Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights Act of 2005

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Hutchison and myself, I rise today to introduce legislation to reauthorize the tremendously successful Breast Cancer Research Stamp for 2 additional years.

Without Congressional action, the Breast Cancer Research Stamp will expire on December 31 of this year.

The life of this extraordinary stamp deserves to be extended as it has proven to be a highly effective and self-supporting fundraiser.

Since 1998, the American people have bought over 588 million breast cancer stamps--raising $42.66 million for breast cancer research.

The National Cancer Institute and the Department of Defense have put these research dollars to good use by funding novel and innovative research in the area of breast cancer.

Over a 7 year period, the Breast Cancer Stamp has demonstrated a very sustained and committed customer base.

Millions of Americans have bought the stamps to honor loved ones with the disease, to highlight their own personal battle with breast cancer or to promote general public awareness--in hope of helping to find a cure.

One cannot calculate in dollars and cents how the stamp has focused public awareness on this devastating disease and the need for additional research funding.

There is still so much more to do because this disease has far reaching effects on our Nation:

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the United States, ranking second among cancer deaths in women after lung cancer.

In 2005, approximately 211,240 women in the U.S. will get breast cancer.

About 40,410 women will die from the disease this year.

There are over two million women living today in the U.S. who have been treated for breast cancer.

Though much less common, about 1,300 men in America are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

It is imperative that we extend the life of this stamp so that we can continue to reach out to American women and men who do not know of their cancer and to those who are living with it.

This legislation would extend the authorization of the Breast Cancer Research stamp for two additional years until December 31, 2007.

The stamp would continue to have a surcharge of up to 25 percent above the value of a first-class stamp with the surplus revenues going to breast cancer research.

Extending the Breast Cancer Research stamp does not affect any other semi-postal proposals under consideration by the Postal Service.

We urge our colleagues to join us in passing this important legislation to extend the Breast Cancer Research Stamp for another 2 years.

Thanks to breakthroughs in cancer research, more and more people are becoming cancer survivors rather than cancer victims. Every dollar we continue to raise will help save lives.

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

Mr. President, I offer today private relief legislation to provide lawful permanent residence status to Robert Kuan Liang and his wife, Chun-Mei (``Alice'') Hsu-Liang, foreign nationals who live in San Bruno, California.

I have decided to offer private relief immigration bills on their behalf because I believe that, without it, this hardworking couple and their three United States citizen children would endure an immense and unfair hardship. Indeed, without this legislation, this family may not remain a family for much longer.

The Liangs are foreign nationals facing deportation on account of their overstay of visitors visas and the failure of their previous attorney to timely file a suspension of deportation application before the immigration laws changed in 1996.

Mr. Liang is a foreign national and refugee from Laos. His wife is a citizen of Taiwan. They entered the United States 22 years ago as tourists and established residency in the San Bruno, CA. Because they overstayed the terms of their temporary visas, they now face deportation from the United States.

After living here for so many years, removal from the United States would not come easily or perhaps without tearing this family apart. The Liangs have three children born in this country: Wesley, 13 years old, Bruce, 10 years old, and Eva, 7 years old. Young Wesley suffers from asthma and has a history of social and emotional anxiety. The immigration judge who presided over the Liang's case in 1997 concluded that there was no question that the Liang children would be adversely impacted if they were required to leave their relatives and friends behind in California to follow their parents to Taiwan, a country whose language and culture is unfamiliar to them. And that was 7 years ago. I can only imagine how much more they would be adversely impacted now given the passage of 7 more years.

The Liangs have filed annual income tax returns; established a successful business, Fong Yong Restaurant, in the United States; are home owners, and are financially successful. Since they arrived in the United States, they have pursued and, to a degree, achieved the American Dream.

Mr. and Mrs. Liang's quest to legalize their immigration status began in 1993 when they filed for relief from deportation before an immigration judge. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, however, did not act on their application until nearly 5 years later, in 1997, after which time the immigration laws had significantly changed.

According to the immigration judge, had the INS acted on their application for relief from deportation in a timely manner, they would have qualified for suspension of deportation, given that they were long-term residents of this country with US citizen children and other positive factors. By the time INS processed their application, however, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which changed the requirements for relief from removal to the Liangs' disadvantage.

I supported the changes of the 1996 law, but I believe sometimes there are exceptions which merit special consideration. The Liangs are such a couple and family. Perhaps what distinguishes this family from many others is that through hard work and perseverance, Mr. Liang has achieved a significant degree of success in the United States while battling a severe form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to his psychologist, this disorder stems from the persecution he, his family and community experienced in his native

country of Laos during the Vietnam War. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Mr. Liang was exposed to numerous traumatic experiences, including the murder of his mother by the North Vietnamese and frequent episodes of wartime violence. He also routinely witnessed the brutal persecution and deaths of others in his village. In 1975, he was granted refugee status in Taiwan.

The emotional impact of Mr. Liang's experiences in his war-torn native country have been profound and continue to haunt him. In addition to being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, his psychologist has also indicated that he suffers from severe clinical depression, which has been exacerbated by the prospect of being deported to Taiwan, where on account of his nationality, he believes he and his family would be treated as second-class citizens. Moreover, Mr. Liang believes that the pursuit of further mental health treatment in Taiwan would only exacerbate the stigma of being an outsider in a country whose language he does not speak. Given those prospects, he also fears the impact such a stigma would have on the well-being and future of his children.

Given these extraordinary and unique facts, I ask my colleagues to support this private relief bill on behalf of the Liangs.

I also ask unanimous consent that the text of the legislation be printed in the Record and that the attached three letters of community support also be printed.

Mr. President, I offer today private relief legislation to provide lawful permanent residence status to Shigeru Yamada, a 22-year-old Japanese national who lives in Chula Vista, CA.

I have decided to introduce a private bill on his behalf because I believe that Mr. Yamada represents a model American citizen, for whom removal from this country would represent an unfair hardship. Without this legislation, Mr. Yamada will be forced to return to a country in which he lacks any linguistic, cultural or family ties.

Mr. Yamada legally entered the United States with his mother and two sisters in 1992 at the young age of 10. The family was fleeing from Mr. Yamada's alcoholic father, who had been physically abusive to his mother, the children and even his own parents. Since then, he has had no contact with his father and is unsure if he is even alive. Tragically, Mr. Yamada experienced further hardship when his mother was killed in a car crash in 1995. Orphaned at the age of 13, Mr. Yamada

spent time living with his aunt before moving to Chula Vista to live with a close friend of his late mother.

The death of his mother marked more than a personal tragedy for Mr. Yamada; it also served to impede the process for him to legalize his status. At the time of her death, Mr. Yamada's family was living legally in the United States. His mother had acquired a student visa for herself and her children qualified as her dependents. Her death revoked his legal status in the United States. In addition, Mr. Yamada's mother was engaged to an American citizen at the time of her death. Had she survived, her son would likely have become an American citizen through this marriage.

Mr. Yamada has exhausted all administrative options under our current immigration system. Throughout high school, he contacted attorneys in the hopes of legalizing his status, but his attempts were unsuccessful. Unfortunately, time has run out and, for Mr. Yamada, the only option available to him today is private relief legislation.

For several reasons, it would be tragic for Mr. Yamada to be deported from the United States and forced to return to Japan.

First, since arriving in the United States, Mr. Yamada has lived as a model American. He graduated with honors from Eastlake High School in 2000, where he excelled in both academics and athletics. Academically, he earned a number of awards including being named an ``Outstanding English Student'' his freshman year, an All-American Scholar, and earning the United States National Minority Leadership Award. His teacher and coach, Mr. John Inumerable, describes him as being ``responsible, hard working, organized, honest, caring and very dependable.'' His role as the Vice-President of the Associated Student Body his senior year is an indication of Mr. Yamada's high level of leadership, as well as, his popularity and trustworthiness among his peers. As an athlete, Mr. Yamada was named the ``Most Inspirational Player of the Year'' in Junior Varsity baseball and football, as well as, Varsity football. His football coach, Mr. Jose Mendoza, expressed his admiration by saying that he has ``seen in Shigeru Yamada the responsibility, dedication and loyalty that the average American holds to be virtuous.''

Second, Mr. Yamada has distinguished himself as a local volunteer. As a member of the Eastlake High School Link Crew, he helped freshman find their way around campus, offered tutoring and mentoring services, and set an example of how to be a successful member of the student body. After graduating from high school, he volunteered his time for 4 years as the coach of the Eastlake High School Girl's softball team. The former head coach, who has since retired, Dr. Charles Sorge, describes him as an individual full of ``integrity'' who understands that as a coach it is important to work as a ``team player.'' His level of commitment to the team was further illustrated to Dr. Sorge when he discovered, halfway through the season, that Mr. Yamada's commute to and from practice was 2 hours long each way. It takes an individual with character to volunteer his time to coach and never bring up the issue of how long his commute takes him each day. Dr. Sorge hopes that, once Mr. Yamada legalizes his immigration status, he will be formally hired to continue coaching the team.

Third, sending Mr. Yamada back to Japan would be an immense hardship for him and his family here. Mr. Yamada does not speak Japanese. He is unaware of the nation's current cultural trends. And, he has no immediate family members that he knows of in Japan. Currently, both of his sisters are in the process of legalizing their immigration status in the United States. His older sister is married to a United States citizen and his younger sister is being adopted by a maternal aunt, who is a United States citizen. Since as all of his family lives in California, sending Mr. Yamada back to Japan would serve to split his family apart and separate him from everyone and everything that he knows. His sister contends that her younger brother would be ``lost'' if he had to return to live in Japan on his own. It is unlikely that he would be able to find any gainful employment in Japan due to his inability to speak or read the language.

As a member of the Chula Vista community, Mr. Yamada has distinguished himself as an honorable individual. His teacher, Mr. Robert Hughes, describes him as being an ``upstanding `All-American' young man''. Until being picked up during a routine check of riders' immigration status on a city bus, he had never been arrested or convicted of any crime. Mr. Yamada is not, and has never been, a burden on the State. He has never received any Federal or State assistance.

Currently, Mr. Yamada holds sophomore status at Southwestern Community College. However, he is taking this semester off in order to alleviate his financial burdens by working full time. He had hoped to pursue a career in law enforcement, but his plans have recently changed due to his current immigration status dilemma. Until he obtains citizenship, Mr. Yamada will be prohibited from pursuing a career in law enforcement. Due to the circumstances, Mr. Yamada has changed his career goal to that of becoming a high school teacher. Mr. Yamada's commitment to his education is admirable. He could have easily taken a different path but, through his own ``individual fortitude,'' he has dedicated himself to his studies so that he can live a better life.

With his hard work and giving attitude, Shigeru Yamada represents the ideal American citizen. Although born in Japan, he is truly American in every other sense. I ask you to help right a wrong and grant Mr. Yamada lawful permanent resident status so that he can continue towards his bright future.

Given these extraordinary and unique facts, I ask my colleagues to support this private relief bill on behalf of Mr. Yamada.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record and that the three letters of community support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I offer today a private immigration relief bill to provide lawful permanent residence status to Denes and Gyorgyi Fulop, Hungarian nationals who have lived in California for more than 20 years. The Fulops are the parents of six U.S. citizen children. Today, they face deportation having exhausted all administrative remedies under our immigration system.

The Fulop's story is a compelling one and one which I believe merits Congress' consideration for humanitarian relief.

The most poignant tragedy to affect this family occurred in May 2000, when the Fulops eldest child, Robert ``Bobby'' Fulop, an accomplished 15 year-old teenager, died suddenly of a heart aneurism. Bobby was considered the shining star of his family.

That same year their six-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with moderate pulmonary stenosis, a potentially life-threatening heart condition and a frightening situation similar to Bobby's. Not long ago, she successfully underwent heart surgery, but requires medical supervision to ensure her good health.

The Fulop's youngest child, Matthew, was born seven weeks premature. He subsequently underwent several kidney surgeries and is still being closely monitored by physicians.

Compounding these tragedies is the fact that today the Fulops face deportation. They face deportation, in part, because in 1995 the family traveled to Hungary and remained there for more than 90 days. Under the pre-1996 immigration law, prior to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, their stay in Hungary would not have been a factor in their immigration case and they would have been eligible for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residents.

Indeed, in 1996, Mr. and Mrs. Fulop applied to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, for permanent resident status. Due to large backlogs, the INS did not interview them until 1998. By the time their applications were considered, the new 1996 immigration law had taken effect. Given their one-time 90 day trip outside the United States, they were statutorily ineligible for relief pursuant to the cancellation of removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

One cannot help but conclude that had the INS acted on the Fulop's application for relief from deportation in a timelier manner, they would have qualified for suspension of deportation under the pre-1996 law, given that they were long-term residents of the United States with U.S. Citizen children and many positive factors in their favor.

The irony of this situation is that the Fulops were gone from the United States for nearly five months in 1995 because they traveled to Hungary to help Mr. Fulop's brother build his home. Mr. Fulop's brother is handicap and they went to help remodel his home.

The Fulops are good and decent people. Mr. Fulop is a masonry contractor and the owner and president of his own construction company--Sumeg International. He has owned this business for 10 years and currently has three full-time employees.

The couple are active in their church and community. As Pastor Peter Petrovic of the Apostolic Christian Church of San Diego says in his letter of support, ``[t]he family is an exceptional asset to their community.'' Mrs. Fulop has served as a Sunday school teacher and volunteers regularly at Heritage K-8 Charter School in Escondido. Mrs. Morris, a Heritage K-8 Charter School faculty member says in her letter of support that Mrs. Fulop is ``. . . a valuable asset to our school and community.''

Mr. President, this is a tragic situation. Essentially, as happened to many families under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the rules of the game were

changed in the middle. When the Fulops applied for relief from deportation they were eligible for suspension of deportation. By the time the INS got around to their application, nearly three years later, they were no longer eligible and in fact suspension of deportation as a form of relief ceased to exist.

The Fulops today have been in the United States since the early 1980s. Most harmful is the effect that their deportation will have on the children, all of whom were born here and who range from one year old to 17 years of age. Their eldest, Dennis, is a 4.0 honor student at Palomar Community College having graduated from high school one year early. His sister, Linda, has a 3.8 grade point average and is an honor student in high school.

It is my hope that Congress sees fit to provide an opportunity for this family to remain together in the United States given their many years here, the profound sadness they have already experienced and the harm that would come from their deportation to their six U.S. citizen children.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act of 2005. This legislation will require that individuals are notified when their most sensitive personal information is stolen from a corporate or government database. This is the second Congress in a row that I have introduced this legislation-- it is time for us to pass it to give Americans the notice they need to protect themselves from identity thieves.

Specifically, the bill would require government or private entities to notify individuals if a data breach has compromised their Social Security number, driver's license number, credit card number, debit card number or financial account numbers.

In most cases, if authorities know that someone is a victim of a crime, the victim is notified. But, that isn't the case if an individual's most sensitive personal information is stolen from an electronic database.

Measuring the problem of security breaches is difficult, because many companies never report breaches of their systems for fear that their reputation for securing data would be harmed. But, in a survey conducted in 2004 by the FBI and the Computer Security Institute, 52 percent of respondents reported some level of unauthorized use of their computer systems. (Source: 2004 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey)

Data breaches are becoming all too common. Consider the following incidents which have compromised the

records of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

On January 10, 2005, George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia notified 30,000 students that their names, photos and Social Security numbers were taken by an online intruder; (Source: Cnet news, ``Hackers Steal ID Info from Virginia University,'' Monday, January 11, 2005)

On August 30, 2004, a University of California-Berkeley database containing the personal information of 600,000 people was penetrated. The computer contained names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers; (Source: Associated Press, October 21, 2004)

Already in the new year, cell phone carrier T-Mobile announced that a hacker broke into its database and accessed the names and Social Security numbers of 400 customers. (Source: Cnet News, ``Hacker Had Limited Access'' January 12, 2004)

Last year, San Diego State University reported that hackers broke into a server, gaining access to names and Social Security numbers for more than 178,000 former and current students, alumni and staff; (Source: San Francisco Chronicle, ``Colleges Leaking Confidential Data,'' April 5, 2004)

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, a hacker downloaded information that could have included names, addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers for about 57,775 people; (Source: San Francisco Chronicle, ``Colleges Leaking Confidential Data,'' April 5, 2004) and

Finally, in 2004, a Florida man and his employees hacked into Acxiom Corp.'s computer system for 16 months and stole large amounts of personal information. Christopher Way, a U.S. assistant attorney general, said then that the case represents ``what may be the largest intrusion of personal data ever.'' (Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, ``Hacker Accesses Load of Data from Acxiom,'' July 22, 2004)

My home State of California has a similar data notification law, on which my bill today is modeled. But this sort of protection needs to be extended to all Americans.

I strongly believe Americans should be notified if a hacker gets access to their most personal data. This is both a matter of principle and a practical measure to curb identity theft.

Let me take a moment to describe the proposed legislation.

The Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act will set a national standard for notification of consumers when a data breach occurs.

The legislation requires a business or government entity to notify an individual when there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a hacker or other criminal has obtained unencrypted personal data maintained by the entity.

