Military Family Support Act of 2005

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

No, Mr. President. Senator Kennedy filed an amendment that dealt with the minimum wage. I actually won't send mine to the desk right now, but I would like to comment on that right now.

That is correct. Of course, I am going to ask that he withdraw that amendment and I do not propose my amendment because they don't have to do with the Department of Defense authorization.

The Senator withdraws his request to do that but requests the floor.

Mr. President, I know that some people who are following this debate might be wondering how the minimum wage relates to legislation that authorizes national security programs in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy for the next year, and that is certainly a valid question. The answer is: It doesn't.

The underlying legislation the Senate has been considering for over a week is of tremendous importance to our national security. The bill is bipartisan and was reported out of committee unanimously. As those of us who chair committees know, it isn't easy to obtain unanimous bipartisan support for legislation. Chairman Warner and Ranking Member Levin worked hard to achieve this feat because the subject of the bill is so critically important. Now I believe we owe it to them, as well as to our constituents and every American, to give this national security legislation swift consideration so that it can become law.

The amendment offered by Senator Kennedy has the opposite effect. It will slow this bill down because it is an entirely different subject than the underlying bill. It will take up valuable debate time that should be spent on the bill's national security provisions. Should it be adopted, the Kennedy amendment would become a thorny issue for the conference committee, and that will further slow down the bill's enactment.

Even more frustrating, the issue Senator Kennedy is raising has been considered and voted on by the Senate four times already in this Congress. We voted on the majority and minority plans to raise the minimum wage twice. We voted on the two of them in March, and we voted on them in November. Now, both times, no proposal succeeded.

Amendments offered by the Senate must comply with certain budget rules which, as a member of the Budget Committee, I fully support. Amendments that constitute an unfunded mandate are subject to a point of order which can only be waived with a vote of 60 Senators. Not 1 of the 4 minimum wage amendments has received 60 votes in the Senate this Congress. Yet here we are again, facing the same situation, using up time on the Defense bill. The outcome is likely to be the same as it was the last four times we voted. Knowing this, I find it difficult to understand why those on the other side of the aisle want to bring it up again on this critically important national security bill.

Let us not misuse the time we should be spending debating our national security priorities for the next year by repeating votes that already occurred four times in this Congress. Instead, let's focus on how we should prepare for the many threats we face as a nation. The good men and women who work for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy need our authorization and our guidance to move forward with their activities that keep us safe. We have always done it before we do the appropriations on those budgets. We should not let them down. We should not let the American people down.

I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not to divert this debate on to an entirely unrelated matter, the outcome of which is clearly determinable. So I urge my colleague, Senator Kennedy, to withdraw his amendment. I would add that if he does not, I am plenty willing to have the debate again. We want to have the American public making as much money as possible.

I would rise in opposition to the amendment offered by Senator Kennedy that would increase the Federal minimum wage to $7.25 over 26 months, which amounts to a 41-percent increase. My amendment would raise the minimum wage by $1.10 in two 55-cent steps over 18 months. But, more important than the numbers, only my amendment recognizes the enormous burdens a mandate such as this would place on the backs of America's small businesses.

The Senator from Massachusetts has previously referred to the economic effect of the minimum wage proposal as a drop in the bucket in the national payroll. Comments such as this are

precisely why small business owners across the Nation believe that Washington, DC, politicians do not understand their needs. We must always bear in mind that these are the people who create jobs that provide an increasing percentage of employment for all workers, including those entering the workforce for the first time and those who most need to acquire job skills. Those businesses train people with no skills. We are not talking minimum wage; we are talking minimum skills. And a lot of the small businesses that employ people at a minimum wage hire them at a minimum wage with no skills. As they get skills, which in many of those businesses occur in the first month they are hired, they go above the minimum wage to other levels, and as quickly as they learn other skills, they get paid more money or they go elsewhere, which is another option.

It is particularly offensive to those employers doing that training to suggest that a 41-percent increase in their labor costs amounts to a drop in the bucket. A 41-percent increase in labor costs forces a small businessperson to face difficult choices such as whether to increase prices, which they usually can't do or face a potential loss of customers because they raise the price, or whether to reduce spending on health insurance coverage or other benefits for their employees or, the worst of all possibilities, to terminate employees. These choices are far more significant than a drop in the bucket.

