Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms Reorganization Act

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Trade Adjustment Assistance Improvement Act of 2005.

I want to begin with some simple facts about international trade. The benefits of trade are vast in absolute terms, but so diffuse that individuals are generally unaware of how much they personally gain from trade. By contrast, the harms from trade, while small in absolute terms, are localized and intense.

Research shows that, on average, a worker who loses his job due to trade will make 17 percent less in his new job. The older the worker and the lower his level of education, the larger the lifetime wage cut he is likely to experience.

With statistics like these, is it any wonder that workers who believe their jobs are at risk from international competition are skeptical about trade? With increasing numbers of Americans feeling vulnerable in the global economy--even though many of them will never lose their jobs because of trade--the potential pool of trade skeptics is growing.

There is a solution.

In a June 2002 poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and Harris Interactive, respondents were asked which of three positions most closely reflects their views on international trade. Nearly three quarters of those surveyed, 73 percent, agreed with this statement: ``I favor free trade, and I believe that it is necessary for the government to have programs to help workers who lose their jobs.'' Sixteen percent said they favored free trade and did not think it necessary for the government to help those who lose their jobs. Nine percent said they do not favor free trade.

The results were even more striking in a 1999 poll conducted by the Program on International Policy and Attitudes at the University of Maryland. In that poll, 87 percent of participants agreed with this statement: ``I would favor more free trade, if I was confident that we were making major efforts to educate and retrain Americans to be competitive in the global economy.'' Only 11 percent disagreed.

If there is a more compelling case to be made for Trade Adjustment Assistance, I do not know what it is.

For more than 40 years, TAA has been providing retraining, income support, and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs due to trade. Montana workers tell me that TAA has been a lifeline, making it possible for them to gain new skills and start new careers rather than merely survive a layoff.

In the Trade Act of 2002, I spearheaded the most comprehensive expansion and overhaul of the TAA program since 1974. We expanded the kinds of workers who are eligible for TAA benefits. We added new benefits like wage insurance and the health coverage tax credit. We also streamlined the application deadlines to get workers enrolled and retraining sooner.

I am proud of this landmark legislation. It unified a splintered TAA program to create a single, comprehensive set of benefits.

Like most successful legislation, however, it was the product of compromise. While TAA was expanded to cover secondary workers, it was not expanded to cover service workers. While we added new benefits, we also added eligibility tests for those new benefits that have proven burdensome and unduly restrictive in practice. While we made more workers eligible for training, we did not provide training funds adequate to serve those workers.

In order for TAA to truly meet the needs of displaced workers, it needs to be a lot more user-friendly. This bill

accomplishes that goal by eliminating barriers to entry that, in practice, defeat the purpose of TAA. The bill's goal is simple: to get every trade-displaced worker who needs a new start into meaningful training and back into the workforce at comparable wages.

The TAA Improvements Act makes the following changes to TAA:

First, it provides that all deadlines and time limits for applying for benefits are suspended when workers are appealing the Department of Labor's denial of a TAA eligibility petition. According to DOL statistics, in 2004 DOL denied approximately 35 percent of the TAA petitions on which it ruled. Among the TAA petition denials appealed to the Court of International Trade in the past several years, the vast majority have been reversed. Numerous judges on the Court have expressed growing impatience with the Labor Department's propensity to stick by denials for years until workers--ultimately vindicated through protracted litigation--lose the ability to receive full benefits. This bill rectifies the problem by allowing workers who successfully appeal denials of their TAA petitions to receive the benefits to which they are entitled regardless of intervening deadlines.

Second, the bill creates a TAA Petition Adviser within the Department of Labor to assist workers and those who prepare TAA petitions on their behalf. Most workers and employers who prepare TAA petitions have no experience with the program and seldom have access to experienced counsel. The petition form itself, while improved over prior versions, provides little guidance on the kinds of factual information upon which DOL bases eligibility determinations. As the Court of International Trade has found on numerous occasions, the Department's practice is to do little, if any, investigation beyond the facts presented on the petition. Accordingly, if an inexperienced group of workers fails to say ``the magic words'', their petition is likely to be turned down. The new Petition Adviser would be responsible for assisting workers to prepare petitions by advising them on the kinds of information that are necessary to demonstrate TAA eligibility--eliminating much of the guesswork that can turn applying for TAA into a game of roulette.

Sadly, not all employers make their best efforts to help their displaced workers qualify for TAA. Employers who prepare TAA applications for their workers may assign the task to Human Resources staff, who may lack sufficient knowledge to provide the appropriate information to the Labor Department. They sometimes provide inaccurate or incomplete evidence that prevents DOL from certifying the workers. The bill addresses this problem by requiring that all information provided to DOL by the petitioning workers' employer be certified as to its completeness and accuracy by counsel or by an officer of the company. This requirement assures that petitions will receive high- level management attention and, in the case of counsel, imposes an external ethical check.