Personal data is defined by the bill as an individual's Social Security number, State identification number, driver's license number, financial account number, or credit card number.

The legislation's notification scheme minimizes the burdens on companies or agencies that must report a data breach. In general, notice would have to be provided to each person whose data was compromised in writing or through e-mail.

But there are important exceptions.

First, companies that have developed their own reasonable notification policies are given a safe harbor under the bill and are exempted from its notification requirements.

Second, encrypted data is exempted.

Third, where it is too expensive or impractical (e.g., contact address information is incomplete) to notify every individual who is harmed, the bill allows entities to send out an alternative form of notice called ``substitute notice.'' Substitute notice includes posting notice on a website or notifying major media. Substitute notice would be triggered if any of the following factors exist:

(i) the agency or person demonstrates that the cost of providing direct notice would exceed $250,000;

(ii) the affected class of subject persons to be notified exceeds 500,000; or

(iii) the agency or person does not have sufficient contact information to notify people whose information is at risk.

The bill has a tough, but fair enforcement regime. Entities that fail to comply with the bill will be subject to fines by the Federal Trade Commission of $5,000 per violation or up to $25,000 per day while the violation persists. State Attorneys General can also file suit to enforce the statute.

Additionally, the bill would allow California's law to remain in effect, but preempt conflicting state laws. It is my understanding that legislators in a number of states are developing bills modeled after the California law. Reportedly, some of these bills have requirements that are inconsistent with the California legislation. It is not fair to put companies in a situation that forces them to comply with database notification laws of 50 different states.

A year after California's landmark legislation went into effect, the law has raised overall awareness of the need to have strong privacy protections in place. Chris Jay Hoofnagle, associate director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, said: ``the California law has given the public a window into a very serious problem of information security.'' (Source: Associated Press, ``Authorities Probe U.C. Hacking Attack,'' October 21, 2004)

As Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, points out ``if [California] didn't have this law, the vast majority of these situations would go unreported.'' (Source: The Orange County Register, ``Ingram Micro Discloses Database Break-In,'' May 15, 2004)

I strongly believe individuals have a right to be notified when their most sensitive information is compromised--because it is truly their information. Ask the ordinary person on the street if he or she would like to know if a criminal had illegally gained access to their personal information from a database--the answer will be a resounding yes.

Enabling consumers to be notified in a timely manner of security breaches involving their personal data will help combat the growing scourge of identity theft. If individuals are informed of the theft of their Social Security numbers or other sensitive information, they can take immediate preventative action.

They can place a fraud alert on their credit report to prevent crooks from obtaining credit cards in their name;

They can monitor their credit reports to see if unauthorized activity has occurred;

They can cancel any affected financial or consumer or utility accounts; and

They can change their phone numbers if necessary.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this vitally needed legislation. This bill will give ordinary Americans more control and confidence about the safety of their personal information. Americans will have the security of knowing that should a breach occur, they will be notified and be able to take protective action. Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to re-introduce the ``Privacy Act of 2005.''

This legislation would establish, for the first time, a comprehensive national system of privacy protection. This is the second Congress in a row that I have introduced this legislation. Every year that we wait, millions more Americans become victims of identity theft. It is time for us to act.

As you know, Mr. President, I have ardently fought for years for legislation to hamper identity theft. Today, this legislation is one of three bills that I am introducing to continue that fight. I am also introducing the Social Security Number Misuse Prevention Act of 2005, and the Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act of 2005. I urge my colleagues to pass all of them, to protect Americans from those who would steal our very identities.

At the heart of this bill is the requirement that companies may not sell consumers' most intimate personal information unless consumers affirmatively give their authorization. This is known as ``opt-in.'' Therefore, companies must obtain consumers' written consent prior to selling their personal health information, financial information, Social Security numbers, and drivers' license data (opt-in). For this sensitive data, the bill gives the individual ultimate control over whether

or not his or her information is shared. If an individual does not actively decide to permit sharing of personal data, the data is not disclosed.

The bill recognizes that different sorts of information deserve different levels of protection. For information that is still personal, but not as intimate, the bill allows businesses more flexibility. Therefore, for other personal information--names, physical addresses, e-mail addresses, telephones, photographs, birth dates, places of birth, and birth certificate numbers--companies can sell the information so long as consumers receive notice of the companies' intent, and an opportunity to object and prohibit the sale of their information. This is known as ``opt-out.''

That is structure of the overall bill. Let me take a moment to go over some of the specifics.

For financial data, the Privacy Act would tighten the information- sharing provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This legislation would modify that statute, to prohibit the sale or disclosure of sensitive personal financial information to third parties unless the consumer affirmatively consents or opts in. The legislation would also require that banks let consumers opt out of the sharing of their personal financial information with the bank's affiliates or joint partners. The bill makes exceptions for vital public safety concerns. The Privacy Act of 2005 also prohibits banks from denying a customer a financial product or financial service if the consumer withholds consent.

For sensitive medical information, this legislation would expand on the Department of Health and Human Services privacy regulations, by extending the restrictions placed on ``covered entities'' (health insurers, health providers, and health care clearinghouses) to ``non- covered entities'' (business associates, health researchers, schools or universities, and life insurers). All of those entities will be able to share information only with the patients' consent.

For Social Security numbers, this bill will prohibit the sale or display of an individual's Social Security number to the general public without the individual's express consent, and prohibit federal, state, and local governments from displaying the numbers on the Internet, or from printing them on checks and drivers' licenses. This legislation also recognizes legitimate uses of Social Security numbers, by allowing the sale of Social Security numbers between businesses, or between the government and businesses, among other exceptions.

This legislation protects the privacy of information regardless of the medium through which it is collected. Therefore, it recognizes that both paper and electronic records are important to protecting the identities of Americans.

To minimize the regulatory burden of these privacy rules, the bill sets up a safe harbor so that industries that established approved policies will be exempt from some regulatory requirements of the legislation.

To ensure uniformity of the laws across all 50 states, the bill preempts inconsistent state laws regarding the treatment of non- sensitive information.

I note that this legislation is modeled on the California Financial Information Privacy Act, which gives consumers the right to require their consent before financial companies share their most intimate data. The plan is a good one for Californians, and it is a good one for all Americans. The fact that the California law is under assault in the courts makes it all the more vital that the uniform, national standard I introduce today becomes law.

I want to give a sense of why this legislation is so necessary. Recent statistics on the growth of identity theft show we have no time to waste in protecting personal privacy.

For years, identity theft has topped the list of complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission. In 2003, the Commission received over half a million such complaints, about 42 percent of the total. While the FTC will not report its numbers for 2004 until early February, I unfortunately expect to again see identity theft as the cause of the most complaints.

According to a 2003 report from the FTC, 10 million Americans discovered that year their identities had been stolen. The report also stated that consumers have to spend an average of 30 hours to clear their name; The Identity Theft Resource Center puts the number at 175 hours. And as Attorney General John Ashcroft said last August, ``Identity theft costs the nation's businesses nearly $50 billion a year in fraudulent transactions and often involves coordinated criminal conduct.''

My own State, California, has more victims of identity theft than any other state. The FTC recorded 39,452 complaints of identity theft cases in 2003 in California alone.

But the numbers tell only part of the story. More important are the individual people whose lives have been devastated by identity theft. Let me tell just one story that I find particularly disturbing:

Eric Drew was a patient in a hospital receiving a bone marrow transplant. Yet unbeknownst to him, a worker in the hospital had stolen Drew's identity, and had taken advantage of this sick patient. As the Associated Press reported, ``Drew said that while he was lying in a hospital bed, dying from cancer and weak from massive doses of chemotherapy, he began to get mail thanking him for opening accounts he knew nothing about.'' In this case, luckily, the criminal was caught and convicted.

Since I introduced this legislation for the first time in the 108th Congress, there are millions more stories like this one.

Indeed, there are also new common methods of identity theft. There has been a massive upswing in the phenomenon known as ``Phishing,'' in which criminals send emails to people, spoofed to fraudulently look like emails from banks and other financial institutions. These emails tell consumers to click on a Web page, and then to enter their name, account numbers, passwords, and other sensitive financial information. The criminals then use this information not only to steal from the unwitting consumers, but to literally lock them out of their own accounts. This one sort of identity theft has, according to a December study from e-mail security company MessageLabs, increased by almost tenfold over the last year.

Given the grave risks that technology poses to our privacy, it is our responsibility to start taking action. This is especially the case for older Americans, who are disproportionately vulnerable to identity theft, as I tried to highlight last year by cosponsoring the ``Protecting Older Americans From Fraud Month'' resolution last October.

I would like to highlight some of the key provisions of the law.

For financial information this legislation tightens the privacy provisions of the Financial Services Modernization Act, commonly known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Under Gramm-Leach-Bliley, a bank can share a customer's personal information with other companies so long as it gives consumers notice and the right to opt-out of the data sharing.

The problem with the prevailing opt-out is that most people throw away their privacy notices from banks along with the rest of the unrelenting pile of commercial solicitations they receive. Since the passage of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, banks have sent out over one billion privacy notices.

According to available published information, fewer than 5 percent of bank customers have opted out of sharing their personal information, and for many financial institutions, the response rate has been less than one percent.

Accordingly, this legislation prohibits the sale or disclosure of sensitive personal financial information to third parties unless the consumer affirmatively consents or opts in--the burden thus shifts off of the consumer.

This legislation also toughens Federal financial privacy laws for affiliate-sharing and joint-marketing. An affiliate is a company that is linked by common ownership with another company. Under Federal law, a bank can share with affiliates or joint marketing partners regardless of whether the consumer wants this information shared.

This legislation would require that banks give consumers the option of opting out of the sharing of their personal financial information with the bank's affiliates or joint partners.

I would also like to describe several other key components of the financial privacy section.

The bill prohibits banks from denying a customer a financial product or financial service just because the customer chooses to not disclose his personal information to third parties, affiliates, or joint venture partners. However, the bill does allow banks to offer incentives to customers to encourage them to permit the sharing of their personal information.

Additionally, the bill permits banks to disclose, but not sell, personal information to third parties for vital public interest purposes such as identifying or locating missing and abducted children, witnesses, criminals and fugitives, parents delinquent in child support payments, organ and bone marrow donors, pension fund beneficiaries, and missing heirs.

Just as with financial data, personal health and medical data deserves the most stringent privacy protections.

The recently adopted Department of Health and Human Services privacy regulations set a basic opt-in framework for disclosure of health information. But more can be done to protect patient privacy.

The regulations only prohibit ``covered entities''--namely health insurers, health providers, and health care clearinghouse--from selling a patient's health information without that patient's prior consent.

Meanwhile, non-covered entities--such as business associates, health researchers, schools or universities, and life insurers--are not subject to this opt-in requirement, except through contractual arrangements.

This legislation would preserve the privacy of health information wherever the information is sold. Any business associate, life insurer, school or non-covered entity trying to sell or market protected health information would, like covered entities, have to get the patient's prior consent. This is a crucial step to protect what is truly our most intimate information.

Drivers' license data also are given the strongest level of protection under this bill.

The Driver's Privacy Protection Act, DPPA was amended in 2000 to offer some meaningful protections for drivers' privacy.

For example, under the DPPA, a State Department of Motor Vehicles must obtain the prior consent (opt-in) of the driver before ``highly sensitive information''--defined as a physical copy of the license, a Social Security number, medical or disability information, and other information can be disclosed to a third party.

However, loopholes remain. Other sensitive information found on a driver's license deserves equal protection.

This legislation would expand the definition of ``highly sensitive information'' to include a physical copy of a driver's license, the driver identification number, birth date, information on the driver's physical characteristics and any biometric identifiers, such as a fingerprint, that are found on the driver's license.

Thus, this bill would ensure consumers have control over how their motor vehicle records and driver's license data are used.

I would like to take a moment to highlight the Social Security number section of this legislation. I have also introduced this section as a stand-alone bill, the ``Social Security Number Misuse Prevention Act of 2005.''

It is crucial to protect Social Security numbers because Social Security numbers are the key to a person's identity. Many identity theft cases start with the theft of a Social Security number. Once a thief has access to a victim's Social Security number, it is only a short step to acquiring credit cards, driver's licenses, or other crucial identification documents.

This legislation bars the sale or display of Social Security numbers to the public except in a very narrow set of circumstances. In general display or sale is permitted only if the Social Security number holder affirmatively consents or if there are compelling public safety needs. Government entities will have to redact Social Security numbers from electronic records that are readily available to the public on the Internet. State governments will no longer be permitted to use the Social Security number as the default driver's license number.

The legislation, however, recognizes that some industries rely on Social Security numbers to exchange information for certain transactions.

Thus, the bill directs the Attorney General to develop regulations allowing for the sale or purchase of Social Security Numbers to facilitate business-to-business and business-to-government transactions, so long as businesses put appropriate safeguards in place and do not permit public access to the number.

This legislation codifies steps Congress can take to protect citizens from identity thieves and other predators of personal information.

It restores to an individual more control over her most sensitive personal information, such as Social Security numbers, health information, and financial information. It also sets reasonable guidelines for businesses that handle our personal information every day. Every American has a fundamental right to privacy, no matter how fast our technology grows or changes.

Last year, President Bush signed into law the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, legislation that I helped to write, to increase punishment on people who steal others' identities. I am proud of my work to make that bill into a law. But we all must realize that punishment is no substitute for prevention. My legislation today will make fewer suffer from identity theft in the first place.

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

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

Mr. President. I rise today with Senator Voinovich to introduce legislation to expand the federal loan forgiveness program to include Head Start teachers.

Nationwide, only 30 percent of Head Start teachers have completed a baccalaureate or advanced degree program.

In California, that number is even smaller: about eighteen percent of Head Start teachers have completed a bachelor's degree.

To prepare Head Start children for elementary school, we must recruit highly qualified teachers who have demonstrated knowledge and teaching skills in reading, writing, early childhood development, and other areas of the preschool curriculum with a particular focus on cognitive learning.

Recruiting and maintaining teachers with such qualifications is the only way to jump-start cognitive development and ensure that our children start elementary school ready to learn.

A survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) found a strong relationship between the education of Head Start teachers and classroom quality. Teachers with higher education levels were found to be more sensitive and responsive to their children, to have more high quality language activities, and more creative activities in their classrooms.

Teachers with higher levels of education also had classes with higher quality language activities such as reading books for the children and provided more opportunities for children to develop skills in expressing thoughts.

Head Start is the primary federal program that has the potential to reach out to low-income children early in their formative years when their cognitive skills are just developing.

We know that poor children disproportionately start school behind their peers--they are less likely to count to 10 or to recite the alphabet.

Many of our nation's youngsters enter elementary school without the basic skills necessary to succeed. Often these children lag behind their peers throughout their academic career.

As taxpayers, we will spend millions on efforts to help these children catch up. Many of these children will never catch up. A recent national study by The High/Scope Perry Preschool confirms the importance of providing preschool children with the opportunity early on to gain the basic skills necessary for school.

The study found that preschoolers were more likely to graduate from high school and be employed at age 40, earn more money a year, and were more likely to own a home and have a savings account.

We can save millions by providing low-income children with access to quality preschool where they will gain the necessary skills to succeed in school and life.

In order to give every child a head start in life, we must continue to recruit highly qualified teachers to the Head Start field and prevent the best teachers from leaving.

Many Head Start programs across the country, including in California, are losing qualified teachers to local school districts in part because the pay is better.

Nationally, the average Head Start teacher earns a salary of $21,287 compared to $43,152 for an elementary school teacher.

Head Start teachers are making half of what elementary school teachers are paid on average.

Low pay, combined with increasing student debt, is a real deterrent to getting college graduates to become Head Start teachers.

And every teacher that Head Start loses impacts the quality and access to services for our nation's low-income children.

One way to recruit and retain highly qualified Head Start teachers is to offer incentives to pursue a career in this field.

Current law allows elementary and secondary school teachers to receive up to $5,000 in loan forgiveness in exchange for five years of service.

We believe Head Start teachers should be given this same opportunity.

The legislation we are introducing today is meant to encourage recent graduates, current Head Start teachers without a degree, and college students to enter and remain in the Head Start field.

In exchange for 5 years of service, a Head Start teacher could receive up to $5,000 of their federal loans forgiven.

We must continue to improve the Head Start program so that children will have the necessary cognitive skills when they leave the program, such as being able to count to ten, begin to recite the alphabet, and recognize sizes and colors.

This is just the first step. To further ensure cognitive learning, we must also continue to raise the standards and pay for Head Start teachers.

Providing our nation's low-income children with access to highly educated and qualified teachers so that they enter school ready to learn is critical to their future success and should be a priority of this Congress.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the legislation be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I offer today private relief legislation to provide lawful permanent residence status to Maria Cristina Degrassi, a 37-year-old severely disabled Italian national currently living with her family in San Mateo, California.

I have decided to offer private relief legislation on Ms. Degrassi's behalf because I believe that her removal from the United States would be tragically unfair not only to her, but to her sister and brother-in- law, Daniela Degrassi and Luca Prasso, who reside legally in the United States and who are Ms. Degrassi's closest family and only willing caregivers.

