. Delta Airlines' pension plans are underfunded by $5 billion, and it has threatened to file Chapter 11. Northwest Airlines may be in trouble, too, according to equity researchers at Bear Stearns. And we should believe that a lot of other airlines are looking with great interest at United Airlines and its current situation.

Some people at American Airlines have said they want to keep their pension plans, but they are concerned about the competitive advantage United will now have because it does not have to fund its own pensions.

After the airlines, retirement experts say the auto industry may be the next to default on its defined benefit plans, leaving virtually no companies left that offer guaranteed retirement benefits. Let me give some illustration of this.

Today's Wall Street Journal says:

By far, the industry accounting for the biggest portion of

underfunding is auto makers and automotive-parts companies.

The plans of those companies are $45 billion to $50 billion

shy of promises made to workers.

Delphi Corp., the No. 1 U.S. auto supplier, is struggling

with declining sales at its top customer and former parent,

General Motors Corp., plus big pension obligations and higher

raw-materials cost. Delphi has an unfunded pension liabili-ty

of $4.3 billion and $9.6 billion in retiree health-care

liabili-

ties. . . .

We are in the midst of debating the asbestos bill. It is interesting on this asbestos bill the lineup of groups supporting it. That is another outstanding liability for companies like General Motors. Many of us believe the trust fund in the asbestos bill is underfunded. We believe many major corporations with asbestos liability are anxious to sign up for the trust fund because they will be the benefactors more than smaller and medium-sized corporations. So both General Motors and the United Auto Workers have endorsed the asbestos bill.

Certainly, they have to look forward and say asbestos liability will threaten the payment of health care benefits and retirement benefits to the workers. So here there is a situation where victims of asbestos exposure may receive limited compensation under the trust fund plan that has been endorsed by companies that expose them to asbestos because those companies want to limit their liability in the future because of such things as pension liabilities.

As we can see, this is a free-for-all and the losers ultimately are going to be either victims of asbestos exposure, in this instance that I used, or the workers themselves and we'll see retiree benefits disappearing.

The United Airlines deal is the largest pension default in the history of the United States. Before it, Bethlehem Steel's $3.6 billion pension default in 2002 set the record. There is a pattern, and the pattern is that the workers get hurt the most.

I am offering legislation with Senator Kennedy and Congressman George Miller of California that would attempt to make it more difficult for corporations to offer superior pension deals to their high-ranking directors and officers while the company is shifting its unfunded pension liabilities to the Government or treating older workers unfairly during a conversion from a traditional defined benefit plan to a cash balance plan.

Why in the name of fairness and justice should the officers of a bankrupt corporation be receiving superior pension deals and bonuses while the people who faithfully worked for that company for decades are being cut loose, their jobs eliminated, or the promised retirement benefits are not paid? If there is any justice in this done, we should demand of these corporate officers that they at least sacrifice to the same level as the employees who are the victims of their mismanagement. Rank-and-file workers should not be sent to the back of the line in bankruptcy court while executives get a free pass. Time and again, workers have faced the back of the line in this country.

Mr. President, you may remember an amendment I offered to the bankruptcy bill a few weeks ago. It was rejected overwhelmingly by the Senate. Let me tell you how radical this amendment was. It would have allowed bankruptcy courts to reach back and take the sweetheart deals that were given to these officers and CEOs and put the money back into the corporation to benefit the employees and the retirees.

I gave the example of several CEOs, including Ken Lay of Enron, who abuse their companies. You remember reading about Dennis Koslowski of Tyco. This man had a unique lifestyle at the expense of his corporation. He had the corporation buy his family a shower curtain. Well, what is wrong with that? Mr. Koslowski did some pretty shrewd shopping. He found a $30,000 shower curtain. That takes some doing. He took the money out of the corporation, while it was facing financial trouble, and then turned and said to the employees: Sorry, we are going to cut you loose. Retirees, we can't pay what we promised you, and shareholders, you lose, too. So for his shower curtain deal and a lot of other things, I think Mr. Koslowski should have been held accountable. He was in criminal court, but he certainly should be held accountable.

Bernie Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom, didn't piddle around with a shower curtain; he took $408 million out of a company right before it went into bankruptcy court. How can we sit around and say: That is OK, that is management; those guys are in the boardroom; don't worry about them; but say to the worker out in the plant or to the retiree who is counting on a retirement benefit plan or the shareholder: You are going to have to lose because Mr. Ebbers needed $408 million out of the company before he dumped it in bankruptcy? We should have recaptured the assets he took out of the corporation before it went into bankruptcy. Maybe it would not have made the corporation solvent, but at least it would have been a fair allocation of the resources of that corporation to the people who deserve the benefits from them in bankruptcy.

My amendment lost on a vote of 40 to 54. It was entirely too radical for the Senate, to think that these CEOs would be held accountable for their conduct, that they would accept personal responsibility for what they did. No way. Yet their workers and their retirees had to pay the price. They were held responsible for this terrible mismanagement.

We also tried to raise the minimum wage during that bankruptcy debate. I guess we are just wasting our time in this place. It has been over 8 years since we raised the minimum wage in this country. We were told the head of a family who works 40 hours a week at a minimum wage and has two or three kids should not be able to lift his family above poverty. At a time when we have record productivity in our corporations and record corporate profits, why in the world can't we bring ourselves to make certain that workers in America get fair compensation? I don't understand it. If we value work and value families and value children, why aren't we paying a decent wage to many people who get up and go to work every single day, sometimes two jobs a day? But, no, we can't pass that here. That is too radical.