In the Trade Act of 2002, Congress had the wisdom to create a program of wage insurance, called Alternative TAA. Unlike traditional TAA, which requires a worker to remain unemployed until training is completed, wage insurance creates an incentive for workers to return to work sooner and train on the job. It does so by assuring the worker that, if the new job pays less than the old one, he can receive a subsidy equal up to half the wage differential up to $10,000 over two years. This innovative program has the potential to facilitate the most effective kind of training, reduce worker transition time, and reduce the per-worker cost of adjustment assistance.

Experience under the Trade Act of 2002 indicates low participation in this program, both because it is limited to workers over 50 and because the steps a worker needs to take to choose wage insurance have proved difficult to satisfy. This bill streamlines the application process for alternative TAA and lowers the minimum age for participating workers from 50 to 40--the average age of TAA participants.

The Trade Act of 2002 expanded TAA eligibility to include so-called ``shifts in production''--when a plant in the United States closes and moves overseas. The law makes eligibility automatic when production shifts to a country with which the United States has a free trade agreement or a unilateral preference program. But when production shifts to another country--such as China or India--workers must satisfy additional criteria before they are eligible.

This limitation is one of the compromises that shaped the Trade Act of 2002. But I have never thought it fair or equitable. A worker whose plant moves overseas has the same adjustment needs no matter where the plant relocated. The TAA Improvement Act eliminates this distinction, making eligibility for TAA automatic for shifts in production to any country. It also eliminates a similar provision that limits coverage of certain secondary workers to trade with Canada and Mexico.

In a recent review of the TAA program, the Government Accountability Office noted that inflexible training enrollment deadlines have made it difficult for workers to make timely and informed decisions about their training plans and career options. Experience has shown that the deadlines we set may be too short in some cases. Community colleges, the principal providers of TAA training services, often enroll students only twice a year, making it difficult for some workers to enroll in the courses they need within the applicable deadlines. Even the most motivated among laid-off workers find it difficult to do the research and soul-searching necessary to make informed and sensible choices about retraining in the time provided. For these reasons, this bill extends the training enrollment deadline by several weeks.

Perhaps the single most important problem facing the TAA program today is the chronic shortage in training funds. Every year, there are states that run out of training funds and are forced to ration training. In some cases, states have even stopped workers from enrolling, which can reduce the total TAA benefits the worker can receive even if funds later become available. The Department of Labor has wisely issued guidelines to states to help them better manage their training resources. But the truth of the matter is that Congress has failed to provide states with enough training funds to adequately serve the number of people who qualify for retraining. Rather than cap training spending each year at an arbitrary amount arrived at through political negotiations, this bill sets the training budget with reference to program enrollment and average per person training costs.

The bill also gives the Department of Labor flexibility to steer workers into some less traditional but practical training options. Many workers who go through the TAA program ultimately end up self-employed. Under the Workforce Investment Act, a general retraining program for dislocated workers, workers can participate in entrepreneurial training that prepares them for self-employment. This bill extends the same option to workers in the TAA program. More than 10 percent of TAA participants are not native English speakers. Because English proficiency is a prerequisite for most occupational training courses, these workers are generally steered into English language classes and tend to use up their training benefits before receiving occupational training. Under WIA, the Department of Labor has recently begun promoting ``integrated workforce training,'' which combines occupational training with job-related English proficiency. My bill allows the same kind of training to be provided under TAA.

For workers entering the TAA program, the most important service they receive is guidance from case workers provided by the state. These case workers help displaced workers learn about local career options, make informed choices about training programs, prepare necessary paperwork and meet deadlines for TAA income support and other benefits. They keep workers from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous training providers who prey on confused dislocated workers and make sure workers know about all the benefits to which they are entitled.

Because TAA is a federal program delegated to the states, the federal government provides the states with funding to meet the program's administrative costs. According to a survey by the GAO, however, the cost of providing case worker services far exceeds

the amount that the federal government provides. States must either divert money from other training programs or skimp on the services they provide to workers under TAA. The goal of TAA is to have workers make sensible choices about training that will lead to successful new careers. My bill makes that possible by requiring the federal government to provide the states with adequate funds to meet these critical administrative costs.

This legislation requires the Department of Labor to improve its data collection and to disseminate more information about the operation of the TAA program. Better and more accessible data will permit Congress and the public to more accurately assess the program's successes and failures and make it easier for workers to prepare successful petitions.

Finally, this legislation makes some needed changes to the TAA for Farmers program. For many years, Congress and the Labor Department tried--unsuccessfully to shoehorn farmers into the traditional TAA program. But the adjustment issues facing American farmers from global competition are fundamentally different than those facing manufacturing workers. In the Trade Act of 2002, we created TAA for Farmers by modifying the eligibility criteria and benefits package to more closely meet the needs of agricultural producers.