Ms. Degrassi has legally resided in the United States since 1997 on a non-immigrant tourist visa. However, she is not like an ordinary tourist. She cannot enjoy California's beautiful coastline or stunning mountain ranges. She cannot tour Hollywood movie studios or Napa Valley wineries. Ms. Degrassi was born premature in 1965 and, consequently, is severely mentally handicapped and autistic. Because of these disabilities, Ms. Degrassi has the mental capacity of a two-year old, cannot speak and understands only a few sentences in Italian.

In addition to these challenges, Ms. Degrassi was diagnosed with diabetes in 2001 and now requires daily insulin shots and a carefully monitored diet.

For Ms. Degrassi, the sum of these health problems means that she must have 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week personal care and attention. Luckily, however, there are two people in Ms. Degrassi's life who are more than happy not only to care for her daily needs, but to love and nurture her.

Ms. Degrassi's sister, Daniela, and her brother-in-law, Luca, are legal permanent residents of the United States. Mr. Prasso is a highly skilled and valued employee of PDI-DreamWorks, the world renowned movie production company. Serving as a Character Technical Supervisor and earning nearly $200,000 per year, Mr. Prasso has worked on such critically acclaimed films as ``Shrek'' and ``ANTZ.'' In the course of that work, Mr. Prasso has developed and patented new technologies and become a leader in his field. In a letter in support of this private legislation, DreamWorks referred to Mr. Prasso's skills as ``rar[e]'' and ``irreplaceable.''

Daniela Degrassi has also excelled in the United States, starting a successful freelance photography career and business.

Together, Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi have provided Ms. Degrassi with the love, care and attention that she so desperately needs. When Ms. Degrassi's father and aunt died in 1997, the couple knew that they were the only family left who was willing to care for her. The choice for them was clear. Mr. Prasso wrote in a letter he sent me, ``My wife and I then faced a big decision. We refuse[d] completely to put her in an institution. We [could not] accept the idea of not being able to properly take care of her. No other relative was alive or came forward to offer help. We were the only and closest persons to Cristina. We decided to take care of her like a daughter.''

For the past seven years, Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi have done just that, organizing their lives around caring for and attending to Ms. Degrassi.

They cook for her and clothe and bathe her on a daily basis. Because of the close monitoring Ms. Degrassi's diabetic condition requires, when the couple wants to go out to dinner or see a movie, they must do so separately so that one of them is always with Ms. Degrassi in case of an emergency.

Despite the hardships that caring for Ms. Degrassi have imposed upon Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi, the experience has deeply enriched their lives. In Mr. Prasso's letter, he wrote, ``despite my long work hours and my wife['s] new successful business as a photographer, we are able and fully committed to continue to take care [of Cristina] 24 hours a day . . . The reward of a kiss, hug or smile from Cristina is an amazing thing and makes all the pain disappear.''

Unfortunately, if this private relief bill is not approved, this wonderful family will face a tragic set of choices. Since 1997, Ms. Degrassi has applied for and always received six-month extensions of her non-immigrant tourist visa. The Degrassi's lawyer has informed the couple that approval of the current extension is unlikely and has recommended they withdraw their petition. This would leave Ms. Degrassi with nothing. There are no other avenues available for her to remain in the United States lawfully. In short, if this private relief legislation is not approved, Ms. Degrassi will be forced to return to Italy.

However, Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi's love for their sister will never allow her to return to Italy alone. Faced with Ms. Degrassi's removal, the couple will leave their lives in California and move back with her in order to continue to provide the care and attention on which Ms. Degrassi depends.

The consequences of such a move will be tragic for this family. It will mean the end of Mr. Prasso's highly accomplished career with DreamWorks, as well as, the end of the photography career Daniela Degrassi has worked so hard to build. In addition, both Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi are eligible to become United States citizens this year.

I can think of no compelling reasons why the United States should not enable this family to continue as they have in California. Because of the substantial salary that Mr. Prasso and Daniela Degrassi earn and because of the monthly pension Ms. Degrassi receives, due to her disability, from the Italian government, there is almost no chance that Ms. Degrassi will become a burden on the state or federal government.

In Mr. Prasso's letter to me, he made this simple request, ``We are looking forward to find[ing] a permanent solution to this dilemma that does not involve dismembering this family or giving up on a wonderful job. A solution that will allow us to live a normal life like a normal family.''

We can make this solution a reality for Ms. Degrassi and this wonderful family. For that reason, I offer this private relief legislation and ask my colleagues to support it.

Given these extraordinary and unique facts, I ask my colleagues to support this private relief bill on behalf of Ms. Degrassi.

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

Mr. President, I introduce today the ``Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2005'', legislation to reform the way the federal government treats unaccompanied alien children who are apprehended by federal immigration officials at our borders or within the United States.

I first introduced legislation similar to this bill during the 107th Congress and still strongly believe that its passage is necessary to ensure the proper treatment of unaccompanied alien children within our federal system. With each passing year, as members realize the necessity for this legislation, the bill has moved further along in the process.

I am pleased to be joined by Senators Collins, Schumer, Hagel, Durbin, DeWine, Cantwell, Inouye and Feingold as original co-sponsors of this legislation.

During the 108th Congress, the ``Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act'' passed the Senate by unanimous consent, after garnering no less than 34 co-sponsors. Unfortunately, the bill stalled in the House of Representatives.

So today I re-introduce this legislation, and again, this will be one of my top legislative priorities because I believe we have a special obligation to ensure that every child that comes into contact with federal officials is afforded fair and humane treatment.

In 2004, approximately 6,200 unaccompanied alien children were apprehended by Department of Homeland Security officials and transferred to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services. This number has grown over the years and shows no signs of abating.

Thousands of foreign-born children under the age of 18 enter the United States each year unaccompanied by parents or other legal guardians. These children are among the most vulnerable of the immigrant population and these numbers are going to continue to grow given the greater emphasis on enforcement actions by immigration officials--which I support--and the relatively unchanged conditions bringing them here.

These children are from all over the world, although the majority encountered by immigration officials today are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Some are asylum seekers fleeing human rights abuses and armed conflict in their homelands. Others are fleeing abuses specific to children, such as forced recruitment of child soldiers, forced prostitution and servitude, sexual slavery and exploitation, child labor, abuse of street children, child brides and female genital mutilation. Yet other children come to the United States because they have been abused, abandoned or neglected by their parents or caregivers. And finally, some come seeking to reunify with family members already in the United States or seeking a better life.

Historically, U.S. immigration law and policies have been developed and implemented without regard to their effect on children. This result has been similar to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole--it just doesn't work.

Under current immigration law, these children are forced to struggle through a system designed for adults, even though they lack the capacity to understand nuanced legal principles or courtroom and administrative procedures. Because of this, children who may very well be eligible for relief are often vulnerable to being deported back to the very life-threatening situations from which they fled--before they are even able to make their cases before the Department of Homeland Security or an immigration judge.

Prior to March 1, 2003, the Immigration and Naturalization Service had responsibility for the care, custody and treatment of unaccompanied alien children. Unfortunately, the Immigration and Naturalization Service fell short in

fulfilling these responsibilities. The legislation that I am introducing today builds on Section 462 of Public Law 107-296, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which provided for the transfer of responsibility for the care and placement of unaccompanied alien children from the now-abolished Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Section 462 was based on S. 121, comprehensive legislation relating to unaccompanied alien children that I introduced during the 107th Congress.

With the enactment of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, we set into motion the centralization of responsibility for the care and custody of unaccompanied alien children with the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The first phase of this transfer of responsibility occurred on March 1, 2003. Once the transition was completed, we finally resolved the conflict of interest inherent in the former system which pitted the enforcement side of the Immigration and Naturalization Service against the benefits side of that same agency in the care of unaccompanied alien children.

I am pleased that the provision transferring responsibility for the care and custody of unaccompanied alien children was contained in the Homeland Security Act and that by all accounts the transition in the care of children between the affected agencies has gone well.

But, the transfer of authority to the Office of Refugee Resettlement--by itself--is not enough to ensure that these children are treated fairly and humanely. Congress now has a responsibility to go beyond the simple transfer to actually laying out the process and steps to ensure that unaccompanied alien children are treated fairly and humanely. We must provide the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice with the tools they will need to succeed in their missions regarding the care of unaccompanied alien children after the transfer of jurisdiction took place.

First of all, I want to stress that this bill is not about benefits, as it provides no new immigration benefit to unaccompanied alien children. Rather, this bill is about the process of how we treat these children.

The ``Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act'' provides guidance and instruction to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice in the following areas:

First, in the custody, release, family reunification and detention of unaccompanied alien children;

Second, it provides access by unaccompanied alien children to guardians ad litem and pro bono counsel;

Third, it streamlines the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program and provides guidance on the training of federal government officials and private parties who come into contact with unaccompanied alien children;

Fourth, it requires the issuance of guidelines specific to children's asylum claims;

Fifth, it authorizes appropriations for the care of unaccompanied alien children; and

Sixth, it amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide additional responsibilities and powers to the Office of Refugee Resettlement with respect to unaccompanied alien children.

Central throughout the ``Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act'' are two concepts:

The United States government has a fundamental responsibility to protect unaccompanied children in its custody; and in all proceedings and actions, the government should have as a priority protecting the interests of these children.

I first became involved in this issue in 2000 when I heard about a young 15-year old Chinese girl who stood before a U.S. immigration court facing deportation proceedings with her hands chained to her waist, like a criminal. She had found her way to the United States as a stowaway in a container ship captured off of Guam, hoping to escape the repression she had experienced in her home country.

She had been placed on a boat bound for the United States by her very own parents, fleeing China's rigid family planning laws. Under these laws, she was denied citizenship, education and medical care. She came to this country alone and desperate.

And what did our immigration authorities do when they found her? The Immigration and Naturalization Service detained her in a juvenile jail in Portland, Oregon for eight months before her asylum hearing, and more than seven weeks after she was granted asylum.

At her asylum hearing, the young girl stood before a judge, unrepresented by counsel, confused and unable to understand the proceedings against her. She could not wipe away the tears from her face because her hands were chained to her waist. According to a lawyer who later came to represent her, ``her only crime was that her parents had put her on a boat so she could get a better life over here.''

While the young girl eventually received asylum in our country, she unnecessarily faced an ordeal no child should bear under our immigration system. This young Chinese girl represents only one of the more than 6,000 foreign-born children who, without parents or legal guardians to protect them, are discovered in the United States each year in need of protection.

This is unacceptable treatment and we have a responsibility to do better than this.

Imagine the fear of an unaccompanied alien child, in the United States alone, without a parent or guardian. Imagine that child being thrust into a system he or she does not understand, provided no access to pro bono counsel or guardians ad litem, placed in jail with adults or housed with juveniles with serious criminal convictions. I find it hard to believe that our country would allow children to be treated in such a manner.

That is why I am introducing this legislation today. The ``Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act'' will help our country fulfill the special obligation to these children to treat them fairly and humanely.

I am proud to have the support of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Women's Commission on Refugee Women and Children, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Amnesty International USA and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and many other organizations with whom I have worked closely to develop this legislation.

I urge my colleagues to join with me by cosponsoring this important measure and ensuring that these reforms are finally enacted.

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

Mr. President, I offer today private immigration relief legislation to provide lawful permanent residence status to Esidronio Arreola-Saucedo, Maria Elena Cobian Arreola, Nayely Bibiana Arreola and Cindy Jael Arreola, Mexican nationals living in the Fresno area of California.

Mr. and Mrs. Arreola have lived in the United States for almost 20 years. Two of their five children, Nayely, age 18, and Cindy, age 16, also stand to benefit from this legislation. Their other three children, Roberto, age 13, Daniel, age 9, and Saray, age 8, are United States citizens. Today, Mr. and Mrs. Arreola and their two eldest children face deportation.

The story of the Arreola family is compelling and I believe they merit Congress's special consideration for such an extraordinary form of relief as a private bill.

The Arreolas are in this uncertain situation in part because of grievous errors committed by their previous counsel, who has since been disbarred. In fact, the attorney's conduct was so egregious that it compelled an immigration judge to write the Executive Office of Immigration Review seeking his disbarment for the detriment he caused his immigration clients.

Mr. Arreola has lived in the United States since 1986. He was an agricultural migrant worker in the fields of California for several years, and as such would have been eligible for permanent residence through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers, SAW, program had he known about it.

Mrs. Arreola was living in the United States at the time she became pregnant with her daughter Cindy, but returned to Mexico to give birth so as to avoid any problems with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Given the length of time that the Arreolas had, and have been, in the United States it is quite likely that they would have qualified for relief from deportation pursuant to the cancellation of removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, but for the conduct of their previous attorney.

Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons for permitting the family to remain in the United States is the devastating impact their deportation would have on their children--three of whom are U.S. citizens, as I stated earlier, and the other two who have lived in the United States since they were toddlers. For these children, this country is the only country they really know.

Nayely, the oldest, is a freshman at Fresno Pacific University. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and the first to attend college. She attends Fresno Pacific University, a regionally ranked university, on a full tuition scholarship package and works part-time in the admissions office.

At her young age, Nayely has demonstrated a strong commitment to the ideals of citizenship in her adopted country. She has worked hard to achieve her full potential both in her academic endeavors and through the service she provides her community. As the Associate Dean of Enrollment Services, Cary Templeton, at Fresno Pacific University states in a letter of support, ``[t]he leaders of Fresno Pacific University saw in Nayely, a young person who will become exemplary of all that is good in the American dream.''

In high school, Nayely was a member of Advancement Via Individual Determination, AVID, a college preparatory program in which students commit to determining their own futures through achieving a college degree. Nayely was also president of the Key Club, a community service organization. She helped mentor freshmen and participates in several other student organizations in her school. Perhaps the greatest hardship to this family, if forced to return to Mexico, will be her lost opportunity to realize her dreams and further contribute to her community and to this country.

It is clear to me that Nayely feels a strong sense of responsibility for her community and country. By all indications, this is the case as well for all of the members of her family.

The Arreolas also have other family who are lawful permanent residents of this country or United States citizens. Mrs. Arreola has three brothers who are U.S. citizens and Mr. Arreola has a sister who is a U.S. citizen. It is also my understanding that they have no immediate family in Mexico.

According to immigration authorities, this family has never had any problems with law enforcement. I am told that they have filed their taxes for every year from 1990 to the present. They have always worked hard to support themselves. As I previously mentioned, Mr. Arreola was previously employed as a farm worker, but now has his own business repairing electronics. His business has been successful enough to enable him to purchase a home for his family.

It seems so clear to me that this family has embraced the American dream and their continued presence in our country would do so much to enhance the values we hold dear. Enactment of the legislation I have introduced today will enable the Arreolas to continue to make significant contributions to their community as well as the United States.

I ask my colleagues to support this private bill. I also ask unanimous consent that the text of the legislation be printed in the Record and that the three letters of community support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce legislation cosponsored by Senator Boxer to adjust the boundary of Redwood National Park in the State of California to include the addition of the Mill Creek property. This continues the effort initiated in the last Congress with the leadership of Congressman Mike Thompson, to solidify and expand the co-operative management relationship between the United States Government and the State of California, working together to protect forever the ancient majesty of the redwood forest.

In 2002, the California Department of Parks and Recreation acquired from the Save-the-Redwoods League 25,000 acres of forest land known as the Mill Creek property in Del Norte County, which is contiguous with the Redwood National and State parks boundary. This bill would include within the park boundary the Mill Creek acquisition and about 900 acres of land acquired and added to the State redwood parks since the 1978 expansion of the Redwood National Park boundary. There would be no Federal costs for land acquisition or development resulting from this legislation.

Approval of the expansion of the boundary of Redwood National Park to include the headwaters of Mill Creek will complete the vision of the Redwood Park embraced by Senator Kuchel in S.1370 that he introduced in 1967, a vision dating back to the McLaughlin-Cook report issued by the National Park Service in 1937. Protection of the headwaters of Mill Creek will secure the long term viability of the ancient redwoods already within Redwood National and State Park. It would permanently safeguard the coho salmon who return to spawn in the clear, cold waters of this forest.

These lands will be managed by the same cooperative management agreement between the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation. This partnership is viewed as a model of interagency cooperative management efforts and will provide for more efficient and costeffective management of an ecologically significant resource.

This bill enjoys strong support from local and Federal officials, including Del Norte County and the Department of the Interior. Given this support and lack of controversy, I believe this legislation to be of great importance to ensure that our Redwood National Park is further protected.

I have long held a deep interest in protecting California's magnificent Redwoods. The coast redwood, the sequoia sempervirens, is native only to the West Coast where it stands in a narrow band from the tip of the Big Sur Coast to the Chetco River, just north of the California-Oregon border. The redwood stands taller than any other tree in the world and traces its lineage to among the oldest of living things. The cathedrals formed by these ancient trees inspire the best in us as a people. The redwood forests of California are a national and worldwide treasure that is ours to protect and preserve.