Now the President wants to privatize Social Security. He wants to make sure that two of the sources of retirement security--Social Security and pensions--will no longer have guaranteed benefits. The third source, of course--private savings--has never been guaranteed. President Bush says that is part of the ownership society. But, unfortunately, we are headed for a society for the owners, by the owners, and of the owners, where the workers are more vulnerable than they have ever been in generations in America.

We ought to step back for a second. We ought to try to decide what is important in this society in which we live. Is it important for us to protect the CEOs from their mismanagement of these companies? Is it important for us to say to Mr. Bernie Ebbers, You won't be held accountable for taking $408 million out of the corporation you dumped in bankruptcy? Is it important for us to make sure that people who make more than $1 million a year get handsome tax cuts while we are deep in debt as a nation, trying to come up with the money to fight a war, or is it more important for us to give fair compensation to people who go to work? Is it more important for us to step up and talk about guaranteeing and securing the pensions of hard-working people, who stayed with a job year after weary year because a husband says to his wife: Honey, I am going to hang in there for 2 years because I get my retirement. And look what happens. Months before you retire, or even months after you retire, they pull the rug out from under you.

This is a looming retirement security crisis. Baby boomers are set to retire in large numbers in just a few years. This country is not saving for retirement. Our 401(k)s have taken a huge hit in the last 5 years. Defined benefit pension plans are almost extinct. Medicare is running a huge deficit. And Social Security has been targeted for benefit cuts. The three-legged stool of retirement security is looking a bit wobbly today.

Listen to what people around the country are saying about retirement insecurity. An editorial in the Denver Post said this:

The retirement benefits offered by Social Security were

originally designed as one leg of the three-legged stool that

also included a worker's pension and a family's private

savings. But American families don't save like they used to,

and the national saving rate has been declining for the last

35 years. At the same time, American companies as a whole

have been cutting back--or in some cases defaulting--on

the pension coverage they once offered employees.

Listen to this letter to the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, CA:

I am a retired 74-year-old woman and get Social Security

benefits, a private pension, payments from 401(k)s. Prior to

the dot-com disaster a few years ago, my 401(k) was worth

almost $300,000. It quickly dropped to half, [that value] and

is slowly recovering. If it were not for my pension and

Social Security, I would be very, very nervous about how I

would survive what remains of my life.

Another letter to the editor dated March 16 from a Shreveport, LA, paper:

In this time of corporate scandals, lost pensions, and

stagnant wages, working people need something that is

guaranteed and risk-free; that was always the genius of

Social Security. . . . Social Security does need improvement,

but that should mean ensuring benefits, not putting them on a

Wall Street roller coaster. There are plenty of opportunities

to invest in the stock market. Congress and the president

should strengthen Social Security to make sure working people

get the benefits we've paid for. We deserve it.

We owe it to our workers and their families to take an honest look at these issues and come up with some real solutions. We need to take a look at the Pension Fairness and Full Disclosure Act. We need to strengthen Social Security, not weaken it by privatizing it. We should encourage people to save for retirement, create incentives, tax incentives and other payroll incentives, for people to save. And we should encourage companies to pay what they promised workers and not allow them to get away with underfunding their pension plans.

As part of the reform of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, premiums are necessarily going up, and the companies that underfund their pension plan will have to pay more into it so the guarantee of this Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is worth something. We need to make sure that this agency meets its obligation to all American workers.

Today, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is $23 billion in debt. Who is going to bail it out? At a time when we are going to give $32 billion in tax cuts next year to people making over $1 million a year--$32 billion to people making over $1 million a year--at a time when we are facing record deficits, at a time when we are concerned about the survival of Medicare and Medicaid, it is clearly time for some thoughtful leadership in this country.

What happened with United Airlines, sadly, is a symptom of a real problem that is undermining the retirement security of every American family. We have been diverted from looking at the broader retirement security issues by the administration's Social Security privatization proposal. It is time to look at how to address the entire retirement income equation and provide more security, not less.

There was a time in America when we valued work, we valued workers, we valued the worker's family, and we said: We are going to provide you with basic dignity. You get up and go to work every single day, you set a good

example for your family, you contribute to your company and your community, and America will be a better place and we will stand behind you. We will make certain that when the day comes for retirement, no matter what happens, Social Security will be there to provide some basic safety net for you and your family. We will watch the workplace for you, too. We will do our best to make sure it is safe so you are not injured while you are working on the job. If you are injured, we will see you are compensated fairly.

When it comes to the wage you earn, we hope you will do better than the minimum wage, but we will guarantee there will be a minimum wage in America so there will be some basic dignity in work and the hardest working people in America, trying to raise a family, can get by.

It was part of a social contract. It was America as a family, coming together. We were protecting our own. We were committed to our own. But there is a new attitude in Washington. You can feel it. That attitude of the so-called ``ownership'' society says, remember this, we are all in this alone. We do not come together to help one another, to protect one another, to care about one another. That is abandoning a fundamental principle in America.

We believe in the goodness of the people who live in this country. We believe in the fairness of our economic system. We believe the Government should stand for justice in a system where unjust things are occurring. But if you look at what happens in the Senate and the House day in and day out, time and time again, one wonders if we walked away from that commitment. We wonder if we are not dealing with some situation of noble savages being turned loose in a wilderness with the hope they survive. I hope it does not come to that.

Sadly, for tens of thousands of United Airline employees who just a few years ago were glorying in the fact that they work for one of the best airlines in the world, the bottom is falling out. The pension they worked for, for a life, is disappearing. They have taken wage cuts. The future is totally uncertain.