Apart from its failure to mitigate the cost of this mandate for small businesses, Senator Kennedy's amendment also fails to address the root of the problem for our lowest paid workers. Congress, by simply imposing an artificial wage increase, will not meaningfully address the real issue of the lowest paid workers. Regardless of the size of any wage increase Congress might impose, the reality is that yesterday's lowest paid worker, assuming he or she still has any job, will continue to be tomorrow's lowest paid worker as well. There is a spiral effect to these increases when we do them because everybody all up the chain has to have an increase to stay ahead of those with no skills. There are even union agreements that are tied to raises in the minimum wage, which is probably a bigger reason we debate the minimum wage on such a frequent basis around here.

But if everybody gets a raise, something has to happen to cover the cost of that raise. As I mentioned, you either eliminate employees so that you are increasing productivity to handle the same thing or you are raising the price. If you raise the price, you create inflation. If you create inflation, what they were able to buy for minimum wage today they can't afford for tomorrow's minimum wage because the price went up. So a false economy of just demanding by Congress that everybody do this really doesn't affect the economy the way we think it will. The way that you do that is advancement on the job and earned wage growth. Earned wage growth cannot be legislated. We do a disservice to all concerned, most especially the chronic low-wage worker, to suggest that a Federal wage mandate is the answer.

What we need to focus on is not an artificially imposed number but the acquisition and improvement of job and job-related skills. In this context we should recognize that only 68 percent of the students entering the ninth grade 4 years ago--68 percent of the students entering the ninth grade 4 years ago are expected to graduate this year. Do you know what kind of a job you get if you don't graduate from high school? Well, 68 percent of the kids who entered 4 years ago--not all of them--are going to graduate. For minority students this number hovers around 50 percent. In addition, we continue to experience a dropout rate of 11 percent a year. These noncompletion and dropout rates and the poor earning capacity that comes with them cannot be fixed by a Federal minimum wage policy.

I was in a retail store the other day. I noticed some of the skills have deteriorated to the point where the person at the cash register can't figure out the dollars themselves. I remember when cash registers in stores didn't tell you how much change you had to give the person. You had to figure it out, and kids and adults did that. But there are errors with that, so modern machines took up the disadvantage that was caused by that and we now have cash registers that figure the change for you.

But watch out if you ever change the way you give them the money after they figured it on the computer cash register.

Have you ever had a bill for $10.81 and you gave the clerk $11 and then you gave them a penny? That is no skills, if they can't figure out they owe you the 20 cents. No skills. That is what the retailers out there are training people on--basic, rudimentary things for having a job. We don't fix those by legislating.

If we are going to meaningfully address the issue of low-wage workers we have to acknowledge that you do not do that by simply passing a wage law. If that were the case, we could pass a law that made the minimum wage $20 or $50 or $100 an hour. It is just not that simple. In my own State of Wyoming, Governor Freudenthal, a Democrat, this year, in speaking about legislation to raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15, noted that the real question is how do you enable a worker to become more qualified and thereby able to earn a higher wage? He noted:

How do you make the individual more valuable in the

marketplace and demand a higher wage? It's not simply how do

you pass a law.

As I mentioned, the Governor of Wyoming is a Democrat, one who understands the reality of this issue in the workplace and the job market. Low wages may be the effect; low job skills are the cause. Raising the minimum wage does absolutely nothing to enhance job skills for low-wage workers. In fact, to the extent it makes entry into the workforce more difficult, and increases low-skilled unemployment, as a minimum wage hike without economic relief for small business will unquestionably do, it will have precisely the opposite effect.

If we are able to approach this debate in a candid and constructive way, we need to acknowledge certain basic principles of economics. First of all, wages do not cause sales. Sales are needed to produce revenue. And wages don't cause revenue. Revenue drives wages.

Wages can cause productivity, but the productivity has to come first to be able to afford the wages. Wages have to be paid for.