In 1966, the Headwaters Agreement was negotiated in part in my offices to protect approximately 7,500 acres of old growth redwoods, which was the largest grove of redwoods held in private ownership at the time. It is my great pleasure today to introduce this legislation to extend our national commitment to collaboration in preservation of the redwoods and the watersheds they anchor.

I applaud Congressman Mike Thompson's commitment to this issue and urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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

I rise today to introduce a bill that combines needed help for small Yosemite schools, and an addition to the beautiful Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Each of these bills individually has passed both the House and Senate in previous Congresses.

The first title of this legislation provides critical funds to three small schools nestled in the heart of Yosemite National Park and authorizes the Yosemite Regional Transportation System to shuttle visitors in and out of the park.

Approximately 130 children of park service employees are taught in the three elementary small schools located in Yosemite National Park-- Wawona, El Portal, and Yosemite Valley elementary schools.

These schools represent a dying breed of education models; they are small schools that teach children who live in remote communities and are taught by one or a group of teachers. At El Portal, three teachers instruct 53 students in seven grades. Wawona has 17 students in 7 grades who are taught by one teacher/principal.

And Yosemite Valley serves 60 students in 8 grades who are taught by two teachers.

The remote location of these schools, their small sizes and California's unique method for funding education, have all contributed to the schools amassing a combined deficit of $290,000. In their efforts to continue to provide basic educational services to students, the schools have had to cut supplemental instruction that would normally be available to students taught outside of the park.

Some have suggested that these schools consolidate into one to pool their limited resources. While this may seem to solve the problem, you must understand that many of these students already travel many miles on treacherous mountainous roads to attend their current schools. If the three schools were to consolidate, this problem would be exacerbated, requiring many students to make a 2 hour commute to their new schools.

I do not believe this is a viable option and that is why I support this legislation.

Last year, Senator Bingaman, Congressman Radanovich and I worked out a compromise on this legislation that would help the schools while protecting the National Park Service's budget. The compromise includes the following terms:

For fiscal year 2006 through 2009, the Secretary of the Interior may provide up to $400,000 in funds to the Bass Lake Union Elementary School District and the Mariposa Unified School District for educational services to students who are dependents of persons engaged in the administration, operation, and maintenance of the Park or students who live at or near the Park; the Secretary can only provide the funds if the State of California and local agencies maintain 2005 per-student funding levels to the schools, and the Secretary also must make sure that the assistance to the schools does not reduce the remaining funding available to Yosemite National Park below fiscal year 2005 levels.

Furthermore, this legislation allows the Park Service to allot federal funds for the continuing operation of a bus service that shuttles visitors through Yosemite National Park--the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System.

The federally funded demonstration project that allowed YARTS to offer services on a temporary basis expired in May 2002 and since then, YARTS has leveraged local funds to ensure that services were not discontinued.

Both the Park Service and YARTS are supportive of continuing their mutually beneficial agreement. This legislation would do just that by taking the burden off local entities and providing the necessary assistance that this service needs.

I am also pleased to introduce today a second title in this legislation to allow the National Park Service to extend the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, GGNRA, by acquiring critical natural landscapes and scenic vistas.

This bill meets several distinct needs in California and national needs of all National Park System visitors by adding 4,600 acres of pristine natural land to the boundary of the Golden Gate Recreation Area. It will protect four major watersheds, preserve the home of numerous threatened, rare and endangered plant and animal species in the region, allow potential access to valuable future trail links to contiguous State and county parks, and establish a dramatic and logical southern entrance to the park.

A key component of this legislation is its three-way, local-state- federal partnership. Half of the total purchase price of these lands has already been donated by local and State sources. Additionally, this legislation specifically provides that all land transactions involve a willing seller and willing buyer.

Furthermore, this bill has the strong support of local community groups, the former Golden Gate National Recreation Area Advisory Commission, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, the National Park Service, and the California State Farm Bureau. It also has the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. I know of no opposition to this bill.

Expanding the boundary of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to include Rancho Corral de Tierra through such a beneficial partnership is an opportunity not to be missed. A vast land within a major metropolitan area that offers extraordinary scenic views of the Pacific coastline and the greater Bay Area, a place with plants found nowhere else on earth find refuge, a home for rare and endangered animals, is available now for protection and enjoyment. We have the chance to enjoy this special land and to leave a lasting legacy for our children and our grandchildren.

California's national parks are truly invaluable and the park that this bill supports offers an opportunity for visitors and residents to enjoy unique national habitats and offers a unique chance for the National Park Service and the community to work together, not only to protect the environment, but also the interests of the nearby communities and national and international visitors.

This bill enjoys strong support from local and State officials and I hope that it will have as much strong bipartisan support this Congress, as it did last Congress. Congressman Tom Lantos plans to introduce companion legislation for this bill in the House and I applaud his leadership on this issue.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I introduce the United States Military Cancer Institute Research Collaborative Act. This legislation would formally establish the United States Military Cancer Institute (USMCI), and support the collaborative augmentation of research efforts in cancer epidemiology, prevention and control. Although the USMCI already exists as an informal collaborative effort, this bill will formally establish the institution with a mission of providing for the maintenance of health in the military by enhancing cancer research and treatment, and studying the epidemiological causes of cancer among various ethnic groups. By formally establishing the USMCI, it will be in a better position to unite military research efforts with other cancer research centers.

Cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment are significant issues for the military population, thus the USMCI was organized to coordinate the existing military cancer assets. The USMCI has a comprehensive database of its beneficiary population of 9 million people. The military's nationwide tumor registry, the Automated Central Tumor Registry, has acquired more than 180,000 cases in the last 14 years, and a serum repository of 30 million specimens from military personnel collected sequentially since 1987. This population is predominantly Caucasian, African-American, and Hispanic.

The Director of the USMCI, Dr. John Potter, is a Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). A highly talented cancer epidemiologist, Dr. Kangmin Zhu, has also been recruited to lead the USMCI Prevention and Control Programs.

The USMCI currently resides in the Washington, D.C., area, and its components are located at the National Naval Medical Center, the Malcolm Grow Medical Center, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute. There are more than 70 research workers, both active duty and Department of Defense civilian scientists, working in the USMCI.

The USMCI intends to expand its research activities to military medical centers across the Nation. Special emphasis will be placed on the study of genetic and environmental factors in carcinogenesis among the entire population, including Asian, Caucasian, African-American and Hispanic subpopulations.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Tsunami Preparedness Act with my friend and distinguished colleague, Senator Ted Stevens, in our new capacities as Co-Chair and Chair of the Commerce Committee. Our bill today provides a scientific and technological response to minimize the threats posed by tsunami to our own shores, and the coastal communities of the world, as exemplified by the appalling scope of the Indian Ocean tragedy. The bill builds on our work to establish a system in the Pacific that is a model for the world, and also provides for its expansion and improvement to repair gaps that have been identified recently.

Protecting human life and property from natural disaster requires the ability to reliably detect and forecast, the capacity to broadcast warnings in a timely and informative manner, and the knowledge in communities of how to respond and evacuate to safety. Above all, however, it requires the willingness to invest resources to prepare for a threat that is largely unseen and unpredictable until the last moment, when a monstrous wave actually strikes.

The people of Alaska and Hawaii have long memories of the threat of tsunami. Perhaps it is because Hawaii sits in a position of terrible vulnerability in the Pacific Ocean, which is the site of 85 percent of the world's tsunami activity, and because Alaska, perched on the northern edge of the Pacific's Ring of Fire, suffers frequent tsunami- generating earthquakes.

In order to protect local communities, Hawaii established in 1949 a tsunami warning center, following a tragic Hilo tsunami. In response to the Good Friday earthquake and tsunami of 1964, which accounted for 90 percent of the deaths in the state that year, Alaska followed suit by establishing an observatory in Palmer, Alaska, in 1967. Collaborations between the two centers and other partners led to a nascent capacity for predicting and warning coastal communities about potential tsunami in Alaska and Hawaii and beyond.

As we came to understand the broader threat that tsunami posed, Ted Stevens and I worked together to pass legislation in 1994 to direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop a Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program.

We are pleased to report that the program has laid the foundation for tsunami preparedness. Through its Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), NOAA has developed Deep ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami--or ``DART''--buoys, which accurately measure the subtle variations in the ocean's sea level caused by tsunami traveling over open water. With these measurements, as well as readings from coastal gauges, the mathematical models PMEL and others have developed can forecast tsunami direction, speed, and inundation with astonishing accuracy. Although the worldwide network of seismic sensors operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides excellent notice of earthquakes with the potential to generate tsunami, the DART buoys represent a next-generation approach to detection and forecasting of tsunami that will form the backbone of our domestic preparedness.

Interpreting these data and issuing warnings are Hawaii's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, and Alaska's West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, which jointly have the capacity to cover our domestic shores, and, at the same time, to reach out to all cooperating nations of the world.

Forecasting and warning networks, however, depend on ears who know how to respond, and so the Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program has partnered with states and local authorities to produce inundation mapping, develop evacuation routes, and conduct tsunami education. As a result of much hard work, fifteen counties up and down the west coast, and in Alaska and Hawaii have become national and world leaders by becoming ``tsunami ready.''

The appalling scope of the Indian Ocean tragedy illustrates the importance and necessity of our work of the past ten years, and with stark clarity, we can see that despite our best efforts, much remains to be done. Now, as before, Senator Stevens and I have come together to lead the charge toward national and international tsunami preparedness.

Our legislation today formally authorizes NOAA to establish, operate, and maintain a dependable national tsunami warning system that would provide maximum tsunami detection capability for the nation. The system would build on the model established in the Pacific, and provide for its repair, expansion and modernization by the close of calendar year 2007. The system would include four components: an expanded and upgraded detection and warning system, a federal-state tsunami hazard mitigation program, a tsunami research program, and a modernization and upgrade program. In addition, the bill would direct NOAA to provide any necessary technical or other assistance to international efforts to establish regional systems in other parts of the world, including the Indian Ocean.

The detection and warning system established by the bill would cover the Pacific Ocean region, as well as the Atlantic-Caribbean-Gulf of Mexico region, and incorporate a variety of seismic and tsunami detection technologies, including deep ocean buoys, as well as encompass tsunami warning centers charged with collecting and analyzing the data and distributing warnings--including the existing Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii and the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska, as well as any others deemed necessary by the NOAA Administrator.

The bill also formally authorizes NOAA's Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program and its community-based tsunami hazard mitigation program to improve tsunami preparedness of at-risk areas. The bill directs a Federal-State coordinating committee for the program, consisting (FEMA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and affected coastal states and territories, to work together to improve inundation mapping, community outreach and education, and promote and integrate tsunami warning and mitigation measures, including rescue and recovery guidelines. The program would provide grants to states to ensure the program elements are implemented in coastal communities.

The bill also requires NOAA to establish, along with other agencies and academic institutions, a tsunami research program to continuously improve detection, prediction, communication, and mitigation science and technology to support tsunami forecasts and warnings. This program would also focus on the potential for improved communications systems for tsunami and other hazard warnings, including telephones, wireless and satellite technology, the Internet, television and radio, and any innovative combination of these technologies.

A critical component of the bill requires NOAA to upgrade and modernize the U.S. tsunami detection system by December 2007, as well as provide accountability for the long-term operation of the system. NOAA is required to repair and upgrade the system, ensuring deployment of existing deep ocean detection buoys and related detection equipment, as well as notify Congress upon any equipment or system failures that will impair regional detection, and of significant contractor failures or delays. In addition, the bill calls for the National Academy of Sciences to review the system for further modernization recommendations.

The bill recognizes the need for global coordination on tsunami preparedness, requiring NOAA, and the interagency coordinating committee of the U.S. Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, to provide technical assistance and advice to international entities as part of an international effort to develop a fully functional global tsunami warning system.

Finally, the bill authorizes $35 million annually for six years to support these activities. Through this legislation, the work Senator Stevens and I started over ten years ago will step up to the next level, and provide our nation with coverage and protection that it needs, while fulfilling our duties as citizens of the global community.

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

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing a bill which is of great importance to a group of patriotic Americans. This legislation is designed to extend space-available travel privileges on military aircraft to those who have been totally disabled in the service of our country.

Currently, retired members of the Armed Services are permitted to travel on a space-available basis on non-scheduled military flights within the continental United States, and on scheduled overseas flights operated by the Military Airlift Command. My bill would provide the same benefits for veterans with 100 percent service-connected disabilities.

We owe these heroic men and women who have given so much to our country a debt of gratitude. Of course, we can never repay them for the sacrifices they have made on behalf of our Nation, but we can surely try to make their lives more pleasant and fulfilling. One way in which we can help is to extend military travel privileges to these distinguished American veterans. I have received numerous letters from all over the country attesting to the importance attached to this issue by veterans. Therefore, I ask that my colleagues show their concern and join me in saying ``thank you'' by supporting this legislation.

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

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing legislation to enable those former prisoners of war who have been separated honorably from their respective services and who have been rated as having a 30 percent service-connected disability to have the use of both the military commissary and post exchange privileges. While I realize it is impossible to adequately compensate one who has endured long periods of incarceration at the hands of our Nation's enemies, I do feel this gesture is both meaningful and important to those concerned because it serves as a reminder that our Nation has not forgotten their sacrifices.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to correct discrepancies in the reimbursement of clinical social workers covered through Medicare, Part B. The three proposed changes contained in this legislation clarify the current payment process for clinical social workers and establish a reimbursement methodology for the profession that is similar to other health care professionals reimbursed through the Medicare program.

First, this legislation sets payment for clinical social worker services according to a fee schedule established by the Secretary. Second, it explicitly states that services and supplies furnished by a clinical social worker are a covered Medicare expense, just as these services are covered for other mental health professionals in Medicare. Third, the bill allows clinical social workers to be reimbursed for services provided to a client who is hospitalized.

Clinical social workers are valued members of our health care provider network. They are legally regulated in every state of the nation and are recognized as independent providers of mental health care throughout the health care system. It is time to correct the disparate reimbursement treatment of this profession under Medicare.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing a private relief bill on behalf of Jim K. Yoshida, to obtain recognition of his service with the U.S. military in Korea so that he may obtain veteran's status.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Nursing School Clinics Act. This measure builds on our concerted efforts to provide access to quality health care for Americans by offering grants and incentives for nursing schools to establish primary care clinics in underserved areas where additional medical services are most needed. In addition, this measure provides the opportunity for nursing schools to enhance the scope of student training and education by providing firsthand clinical experience in primary care facilities.

Primary care clinics administered by nursing schools are university or nonprofit primary care centers developed mainly in collaboration with university schools of nursing and the communities they serve. These centers are staffed by faculty and staff who are nurse practitioners and public health nurses. Students supplement patient care while receiving preceptorships provided by college of nursing faculty and primary care physicians, often associated with academic institutions, who serve as collaborators with nurse practitioners. To date, the comprehensive models of care provided by nursing clinics have yielded excellent results, including significantly fewer emergency room visits, fewer hospital inpatient days, and less use of specialists, as compared to conventional primary health care.

This bill reinforces the principle of combining health care delivery in underserved areas with the education of advanced practice nurses. To accomplish these objectives, Title XIX of the Social Security Act would be amended to designate that the services provided in these nursing school clinics are reimbursable under Medicaid. The combination of grants and the provision of Medicaid reimbursement furnishes the financial incentives for clinic operators to establish the clinics.

In order to meet the increasing challenges of bringing cost-effective and quality health care to all Americans, we must consider a wide range of proposals, both large and small. Most importantly, we must approach the issue of health care with creativity and determination, ensuring that all reasonable avenues are pursued. Nurses have always been an integral part of health care delivery. The Nursing School Clinics Act recognizes the central role nurses can perform as care givers to the medically underserved.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Rural Preventive Health Care Training Act, a bill that responds to the dire need of our rural communities for quality health care and disease prevention programs. Almost one fourth of Americans live in rural areas and frequently lack access to adequate physical and mental health care. As many as 21 million of the 34 million people living in underserved rural areas are without access to a primary care provider. Even in areas where providers do exist, there are numerous limits to access, such as geography, distance, lack of transportation, and lack of knowledge about available resources. Due to the diversity of rural populations, language and cultural obstacles are often a factor in the access to medical care.

Compound these problems with limited financial resources, and the result is that many Americans living in rural communities go without vital health care, especially preventive care. Children fail to receive immunizations and routine checkups. Preventable illnesses and injuries occur needlessly, and lead to expensive hospitalizations. Early symptoms of emotional problems and substance abuse go undetected, and often develop into full-blown disorders.

An Institute of Medicine IOM report entitled, ``Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research,'' highlights the benefits of preventive care for all health problems. The training of health care providers in prevention is crucial in order to meet the demand for care in underserved areas. Currently, rural health care providers lack preventive care training opportunities.

Interdisciplinary preventive training of rural health care providers must be encouraged. Through such training, rural health care providers can build a strong educational foundation from the behavioral, biological, and psychological sciences. Interdisciplinary team prevention training will also facilitate operations at sites with both health and mental health clinics by facilitating routine consultation between groups. Emphasizing the mental health disciplines and their services as part of the health care team will contribute to the overall health of rural communities.