There are no guarantees in a free market system. There are winners and losers. But when you have made a promise to an employee, shouldn't you be held to that promise? Shouldn't you have a social contract, a binding contract, that the promise won't be broken?

I am afraid it has been broken here. This pillar of family security in America is crumbling. What will your Congress do to deal with it?

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the SAFETEA bill in the Senate today is a good bill. I strongly support its passage.

I thank Senator Inhofe, Senator Jeffords, Senator Bond, and Senator Baucus for their good leadership and their good work, particularly on the Environment and Public Works title of this bill. The roadway safety and funding provisions they have crafted are vitally important.

Let me also thank Senators Stevens, Lott, Inouye, and McCain for their hard work on the Commerce Committee vehicle and behavioral safety title.

Finally, let me thank Senator Rockefeller for his support as the lead cosponsor of the safety provisions I have authored that are part of this bill.

Staff on both the Commerce Committee and the EPW Committee also deserve praise and thanks for their hard work on this bill. In particular, I thank Ruth Van Mark, Chris Bertram, David Strickland, and James O'Keeffe and JC Sandberg for their willingness to work with my office on portions of the bill I wanted included. These are portions of the bill I will describe in a minute that have to do with highway safety, provisions that I believe truly will save lives. I thank them for their very good and diligent work.

I also thank Kevin King of my staff for his hard work on these safety provisions in the bill.

While certainly we would like to include more funding for highway and transit projects, I commend my colleagues for doing an excellent job in stretching the funding that is available as far as it can go.

The language Senators Grassley and Baucus have drafted adding additional funding helps. I am a strong supporter of their efforts. We need the funding that the managers' package provides to improve the rate of return for donor States, such as my home State of Ohio, to get those levels up as high as possible.

Additionally, the managers' package contains the Commerce Committee title of the bill relating to safety programs. This title is comprehensive and deserves the full support of the Senate.

I will take a few minutes now to talk about the safety provisions I have asked to be included in the bill. First, I will say something about Senator Lott's provisions on the Primary Safety Belt Incentive Grant Program.

I thank Senator Lott. I congratulate him for including this provision, a provision that will clearly save lives. Senator Lott came to the Senate floor earlier and spoke about the importance of this provision. I must say what Senator Lott said is absolutely correct. This provision must be kept in the Senate bill. It must be kept through conference. Efforts to modify or remove primary safety belt incentive grants will undermine the national goal of reaching 90 percent safety belt usage. Encouraging States to aim low when it comes to saving lives makes no sense. Such efforts to change this language in the bill must be opposed.

Some States already have primary enforcement laws. Those laws are the single cheapest and most effective means for saving lives on our Nation's roads. Those States that have already enacted primary seatbelt laws have seen lives saved. Other States, such as my home State of Ohio, do not have primary seatbelt laws. These States would benefit tremendously in terms of lives saved and financial bonuses under Senator Lott's program. The incentive program may be the only way to get some States to adopt primary laws.

In Ohio alone, it is estimated we could save nearly 100 lives per year if we added primary belt laws. If we maintain this provision, countless lives will, in fact, be saved. The highway experts, the people who study this issue, who understand it, tell us this is the simplest, cheapest, easiest way to save lives. It is the one thing we could do to save lives in this country the easiest way.

So I thank Senator Lott and commend his efforts and urge my colleagues, if there is an amendment offered to take this provision out, that they oppose that amendment.

Let me say a few things about the provisions in the bill that I have been working on and I have asked to have included and that have, in fact, been included. First, Senator Rockefeller

is the lead cosponsor on our provision that we call Stars on Cars. While the name is kind of cute, its focus is quite serious.

Today, when you go to buy a new car, we all know there is a large label on that car, a large label on the window telling the price, the features, and other information about the vehicle. Most of the content on the sticker is actually mandated by the Federal Government. The sticker has to tell you whether the vehicle has a stereo, the car's mileage, how many miles per gallon, and so on. But one piece of vital information, amazingly, is not there, and that is the safety ratings. How safe is that car? That piece of information is not on the sticker.

Citizens have a right to know this information, and our provision would provide, for the first time, that information would be available right on that car, right in the showroom when you walk in to buy the car. Taxpayers have already paid to have the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, test cars for this information. We have already paid for the information. In fact, NHTSA has put this information up on the Internet. It is available on the Internet now. But, nonetheless, this information is not available to the American consumer in the one place where it would be most helpful, the one place where it would truly make a difference: where you buy the car, on the face of the car when you buy it at the dealership.

Our provision would add a new section to the label that would clearly lay out information from each of the crash tests. You would have the information about frontal crash impact, side impact, and rollover resistance. It would show the test results as star ratings on the label, just like many automakers already do in their commercials. This is a commonsense provision, and it is one that will allow consumers the opportunity to make more informed decisions for themselves and their families.

We have found over the last few years that consumers are much more conscious about the safety of the cars they buy, wanting to put their families in safe cars. This is a proconsumer, prosafety provision that makes good common sense. I congratulate the committee for including it in this bill.

Another provision in this package that Senator Rockefeller has cosponsored with me is what we call the Safe Kids and Cars Act. Now, according to NHTSA, automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for those ages 4 to 34. More than cancer, more than fire, more than anything else, auto accidents are the source of child fatalities. We all know that.

The focus of the child safety initiative we have incorporated in this bill is on an emerging danger for small children that is often overlooked. It is referred to as ``nontraffic, noncrash'' accidents. What are those? Well, these are incidents in which there is an interaction between an automobile and a child which leads to injury or death when the vehicle is not on the road or there is no actual crash which has occurred. Instead, these are accidents that happen inside parked cars, in driveways, or other common, potentially deadly situations.