Skills, however, operate differently than wages do. Skills do create sales. Sales do produce revenue. Skills do create productivity. And here is the most important part--skills get compensated with higher wages or else the employee goes somewhere else to get true higher wages to compensate for their increased skills. There is a relationship between skill and how much you make. Dropouts will not make as much as college graduates. Dropouts will not make as much as someone who has been to a technical school. Dropouts will have minimum skills.

Some people who finish school have minimum skills. I know my dad, once, when he was interviewing a person, said the person told him he had 5 years' experience. My dad, after questioning him, said: Unfortunately, he had 1 month of experience 60 times.

Wage increases without increased sales or higher productivity, which are a result of more skills, have to be paid for with higher prices. Higher prices wipe out wage increases. Better skills, not artificial wage increases, produce true net gains in income.

We also need to focus on the goal that the minimum wage should be for all workers and what it is for most, which is a starting point in an individual's lifelong working career if they are not skilled.

Let me say that again. We need to focus on the goal that minimum wage should be for workers who need a starting point in an individual's lifelong working career because they are not skilled. If viewed as a starting point, it is clear the focus needs to be far less on where an individual begins in his or her work career and far more on how an individual can progress--get jobs that have the potential for increase, get jobs that teach skills. They are available.

I always have to mention this. Right now in Wyoming, which is the least populated State in the Nation, we have a huge shortage of workers. There is a huge shortage of workers. Are these good jobs? Yes, they are good jobs.

They are in the coal mines. We ship a third of the Nation's coal out of my county. It is clean coal and it is open-pit mining. We use huge trucks. You could only fit two trucks in this whole room and that would be a pretty tight squeeze. The top of it would probably touch the top of the roof. They are big trucks. We are having trouble getting drivers for the trucks.

The only requirement for being a driver on one of these trucks is to be able to drive and have a clean drug record--be able to pass a drug test. When you drive one of these trucks, once you get up to elevation and get in the driver's chair, there are antivibration seats, power steering, air-conditioned cabs. That great big vehicle is easy to drive.

What do you get paid for driving it? The starting salary is about $60,000, and they train you, provided you have this clean drug record-- $60,000 a year. We are having trouble getting people to come to Wyoming to work for $60,000 a year. So it isn't always minimum wage that drives these things. Skills are important, but you can even get the skills if you look for the jobs that pay well.

They may be nontraditional jobs. We have a lot of women who are driving coal haul trucks. They can do it very capably and probably with fewer accidents than the men.

The truth is, real wage growth happens every day. It is not the function of Government to mandate it. It is the direct result of an individual becoming more skilled and therefore more valuable to his or her employer. As a former small business owner, I know these entry- level jobs are a gateway to the workforce and an opportunity for workers to begin to acquire the skills and experience they need. These entry-level jobs can open the door for better jobs and better lives for low-skilled workers--if we give them the tools they need to succeed.

We have a great example in Cheyenne, WY. Workers entering the job market were given the tools and the opportunity to reach the American dream. We have a man there named Mr. Jack Preiss, and he is the owner of eight McDonald's in Wyoming. We often talk about McDonald's and minimum wage.

I want to tell you he has had three employees who started working at McDonald's at minimum wage who now own a total of 20 McDonald's restaurants. They own them. This type of wage progression and success should be the norm for workers across the country. However, there are a small percentage of workers who have not acquired the necessary work- based skills and for whom stagnation at the lower tier wage is a longer term proposition. The answer for these workers, however, is not to simply raise the lower wage rung. Rather, these individuals have to acquire the training, experience, and skills that will lead to meaningful and lasting wage growth. Our policies ought to be directed at that end.

We have to equip our workers with the skills they need to compete in a technology-driven global economy. It is estimated that 60 percent of tomorrow's jobs will require skills that only 20 percent of today's workers possess.

It is also estimated that graduating students will likely change careers 14 times in their lives. You didn't hear me say change jobs 14 times in their lives. That is easy. I said change careers 14 times in their lives.

Here is the important part of that statistic. The world is changing so fast that 10 of those jobs don't even exist today. They are going to have 14 career changes, 10 of which are for jobs that don't even exist today. We have to do a better job of educating and training our youth to be able to take the kind of jobs we are going to have.