Congress dedicated $90 million annually to this program, with the intention of helping farmers to become more competitive before losing their farms. After several years in operation, however, much of the money provided by Congress has not been spent. The legislation I am introducing today fine tunes the eligibility criteria, based on experience, to eliminate some of the pitfalls that have excluded some crops from the program.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance Improvement Act is the fourth in a series of bills I have recently introduced to improve and reform TAA. The Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms Reorganization Act, S. 1308, makes needed changes to the management structure of TAA for Firms at the Department of Commerce. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Equity for Service Workers Act, S. 1309, extends TAA to the 80 percent of American workers in the service sector. The Trade Adjustment Assistance for Industries Act, S. 1444, simplifies the TAA petition process and ties TAA more closely to displacements caused by specific trade agreements.

In the future, I plan to introduce additional legislation addressing the TAA health coverage tax credit. HCTC is a critical new benefit added to the TAA package in 2002. As with many new programs, the implementation process for HCTC has been bumpy. Armed with several years of experience and several objective studies of the program, the time has come to start smoothing out those bumps by revisiting the structure and operation of the HCTC. This further legislation should be ready for introduction in the coming months.

Whenever I speak about the need to expand and improve TAA, the first question I usually get is: how much will it cost? Clearly, my proposals will add to the cost of the program and I will ask CBO to provide a score. But the strong implication of this common question is that we cannot afford to add to the cost of the TAA program. I think that is the wrong starting point.

First, we need to put the cost of TAA in perspective. At present, TAA costs around one billion dollars per year to operate. That is a cost of less than $10 per American household per year. By contrast, a study by the Institute for International Economics recently concluded that the American economy is roughly $1 trillion per year better off thanks to global integration, which comes to about $9,000 in extra income every year for each American household. Looking at these figures, we should be embarrassed at the paltry fraction of the economic gains from trade that we are plowing back into adjusting and retraining our workforce.

The truth is, the United States as a country cannot afford not to make these changes. We need to be putting more resources into worker retraining. We need to make sure we do not marginalize an entire generation of manufacturing workers.

Now more than ever, we have to prepare workers for the challenges of the global market. The domestic auto industry faces unprecedented challenges to remain competitive in today's world. In October alone, a major auto parts supplier filed for bankruptcy, General Motors slashed wages and legacy benefits, and the Ford Motor Company announced substantial layoffs. Thousands of specialized workers will be displaced and have to start over.

At the same time, I continue to read warnings of an impending labor shortage--even in the manufacturing sector. Baby boomers will soon begin retiring in large numbers. Our educational system is not turning out enough new workers with the skills our employers need to succeed in global competition. I have seen estimates of a shortage of 20 million workers by 2020--with the most severe shortages in the most skilled jobs.

Economists estimate that increasing the education level of American workers by one year would increase productivity by 8.5 percent in manufacturing and 12.7 percent in nonmanufacturing industries. Is expanding TAA too high a price to pay to address the coming labor shortage and to achieve productivity gains on this order? I certainly do not think so.

Experts with a wide range of views on issues surrounding trade and competitiveness agree that, if our nation is to thrive in the global economy of the 21st century, we must expand our worker adjustment program. From Jagdish Bagwati to Tom Friedman, from Alan Greenspan to the AFL-CIO--there is near universal agreement on this point. I believe the legislation I have introduced today and over the past weeks creates a strong platform to build on and I will work to see these bills enacted into law.

But trade adjustment for workers alone cannot prepare America for the competitive challenges ahead. We must aggressively pursue our interests through the trade agreements we negotiate with other countries, and we must enforce them just as aggressively. Recently I laid out my vision for closer congressional oversight of trade enforcement by the United States Trade Representative. I intend to introdue legislation to address the need for better, more aggressive enforcement of our trade agreements. Finally, I believe that our global competitiveness strategy must go beyond trade negotiations. Over the course of several months, I have highlighted many opportunities to enhance our global competitiveness in areas such as healthcare, energy, education, and savings. We must prepare the American people to take full advantage of these opportunities and many more.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms Reorganization Act.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms program assists hundreds of mostly small and medium-sized manufacturing and agricultural companies in Montana and nationwide when they face layoffs and lost sales due to import competition. Qualifying companies develop adjustment plans and receive technical assistance to become more competitive, so that they can retain and expand employment.

The program is very cost effective. It requires the firms being helped to match the Federal assistance with their own funds, and it pays the government back in federal and State tax revenues when the firms succeed.

For example, TAA for Firms is helping Montola Growers from Culbertson, Montana, to develop cosmetic applications for its safflower oil. And it is helping Porterbilt Company of Hamilton to expand its product line.

Currently, TAA for Firms clients receive assistance preparing petitions and adjustment plans from twelve Trade Adjustment Assistance Centers, which are Commerce Department contractors. Program and policy decisions are made by a small headquarters staff in the Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration.

In the Trade Act of 2002, Congress voted to reauthorize this important program for seven years and to increase its authorized funding level. The program seemed headed toward some years of smooth sailing. But it turns out that is not the case.