The Rural Preventive Health Care Training Act would implement the

risk-reduction model described in the IOM study. This model is based on the identification of risk factors and targets specific interventions for those risk factors. The human suffering caused by poor health is immeasurable, and places a huge financial burden on communities, families, and individuals. By implementing preventive measures to reduce this suffering, the potential psychological and financial savings are enormous.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Native Hawaiian Medicaid Coverage Act. This legislation would authorize a Federal Medicaid Assistance Percent (FMAP) of 100 percent for the payment of health care costs of Native Hawaiians who receive health care from Federally Qualified Health Centers or the Native Hawaiian Health Care System.

This bill was originally a provision within the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, which the Senate passed by an overwhelming majority of 76 to 21, but was dropped from the final Medicare Prescription Drug Conference Report.

This bill is modeled on the Native Alaskan Health Care Act, which provides for a Federal Medicaid Assistance Percent (FMAP) of 100 percent for payment of health care costs for Native Alaskans by the Indian Health Service, an Indian tribe, or a tribal organization.

Community health centers serve as the ``safety net'' for uninsured and medically underserved Native Hawaiians and other United States citizens, providing comprehensive primary and preventive health services to the entire community. Outpatient services offered to the entire family include comprehensive primary care, preventive health maintenance, and education outreach in the local community. Community health centers, with their multidisciplinary approach, offer cost effective integration of health promotion and wellness with chronic disease management and primary care focused on serving vulnerable populations.

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

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing a private relief mill on behalf of Donald C. Pence of Stanford, North Carolina, for compensation for the failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay dependency and indemnity compensation to Kathryn E. Box, the now- deceased mother of Donald C. Pence. It is rare that a federal agency admits a mistake. In this case, the Department of Veterans Affairs has admitted that a mistake was made and explored ways to permit payment under the law, including equitable relief, but has found no provision authorizing the Department to release the remaining benefits that were unpaid to Mrs. Box at the time of her death. My bill would correct this injustice, and I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to authorize the autonomous functioning of clinical psychologists and clinical social workers within the Medicare comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facility program.

In my judgment, it is unfortunate that Medicare requires clinical supervision of the services provided by certain health professionals and does not allow them to function to the full extent of their State practice licenses. Those who need the services of outpatient rehabilitation facilities should have access to a wide range of social and behavioral science expertise. Clinical psychologists and clinical social workers are recognized as independent providers of mental health care services under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, the TRICARE Military Health Program of the Uniformed Services, the Medicare (Part B) Program, and numerous private insurance plans. This legislation will ensure that these qualified professionals achieve the same recognition under the Medicare comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facility program.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act. I am introducing this bill on behalf of the American Nurses Association's Chief Executive Officer and President Linda Stierle, MSN, RN, CNAA and Barbara A. Blakeney, MS, APRN, BC, ANP, respectively. For over four decades I have been a committed supporter of nurses and the delivery of safe patient care. While enforceable regulations will help to ensure patient safety, the complexity and variability of today's hospitals require that staffing patterns be determined at the hospital and unit level, with the professional input of registered nurses. More than a decade of research demonstrates that nurse staff levels and the skill mix of nursing staff directly affect the clinical outcomes of hospitalized patients. Studies show that when there are more registered nurses, there are lower mortality rates, shorter lengths of stay, reduced costs, and fewer complications.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the risks of patient mortality rose by 7 percent for every additional patient added to the average nurse's workload. In the midst of a nursing shortage and increasing financial pressures, hospitals often find it difficult to maintain adequate staffing. While nursing research indicates that adequate registered nurse staffing is vital to the health and safety of patients, there is no standardized public reporting mechanism, nor enforcement of adequate staffing plans. The only regulations addressing nursing staff exists vaguely in Medicare Conditions of Participation which states: ``The nursing service must have an adequate number of licensed registered nurses, licensed practice (vocational) nurse, and other personnel to provide nursing care to all patients as needed''.

This bill will require Medicare Participating Hospitals to develop and maintain reliable and valid systems to determine sufficient registered nurse staffing. Given the demands that the healthcare industry faces today, it is our responsibility to ensure that patients have access to adequate nursing care. However, we must ensure that the decisions by which care is provided are made by the clinical experts, the registered nurses caring for these patients. Support of this bill supports our nation's nurses during a critical shortage, but more importantly, works to ensure the safety of their patients.

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

Mr. President, all too often we find that our Nation's civilian employees of the Federal Government who have been forcibly detained or interned by a hostile government do not receive the recognition they deserve. My bill would correct this inequity and provide a prisoner of war medal for such citizens.

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

Mr. President, I am reintroducing legislation today that would direct the Secretary of the Army to determine whether certain nationals of the Philippine Islands performed military service on behalf of the United States during World War II.

Mr. President, our Filipino veterans fought side by side with Americans and sacrificed their lives on behalf of the United States. This legislation would confirm the validity of their claims and further allow qualified individuals the opportunity to apply for military and veterans benefits that, I believe, they are entitled to. As this population becomes older, it is important for our nation to extend its firm commitment to the Filipino veterans and their families who participated in making us the great nation that we are today.

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

Mr. President, in our effort to accommodate many Americans by making Memorial Day the last Monday in May, we have lost sight of the significance of this day to our nation. My bill would restore Memorial Day to May 30 and authorize our flag to fly at half mast on that day. In addition, this legislation would authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating Memorial Day and Veterans Day as days for prayer and ceremonies. This legislation would help restore the recognition our veterans deserve for the sacrifices they have made on behalf of our Nation.

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

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce legislation which would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow Cooperative Housing Corporations (co-ops), to convert to condominium forms of ownership.

Under current law, a conversion from cooperative shareholding to condominium ownership is taxable at a corporate level as well as an individual level. The conversion is treated as a corporate liquidation, and therefore taxed accordingly. In addition, a capital gains tax is levied on any increase between the owner's basis in the co-op share pre-conversion and the market value of the condominium interest post- conversion. This double taxation dissuades condominium conversion because the owner is being taxed on the transaction which is nothing more than a change in the form of ownership. While the Internal Revenue Service concedes that there are no discernable advantages to society of the cooperative form of ownership, they do not view federal tax statutes as providing sufficient flexibility with which to address the obstacles of conversion.

Cooperative housing organizes the ownership structure into a corporation, with shares of stock for each apartment unit, which are sold to buyers. The corporation then issues a proprietary lease entitling the owner of the stock to the use of the unit in perpetuity. Because the investment is in the form of a share of stock, investors sometimes lose their entire investment as a result of debt incurred by the corporation in construction and development. In addition, due to the structure of a cooperative housing corporation, a prospective purchaser of shares in the corporation from an existing tenant- stockholders has difficulty obtaining mortgage financing for the purchase. Furthermore, tenant-stockholders of cooperative housing also encounter difficulties in securing bank loans for the full value of their investment.

As a result, owners of cooperative housing are increasingly looking toward conversion to the condominium structure of ownership. Condominium ownership permits the owner of a unit to own the unit itself, eliminating the cooperative housing dilemma of corporate debt that supercedes the investment of cooperative housing share owners, and other financial concerns.

The legislation I introduce today will remove the penalty of double taxation from the conversion of cooperative housing to condominium ownership, and will greatly benefit co-op owners across the nation. The bill does not apply to cooperatives which have been or are now being financed by any federal, state, or local programs for the purpose of assisting in the construction of affordable housing cooperatives or the conversion of rental units to affordable housing cooperatives. I urge my colleagues' consideration and support for this measure.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill that would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exempt certain sightseeing flights from the air transportation excise tax. A clarifying amendment to the Tax Code is needed due to a problem that exists in the application of the excise tax.

In 1986, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), issued a Private Letter Ruling in which it exempted one Hawaii-based air tour operator from paying the air passenger transportation excise tax, but has not applied equal treatment to other similarly situated aerial sightseeing tour operators. It is my belief that the IRS should be consistent in its application of this excise tax.

Under current law, a variety of excise taxes on air transportation are imposed to finance the Airport and Airway Trust funds program that is administered by the Federal Aviation Administration. For example, an air passenger transportation excise tax is imposed on users of our nation's airports and airways. The Congress intended that the tax be levied on passengers traveling on scheduled commercial airlines. In addition, for the most part, the tax is imposed on each flight segment.

The Congress did not intend to have the tax applied to air tour operators, who utilize our system of airways differently. Our national transportation system receives little or no benefit from aerial sightseeing operations. Air tour operations are not scheduled commercial airlines. They are for entertainment purposes and are circular, in that they begin and end at the same destination point.

Hawaii is among a small handful of states where our citizens can enjoy aerial tours of sights that are remote or difficult to reach by land. Aerial sightseeing tours are also enjoyed in Alaska, California, Washington, Arizona, and even New York City. The imposition of the air transportation excise tax on aerial sightseeing flights will significantly raise the consumer price on air tours. Doing so will cause many small aerial sightseeing tour operators, especially in my home state, to lose customers. Many of these small companies have struggled to stay in business after incurring significant losses in the months following September 11, 2001, when our government imposed flight restrictions across the nation. Those flight restrictions prevented many flight operations in all segments of the general aviation industry for many months into early 2002.

Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support my bill, which would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exempt certain sightseeing trips from the air transportation excise tax. Under my bill, air tour operations would still be subject to the aviation fuel excise tax.

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

Mr. President today I am introducing legislation that would provide a federal charter for the National Academies of Practice. This organization represents outstanding health care professionals who have made significant contributions to the practice of applied psychology, medicine, dentistry, nursing, optometry, osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, podiatry, social work, and veterinary medicine. When fully established, each of the ten academies will possess 150 distinguished practitioners selected by their peers. This umbrella organization will be able to provide the Congress of the United States and the executive branch with considerable health policy expertise, especially from the perspective of those individuals who are in the forefront of actually providing health care.

As we continue to grapple with the many complex issues surrounding the delivery of health care services, it is clearly in our best interest to ensure that the Congress has direct and immediate access to the recommendations of an interdisciplinary body of health care practitioners.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to amend Title 18 of the United States Code to allow our Nation's clinical social workers to use their mental health expertise on behalf of the federal judiciary by conducting psychological and psychiatric exams.

I feel that the time has come to allow our Nation's judicial system to have access to a wide range of behavioral science and mental health expertise. I am confident that the enactment of this legislation would be very much in our Nation's best interest.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation today to modify Title VII of the Public Health Service Act in order to provide students enrolled in graduate psychology programs with the opportunity to participate in various health professions loan programs.

Providing students enrolled in graduate psychology programs with eligibility for financial assistance in the form of loans, loan guarantees, and scholarships will facilitate a much-needed infusion of behavioral science expertise into our community of public health providers. There is a growing recognition of the valuable contribution being made by psychologists toward solving some of our Nation's most distressing problems.

The participation of students from all backgrounds and clinical disciplines is vital to the success of health care training. The Title VII programs play a significant role in providing financial support for the recruitment of minorities, women, and individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Minority therapists have an advantage in the provision of critical services to minority populations because often they can communicate with clients in their own language and cultural framework. Minority therapists are more likely to work in community settings where ethnic minority and economically disadvantaged individuals are most likely to seek care. It is critical that continued support be provided for the training of individuals who provide health care services to underserved communities.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to amend the Public Health Service Act for the establishment of a National Center for Social Work Research. Social workers provide a multitude of health care delivery services throughout America to our children, families, the elderly, and persons suffering from various forms of abuse and neglect. The purpose of this center is to support and disseminate information about basic and clinical social work research, and training, with emphasis on service to underserved and rural populations.

While the Federal Government provides funding for various social work research activities through the National Institutes of Health and other Federal agencies, there presently is no coordination or direction of these critical activities and no overall assessment of needs and opportunities for empirical knowledge development. The establishment of a Center for Social Work Research would result in improved behavioral and mental health care outcomes for our Nation's children, families, the elderly, and others.

In order to meet the increasing challenges of bringing cost- effective, research-based, quality health care to all Americans, we must recognize the important contributions of social work researchers to health care delivery and the central role that the Center for Social Work can provide in facilitating their work.

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

Mr. President, on behalf of our Nation's clinical social workers, I am introducing legislation to amend the Public Health Service Act. This legislation would (1) establish a new social work training program, (2) ensure that social work students are eligible for support under the Health Careers Opportunity Program, (3) provide social work schools with eligibility for support under the Minority Centers of Excellence programs, (4) permit schools offering degrees in social work to obtain grants for training projects in geriatrics, and (5) ensure that social work is recognized as a profession under the Public Health Maintenance Organization Act.

Despite the impressive range of services social workers provide to people of this Nation, few Federal programs exist to provide opportunities for social work training in health and mental health care.

Social workers have long provided quality mental health services to our citizens and continue to be at the forefront of establishing innovative programs to serve our disadvantaged populations. I believe it is important to ensure that the special expertise social workers possess continues to be available to the citizens of this Nation. This bill, by providing financial assistance to schools of social work and social work students, acknowledges the long history and critical importance of the services provided by social work professionals. I believe it is time to provide them with the recognition they deserve.

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

Mr. President, I am introducing legislation today to amend Title VII of the Public Health Service Act to establish a psychology post-doctoral program. Psychologists have made a unique contribution in reaching out to the nation's medically underserved populations. Expertise in behavioral science is useful in addressing grave concerns such as violence, addiction, mental illness, adolescent and child behavioral disorders, and family disruption. Establishment of a psychology post-doctoral program could be an effective way to find solutions to these issues.

Similar programs supporting additional, specialized training in traditionally underserved settings have been successful in retaining participants to serve the same populations. For example, mental health professionals who have participated in these specialized federally funded programs have tended not only to meet their repayment obligations, but have continued to work in the public sector or with the underserved.

While a doctorate in psychology provides broad-based knowledge and mastery in a wide variety of clinical skills, specialized post-doctoral fellowship programs help to develop particular diagnostic and treatment skills required to respond effectively to underserved populations. For example, what appears to be poor academic motivation in a child recently relocated from Southeast Asia might actually reflect a cultural value of reserve rather than a disinterest in academic learning. Specialized assessment skills enable the clinician to initiate effective treatment.

Domestic violence poses a significant public health problem and is not just a problem for the criminal justice system. Violence against women results in thousands of hospitalizations a year. Rates of child and spouse abuse in rural areas are particularly high, as are the rates of alcohol abuse and depression in adolescents. A post-doctoral fellowship program in the psychology of the rural populations could be of special benefit in addressing these problems.

Given the demonstrated success and effectiveness of specialized training programs, it is incumbent upon us to encourage participation in post-doctoral fellowships that respond to the needs of the nation's underserved.

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

Mr. President, today I introduce the Clinical Social Workers' Recognition Act to correct a continuing problem in the Federal Employees Compensation Act. This bill will also provide clinical social workers the recognition they deserve as independent providers of quality mental health care services.

Clinical social workers are authorized to independently diagnose and treat mental illnesses through public and private health insurance plans across the nation. However, Title V of the United States Code, does not permit the use of mental health evaluations conducted by clinical social workers for use as evidence in determining workers' compensation claims brought by federal employees. The bill I am introducing corrects this problem.

It is a sad irony that Federal employees may select a clinical social worker through their health plans to provide mental health services, but may not go to this same professional for workers' compensation evaluations. The failure to recognize the validity of evaluations provided by clinical social workers unnecessarily limits federal employees' selection of a provider to conduct the workers' compensation mental health evaluations. Lack of this recognition may well impose an undue burden on federal employees where clinical social workers are the only available providers of mental health care.

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

Mr. President, last Thursday Senator Jeffords and I took some time to thank the members of our committee and many on the outside for cooperation in bringing to the Senate the Water Resources Development Act. This is a very big bill. It is a very significant bill. It involved the cooperation of quite a number of people. I would say every member of our committee has been very cooperative. I talked a little bit about Senator Feingold and the fact he had some objections. He was very good to work with, along with Senator McCain and others.

We finally are at the point now where, after a lot of negotiation, the Senate is considering today S. 728, the Water Resources Development Act of 2006.

As the world's leading maritime and trading nation, the United States relies on an efficient maritime transportation system to maintain its role as a global power. The bill we debate today is the cornerstone of that system.

The Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, sets out the Federal policy of procedure for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain and build our inland and intracoastal waterway system, which carries one-sixth of the Nation's volume of intercity cargo.

In addition, the Corps is responsible for maintaining approximate channel depths in ports along our coasts and the Great Lakes to handle 95 percent of all foreign trade into and out of the country. In fact, more than 67 percent of all consumer goods pass through harbors maintained by the Corps of Engineers. WRDA also authorizes the Corps to work with communities on flood damage reduction and hurricane and storm damage reduction projects designed to protect human life and property.

Inland and intracoastal waterways, which serve States on the Atlantic seaboard, the gulf coast, and the Pacific Northwest, move about 630 million tons of cargo valued at over $70 billion annually. Furthermore, it is estimated that the average transportation cost savings to users of the system is $10.67 per ton, or $7 billion annually over other modes of transportation.