We need a system in place that can support a lifetime of education, training, and retraining of our workers. The end result will be the attainment of skills that will provide meaningful wage growth. As legislators, our efforts are better focused on ensuring that the tools and opportunities for training and enhancing skills over a worker's lifetime are available and fully utilized--more available and fully utilized than we are in imposing an artificial wage increase that fails to address the real issues and in the process does more harm than good. Skills and experience, not an artificial wage hike, will lead to lasting wage security for American workers.

As chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, one of my priorities is reauthorizing and improving the Nation's job training system that was created by the Workforce Investment Act. This law would help provide American workers with the skills they will need, new skills to compete in a global economy. Those are ones that will lead to real, not artificial wage increases.

Last Congress--this is 3 years ago--I was denied the appointment of a conference committee to resolve the differences with the House on this important bill by some of the very people who are proposing this minimum wage increase. This Congress, this important bill has faced the same obstruction. In November of last year we reported this legislation out of the HELP Committee by unanimous voice vote. Yet it continues to languish, unavailable for debate on the floor of this Congress, with no progress being made and little hope for action in this Congress if such obstruction continues. This bill would train an estimated 900,000 people a year to higher skilled jobs--900,000 people a year could be on a better career path, could have more skills. That would be a real improvement for chronic low-wage workers.

It makes little sense to me that some of the same people who denied the opportunity in the last Congress to enact real improvement now think a redetermination of the lowest wage will magically change everyone's life. If we truly want to change and improve the lives of our lowest paid workers, we must pass the Workforce Investment Act.

Let's be clear about what a minimum wage hike will and will not do. First, we must realize that large increases in the minimum wage will hurt low-income, low-skilled individuals. Mandated hikes in the minimum wage do not cure poverty, and they clearly do not create jobs. The Congressional Budget Office has said:

Most economists would agree that an increase in the minimum

wage rate would cause firms to employ fewer low-wage workers

or employ them for fewer hours.

That is a CBO estimate from October 18, 1999.

What every student who has ever taken an economics course knows is that if you increase the cost of something--in this case a minimum wage job--you decrease the demand for those jobs. Misleading political rhetoric cannot change the basic principle of supply and demand. The majority of economists continue to affirm the job-killing nature of the mandated wage increases. A recent poll concluded that 77 percent or nearly 17,000 economists believe that a minimum wage hike causes job loss.

It is kind of a spiral that we get into.

We simply cannot assume that a business that employs 50 minimum wage workers before the wage increase is enacted will still employ 50 minimum wage workers, whether the business is in Washington, Wyoming, or Massachusetts. Employers can't absorb an increase in their cost without a corresponding decrease in the number of jobs or benefits they can provide workers. We know there are losers when we raise the minimum wage. But who are the individuals who will benefit?

Minimum wage earners who support a family solely based on the wage are actually pretty few and far between. Fully 85 percent of the minimum wage earners live with their parents, have a working spouse, or are living alone without children.

Of the minimum wage earners, 41 percent live with a parent or relative, 23 percent are single or the sole breadwinner of the household with no children, and 21 percent live with another wage earner.

All are low-skilled workers or brandnew employees. In a shoe store you might have the lowest-skilled people unpacking the shoes. By the time they can check inventory and correctly put it on the shelf so they can find the size when the customers come in, they get a raise. If they can actually wait on a customer--that is kind of the goal in most businesses, to be able to wait on a customer--that is another level of wage increase. The better they do waiting on customers--which is the important part in the business--the more they get paid.

Research shows that the poor targeting and other unintended consequences of the minimum wage make

it a terribly ineffective approach to reducing poverty in America--the intended purpose of the policy. In fact, two Stanford University economists concluded that a minimum wage increase is paid for by higher prices that hurt poor families the most.

A 2001 study conducted by Stanford University economists found that only one in four of the poorest 20 percent of families would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. The way to truly improve the wages and salaries of these American workers is through education and training--not an artificial wage increase.

With these realities in mind, I will offer an amendment, unless Senator Kennedy wishes to withdraw his amendment. We can go on with the Defense debate. There must be serious discussion on that possibility. So I will allow that to go on and make a few more comments.