For reasons unrelated to TAA for Firms, EDA began more than a year ago to move all its headquarters programs to its six regional offices. For TAA for Firms, that means clients will still get the same local services from the TAACs, but decisions will be made in six regional offices plus a national policy office. The likely result is more personnel needed to run the program, more layers of government, less centralized and consistent decision making, and less accountability-- all without any likely improvement in customer service.

In preparation for this reorganization, EDA transferred or otherwise eliminated most of its experienced TAA staff in the Washington office. But to date it has not completed the transfer and hired or trained the necessary regional staff. So the program is in limbo.

Meanwhile, the President recently announced a multi-agency consolidation of economic development programs that will eliminate EDA and its regional offices. Not surprisingly, the latest word from EDA is that plans to complete the move of TAA for Firms to the regional offices are now on indefinite hold. The President's fiscal year 2006 budget zeroes out TAA for Firms, even though Congress has authorized the program through fiscal year 2007. With funding in doubt and the Washington-based management structure for TAA for Firms already largely dismantled, this program is on the verge of a crisis.

TAA for Firms was not broken until someone decided to fix it. Now it is doomed to stay in limbo unless Congress acts to clean up the mess.

The bill I am introducing today solves these problems by moving administration of the TAA for Firms program from EDA into a different part of the Commerce Department--the International Trade Administration. I introduced this same bill last year with 15 co- sponsors.

Relocating the program to ITA makes sense. ITA has experience running this program, which was located there prior to 1990. Relocating TAA for Firms to ITA will result in fewer lays of government and more centralized and accountable program management than running it through EDA's regional offices or some new economic development agency.

Relocating the program also creates synergies by allowing better coordination of the TAA for Firms program with other trade and trade remedy programs administered by ITA. And it enhances the ability of the Finance Committee to carry out its oversight responsibilities for this program and for trade policy in general.

I do not want to see this important TAA program die of neglect. This legislation is a simple matter of good, sensible government. I encourage my colleagues to lend it their support.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Trade Adjustment Assistance Equity for Service Workers Act.

Frankly, I am disappointed to be here introducing this bill yet again.

Just last week, the substance of the bill was adopted by a majority of members of the Finance Committee as an amendment to the implementing legislation for the United States-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement. But today, the administration sent us the final implementing bill with the amendment stripped out.

President Bush likes to say that trade is for everyone. That we all share the benefits, including workers. And he claims to care a lot about having a skilled workforce that can keep American businesses competitive in global markets.

This amendment presented the President with the perfect opportunity to put his money where his mouth is.

He could have said to the American people--as President Clinton did when Congress considered the NAFTA--that just as all Americans share in the benefits of trade, we all bear a responsibility for its costs. Trade liberalization and trade adjustment go hand in hand. And then he could have provided America's service sector workers with access to the one program designed to make that happen--Trade Adjustment Assistance.

But by submitting the CAFTA implementing bill stripped of the Trade Adjustment Assistance amendment passed by the Finance Committee, he chose not to.

Since 1962, Trade Adjustment Assistance--what we call ``TAA''--has provided retraining, income support, and other benefits so that workers who lose their jobs due to trade can make a new start.

The rationale for TAA is simple. When our government pursues trade liberalization, we create benefits for the economy as a whole. But there is always some dislocation from trade.

When he created the TAA program, President Kennedy explained that the Federal Government has an obligation ``to render assistance to those who suffer as a result of national trade policy.''

For more than 40 years, we have met that obligation through TAA, which is principally a retraining program designed to update worker skills.

The TAA program has not been static over time. Congress periodically revises the program to meet new economic realities. Most recently, in the Trade Act of 2002, Congress completed the most comprehensive overhaul and expansion of the TAA program since its inception.

I am proud to have played a leading role in passing this landmark legislation. But I am also the first to admit that our work is not done. Economic realities continue to change, and TAA must continue to change with them.

One fundamental aspect of TAA that has remained unchanged since 1962 is its focus on manufacturing. We only give TAA benefits to workers who make ``articles.''

Excluding service workers from TAA may have made sense in 1962, when most non-farm jobs were in manufacturing and most services were not traded across national borders.

But today, most American jobs are in the service sector. And the market for many services is becoming just as global as the market for manufactured goods.

In 2002, the service sector accounted for three quarters of U.S. private sector gross domestic product and nearly 80 percent of non-farm private employment.

Trade in services is a net plus for the U.S. economy. Although trade in goods continues to dominate, services accounted for 29 percent of the value of total U.S. exports in 2002 and the service sector generated a trade surplus of $74 billion.

Just as we have seen with trade in manufactured goods, however, there are winners and losers from trade. Trade in services will inevitably cost some workers their jobs.

Indeed, there have been some well-publicized examples in the papers. Software sign. Technical support. Accounting and tax preparation services. Not long ago, a group of call center workers in Kalispell, MT saw their jobs move to Canada and India.

Examples abound of service sector jobs--even high tech jobs-- relocating overseas. A series of studies estimate that between a half million and over 3 million U.S. service sector jobs would be moved offshore in the next 5 to 10 years.