The nearly 12,000 miles of inland and intracoastal waterways include 192 commercially active lock and dam sites. I might add, a lot of people are surprised these are in my State of Oklahoma. Over 50 percent of the locks and dams operated by the Corps are more than 50 years old and consequently are approaching the end of their design life and are in need of modernization or major rehabilitation. This bill authorizes ongoing work to modernize and rehabilitate our inland and intracoastal waterway system.

In the 1800s, the Corps was first called upon to address flood problems along the Mississippi River. Since then, the Corps has continued to provide flood damage reduction along the Mississippi River and in other regions of the country. These efforts range from small local protection to projects such as levees, or nonstructural measures, to major dams. Today, most of the structures are owned by sponsoring cities, towns, and agricultural districts. Although the Corps cannot prevent all damage from floods, the efforts of the Corps do significantly reduce the cost of the flood events.

To illustrate this point, consider that during the 10 years from 1991 to 2000, the decade of the 1990s, the country suffered $45 billion in property damage from floods. If Corps flood damage reduction measures had not been in place, however, that figure would have been more than $208 billion in damage. Clearly, flood control is a wise investment. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the flood control structures on average prevent $22 billion in flood damage each year, a savings of $6 per every $1 spent.

Second, similarly, the Corps also participates in and this bill authorizes hurricane and storm damage reduction projects along our Nation's coast as well as projects to combat shoreline erosion. So we are talking now about three aspects: navigation, the hurricanes, and the erosion problem.

And then the third Corps mission is ecosystems restoration. Working with non-Federal sponsors, the Corps implements single-purpose ecosystems, restoration projects, multipurpose projects with ecosystems restoration components, or projects for flood protection or navigation that incorporate environmental features as good engineering. The Corps has restored, created, and protected over 500,000 acres of wetlands and other habitats between 1988 and 2004. In some cases, existing water resources projects are modified to achieve restoration benefits.

This bill includes authorization of several such projects, including quickly approaching the crisis that, if ignored, would dramatically stunt continued economic growth.

We have to understand right now, with what is happening in this country, the increase in economic activity is what has brought us out of this recession. The deficits people in this Senate like to talk about are being addressed by the fact that, for each additional 1 percent of economic activity, it increases revenues about $45 billion. This bill is going to be very helpful in increasing economic activity.

As one of the most fiscally conservative Members of this Senate, I have long argued that the two most important functions of the Federal Government are to provide for national defense and public infrastructure. A lot of my conservative colleagues are going to be talking about projects and maybe earmarks. That is not in this bill we are talking about. They might be surprised to know that I, with a rating of 100 percent by the American Conservative Union, this year and last year, am proposing this bill, which is a big spending bill, but we are not spending. We are authorizing. We have an orderly procedure to reach those projects which would enjoy the most support.

I say to my conservative friends, I am one who is not for wasteful spending. I have maintained the perfect record in terms of my conservative leanings. In fact, it is exactly what being a fiscal conservative is all about.

The primary purpose of government spending is to provide for the national defense and to provide for critical infrastructure. Think how chaotic the system would be if each individual would build and maintain their own infrastructure system. Society simply would not function. Every first-year political science student learns that the function of the body politic is to provide resources that are used by all. Efficiency and economics require the Government not only plan but construct and maintain public infrastructure. So I am not shy about voting for increased authorization on national defense needs or public infrastructure.

At the same time, we have to spend limited tax dollars wisely, with that in mind, on three major restoration projects in Louisiana, Florida, and the Upper Mississippi River Basin. Unfortunately, as other infrastructure bills, WRDA has been decried in the press perhaps as a pork bill. During the debate in the Senate we may hear from some who will agree with that. It is the popular thing to say. As one of the primary authors of the bill, allow me to explain why this charge, if raised, is not accurate.

First, contrary to public belief, this bill is not just project authorization. It contains also significant policy changes designed to ensure an efficient and effective process for addressing our Nation's water resources needs. Later in this debate, Senators will have an opportunity to consider several amendments on further policy reforms.

The bill does have project authorizations. It is an unfortunate fact of life when infrastructure bills are debated we first have to battle back the charge that all we are doing is funding unneeded projects.

Look at the facts. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers 2005 report cards on America's infrastructure, none of the Nation's primary infrastructure such as roads, airports, drinking water facilities, wastewater management systems, gets above a C, and most receive a D. That is without exception. None. And every project authorization is quickly approaching a crisis that, if ignored, will dramatically stunt continued economic growth. We are at the point now where we need to do something.

With that in mind, the committee established a very firm policy of what types of project requests we would consider. Every project authorization included in this bill is based on a report of the Chief of Engineers verifying that the project is technically feasible, economical, economically justified, and environmentally accepted.

I will talk a little bit about the types of engineering reports that are necessary. We did not include environmental infrastructure projects such as water treatment facilities or riverfront development projects because neither of these are a Corps of Engineers mission. Finally, we did not authorize cost-share waivers on existing or new projects. We have always felt the local community has to have an investment and has to have the support of the State, county, or city in order to come forth with the project.

At the present time, Senator Bond and I will be offering two amendments, one on prioritization of projects, and another establishing a procedure of independent peer review. Both of these issues are important reforms to the program. We agree that Congress needs better analysis so we can more easily compare individual projects, thereby ensuring the most needed projects are addressed in a timely manner. Independent peer review fulfills a critical function to ensure that policymakers are using accurate information to make decisions. Therefore, Senator Bond and I will be offering an amendment to clarify which projects should undergo independent peer review.

Finally, some have expressed a concern about the size of the bill. I understand and appreciate these concerns. However, I point out that it has been 6 years since the last WRDA bill was signed into law. Traditionally, WRDA is done every 2 years. Given the 6-year timelag, what the Senate is being asked to consider represents what would be three WRDAs if we had kept to the 2-year schedule. Given that, I believe the cost is reasonable.

The amount of this bill would be eventually about $7 billion in authorization. However, if we were to follow the pattern set in 2000, for a 2-year bill, it was 5.07, so it is considerably less than if we had been doing it every 2 years as we did in the year 2000.

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with the Army Corps of Engineers program, let me explain. The program does include planning, design, construction, maintenance, and operation of water projects that give improved flood damage reduction, hurricane and storm damage reduction, shore protection, navigation, ecosystems restoration, hydroelectric power, recreation, and other various water resources needed. Virtually all water resources projects are cost shared with a local sponsor. The statutory cost share varies depending on the size of the project. Generally speaking, the local share is about 35 percent; the Federal share is about 65 percent.

Projects generally originate with a request for assistance from a community or local government entity with the water resource need that is beyond its capability to alleviate. A study authority allows the Corps to investigate a problem and determine if there is a Federal interest in proceeding further.

If the Corps has performed a study in the geographic area before this time--in other words, if it has already done it--a new study can be authorized by a resolution of either the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the committee I chair, or the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. If the Corps has not previously investigated the area, the study needs to be authorized by an act of Congress, typically through what we are considering today, a WRDA bill.

Army Corps studies are usually conducted in two stages: the first, called a reconnaissance study, or the recon study, is a general investigation, including an overview of the problem, identification of potential local sponsors--that could be State, tribal, county, or local agencies or governments or nonprofit organizations--and an initial determination of a Federal interest. A recon study is done at full Federal expense and usually costs $100,000 to $200,000 and usually can be completed in about a year.

The second stage is a feasibility study, which is the detailed analysis of alternatives, costs, benefits, and environmental and other impacts. A feasibility study is cost-shared 50-50 with a local sponsor, usually costing upwards of $1 million and takes up to several years to complete.

Congress must provide authorization for the Corps to begin the recon study, but the Corps can move from the recon to feasibility stage without further authorization. Based on the results of the study, the chief of engineers may--this is the significant part--may sign a final recommendation on the project, known as the Chief's Report. Accordingly, the committee has used a favorable Chief's Report as the basis for authorizing projects.

I am going through this process so people will understand this has been thoughtfully considered in each one of these, and the Corps has gone into them and actually come out with a final Chief's Report. I have to say, individuals who sometimes complain about the way the Corps is working might remember in the late 1990s when we had the Everglades Restoration Act. I happen to be the only Member who voted against it. It was 99 to 1, I say to the Presiding Officer. The reason I voted against it is because it did not have a Chief's Report. We have to stay with this system.

Before I yield the floor to my colleagues, I want to point out some other provisions in the managers' substitute amendment that were added to the committee-reported bill. The primary changes were made in response to the devastating hurricanes that hit the gulf coast last year.

We are proposing a new National Levee Safety Program designed after the National Dam Safety Program. The new Levee Safety Program requires that a national inventory be made of all levees and that those levees that protect human life and public safety be inspected. As with the Dam Safety Program, the provision establishes a State grant program to encourage States to establish their own safety program, as

these activities are best handled at the local level.

We also made some changes to language already in the bill to authorize a project for coastal wetlands restoration in Louisiana. These changes are intended to address the two main suggestions for process improvements that the Environment and Public Works Committee heard from a broad range of stakeholders following Hurricane Katrina.

First, we try to do a better job of addressing our water resources needs in a comprehensive, integrated manner, rather than in the traditional stovepipe manner of separate missions areas.

Secondly, the time it takes between identifying a water resources need to completing a solution is significantly longer than it should be. Our substitute amendment addresses the time from identification of need to solution.

So we are going to proceed with this bill. I have a request from a well-respected Senator, but I am going to ask if the Senator could withhold until we have the opening statements done.

Let me say, in closing, I have a special interest in this bill because--a lot of people do not realize it, and I am sure the Chair does because he is aware of these things--my State of Oklahoma is in that way navigable. We have a navigation way that comes all the way to the Port of Catoosa. That is in Tulsa, OK. It was put together by a State authorization in legislation that was passed by my father-in-law, the late Arthur Patrick, in the early 1930s. And you might have heard of the McClellan-Kerr Dam. That is the one that is there. So we have that history, and I have that bias that I bring to this floor with my opening remarks.

With that, let me thank the ranking minority member, Senator Jeffords, who has been so cooperative throughout the development of this legislation.

Mr. President, I thank the minority leader of our committee who has done such a good job.

Let me announce what I would like to do and see if there is any objection. I will not pose this as a UC, but I will mention we have some people who do have to leave. We had announced earlier we would go straight to the Boxer amendment. I am in support of the Boxer amendment, and that is not going to take a long time. However, she has graciously agreed to let the Senator from Michigan go in advance of her for 10 minutes.

The question I would like to ask the Senator from Michigan is, would it be permissible, and not counted against the time of the Senator from California, if Senator Santorum went for 3 minutes prior to you? This is at the conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Missouri. Would that be all right? It would put you off only 3 minutes.

How much time?

After the conclusion of his remarks---

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Missouri be first recognized for 15 to 18 minutes, immediately followed by Senator Santorum for not to exceed 4 minutes, and then Senator Stabenow for not to exceed 10 minutes. And then we will proceed on to the Boxer amendment.

For whatever time she wants to use.

Mr. President, in my opening statement, I talked about the rather difficult process we go through in this WRDA process and the Corps of Engineers starting off with a reconnaissance or a recon setting and then going to a feasibility study. I would like to say the project, as discussed by the Senator from California, has already gone through all this. It has already been authorized twice. So I join her in wanting to get this done.

I would like to make the comment, though, that at the conclusion of this voice vote, I think we are going to be going to the Specter amendment. It is the intention of the chairman, anyway, to go ahead and have that as a recorded vote this evening.

I support the Boxer amendment.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, at this time I will not give my full statement in opposition. I will say I would like, at this point, to have printed in the Record a couple of letters, one from the Transportation Institute and the other from the Seafarers International Union of North America, AFL-CIO, both saying essentially the same thing; that is, $165 million has been spent for

hoppers to be able to have modern dredges work in the same areas. The capacity is there to bring the McFarland up to date. It would be, according to the Corps of Engineers, a cost of about $20 million. For all these reasons, they oppose it.

I ask unanimous consent that these two letters be printed in the Record.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Could I interrupt just for a moment? I would like at this point to yield a few minutes, whatever time is necessary off of our time, to the Senator from Missouri who has another committee hearing and would like to take his time now. Would that be acceptable?

Mr. President, it doesn't need the $20 million to bring it up to standard for it to compete. The Corps of Engineers has stated that its operational costs are almost double that of the private sector dredging that has been taking place. This has been agreed to by the Seafarers International Union of North America. So it is the Corps of Engineers that is making that assertion, and it is agreed to by both the Seafarers International Union and the Transportation Institute.

Mr. President, let me comment.

I was asked the question by the Senator from Pennsylvania as to clarification on this Army Corps of Engineers report. It was the Energy and Water appropriations that made a request of the Corps of Engineers on June 3, 2005. The Corps report states:

From the above discussion, the most reasonable option would

be to retire the McFarland.

It goes on to state:

It is expected that sufficient industry hopper dredging

capability exists to perform the requirements that may occur

on the Delaware River.

Finally, it states:

McFarland would have to be rehabilitated and repowered at

the cost of approximately $20 million.

It says that on page 22 of the report.

I will go ahead.

I ask the Senator from Delaware to take his time and I will elaborate a little bit more on this on my time.

Mr. President, I know no Senator on this floor would misrepresent the facts in a case like this. We have an opportunity with an agreed-to provision of our bill, which I thought we all agreed to, that we are able to save a lot of money and finally put this thing to rest.

Every year we go through this same exercise. Everyone wants to keep this old relic called the McFarland. I cannot figure out for the life of me why they want to do it other than the fact maybe this is some kind of an emotional institution that exists that we want to hold on to. If that is the case, maybe we should let the Historical Society have that and they can see what dredging used to be like in the old days.

The McFarland is the oldest and most expensive hopper dredge owned and operated by the Corps. The Corps did a study in the hopper fleet and concluded that the McFarland should be retired. The WRDA bill does that. The pending amendment would prevent the retirement of the McFarland.

The Corps found the McFarland operates at almost double the daily cost of a private-sector dredge, and there is sufficient private dredge capacity to cover the work of the McFarland.

Proponents of keeping the McFarland in service argue that it is necessary for two main reasons. No. 1, to keep the Delaware River free from navigational hazards and to be ready for emergency dredging. Both are incorrect.

The Corps found they have more than enough capacity to handle dredge for

the Delaware River. Private dredges currently do over 80 percent of the dredging in the McFarland service area and still have idle capacity. The McFarland is the wrong type of dredge for much of the work on the Delaware.

The Corps and private industry have an agreement whereby the Corps can pull any private dredge off of any Corps project to send to an emergency. Since this agreement, the McFarland has not done any emergency work on the Delaware. Not only is the McFarland dramatically more expensive to operate than the private dredges, its age necessitates a rehabilitation that would cost over $20 million to remain in service. Even after updating, it would still be far more expensive to operate than those private dredges.

Since 1978, Corps policy has been to use industry first. This policy has been very successful. We need to retire this inefficient dredge. It will save the taxpayers a lot of dollars and get the Government out of the business of competing with the private sector.

I retain the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I have listened to these arguments. We keep going back and refuting the arguments. We have it documented. There is no question about that.

As far as the national security ramifications are concerned, I tell my good friend from Pennsylvania I have served for 20 years either on the House or the Senate Committee on Armed Services and I have watched these things very carefully.

The Senator has mentioned San Diego and San Francisco, all these areas for national security purposes.

I suggest to my good friend from Pennsylvania that these do not use the Corps dredges. They use private-sector dredges in these areas, in all of them you mentioned.

Again, going back to the arguments, as I quoted from institutions such as the Transportation Institute and the Seafarers International Union of North America, AFL-CIO, they all say the same thing, which I could repeat as many times as we need to tonight--and I have quite a bit of time left, so I guess I could do it several times--that it would take $20 million or so to refurbish this thing, to get it so it can operate.

The report that was quoted by the Senator from Pennsylvania of the American Bureau of Shipping, that was, as I understand it, only referring to the hull, that the hull has some problems and that the hull is not cracked. So again, I just repeat these arguments, as I have done before.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that his time has expired. Is that correct?

Mr. President, I will just take a couple minutes.

Let me say, if the argument is that it is the industry influencing these reports, I think it is rather strange that the Seafarers International Union of North America, the AFL-CIO, are the ones that agree with this report and strongly recommend that we vote against this amendment to keep us from retiring this--as I referred to several times--this relic.

Now, the Senator has a couple of arguments I had not responded to. One was he states that it went down and performed some type of a function in Katrina. It is my information they took it down to Katrina, but it would not work, so they used it as an office.

As far as the ``flimsy'' report is concerned, I do not think I have actually

read from the report, but this says this is in response to the Energy and Water appropriations bill. They requested the Corps of Engineers to clear this up so once and for all we can get rid of this relic. This was June 3 of 2005. They said, reading from that report:

[I]t is expected that sufficient industry hopper dredge

capability exists to perform the requirements. . . .

It further says:

Even if the scheduled work for the McFarland were

maximized, the reduction in daily rate would still be almost

double the daily rate of a comparable industry hopper dredge.

. . .the McFarland is the oldest dredge in the fleet, and

operates at a daily rate that substantially exceeds

comparable industry medium class hopper dredges. If the

McFarland were to be kept in the Minimum Fleet it would have

to be rehabilitated and repowered at a cost of approximately

$20 million.