We provide two different things in this title. The title includes two very different sections relating to the Safe Kids and Cars initiative. The first one directs NHTSA, for the very first time, to perform regular collection of data on nontraffic, noncrash injuries and deaths. We need that information. We need that as a matter of public policy. If we are going to prevent them, we have to understand them. We are not collecting the data today. We do not fully understand it.

Further, we have another section that deals with the so-called back- over deaths and requires NHTSA to investigate this issue and the technologies that might help prevent such accidents in the future. These back-over deaths occur in driveways, people's homes. Quite often, every year, a child is backed over and killed. They are becoming more frequent, as people have vans where you cannot see out of the back of the van very well.

We need to better understand the cause of these accidents. We need to have better information. NHTSA needs to investigate this issue and needs to look at the technologies that might help prevent such accidents.

Another provision we have included in this bill we call dangerous roads and intersections. Senator Rockefeller and I have worked on this provision. Every State in the Union, of course, has dangerous roads, dangerous intersections. Most States, fortunately, rank these. Most States come up with a list of what are the dangerous roads, the most dangerous places in the State. They keep a list of them. But, amazingly, there are many States that keep this information secret and never tell the public.

Citizens have a right to know this information. What would you do with the information? Well, if you are a parent, you might tell your child to avoid a certain road: Don't go that way to the movie. Don't go that way to the restaurant. Don't go that way on a date. Go a different way. You have a right to know that information. Or if the public knew about a road that was statistically very dangerous or the State knew that it was dangerous, maybe the public would demand that road be fixed. That is the type of vital information the public has every right to know.

Our provision requires that safety information be disclosed to the public as an eligibility requirement for a new Federal safety funding program, the Highway Safety Improvement Program. States seeking additional Federal dollars for safety construction projects will have to identify their danger spots, rank them according to severity, and then disclose them to the public. It is pretty simple. Most States are already doing it; they just have to disclose it. This is another commonsense provision that truly is going to save lives. I am pleased it has been incorporated into this highway bill.

The fourth issue covered by language in the bill that I included, along with Senator Rockefeller, has to do with driver education and licensing. Teen driving is an area where the fatality rates are very high. Unfortunately, current programs are many times not getting the job done. Higher crash and fatality rates for teenage drivers can be reduced if we work at it. The Federal Government can't run driver education. It is a State responsibility to set standards. But the Federal Government can play a small yet significant role and a productive role. Revitalized driver education needs to be data driven. We can help teenage drivers avoid high-risk situations, particularly in the first 6 months behind the wheel. Integration of driver education with graduated licensing must also be addressed.

The language we have included in the bill creates a driver education and licensing research program within NHTSA. This program will go out and test what works and what doesn't and come up with a ``best practices'' model that States can implement. The time has come to take serious action on driver education and licensing. This program is a solid first step. We need to have scientific data, and the Federal Government is in a good position to come up with this data to assist States as they develop good criteria.

Finally, I have worked with Senator Lautenberg to include a provision in the highway bill to reduce the number of drinking and driving deaths and injuries each year. Statistics are staggering. In 2003, 17,013 Americans died in what we believe were alcohol-related incidents. NHTSA projects this number dropped to 16,654 in 2004, a 2.1-percent reduction. While this is good news, it certainly is still too high. We do want to see the trend continue. To help accomplish that, the language we have supported requires NHTSA to work with the States to conduct combined media-law enforcement campaigns aimed at reducing drunk driving fatalities.

Specifically, the law enforcement portion of this bill consists of sobriety checkpoints in the 39 States that allow them. In the States that don't allow them, it provides for saturation patrols. The Centers for Disease Control estimates the sobriety checkpoints may reduce alcohol-related crashes by as much as 20 percent. That is a significant amount. We should do all we can to help States reduce drinking and driving. This provision will do that.

In conclusion, the fact is that auto fatalities represent the No. 1 killer in this country of those between the ages of 4 and 34. In 2004, NHTSA projects that almost 43,000 people were killed on our Nation's roads. In 2003, the number

was 42,643. In fact, in the next 12 minutes, at least one person will be killed in an automobile accident, while nearly 6 people will be injured in the next 60 seconds. This is a tragedy we as a society are much too willing to tolerate. It is so common we kind of shrug it off and put up with it. These auto fatalities occur every day, every hour. And yet somehow we all have become immune to it. This year's highway bill takes some positive steps toward reducing those deaths.

I thank the sponsors for working with me on these safety measures that truly will save lives. I commend them for their efforts and for including these provisions in the bill. I urge my colleagues, once this bill goes to conference, to continue to include these provisions in conference.

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

Mr. President, one of the most gratifying aspects of serving in the U.S. Senate is the opportunity to come to this Chamber and talk about and celebrate the great events in American and world history. One such event occurred 57 years ago today, and that is the creation of the nation of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and the eternal homeland for all Jews around the world. Israel, our enduring friend and everlasting ally, was reborn from its biblical birthright on this day in 1948.

Two years ago on the 58th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and again this week on its 60th anniversary, I spoke about how American soldiers successfully fought both the fascism in Europe that spread like a cancer across that continent and Adolf Hitler's efforts to eradicate the Jewish race.

Last week, we honored the souls of those murdered in the holocaust on Yom Ha-shoa--the Day of Remembrance. And today we celebrate the result of all of this history which is Israel's independence.

My father, Richard DeWine, when he was serving in World War II in K Company, which was part of the Army's 103rd Infantry Division, went into one of the Nazi concentration camps--Dachau--after it had been liberated. Although K company did not participate in the liberation of Dachau, the 411th Regiment of their 103rd Division did liberate the camp at Landsburg, Germany.