That doesn't mean the total number of jobs in the U.S. economy is shrinking. But the fact that jobs may be available in a different field is cold comfort to a worker whose own skills are no longer in demand.

That is why this legislation is so important. It is a simple matter of equity.

When a factory relocates to another country, those workers are eligible for TAA. But when a call center moves to another country, those workers are not eligible for TAA. They should be.

The benefits service workers will receive under this legislation would be exactly the same as those that trade-impacted manufacturing workers now receive. They include retraining, income support, job search and relocation allowance, and a health coverage tax credit.

Hard working American service workers deserve this safety net. These benefits will always be second best to a job. But they can really make a difference in helping workers make a new start.

Truthfully, I am mystified by why the President so cavalierly dropped the TAA for Services amendment and let this opportunity pass him by. His actions are entirely inconsistent with his stated desire to make trade benefit all Americans. But, sadly, this has become a pattern.

Despite the obvious benefits of the TAA program, the Bush Administration fought tooth and nail against every penny, and against every provision in what became the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act of 2002. Extending TAA to service workers was one of many needed improvements that was struck in the final version of the bill.

Again in the last Congress, the extension of TAA to service workers was offered as an amendment to the JOBS Act and opposed by the Administration. It garnered 54 votes from both sides ofthe aisle-- failing only on a technicality.

The world is changing and TAA must keep up with the times. Last year's Senate vote and this year's Finance Committee vote make clear that there is wide support for extending TAA to service workers. I truly believe this bill's time has come. I will work hard to move this legislation this year.

I want to thank Senators Coleman and Wyden for co-sponsoring this legislation. They have been stalwart supporters in the fight to bring equity to service workers. I look forward to working with them to make TAA for service workers a reality.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Pascua Yaqui Mineral Rights Act of 2005 to provide for acquisition of subsurface mineral interests in land owned by the Pascua Yaqui tribe and land held in trust for the Tribe.

The Pascua Yaqui tribe has purchased in fee four parcels of land, totaling approximately 436 acres, from the State of Arizona. These parcels are adjacent to the Tribe's reservation near Tucson, AZ. The Tribe subsequently applied to have these lands taken into trust pursuant to the 25 CFR Part 151 process. The Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the trust application. However, the State of Arizona objected because it still owns the subsurface mineral rights when it conveys its Trust lands. Based on the State of Arizona's objection, the Tribe's trust application was stayed pending resolution of the mineral rights title issue. Arizona law prevents the State from selling these mineral interests and I understand that the only way they can be acquired is through an act of condemnation brought by the United States pursuant to 40 U.S.C. Sec. 3113. The State of Arizona has conditionally consented to a condemnation action.

It has since been discovered that an additional 140 acres of the reservation was also former State of Arizona trust land that was purchased in fee by the Tribe and taken into trust without obtaining the mineral estate. The State of Arizona has also conditionally consented to a condemnation action with regard to these additional 140 acres.

In additional to the mineral interests condemnation, this legislation covers another subject. Under 360 acres of the reservation, the United States owns the mineral interests for itself, rather than in trust for the tribe. Although that acreage was originally purchased in fee, it was previously patented by the U.S. and the U.S. retained the mineral interests to that property for its own benefit, currently administered by the Bureau of Land Management. This legislation would authorize the Bureau of Land Management to transfer those mineral interests to the U.S., to be held in trust for the Pascua Yaqui tribe.

The result of the legislation I introduce today would be to allow the United States to obtain and/or consolidate ownership of the mineral interest only, in its name, in trust for the Pascua Yaqui tribe. These mineral interests are under the surface of land already either owned by the Pascua Yaqui tribe, or held in trust for the Tribe by the United States.

Finally, under the terms of its current gaming compact with the State of Arizona, the Tribe has already constructed the maximum number of casinos it can operate on its reservation at this time. This bill will not authorize additional reservation casinos.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this legislation.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to join in sponsoring the Community Broadband Act of 2005. In the simplest of terms, this bill would ensure that any town, city, or county that wishes to offer high- speed Internet services to its citizens can do so. The bill also would ensure fairness by requiring municipalities that offer high-speed Internet services do so in compliance with all Federal and State telecommunications laws and in a nondiscriminatory manner.

This bill is needed if we are to meet President Bush's call for ``universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007.'' When President Bush announced this nationwide goal in 2004, the country was ranked 10th in the world for high-speed Internet penetration. Today, the country is ranked 16th. This is unacceptable for a country that should lead the world in technical innovation, economic development, and international competitiveness.

Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high-speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan, and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries. As a country, we cannot afford to cut off any successful strategy if we want to remain internationally competitive.

I recognize that our Nation has a long and successful history of private investment in critical communications infrastructure. That history must be respected, protected, and continued. However, when private industry does not answer the call because of market failures or other obstacles, it is appropriate and even commendable, for the people acting through their local governments to improve their lives by investing in their own future. In many rural towns, the local government's high-speed Internet offering may be its citizens only option to access the World Wide Web.