So what you are saying is, you want to spend public funds of $20 million more to get something to compete with the private sector, that costs twice as much to operate as the private sector. I think this is absurd. I think we have been trying to do this for a number of years.

Now, we have the labor unions joining other interests in saying that we need to get rid of this thing and start saving money in our dredging. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment by the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. President, it's an honor to join our Democratic Leader and so many of our colleagues in introducing the Affordable Health Care Act.

This legislation states our strong commitment as Democrats to end the crisis in health care that affects every family. It's a down payment on our commitment to quality, affordable health care for every American, and we

will not rest until that goal is achieved.

The worsening crisis in health care is caused by skyrocketing costs, declining insurance coverage, and less security for every family. Businesses--especially small businesses--find it increasingly difficult to provide decent coverage for their employees. Companies struggling with foreign competition are at an every-larger competitive disadvantage because of their constantly rising costs.

Last year, the percentage of the Nation's gross domestic product devoted to health was 15.5%, the highest in our history. Since 2000, annual spending on health care has risen from $1.3 trillion to $1.7 trillion, an increase of almost half a trillion dollars in just four years.

Even worse, insurance premiums have soared by 59 percent during those four years. The cost of insurance for a family has risen by almost $3,000. Last year, the cost of the premiums for family coverage averaged $10,000, and was much higher for many families.

Drug costs are also out of control. According to current data, they rose 47 percent in the first three years of the Bush Administration. Too many patients are cutting the pills their doctors prescribe in half or going without them altogether, because they can't afford the drugs they need to treat or prevent disease.

Even Medicare premiums are out of control. The largest premium increase in Medicare's history went into effect just three weeks ago. Since President Bush took office, Medicare premiums have climbed by 72 percent. Senior citizens, with an average income of $15,000, now have to pay almost $1,000 a year for their Part B premiums under Medicare. The recent report of the Medicare trustees included the stunning revelation that Medicare cost sharing and premiums will soon eat up more than 40 percent of the total Social Security benefit of the typical 85 year old.

As a proportion of Gross Domestic Product spent on health care, America is first in the world by a large margin. We spend 30 percent more than the Swiss who are number two, a third more than the Germans, fifty percent more than the French and the Canadians, and seventy-eight percent more than the Japanese.

These extraordinarily high levels of health spending might be justified if they produced dramatically better health care for the American people. But they don't. Among the world's leading industrialized countries, the United States ranks 22nd in average life expectancy and 25th in infant mortality.

We also face a worsening crisis of the uninsured. Since President Bush took office, the number of uninsured Americans has increased by a shameful million a year. Today, 45 million Americans have no coverage. Between 2001 and 2004, five million jobs offering health insurance were lost.

Even these figures understate the problem. Over a two-year period, 82 million Americans--one out of every three non-elderly Americans--will be uninsured for a significant period of time.

Tragically, eight and a half million children are uninsured and may well be denied the opportunity for a healthy start in life that should be the birthright of every child. Even people who have health insurance today cannot count on it being there for them tomorrow. No American family is more than one pink slip or one employer decision away from being uninsured.

The uninsured are vulnerable not only to unaffordable costs, but to substandard or health care or no care at all. In any given year, one- third of the uninsured go without needed medical care. Two hundred seventy thousand children suffering from asthma never see a doctor. Three hundred fifty thousand children with recurrent earaches never see a doctor. Three hundred fifty thousand children with severe sore throats never see a doctor.

Twenty-seven thousand uninsured women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. They are twice as likely as insured women not to receive medical treatment until their cancer has spread too far, and they are 50 percent more likely to die of the disease.

Thirty-two thousand Americans with heart disease go without life- saving and life-enhancing bypass surgery or angioplasty--because they are uninsured.

The bottom line is that whether the disease is AIDS or mental illness or cancer or heart disease or diabetes, the uninsured are left out and left behind. In hospital and out, young or old, black or brown or white, they receive less care, suffer more, and are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than those who have insurance.

Even for those with insurance, the quality of health care is often needlessly compromised. Recent events cast serious doubt on the FDA's ability to respond promptly when drugs it has approved turn out to have dangerous side effects. By some estimates, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths have resulted.

The lack of coordination in our system results in duplicative, costly, and often counterproductive tests and procedures. The Midwest Business Group on Health estimates that the cost of poor quality care to employers providing health insurance coverage is $2,000 per worker, and it's paid in the form of higher insurance premiums. A recent study found that for many serious illnesses, patients are as likely to receive substandard care as they are to receive care meeting accepted professional standards.

In the face of this massive crisis in health care, the Administration and Congress have been missing in action for too long. The Bush Administration and the Republican leadership in Congress defend the special interests that profit from the status quo and ignore the suffering of the millions of families victimized by their neglect.

Reports suggest in fact that the Administration's new budget will propose to cut Medicaid, which provides health care for more than 50 million of the poorest of the poor. The deficit must be addressed--but it was created by the Administration's tax breaks for the wealthy, and the poor and the sick should not have to bear the burden of reducing it. That's the wrong priority and the wrong values.

The legislation we are offering today will not solve all these problems, but it is a good start, and we are committed to finishing the job.

The Affordable Health Care Act guarantees that every child in America will have quality health care coverage.

It reduces health costs substantially, by making FDA-approved drugs available at the same fair prices available to Canadians and Europeans, rather than the inflated prices charged to U.S. patients.

It takes a giant step toward adoption of modern information technology in health care, which has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of care and dramatically reduce its cost--by as much as $140 billion a year. It also improves quality by giving the FDA additional authority to monitor the safety of approved drugs.

It addresses the special burden faced by small businesses by offering tax credits to reduce the premiums they pay to cover their employees. It also establishes a demonstration program in 25 cities to see if a successful program in Michigan to expand insurance coverage for small businesses can be replicated elsewhere. Finally, our bill includes a sense of the Senate resolution to put Congress firmly on record against destructive cuts in Medicaid.

Affordable health care is a high priority for every family, and it should be an equally high priority for this Congress. We face a crisis, and it is time to act. Senate Democrats are committed to guaranteeing the basic right to health care for all Americans, and when we say ``all'', we mean ``all''.

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

Mr. President, the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress are no friend of America's seniors. In 2003, they enacted legislation to dismantle Medicare, even though Medicare has helped a generation of seniors live their golden years with health and dignity.

Now their target is Social Security. They want to privatize this trusted program for the benefit of Wall Street bankers. They even want to cut benefits for women because--in the Republican view--they live too long. It's time to end these shameful attacks on our senior citizens, restore Medicare and protect Social Security.

I commend the leadership of my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Dayton, and our Democratic Leader, Senator Reid, in introducing this urgently needed legislation today to enable Medicare to keep its promise to the elderly.

Forty years ago, Congress enacted the landmark legislation that established Medicare. We would do well today to remember President Lyndon Johnson's words on signing that historic bill in 1965: ``No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years.''

The ruinous Medicare legislation that the Republican Congress enacted in 2003 breaks that solemn promise.

Before Medicare was created, millions of seniors could obtain health care coverage only at the whim of the insurance industry. If they were too sick or too poor to be profitable to an insurance company, they would be denied health care coverage. Their savings--and their children's savings--were in jeopardy when illness struck. Before Medicare, senior citizens were among the poorest Americans, with almost three in ten living in poverty. Bankruptcies from overwhelming medical bills were common.

Medicare changed all that, and 40 years later, President Bush and the Republican Congress are wrong to try to turn back the clock.

Some of my colleagues attempt to portray Medicare as a failure. But the facts show that it is one of the most successful endeavors the Nation has ever undertaken. In 1963, before Medicare was enacted, almost half of America's seniors were uninsured. Today that number is one in a hundred.

Before Medicare was enacted, Americans turning 65 could expect to live another 14 years. Today, they can expect almost 18 more years.

Seniors understand that Medicare works. They don't want to return to the days when they had to gamble their health, their savings and their lives on risky private insurance.

The 2003 Republican bill was sold to the American people as a way to help seniors with the high cost of prescription drugs, so you might think it does something about the high cost of drugs. But it doesn't.

It not only fails to help Medicare lower the cost of drugs--it actually makes it illegal for Medicare to try. Republicans were so worried about protecting drug company profits that they made it illegal for Medicare to do what

the Veterans Administration does for veterans--negotiate discounts on drug prices. The Bush Administration and the GOP Congress wouldn't dare to prohibit the VA from doing that for the veterans, and they shouldn't do it for senior citizens either.

The discounts on drug prices for veterans are substantial. On average, the price paid by the VA is 45 percent of the retail price, but often, the savings are even more dramatic. The retail price for Mevacor is $4 a pill, but the VA pays only 23 cents. The undiscounted price of Zantac is $1.83, but the VA pays two cents.

Senator Dayton's legislation abolishes the unconscionable provision that bars Medicare from negotiating discounts on drug prices for America's seniors. That's not price control--it's common sense.

Republicans also claim that their new drug benefit is ``voluntary.'' Not exactly. If seniors don't sign up the first year, they have to pay more and more to join in subsequent years. When they need the coverage, they may not be able to afford it.

Senator Dayton's legislation reverses this flagrant system of fines and makes the Medicare drug program truly voluntary. When Congress enacts it, seniors will be able to sign up for the drug program without facing ruinous fines.

Good prescription drug coverage for senior citizens is a priority for Democrats. For the Administration and the Republicans in Congress, however, tax cuts for billionaires are more important than health care for senior citizens.

In addition, the 2003 Medicare law leaves too many elderly citizens with unaffordable costs. Seniors with moderate incomes and high drug expenses still face high drug costs. The benefits under the GOP law-- with its $250 deductible, 25 percent cost-sharing, an out-of-pocket limit of $3,600 on costs, but continued co-payment obligations even after the limit is reached--are far less generous than those enjoyed by most younger Americans, even though the elderly's need for prescription drugs is much greater.

Senior citizens with an income of $15,000 and drug expenses of $4,000 would have to pay more than $2,900, including premiums, out of their own pocket. That's too heavy a burden.

If they fall into the so-called doughnut hole, their situation is much worse. Under the 2003 law, the government makes no contribution to any drug costs between $2,250 in expenditures and $5,100 in expenditures. Patients who need $5,200 worth of prescriptions could be forced to pay $2,850 in drug expenses without any help at all from Medicare. That's too much for an elderly person to pay and still meet other essential medical needs, pay the rent or mortgage, and buy food and other necessities of life.

Senator Dayton's proposal begins to fill in that doughnut hole by not allowing the cap on total out of pocket expenditures to rise year after year, as it does under the GOP act. Under Senator Dayton's proposal, seniors will have the certainty of knowing where that limit is from one year to the next. As drug expenses rise, more seniors will gain the benefit of the assistance from Medicare at these high spending levels, and ultimately, the doughnut hole will close.

The Republican Medicare law is a raw deal for seniors, but it's a bonanza for the drug industry and the insurance industry.

It gives massive subsidies to HMOs. Most Americans probably think it's the job of insurance companies to guarantee the health of their beneficiaries, but according to the Republican view that's wrong. They make America's seniors guarantee the health and wealth of HMOs.

The government already pays private insurance plans 104 percent of what it costs Medicare to provide seniors with the same health care. Republicans claim to be in favor of competition, but the playing field is tilted toward HMOs, and their 2003 Act tilted it further. You might think HMOs need that overpayment because they serve sicker or needier beneficiaries. Not true. Enrollees in private plans are actually healthier than those in Medicare, resulting in a further bonus of 8.7 percent to the private plans.

Senator Dayton's legislation requires realistic risk adjustment for private plans that provide services to seniors under Medicare. It removes the artificial calculations that inflate payments to HMOs and other private insurance carriers.

Another problem with the 2003 Act is that if the subsidies don't provide enough profits, the Republican bill provides cash handouts for the insurance industry. If an HMO doesn't think it can make enough money in some area of the country, the Bush Administration can simply ladle out the cash--up to $12 billion a year--until the bribe is high enough to get the company to participate.

Senator Dayton's legislation reverses this outrageous giveaway and ensures that the dollars devoted to this slush fund are used instead to provide better health care for seniors.

The Republican law stacks the deck against seniors in other ways. It allows a region to be served by only one prescription drug plan, along with a PPO. That gives the drug plan a monopoly in that region for seniors who want to remain in Medicare. If the only available drug plan is tailored to the healthiest and youngest seniors, it might be acceptable for a senior whose prescription needs are limited. But it gives no help to seniors who take medications for multiple chronic conditions every day. Seniors have no real recourse if they can't afford the monopoly drug plan. The only way they can get prescription drug coverage is to enroll in the PPO.

Senator Dayton's legislation provides an effective guarantee that seniors who wish to remain in traditional Medicare will have a genuine choice of prescription-only plans. If a choice between at least two private drug-only plans is not available in any region, the Federal Government will provide a plan. This proposal ensures that any senior who wishes to remain in Medicare will have access to high-quality affordable prescription drug coverage.

The Republican Medicare law also dealt a harsh blow to the employer plans that millions of retirees depend on. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that almost three million retirees will lose their current drug coverage, because employers will drop the coverage when retirees become eligible for the new federal benefit, which is not as comprehensive.

Democrats fought to include provisions in that flawed legislation to help employers maintain the good coverage that so many Americans depend on to meet their needs in retirement. Sadly, some employers could abuse these subsidies by failing to use them to assist their employees--and the Bush Administration is letting them get away with it. Toothless enforcement and weak regulation allow some unscrupulous employers to pocket the subsidy and weaken the coverage.

Senator Dayton's legislation will put an end to this scandalous practice by requiring employers to account for the funds they receive in subsidies. No longer will employers be able to hide that they are accepting subsidies to maintain retiree health coverage and still cut back the coverage. The Dayton bill also requires new research on ways to help employers maintain retiree coverage.

One of the most troubling aspects of the 2003 Act is that it victimizes six million senior citizens and disabled people on Medicaid--the poorest of the poor. Their out-of-pocket payments for drugs will be raised, even though they do not even have coverage for the drugs they need the most.

Today, under Federal law, people with drug coverage under Medicaid may be charged only nominal amounts for the drugs they need. The vast majority of states charge nothing.

For every other Medicare benefit, Medicaid wraps around Medicare coverage and picks up the out-of-pocket costs that Medicare does not pay. Not under this legislation. States are prohibited from wrapping around the Medicare benefits with their Medicaid program. Instead, a uniform Federal co-payment is imposed. It is indexed, so that it increases every year. If low income seniors need a drug that is not in the insurance company formulary, they have to go through a burdensome appeals process. Most will simply go without the drug they need.

The people we are talking about are truly the poorest of the poor. In most cases, their incomes are well below poverty. And the impact of even small

co-payments is devastating. Study after study finds that when the poor have to pay more for drugs, they end up hospitalized, in nursing homes, or dead.

Senator Dayton's legislation reverses this cruel provision and allows States to delay implementing the requirement that the new Medicare provisions must immediately supplant State Medicaid programs for the poorest of the poor.

Congress should be helping seniors with the burden of high drug costs, not allowing a right wing agenda to destroy the guarantee of affordable health care that America's seniors deserve and expect.

That's why Senator Dayton and Senator Reid have introduced this needed legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I'm honored to join my friend and colleague, Senator Kerry, in introducing this legislation to guarantee affordable health insurance for every child. We made a good start toward this goal in the 1990s, by enacting the Children's Health Insurance Program to cover more low-income children. Now it is time to finish the job.

Twelve million Americans who are twenty-one years old or younger have no health insurance today. Seven million are already eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, but five million are not eligible for these current programs.

Every uninsured child represents a national failure. Every uninsured child is at risk for losing the healthy start in life that should be birthright of every American. Every uninsured child is a potential source of heartbreak for parents and other loved ones. Every uninsured child is an American tragedy waiting to happen.

This year, three hundred eighty thousand children suffering from asthma will never see a doctor. Five hundred thousand children with recurrent earaches will never see a doctor. Five hundred thousand children with severe sore throats will never see a doctor.

Uninsured children pay for their lack of coverage in human suffering, unnecessary disability, and even death, and our society pays too. Sick children cannot learn. Every child whose education is limited or whose future potential is lost because of avoidable illness is a loss to America, because America's children are America's future.

The legislation we are introducing today will guarantee coverage for every child twenty-one years of age or younger. It makes health insurance affordable for every family, but it also asks families to share the responsibility of covering their children, when they are able to do so.

The bill expands Medicaid and CHIP up to 300 percent of poverty. Families of moderate means will be able to obtain subsidized coverage for their children. Families with incomes above 300 percent of poverty will be able to buy into Medicaid or CHIP for their children, and they will be guaranteed that the cost will not exceed 5 percent of their family income.

The bill also lifts the cap on CHIP funding that has caused some States to limit enrollment. It assists States financially by shifting current State spending for children under 100 percent of poverty to the Federal government. It requires all States to adopt the proven methods that encourage families to enroll and stay enrolled--methods such as presumptive eligibility, the ability to apply on-line or by telephone for the coverage, and coverage for at least twelve months without eligibility redeterminations.