When my father was at Dachau, a camp where over 28,000 Jews had perished, the prisoners had already left the camp. He has a vivid recollection, though, of seeing the ovens that the Nazis used to burn the bodies of so many of the prisoners.

He can still picture in his mind the devices they used to slide the bodies into the ovens and the many urns that contained the prisoners' ashes. He remembers going into a room next to the ovens and seeing fixtures on the walls that looked like showerheads. Those at the camp told him the prisoners were taken into these rooms and the prisoners were told they were going to take showers, but instead of water coming out of the nozzles, poisonous gas was emitted, killing them.

My dad remembers walking down the road near the camp and encountering a very weak, emaciated man who had, a short time before that, been a prisoner. My dad and his buddies talked to the man and gave him food and cigarettes. They asked the man, who a short time before had been a prisoner, if they could take his picture. He said, yes, as long as it is with an American soldier. So they did. My dad still has that picture today.

Carl Greene, who was also a member of K Company, remembers their visit to Dachau. He says some of the former prisoners in the camp still wearing those unforgettable striped uniforms actually served as their guides to show them around the camp, showing them the gas chambers and the crematorium and the area in the camp where the Nazis would shoot prisoners in the back of their heads.

K Company member Al Eucare, Sr., who was 18 years old at the time, remembers what he describes as one-man pillboxes that stood outside the gates of Dachau. These were cylindrical pipes that stood upright, just big enough for a man to fit inside. They were something of a sentry post. Each of these concrete tubes contained an open slat at the top and the bottom, where guns were placed to shoot at prisoners if there was a disorder as the prisoners went in and out of the gates.

Like my dad, Al also remembers the ovens at Dachau. He said when he was there, even though it was after the camp was liberated and the war had ended, there were still ashes and skeletal remains inside those horrible ovens.

Al also remembers seeing hooks--something akin to meat hooks--that the Nazis would hook dead bodies on like cattle, to move them more easily. He said they would put the bodies on by hooking them right underneath the jaw. He had heard stories that sometimes live Jews were placed on the hooks and left until they died.

General Dwight Eisenhower visited some of the death camps and reported back what he saw. In one of his reports, this is what the general described:

On April 12, 1945, I saw my first horror camp. It was near

the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my

emotional reactions when I first came face to face with

indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless

disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time, I had

known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I

am certain, however, that I have never at any other time

experienced an equal sense of shock.

I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt

it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at

firsthand about these things in case there ever grew up at

home the belief or assumption that ``the stories of Nazi

brutality were just propaganda.'' Some members of the

visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal.

I not only did so, but as soon as I returned to Patton's

headquarters that evening, I sent communications to both

Washington and London, urging the two governments to send

instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and

representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt

that the evidence should be immediately placed before the

American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no

room for cynical doubt.

That was Dwight David Eisenhower.

To think about it now, it defies credulity to consider that these atrocities were occurring and there were those who questioned their reality or those who today even question their reality. My father said that was one of the things that struck him when he visited Dachau 60 years ago--the idea that there were townspeople right there who would never admit the death camp was out there. He talked to people and they would not admit it. They said they didn't know anything about it. They didn't know what was going on so close. They acted as though it didn't exist.

Fortunately, the world came to reveal what was happening. The world knew, and although the rebirth of Israel came upon the heels of the modern tragedy of the Nazi death camps, it is important to remember that the Jewish people have struggled to regain their homeland ever since biblical times. The year 1948 marked the culmination of those efforts. After 6 million Jews were murdered in World War II, surviving Jews from across Europe and Asia made the trek to the holy land. They sought their homeland and peace. They obtained the former but not the latter.

One such man seeking a homeland and peace was Mark Steinbuch, the late father of one of my Judiciary staffers, Robert Steinbuch. Born in Poland, Mark and his family lived under Nazi occupation, relocated to Siberia shortly after the start of World War II, and then traveled for 2 weeks by cattle car to live in Soviet Kazakhstan.

Mark's extended family faced some horrific challenges. Many were killed by the Nazis. His cousins, the Hershenfis family, were forced into labor in the Pionki ghetto in Poland. In 1941, the family was shipped off to Auschwitz. Hanna and her brother Harry were separated from each other and from their parents Fay and Harvey. Fay and Harvey never made it out of the death camp. Hanna, tattooed with the number A14699, was shipped to an intermediate camp and then Bergen-Belsen. Harry--B416 to the Nazis--worked hard labor in Auschwitz for 4 years, and then, in 1944, was sent to another camp called Mauthausen.

On May 3, 1945, the Nazis fled the camp. That night, the skies opened and sent down a rainfall as if the world were being cleansed from the horrors it had seen. The next morning, the Americans arrived and the 11th Armored Division liberated the camp. Three days later, Harry turned 26.

After 5 weeks in an American hospital, Harry spent the next 3 years in a displaced persons camp in Austria. In 1949, Harry's wishes were answered, and he set off for America. Four years later, when Hanna also came to the United States, the siblings were reunited for the first time since they were shipped off to Auschwitz 13 years prior. Harry is 86 now and Hanna is a few years younger. Both are alive and well. Harry's sense of humor is strong, and he plays down the difficulties he faced. But we all know better.

Upon the defeat of the Nazis, Mark Steinbuch's immediate family went to Germany because, as Mark described it, ``that is where the Americans were

and, if you wanted to live, you went to the Americans.'' From there, Mark joined the Zionist youth movement and set off for Israel.