Despite this situation, a few incumbent providers of traditional telecommunications services have attempted to stop local government deployment of community high speed Internet services. The bill would do nothing to limit their ability to compete. In fact, the bill would provide them an incentive to enter more rural areas and deploy services in partnership with local governments. This partnership will not only reduce the costs to private firms, but also ensure wider deployment of rural services. Additionally, the bill would aid private providers by prohibiting a municipality when acting as both ``regulator'' and ``competitor'' from discriminating against competitors in favor of itself.

Several newspapers have endorsed the concept of allowing municipalities to choose whether to offer high speed Internet services. USA Today rightfully questioned in an editorial, ``Why shouldn't citizens be able to use their own resources to help themselves?'' The Washington Post editorialized that the offering of high speed Internet services by localities is, ``. . . the sort of municipal experiment we hope will spread.'' The San Jose Mercury News stated that a ban on localities ability to offer such services is ``bad for consumers, bad for technology and bad for America's hopes of catching up to other countries in broadband deployment.'' Finally, the Tampa Tribune lectured Federal and State legislators, ``don't prohibit local elected officials from providing a service their communities need.''

My home State of Arizona boasts the largest approved municipal broadband system in the United States, for example. The city of Tempe's wireless system will serve all of the city's 40 square miles and a population of 159,000, including the campus of Arizona State University. Citizens will have Internet access from anywhere at any time, and police, fire, water and traffic services personnel will use the system to enhance their efficiency.

In addition to Tempe, several Native American tribal governments offer high-speed Internet access services to their citizens. This bill would ensure that such offerings could continue to assist Indian country and their ability to connect to the Internet.

Our country faces some real challenges. We need to find ways to use technology to help our citizens better compete. We need to help our businesses capitalize on their ingenuity so that they can become more internationally competitive. That is why we need to do all we can to eliminate barriers to competition and create incentives for the delivery of high-speed Internet services for public suppliers of broadband services, private suppliers of broadband services, and public-private partnerships as well.

I hope my colleagues will join us in sponsoring the Community Broadband Act of 2005.

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the National Indian Gaming Commission Accountability Act of 2005 to amend provisions of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act regarding NIGC funding and accountability.

The Indian gaming industry has undergone tremendous growth since the enactment of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. The regulatory responsibilities of the NIGC, the Federal agency responsible for oversight of the industry, has likewise grown. In recent years the NIGC's budgeting needs have consistently exceeded the $8 million statutory cap, necessitating short-term authorizations to exceed the cap to enable it to adequately enforce the Act.

Rather than merely raising the cap on funding, this legislation amends IGRA's equation for funding the NIGC by allowing the funding to adjust in direct proportion to the revenues of the Indian gaming industry, with funding expanding or contracting as the Indian gaming industry grows or recedes. Under that equation--which provides that fees cannot exceed .08 percent of gross gaming revenues--the NIGC's budget for fiscal 2007 would be capped at approximately $14.5 million.

As the agency's needs have grown, so has the scrutiny of the regulated community and affected parties. It is therefore appropriate that the agency's budgetary choices and program plans be subject to transparency. Therefore, this legislation increases not only the agency's funding, but also its accountability by directing that the NIGC be subject to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). As a result, the agency would be required to develop a Strategic Plan, and annual performance plans and performance reports, all of which will provide critical information to the regulated stakeholders.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to enact this timely and balanced legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation to fix a huge oversight in pension policy.

In the early 1990s, a large number of U.S. companies began a process of switching their traditional defined benefit pension plans to what's referred to as ``cash balance'' pension plans. A cash balance pension is insured, like a traditional plan, through the PBGC. However, it looks more like a defined contribution plan to participants because the benefit is expressed as some percent of play plus some guaranteed interest rate. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself. However, in practice, many of the employees working for these companies were not told what these changes would mean for them. Some companies had their employees work for years without earning any more benefits. Many of those employees didn't figure that out for a very long time. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding in this situation was a key benefit to management. However, once they figured out what was happening, the retirees were furious.

As two consultants who helped put these plans together said at an Actuaries conference in 1998:

``I've been involved in cash balance plans five or six

years down the road and what I have found is that while

employees understand it, it is not until they are actually

ready to retire that they understand how little they are

actually getting.''

``Right, but they're happy while they're employed.''

One of the most abusive practices in cash balance conversions is known as ``wear away. `` The company freezes the value of the benefits employees already earned, which by law cannot be taken away once given. However, the employer opens a cash balance account for that worker at a much lower dollar level. So they end up working for years contributing to this lower cash balance account, not realizing that contribution is meaningless because their old benefits were higher. At the same time, younger workers do get money added to their account every day. This is clearly age discrimination, and bad pension policy.

In 1999, I introduced a bill to make it illegal for corporations to wear away the benefits of older workers during conversions to cash balance plans. I offered my bill as an amendment. Forty-eight Senators, including 3 Republicans, voted to waive the budget point of order so we could consider this amendment. We did not have enough votes then, but I believe the tide is turning.