This legislation is vitally important to all children. It is a pledge that they will have access to good health care without regard to their family's wealth. It is a commitment to a healthy start in life for every child.

As important as those objectives are, the significance of this legislation goes beyond coverage of all children. It is a major step toward the day when the basic right to health care will be a reality for every American, whatever their age or income. We will not rest until that goal is achieved, and I commend Senator Kerry for leading this essential effort.

Mr. President, I am, regretfully, limited by having to be at a markup in a subcommittee I chair, and I will limit my remarks to about 15 to 18 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I particularly thank our leader, Senator Frist, and the minority leader, Senator Reid, for bringing WRDA to the floor. This is a long and arduous process, and we are grateful they were able to bring together this tremendously important bill.

I pay special thanks to the chairman of the committee, Senator Inhofe, and his staff, and the ranking member, Senator Jeffords, and his staff. This has been a truly bipartisan process--a lot longer process than we intended because this was supposed to have been the 2002 WRDA bill. Nevertheless, we have the much needed Water Resources Development Act before us, authorizing projects under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

These projects are of tremendous value to the entire Nation. They provide drinking water, electric power production, river transportation, recreation, flood protection, environmental protection and restoration, and emergency response.

Few agencies in the Federal Government touch as many citizens as the Corps does. The Corps provides one-quarter of our Nation's total hydropower output, operates 463 lake recreation areas, moves 630 million tons of cargo valued at over $73 billion annually through our inland system, manages over 12 million acres of land and

water, provides 3 trillion gallons of water for use by local communities and businesses, and has prevented an estimated $706 billion in flood damage within the past 25 years with an investment of less than one-seventh that value.

During the 1993 flood, which we experienced in Missouri with great devastation, an estimated $19.1 billion in flood damage was prevented by flood control facilities in place at the time.

WRDA, as I indicated, is a bipartisan bill, traditionally produced by Congress every 2 years, making possible America's major flood control projects, coastal protection, environmental protection and restoration, transportation, and recreation on our major waterways.

Despite its importance, we have not passed a bill since 2000. The longer we wait, the more unmet needs pile up and the more complicated the demands upon the bill become, making it harder and harder to win approval.

The public voice is loud, clear, and spoken often regarding how they feel about the need for our long-overdue and much needed WRDA legislation.

We believe the bill before the Senate is a good one that balances the needs of States for environmental restoration of key waterways and for navigation projects that create economic growth.

The bill before us will create jobs, spur economic development and trade competitiveness, and improve the environment. And it is financially responsible.

To say it is widely supported is an understatement. It passed the EPW Committee by voice vote. Eighty of our colleagues signed a letter to leadership urging floor action--80 out of 100. It is tough for us to get 80 together on anything, but they said: We want this bill. The House cleared it with an overwhelming vote of 406 for it.

Environmental restoration, in the last 20 years, has become a primary Corps mission.

Our water resources perform a variety of functions simultaneously. They can provide transportation and protection from floods and habitats for many species. Similarly, when it comes to Corps projects, navigational and flood control projects can and should be environmentally sound. Environmental restoration can help prevent or minimize flooding during the next major storm, and many other benefits.

The Corps is leading some of the world's largest ecosystem restoration projects. And the commanding feature of this bill is its landmark environmental and ecosystem restoration authorities. More than half of the cost of the bill consists of authorization for environmental restoration projects.

Think of all the major waterways that are important to America--to our environmental heritage, to recreation, and to commerce. This bill affects all of them.

Among the projects in this bill are those that will restore wetlands in the Upper Connecticut River Basin in Vermont and New Hampshire; restore oyster habitat in the Chesapeake Bay; restore fisheries in the Great Lakes; implement an environmental management program for the Rio Grande River; continue restoration of the Everglades; restore areas of coastal Louisiana damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; restore habitat on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois waterways; restore oyster habitat on Long Island Sound.

Flood control is also important. If we have learned anything from Mother Nature in the last 15 years, it is that we frequently need protection from her storms. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are just two of the latest devastating examples.

As I said, the good news is Corps projects had an estimated $706 billion in flood damage within the past 25 years with an investment one-seventh that value. This legislation authorizes flood control projects in California, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Minnesota, Kentucky, South Carolina, Idaho, Washington, and Missouri, to name a few.

While the majority of this legislation is for environmental protection and restoration, a key bipartisan economic initiative included provides transportation efficiency and environmental sustainability on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

As the world becomes more competitive, America must also become more competitive. Between 1970 and 2003, the value of U.S. trade increased 24-fold and 70 percent since 1994. That is an average annual growth of 10.2 percent--nearly double the pace of the GDP growth for the same period. We can expect demand for U.S. exports to continue increasing dramatically over many years.

We have to ask ourselves where the growth in transportation will occur in the next 20 to 50 years to accommodate the growth in demand for commercial shipping. The Department of Transportation suggests that congestion on our roads and rails will double in the next quarter century.

Now, those who drive on the highways know how crowded they are. How would you like to see all of the transportation that we now put on water go on the roads? Ask any farmer who has found difficulty getting rail availability to ship product, commodities, because there is heavy demand. Water transportation is a great untapped capacity.

One medium-sized barge tow carries the freight of 870 trucks. On the road are 2.25 100-car unit trains, 250-car unit trains, and 1 barge carries the equivalent of 15 jumbo hopper cars. Now, how does that translate into the use of energy? We ought to be concerned about energy conservation. Well, the good news is that water transportation conserves fuel and protects the air and environment. How? How far will one gallon of fuel move one ton of freight? If you are going by truck, one gallon of fuel can move a ton of freight 59 miles. If you are going by rail, it can move it 386 miles. But if you are going by water, it can move it 522 miles. That is almost 10-to-1 more efficient than trucks and 1.5 times as efficient as rail. The rail just isn't there. The rail system is overcrowded already.

Over the past 35 years, waterborne commerce on the Upper Mississippi River has more than tripled. The system currently carries 60 percent of our Nation's corn exports and 45 percent of our Nation's soybean exports, and it does so at two-thirds the cost of rail--when rail is available.

In Missouri alone, we ship 34.7 million tons of commodities with a combined value of more than $4 billion. That is not just farm products. It includes coal, petroleum, aggregates, grain, chemicals, iron, steel, minerals, and other commodities, and, yes, the corn, soybean, and wheat that we export overseas.

Our navigable waterways are in environmental and economic decline. Jobs and markets and the availability of habitat for fish and wildlife are at stake. The American Society for Civil Engineers grades navigable waterways infrastructure D- with over 50 percent of the locks ``functionally obsolete'' despite increased demand.

So we have developed a plan that gets the Corps back in the business of building the future, rather than just haggling about predicting the future.

This legislation contains authorization for funding to improve navigation on a number of our major waterways in several States, including Louisiana, Texas, Alaska, Virginia, Delaware, and Maine.

A key piece of the bill modernizes locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. We authorize capacity expansion on locks 20 to 25 on the Mississippi River and Peoria and LaGrange on the Illinois.

New 1,200-foot locks on the Mississippi River will provide equal capacity in the bottleneck region. Upstream from the Keokuk, there is a lock 19 which is 1,200 feet, and below them at St. Louis are locks 26 and 27. They are also 1,200 feet. These 600-foot locks serve as major water roadblocks to transportation of our products to the world markets and inputs to users upstream.

One-half of the cost of the new locks will be paid for by private users who pay into the Inland Waterways Trust Fund. Additional funds will be provided for mitigation and small scale and nonstructural measurements to improve efficiency.

If you are for increased trade, commercial growth, and job creation, you cannot get there without supporting the basic transportation infrastructure, as our chairman has so eloquently pointed out. New efficiency helps give our producers an edge that can make or break opportunities in the international marketplace.

As we look 50 years into the future, we have to ask ourselves a fundamental question: Should we have a system that promotes growth or should we be confined to a transportation straitjacket designed not for 2050 but for 1950 with paddle wheel boats?

We must ask ourselves if dramatic investments should be made to address environmental problems and opportunities that exist on these great waterways?

In both cases, the answer, to me, is simple. Of course we should improve and modernize. The choice is a very important one today as we have a global economy. Our farmers are the most efficient in the world, but transportation costs can knock them out of the world market. We know our competitors are modernizing their water transportation.

Here is a very troubling picture. This is one of our foremost exports right now. You know what they are exporting? Not renewable crops that come from our fields. These are 2 towboats and 30 barges headed for Argentina. Argentina and Brazil and other Latin American countries are taking imports from our water transportation system because they have the waterways to use them and we don't. Do you want to make a one-time sale of the barges or towboats, or do you want to have sales every year on the goods and commodities these can produce?

Seventy years ago, some argued that a transportation system on the Mississippi River was not justified. Congress, fortunately, decided that its role was not to try to predict the future but to shape it and decided to invest in a system despite the naysayers. Over 84 million tons per year later, it is clear that the decision was wise.

The veteran chief economist at USDA testified that transportation efficiency and the ability of farmers to win markets and higher prices are ``fundamentally related.'' He predicts that corn exports over the next 10 years will rise 45 percent, 70 percent of which will travel down the Mississippi River--if the river has the capacity to carry it.

The decision to improve these waterways has not been taken lightly. As has already been pointed out, all decisions and procedures have been documented and coordinated with an interagency Federal Principals Group, independent technical reviews and stakeholders, and have been made available for public review and comment.

The Corps of Engineers spent $70 million completing a study that was anticipated to take 6 years and cost $12 million, but it actually took 14 years to complete. During that period, there have been 35 meetings of the Governors Liaison Committee, 28 meetings on the Economic Coordinating Committee, among the States along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois waterways, 44 meetings of the Navigation and Environmental Coordination Committee; and there have been 3,879 public involvement activities concerning the Upper Mississippi River alone.

Additionally, there have been 130 briefings for special interest groups and 24 newsletters. There have been 6 sets of public meetings in 46 locations, with over 4,000 people in attendance. To say the least, this has been a very long, very transparent, and very representative process.

While we have been studying, our competitors have been building. Given the extraordinary delay so far, and given the reality that large- scale construction takes decades, further delay is no longer an option.

That is why I am pleased to join the bipartisan group of Senators who agree that we must improve the efficiency and the environmental sustainability of our great resources.

The transportation efficiency provisions are supported by a broad- based group of the States, farm groups, shippers, labor, and those who pay taxes into the trust fund for improvements.

Of particular note, I appreciate the strong support from the carpenters, laborers, operating engineers, Iron Workers, Teamsters, the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Group, and the construction and energy and agriculture people.

Also, I mention specifically the good efforts of Senators Talent, Durbin, Obama, Grassley, and Harkin, who have given strong bipartisan support.

For some, the bill is too small; for others, it is too big. It is important to understand the budget implications in the real world. We are contending with difficult budget realities. It is critical to be mindful of those realities as we make investments in the infrastructure that support those who make and grow and buy and sell things so that we can expand our economy, create jobs, and, yes, pay taxes and secure our future.

This is an authorization bill that doesn't spend a single dollar, not one. Like other authorization bills, it makes projects eligible for funding under constraints administered by Congress. The Appropriations Committee and the President will have final say. Those who don't make it won't be funded.

The WRDA process simply allows for projects to be considered during the process of appropriations. I hear some suggest we should not authorize anything new until everything previously authorized has been funded. That is nonsense because it falsely assumes that all projects authorized 5, 10, 15 years ago are higher priority than those we have now. That is not true.

In fact, we have eliminated the authorization for 56 projects totaling over $500 million in savings. The remaining projects will be subject to the appropriations process.

People have talked about Corps reform. I want to make sure we reform it and don't kill it. I agree that we need to be sure every project is authorized, is needed, and is economically justifiable.

The Corps continues to make agency-wide planning improvements that are responsive to stakeholders' needs and responsible to taxpayers.

The Corps includes independent review in all project studies and review by outside independent experts for larger, higher risk and complex projects. Peer review is integrated into project development.

The Corps is developing new tools to examine regional and watershed issues that will allow a broader view of complex water resource issues.

The bill contains provisions that will further improve the reliability of Corps analyses of projects.

Now, there are many--particularly community leaders around the country--who believe there is already too much redtape, delay, cost, and uncertainty. There are those who want less redtape. I strongly agree with them. Others want more redtape. But I think we strike a necessary balance in the bill.

We have embraced a commonsense, bipartisan proposal by Senators Landrieu and Cochran that requires major projects to be subject to independent review.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 more minutes.

Mr. President, the Landrieu-Cochran proposal requires that necessary mitigation for projects be completed at the same time the project is completed or no longer than 1 year afterward. This will impose a cost on communities, particularly smaller ones, but it is not as onerous as regulations proposed 2 years ago which ultimately prevented a final agreement between the House and Senate. For some, the new regulations are too onerous; for others, not enough. As I said, I believe we strike a balance.

This legislation is supported by over 250 organizations representing the environment, agriculture, labor, and chambers of commerce. I ask unanimous consent that the letter from the National Waterways Alliance listing these groups be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, anybody who wants to know if this is broadly based can look at the list of all of these groups. As I said, they include environmental, labor, agriculture, chambers of commerce, construction, energy, local entities. MARC 2000 in my State has been a very strong supporter.

I thank all of these people who support the bill. I thank my colleagues and their staffs for the hard work devoted to this bill and the difficult issues it presents. I particularly thank Chairman Inhofe for his forbearance. I look forward to the debate on this bill and final passage.

I hope my colleagues listen carefully to the debate because we have included significant Corps reform that will achieve all the benefits that legitimate requests for Corps reform entail, but it will not subject the process to unending, wasteful delays and further redtape that sank the bill the last time we tried to send it to the House.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank our chairman and manager of the bill for yielding time. I join him in urging that my colleagues oppose the amendment to strike the provision to decommission the Hopper Dredge McFarland.

As has already been stated, the McFarland is an expensive, 39-year- old hopper dredge which costs $79,000 a day to operate, more than double what a more technologically capable commercial dredge would cost. The McFarland imposes a wasteful expenditure of scarce resources on Corps dredging projects.

The Energy and Water bill will provide money for removing asbestos from the McFarland, another expense we don't need. In addition, it needs between $20 million and $40 million in upgrades to bring its safety and operational efficiency to minimal levels of acceptability in comparison with state-of-the-art private sector dredges.

Since 1978 the dredging industry has developed the capability to perform the majority of the Corps' dredging work.

This came as a result of Public Law 95-269, which directed the Secretary of the Army to dredge by contract, if he determines private industry has the capability to do such work and it can be done at reasonable prices and in a timely manner.

Under the law the Secretary ``shall retain only the minimum federally owned fleet'' to ``carry out emergency and national defense work'' and may set aside ``such amount of work as he determines to be reasonably necessary to keep such fleet fully operational . . . for as long as he determines necessary.''

During the last decade the Corps has successfully followed a ``use industry first'' policy.

Today's facts: industry is more capable; has provided more than reasonable prices; and responds routinely in a timely manner and successfully to emergencies.

All four government dredges, including the ready reserve dredge Wheeler, are fully operational.

The data does not support the continued operation of the 39-year-old McFarland or spending an additional $20-40 million on its modernization. The vision provided by Congress and implemented by the Corps has resulted in a vibrant and competitive marketplace.

As the Corps' November 2005 Hopper Dredge Report to Congress points out, generally, the combined industry/Corps hopper fleet has been able to meet demand.

With the January 2006 launching of the hopper dredge Glenn Edwards, industry has added 18 percent additional hopper capacity to the combined Federal/private hopper dredge fleet.

With a hopper capacity in excess of 13,000 CY, the Glenn Edwards is configured to dredge in all deep draft commercial ports in a highly effective manner. Therefore, ability to meet the Nation's hopper dredging needs has been greatly enhanced since the Corps' Hopper Dredge Report to Congress was released.

Industry by and large does most of its work for the Corps under contract.

Therefore, if an emergency arises and industry dredges are all working, the Corps has the ability to reassign a private dredge working elsewhere under Corps contract to do an emergency dredging job.

Most of the dredging requirements on the Delaware River, particularly in the upper reaches near Philadelphia and Wilmington, can be accomplished through the use of nonhopper dredges. In fact, it is more efficient to dredge with a nonhopper dredge in the case of the McFarland because material must be pumped out of the hopper by private pumping equipment in the upper reaches of the Delaware River.

The Corps hopper dredge Wheeler was placed in ``Ready Reserve'' by the Congress in WRDA in 1996 as insurance that a hopper dredge would be available to respond to urgent and emergency dredging needs in the gulf, on the Mississippi River, and on the east coast.

The Wheeler has actually been used on the east coast to respond to emergencies when a private hopper dredge is not available. Therefore, the Wheeler is working exactly as Congress intended--as insurance for use during emergencies.

We should be looking for ways to make the operation of our major activities more efficient by using private sector facilities where they can be done more reasonably and more effectively rather than spending large amounts of Federal dollars just to keep the dredge in operational capability. Paying a very high charge for it every day when there are better rates available warrants the recommendation in the WRDA bill that we decommission the Hopper Dredge McFarland.

I urge my colleagues not to support the striking motion.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.