That, however, was no easy task. Traveling across Europe, often on foot to a southern port, he, his brother, and many others like them boarded an overloaded freighter renamed the ``Theodore Hertzl,'' after the founder of the Zionist movement. Upon the ship's arrival in Israel, the British quickly arrested its passengers and sent them to a holding camp in Cypress. Months later, Mark and the others were allowed to enter Israel.

Upon the joyous declaration of independence, seven Arab nations invaded Israel, and Mark quickly joined the army. Underage and flatfooted, he fought for the independence of this new democracy.

Mark's story is by no means unique. It not only represented the goals and desires of the Jews of postwar Europe but the dreams of a nation of people dispersed from their homeland for millennia.

Mark's dreams were realized a year later when armistice was struck. Israel survived its first challenge. It, like the Jewish people after the Holocaust, was still alive.

Since then, Israel's existence has been continuously challenged. Israel defended itself from foreign aggression during the Suez Canal crisis, the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, and periods of extreme terrorism. Israel survived it all. OPEC blackmailed the world by withholding oil from the West because of their support for Israel. Israel's Olympic athletes were murdered by terrorists. And the United Nations equated Zionism with fascism. Israel survived it all and much more.

Israel is a survivor, but it is also so much more. The people of Israel have forested the desert, revived their language, built cities, and established a vigorous and ever-growing community.

We support Israel because it is a democracy, because it shares our values and ideals, because it has been willing to suffer attacks at our request, and because simply it is our friend. We welcome other nations to choose to be the same, and for the many that have, we share the same relationship.

America is a nation of justice, fairness, and principles. So is Israel. And on this day, we wish our friend a happy and joyous anniversary.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

If the Senator will yield?

I have a tribute to a soldier who was killed, and it will take no more than 10 minutes. So once I start, I would not want to stop. But I will not start until you want me to start.

Yes. I will certainly do it in 10 minutes.

I could wait to start until later if you want.

Mr. President, I appreciate what my colleague has done. The Senator from Oklahoma is absolutely correct that if this bill is passed, these provisions will be in there, as well as a lot of new construction that will save lives as well.

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

Mr. President, I once again want to persuade my Republican colleagues that the so-called nuclear option to break the Senate rules regarding judicial nominations is unnecessary and unwise. Earlier this week, I came to the floor of the Senate and offered to enter into a unanimous consent agreement that will allow an up-or-down vote on controversial nominee Thomas Griffith to the DC Court of Appeals.

We have confirmed 208 of President Bush's nominations to the Federal court, but this record near 100 percent is enough, and the Republican leaders have brought us to the brink of a nuclear showdown. There will be a lot of nuclear fallout if this happens, which would be bad for the Senate and bad for the country.

As I said on the Senate floor earlier this week, Democrats understand the meaning of checks and balances and our constitutional role in ensuring a fair and independent judiciary. We know the difference between opposing nominees and blocking nominees. We will oppose bad nominees, but we will only block unacceptable nominees. Unfortunately, my effort to demonstrate good faith to this point has been rejected.

My statement earlier this week was immediately rejected. The distinguished majority leader, my friend, has indicated that the Senate would not be allowed to vote on Griffith unless Senate Democrats agree to an up-or-down vote on all judicial nominees. What that means is the majority leader will not compromise unless Democrats agree to give up the last check in Washington against abuse of power: the right for extended debate. This is not about seven radical judges. In some people's minds, it is paving the way to the Supreme Court.

Our position is clear: Let us find common ground and confirm judges. Their position appears to be: Let us threaten to break the rules until we get everything we want.

Let us find common ground to confirm judges. That does not mean everybody. If we cannot find compromise, as I said 2 days ago, then we have to vote. We will fight to protect the Nation's constitutional system of checks and balances and depend on Republicans of good will who serve in the Senate who do not want to break the rules to change the rules. That is what the people sent us to do, and we will live up to our responsibility to the American people.

Today, I want to try to do what my Republican colleagues say they want to do, and that is confirm Federal judges. Today, I am prepared to enter into an agreement that would be in respect to two and possibly three nominees to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has had tremendous problems for going on 13 years. David McKeague, Robert Griffin, and likely Susan Neilson, Sixth Circuit nominees from Michigan, have been caught up in a dispute that began when the Republican Senate failed to vote on either of the two eminently qualified women President Clinton had nominated to the Michigan seats on that court: Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis.

Helene White is a distinguished judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Her nomination was pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than 4 years--I repeat, more than 4 years. Kathleen McCree Lewis is a highly regarded appellate litigator at a prominent Detroit law firm. Her nomination was pending for more than a year.

Despite their outstanding qualifications, both of these nominees, along

with over 60 other Clinton nominees, were buried in the Republican- controlled Judiciary Committee. They were never given the courtesy of consideration by the Judiciary Committee, not even a hearing, much less the courtesy of an up-or-down vote by the full Senate.

It seems as if each day a Republican Senator comes to the floor and says that every judicial nominee is entitled to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. I challenge these Senators to explain why Helene White, Kathleen Lewis, and 67 others were denied up-or-down votes on the Senate floor.

I have said that what was done in the last 12 years let us put behind us. The 69 Clinton nominees and the 10 Bush nominees, let us put them behind us and go forward. We have a new Congress. We have new leaders, at least two new leaders, Senator Durbin and I, and we have a number of new Senators. Let us move forward on a new note.