After that vote, more and more stories came out about how many workers were losing their pensions. In September of 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury put a moratorium on conversions from defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. That moratorium has

been in effect now for over three years. In April of 2000, I offered a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to stop this practice, and it passed the Senate unanimously.

There are hundreds of age discrimination complaints currently pending before the EEOC based on some of these abusive cash balance conversions. Clearly, something must be done to address this issue that's been floating around now unresolved for over five years.

Before, I said that wear-away is the least fair practice during conversion. And I have to say that now, public sentiment is really coming around to acknowledge that unfairness. However, aside from wear- away, there's another problem in shifting from a traditional pension to cash balance. In a traditional plan, you accrue most of the benefits toward the end of your career, because there's usually some kind of formula that multiplies top pay times years of service. People tend to earn more salary toward the end of their careers, and if that is multiplied times more years served, the pension grows quickly in later years. But in a cash balance plan, younger workers do better because they are given a flat percent of pay plus some guaranteed interest credit. Interest is good for young people, they have many years to accrue and compound it. So if you get caught in mid-life, mid-career in one of these transitions, you get the downside of both plans.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear on one point--cash balance pensions can be a great deal for workers. Some. And they may help fill a needed niche in the pension world to cover the half of the workforce that currently has no pension. But I will continue my long battle to oppose the unilateral decision of a company to cut off a promise for an older worker, give that money to a younger worker, and not view it as age discrimination.

That is what this issue is all about. It is fairness. It is equity. I know discussion of pension law can become very convoluted. But this can be boiled down pretty simply. It is about what we think a promise from an employer ought to mean.

There is one thing that has distinguished the American workplace from others around the world. We have valued loyalty. At least we used to. That is one of the reasons pension plans exist--the longer you work somewhere, the more you earn in your pension program. Obviously, the longer you work someplace, the better you do your job, the more you learn about it, the more productive you are. We should value that loyalty.

But here, companies are able to take away the benefits of the longest serving workers. What kind of a signal does that send to the workers? It tells workers they are fools if they are loyal because if you put in 20 or 25 years, the boss can just change the rules of the game, and break their promise. It tells younger workers that it would be crazy to work for a company for a long time, that it's best to hedge your bets and move on as soon as it is convenient. It's crazy to trade current pay for the promise of future benefits. So why even take into account the fact that you're being offered a pension plan? This is a very dangerous road to go down.

This destroys the kind of work ethic we have come to value and that we know built this country. But some of these cash balance conversions counter all of that. Here is an analogy. Imagine I hire someone for 5 years with a promise of a $50,000 bonus at the end of 5 years of service. At the end of 3 years, however, I renege on the $50,000 bonus. But the employee has 3 years invested. Had they known that the deal was going to be off, perhaps they would not have gone to work for me. They could have gone to work someplace else for a total higher compensation package. Now imagine that they hire a new guy to join the team, and they give him part of that $50,000 bonus they promised me. Is that the way we want to treat workers in this country, where the employer has all the cards and employees have none, and employers can make whatever deal they want, but can change the rules at any time?

That is why I am introducing this legislation. It is simple. It says that you have to give older, longer serving employees a choice, at retirement, when their pension plan is converted to a cash balance plan to get the benefits earned in the old plan instead. It also says that employers must start counting the new cash balance benefits where the old defined benefit plan left off, instead of starting the cash balance plan at a lower level than an employee had already earned.

This isn't a radical idea. I was very pleased that in February of 2004, the Administration came out with a cash balance proposal that recognized that these transitions are hard on workers. It not only prohibits wear-away but provides for 5 year transition credits for workers caught in the middle of a conversion. Treasury reaffirmed its commitment to this approach in this year's budget request.

I was excited when Treasury first came to the table with a proposal to do more to protect workers here. I was so encouraged by this that I convened a series of meetings over the course of last summer to get all interested parties to the table--everyone from participant rights advocates to industry groups to consultants. I heard some really great ideas, and some that I didn't agree with. But I think there is still room to find answers to this problem. So I'm putting my plan back on the table today. And I really hope that we can continue a meaningful dialog on this issue.

If we do that, this year, we can enact meaningful participant protections moving forward so that there is another pension option out there to cover the roughly half of Americans with no pension at all. But I also want to make it clear that this Senator will never sit idly by as older workers get the rug pulled out from under them just as they thought they were on solid ground for their retirement. I won't stand idly by and watch their money redistributed in an age-discriminatory way. We can have this dialog and we can find a way to fix what's broken here, but not by blessing some of these blatant abuses.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Extending the Child Safety Pilot Program Act of 2005, along with my good friend Senator Hatch.

At the outset, let me thank Senator Hatch and his staff for joining with me in this effort. I can think of no stronger advocate for children's safety than my friend from Utah, and I am so pleased to have him as an original cosponsor of this bill.