The failure of the Senate to confirm these two outstanding Clinton nominees meant that there were vacancies on the Sixth Circuit when President Bush took office more than 4 years ago. President Bush nominated candidates to fill those unjustified vacancies, and as other judges have left the court, the President has eventually sent four Sixth Circuit nominees to the Senate. In light of the shameful treatment of President Clinton's Sixth Circuit nominees, Senators Levin and Stabenow objected to the Bush nominees to this court, and three of them were filibustered in the last Congress. They were determined that the GOP tactic of denying hearings and votes to qualified nominees should not succeed.

I have talked about these on the Senate floor earlier. These were procedural objections. It had nothing to do with the qualifications of two of these Sixth Circuit nominees.

I supported the two Senators from Michigan. They have been fighting a grave injustice that has been perpetrated on White and Lewis. They have been fighting for the principle of fair treatment. I and all Democrats have been proud to stand with them in that fight.

Now with the Senate facing the threat of a nuclear option, we have to remember why we are here. We are here to govern, not endlessly engage in political bickering that brings us to the brink of a Republican shutdown. The American people face great challenges each and every day: escalating health care costs; record high gas prices; skyrocketing tuition; as we learned today on the national news, pensions that are being thrown out the windows of major companies that have tens of thousands of employees; mounting debts that will be handed down to our children and our grandchildren. Under President Bush's leadership, middle-class Americans have gone backward, not forward. Instead of helping them, we are bickering over seven judges and, in my estimation, many radical judges.

For the sake of the American people and the dignity of the Senate, Democrats have been and will be reasonable. We believe too much is at stake. Our very system of constitutional checks and balances is at stake in this dispute. In granting an up-or-down vote on two and likely three of these circuit court judges--and let me say, the nominee I have talked about, Susan Neilson, from everything we know, is a fine woman. She was just grievously ill, and therefore she was not able to have the hearing before the Judiciary Committee. We are confident that will take place quickly. Once that is done and the two Senators from Michigan have had a chance to vet her, that will take care of our being able to move forward on three, not just two.

Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway. He is one of those nominees. All one needs to do is have a Member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there.

The other two nominees, Griffin and McKeague, would not have been filibustered but for the treatment of the Clinton nominees.

Accordingly, I want the majority leader to be aware that Democrats are prepared to enter into the following unanimous consent agreement: If the nominations of Griffin, McKeague, and Neilson are reported from the Judiciary Committee, we agree to limit floor debate on all three nominations to a total of 6 hours equally divided. Following the use or yielding back of that time, there would be a vote on each of these three nominations. Once again, I say to my Republican colleagues, do they want to confirm judges or do they just want to provoke a fight?

We have confirmed all but four of the judicial nominees the majority leader has brought to the Senate floor this year. We are prepared to vote on the nomination of Griffith to the DC Circuit. We are prepared to vote on two and likely three of the nominees to the Sixth Circuit. Why are we being denied the opportunity to confirm these judges? We have already confirmed 208 of President Bush's judicial nominations. If the majority leader will accept our offer to vote on Griffith and these Sixth Circuit nominees, we would have confirmed 212 of President Bush's nominees and rejected only 5. Is the majority leader prepared to break the rules and violate 217 years of Senate tradition, all for five extreme judges? I hope not.

I have great admiration and respect for my Republican counterpart, and I am hopeful and confident that somehow we can work our way through this morass.

In a New York Times op-ed 2 days ago, former Senator George Mitchell, who was the majority leader in this body, quoted from a famous speech delivered by one of his predecessors, former Senator Margaret Chase Smith, whom I did not have the opportunity to meet, but I wish I could have. In her famous ``Declaration of Conscience'' speech against the terrible McCarthyism then practiced by members of her own party, she said:

I don't believe the American people will uphold any

political party that puts political exploitation above

national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that

desperate for victory. While it might be a fleeting victory

for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat

for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be

suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system

that has protected our American liberties from the

dictatorship of a one-party system.

Today, the Senate is not plagued by McCarthyism but by what some believe is an abuse of power.

Lord Acton, whom we studied in college--I thought it was just something the teacher had me think about that had no practical application to my life's work, but it has. Lord Acton: ``Power tends to corrupt.'' Lord Acton: ``Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.''

We have now a legislative body that is controlled by the Republicans in the Senate by a significant majority, by a significant majority in the House of Representatives, seven of the Supreme Court Justices across the street are Republican appointees, the White House is Republican. Let's not have Lord Acton's theory come to be.

Today, the Senate is not plagued by McCarthyism but by what some believe is abuse of power. Still, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, this great Republican Senator, her words ring true. I hope there are enough modern-day Senator Margaret Chase Smiths who will be guided by the interests of the Nation, not partisan politics.

I yield the floor.

I, frankly, wish I could spend more time on the most important highway bill. I was chairman of the full committee on two separate occasions, and I am interested in the jurisdiction of the highway bill. I am sorry my attention is diverted from all we are doing on judges.

Let me say this to my distinguished counterpart, the Republican leader, the senior Senator from the State of Tennessee, I have said in the Senate on a number of occasions, I cannot justify what went on during the 8 years Clinton was President. I am not here to go into a dissertation of what happened the last 4 years during the Bush years.

But I say this: We never got into any problem with filibusters during the Clinton years because these people never got any kind of attention. They were buried in the committee. I hope the American public understand that 69 people were nominated by a President of the United States, nominations came to the Hill and were lost. Some of them waited years and years, almost 5 years. We are not here to debate every 1 of the 10. We have narrowed it down to a fairly small number.

We have to go forward. I don't know if the distinguished Republican leader and I can come up with a formula that satisfies our two caucuses. We realize the time is of the essence. Not only has the country had enough of the judicial problem we call the nuclear option, but the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from Nevada have had enough. We have to move on. We have work we have to do in this Senate. The Republican leader has mentioned the things we have been able to accomplish so far. It hasn't been easy what we have been able to do but we put the record of our accomplishments this quarter about as far as one could go in saying we have done a pretty good job.

We have a lot of other things to do. He has mentioned a few things. But whether or not we can get things done in this Senate means we have to move beyond this problem.

Some have said that the Senate will stop. The Senate is not going to stop. It is a body that has lots and lots of rules and procedures and things are going to slow down. It will make it very hard to get things done.

We are now approaching June. After we finish 2 more weeks of work, we have 7 weeks remaining until the August recess--7 weeks to do all the things we need to do. Then we come back, and it is time to finish our appropriations bills. We have so, so much to do.

This is not to make me look good or the Senator from Tennessee look good. We have the people's business to do. We are chosen, as indicated by the vision of our Founding Fathers, to represent States. The State of Nevada has about 2.5 million people. The State of New York has 19 million. The State of California has 35 million. In the little State of Nevada, I have as much power as Senators from heavily populated states.

I hope that Senator Frist and Senator Reid can work a way out of this. I don't know if we can. We have met on this. Our conversations, I am sorry to say, are completely filled with discussion of this. We have talked about every possible avenue we think is a way to get my caucus and his caucus out of this.

I have come to one conclusion: If we work out a deal, there are not going to be many happy people around here. We will have to work something out that is a good compromise. As I have said in the Senate before, what does that mean? Both sides are unhappy.

I hope we do not have to come here and I have to look to six Republicans to stop a change of the Senate as we have known it. I hope we do not get to that point.

I have said, with the majority leader off the floor and I say it when he is in the Senate right here, I have the greatest respect and admiration for this man.

I have said it in my private conversations with others, I have said it in the Senate again today. He chose public service for the right reason. Senator Frist is an accomplished surgeon, in a specialty, transplant surgeon. He is a man of means. He does not have to come here. He did it because he wanted public service. I have admiration for him. I wish we could move past this and move on with the business at hand.

I, again, say I cannot justify what went on during the Clinton years. It was bad. As the distinguished Senator mentioned, people's lives were disrupted and changed. They quit jobs and then they had no job. They waited in limbo for years. It affected people's lives. He and I have discussed how it affected individual human beings to their detriment.

I know for the people we are talking about, the Republicans--I am sorry, the people nominated--I don't know if they are Republicans; I assume they are--by President Bush, this has had an adverse effect on some of their lives, not all of them but some of them. So we have to move on. When we move on, we have to have the Senate we have always known.

We need the partisanship to continue. There is nothing wrong with partisanship. We are the envy of the rest of the world because of our two-party system. We are not like the parliamentary system in Great Britain where they have three parties, and Blair, with his party, barely got a majority. We are not like India or Great Britain.

Mr. President, what a wonderful country this is. President Bush was elected with fewer votes than the person he beat. His case was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States. I did not like the decision they made, but I felt like the rest of Americans--it was all over with. There was not a car burned, no fire started. There were no demonstrations. He became our President the minute that decision was made.

But the fact that we are partisans in protecting this great two-party system we have does not mean we should not work together on issues for this country. We need to do that. I hope we can do that. As the distinguished majority leader said, we are coming down to where the rubber hits the road. I would think next week there will be a decision made on this one way or the other. I hope it is something that is good for the American people. I am going to do my level best to work with my 44 Senators to see that is the case. I know he will work with his 54 Senators to see that is the case. And history will determine how the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Tennessee fared on this issue, whether we were able to come through on an issue of tremendous importance, because the microscope is on the Senate of the United States as we speak.

This was only a minor issue. What we have done, I say to my distinguished friend through the Chair, and my former leader, is that we have three judges, one for the DC Court of Appeals and two for Michigan, probably three for Michigan, who we said we have no objection--they are all circuit court judges--to move forward on. What Senator Frist has said in reply is that he wants to have all the judge issues resolved before we move to any of these circuit court judges. That is what he said and that is what I said.

Mr. President, may I respond to my distinguished friend?

Mr. President, the majority leader and I have had, as I have indicated, many conversations. I think we should proceed one by one. The distinguished majority leader wants to resolve this issue once and for all. So I accept him at what he wants to do. I am going to work with him over the next several days--hopefully, it doesn't take that long--to see if we can resolve this in some manner. If not, we both agreed that this matter is going to end sometime next week anyway. We would hope that in the meantime we can resolve this. We are on the highway bill. We have a lot of work to do on that. In the interim, I would hope that we can work something out. If we can't, next week we will have a showdown.

Senator Byrd, if I could be rude and interrupt, through the Chair, without the Senator losing his right to the floor.

Senator Byrd, I feel this very way, very strongly. I say, respectfully, to a man who is the dean of the Senate today, has been in the Senate almost 50 years, who I have the widest respect for, we are not going to resolve this issue right now. We are trying to do that. We are going to have some private conversations. What I am saying to my distinguished leader, give us a little bit of time.

I yield the Senator another hour.

It is 208.

Ten.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

That speech was given 41 or 42 years ago?

I say to my distinguished friend, we have heard a lot of speeches in the last several months on this subject, but I have to say candidly that this is the best speech we have heard. This is outstanding, especially coming on the footsteps of the great Senator Robert Byrd who made a statement about the right to free speech.

As I look back at a very young Senator from a very small State taking on people who had been here a long time, going against a majority of his party, in a sense, certainly a lot, as a young Senator, shows why 20 years prior to giving this speech he was a hero on the battlefield for America and why he has been a hero on the battlefields of the Senate for all these many years.