When a mom drops her young son or daughter off at the local Boys & Girls Club, when a dad brings his child to little league practice, or when one of our kids is mentored by an older member of the community, we hope and pray that they are going to be safe. They usually are, and youth-serving organizations are constantly vetting new employees and volunteers to ensure there's nothing in their background to indicate that potential workers should not be around our kids.

But these groups can only do so much. They send information and fingerprints on prospective workers to their State criminal identification agencies, and that effort typically results in a comprehensive search of criminal history information on file in the State where the organization is established. But if the worker spent time in another state, or if a State's records are not up to date, kids' safety can be put in jeopardy.

The organization with the most complete set of national criminal history information is the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Years ago, I was approached by the Boys & Girls Clubs and others and asked whether there would be a way for them to directly access CJIS' records and avoid the then- cumbersome system requiring them to apply for these national background checks through their States.

I looked into the issue and discovered that a patchwork of statutes and regulations govern background checks at the State level. There are over 1,200 State statutes concerning criminal record checks. In different States, different agencies are authorized to perform background checks for different types of organizations, distinct forms and information are required, and the results are returned in various formats that can be difficult to interpret. Youth-serving organizations trying to do the right thing and keep the kids in their charge safe were being forced to navigate an extremely cumbersome system.

Indeed, in 1998, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division performed an analysis of fingerprints submitted for civil applicant purposes. CJIS found that the average transmission time from the point of fingerprint to the State bureau was 51.0 days, and from the State bureau to the FBI was another 66.6 days, for a total of 117.6 days from fingerprinting to receipt by the FBI. The worst performing jurisdiction took 544.8 days from

fingerprinting to receipt by the FBI. In a survey conducted by the National Mentoring Partnership, mentoring organizations waited an average of 6 weeks for the results of a national criminal background check to be returned. In a New York Times article published this past August, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America's vice president of club safety, Les Nichols, was quoted as saying that about a third of the criminal records that Clubs' checks turned up were from states other than the one where the applications were submitted. ``It can take as long as 18 months to retrieve those records,'' Mr. Nichols said, ``and that time lag works against us, particularly because we are in a business where we have a lot of seasonal staff and volunteers.''

Not only was the national criminal history background check process slow, but it was often too expensive to be useful to youth-serving organizations. In 2000, I introduced comprehensive legislation designed to plug these security holes. No action was taken on my National Child Protection Improvement Act that year. The following year, I re- introduced the bill as S. 1868. That bill cleared the Senate unanimously but was never acted on by the House. It would have set up an office in the Justice Department to coordinate background check requests from youth-serving organizations, and would have required the results of these checks to be forwarded from the FBI to the requesting groups quickly and affordably.

Finally, in 2003's PROTECT Act, we were able to make some progress on this critical issue. Along with Senator Hatch and Chairman Sensenbrenner of the House Judiciary Committee, I authored section 108 of the PROTECT Act conference report. Section 108 of Public Law 108-21 established an 18-month pilot program for certain organizations to obtain national criminal history background checks. When he signed the PROTECT Act into law, the President noted ``this law creates important pilot programs to help nonprofit organizations which deal with children to obtain quick and complete criminal background information on volunteers. Listen, mentoring programs are essential for our country, and we must make sure they are safe for the children they serve.''

The Child Safety Pilot Program created in the PROTECT Act was extended for another 12 months by a provision in last year's Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, but the initiative is scheduled to expire at the end of January 2006. Although the Department of Justice has yet to submit a status report on the Child Safety Pilot Program, as required by law, data provided by groups using the program demonstrate its effectiveness and the need for it to be extended.

At last check, over 10,000 background checks have been conducted through the pilot program. In those performed checks, 7.5 percent of all workers screened had an arrest or conviction in their record. Crimes discovered were serious: rape, child sexual abuse, murder, and domestic battery. Half of those individuals were not truthful in their job application and instead stated they did not have a criminal record. Over one-quarter, 28 percent, of applicants with a criminal record had crimes from States other than where they were applying to work. In other words, but for the existence of the Child Safety Pilot Program, employers may not have known that their applicants had a criminal record.

The bill Senator Hatch and I introduce today will extend the Child Safety Pilot Program for an additional 30-month period. It will also change the original program so that more youth-serving organizations can participate, and will shorten the timeframe given to the FBI in which to return the results of the background check. We are pleased that our bill has been endorsed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the National Mentoring Partnership, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

I would like to thank those who have made this program such a success. Specifically, Ernie Allen and his team at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have generously provided staff and equipment and have served as a clearinghouse to process background check requests. Robbie Callaway and Steve Salem of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America originally came up with this idea, and have provided tireless advocacy on its behalf. And Margo Pedroso of the National Mentoring Partnership has been invaluable in making Members of Congress and the general public aware of the need for an affordable, efficient national criminal history background check system. Without her, this program would never have been created.

I urge my colleagues to support the Child Safety Pilot Program Act, and I look forward to its prompt consideration.