But I am considering offering an amendment that recognizes the true cost of the minimum wage increase on American workers and businesses, and particularly small businesses.

My amendment includes a minimum wage increase of $1.10, and it also addresses other needs for reform and the needs of small businesses that create the most jobs in this country. Therefore, my amendment is protective of economic growth and job creation.

Let me turn to a brief review of the provisions that would be contained in my amendment. In doing so, we must bear in mind that small businesses continue to be the engine that drives our economy and the greatest single source of job creation. Any wage increase imposed on small businesses poses difficulties for that business owner and, more importantly, for his or her employees.

My amendment recognizes this reality and provides a necessary measure of relief for these small business employers.

My amendment would make the following changes that are critical, particularly for small business. The first one is updating the small business exemption.

Having owned a small business in Wyoming, I can speak from personal experience about how difficult any minimum wage increase is for small businesses at the low end of the scale level and job growth.

Small businesses generate 70 percent of new jobs. Since the negative impact of a minimum wage increase will affect small businesses most directly, we have proposed addressing the small business threshold which is set under current law at $.5 million. If the original small business threshold enacted in the 1960s--that is when we came up with this arbitrary number, in the 1960s--if it were to be adjusted for inflation, it would amount to over $.5 million.

The small business threshold was last adjusted 15 years ago. In those ensuing years since the national minimum wage rate has been hiked, the economy has undergone a dramatic change, and the way work is done in this country has changed forever.

The pending amendment raises that threshold for small business determination to $1 million to reflect these changes.

My amendment also incorporates bipartisan technical corrections that were originally proposed in 1990 by then Small Business Committee Chairman Dale Bumpers, Democrat from Arkansas, and cosponsored over the years by Senator Reid, now the Democratic leader, Senator Harkin, Senator Pryor, Senator Mikulski, Senator Baucus, Senator Kohl, and others. Those Senators can attest to the Department of Labor's disregard of the will of Congress and interpreted the existing small business threshold to have little or no meaning. The Labor Department would make a Federal case out of the most trivial paperwork infraction by the smallest small business because of what it interpreted as a loophole in the law.

Some would say that the 1989 bill to hike the minimum wage and the small business threshold was inartfully drafted and permitted this result. Others say the Department is misreading the clear language of the statute.

Regardless, the fact is that a threshold enacted by Congress is not providing the balance and fairness that was intended. This amendment corrects the problem by stating clearly that the wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act apply to employees working for enterprises engaged in commerce or engaged in the production of goods for commerce. My amendment also applies those wage and hour worker safeguards to home-work situations.

Second, ensuring procedural fairness for small business: This next provision is just common sense and good government legislation.

Surely, we can all agree that small business owners--the individuals who do the most to drive our economy forward--deserve a break the first time they make an honest paperwork mistake when no one is hurt and the mistake was corrected.

Let me say that again.

Surely, we can all agree that small business owners-- the individuals who do the most to drive our economy forward--deserve a break the first time they make an honest paperwork mistake where no one is hurt and the mistake is corrected.

Small business owners told me over and over again how hard they try to comply with all the rules and regulations imposed on them, mostly by the Federal Government. As a former owner of small business myself, I know what they mean. Yes, for all that work, a government inspector can fine a small business owner for paperwork violations alone, even if the business has a completely spotless record and the employer immediately corrects the unintentional mistake. Even the best intentioned employer can get caught in the myriad of burdensome paperwork requirements imposed on them by the Federal Government. And I will even go so far as to say a lot of times the paperwork isn't clear, because I have filled out a lot of those documents.

To comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act, sometimes we use something for insurance that deals with health, and the questions can't be the same.

So there are a lot of possibilities unless you follow the manual very closely. And small businesses don't have time to do that because they are trying to make a living for themselves and their employees.

There are a lot of opportunities out there which the Federal Government gives them to make paperwork mistakes that really don't affect anybody. But if we have enough people working in the Federal bureaucracy to check and see if all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted, we can find some mistakes, particularly if that person only has to concentrate on one document. The small business owner has dozens that he has to comply with.

The owners of small businesses are not asking to be excused from any obligations or regulations, but they feel they deserve a break if they previously complied perfectly with the law. Small business men and women who are first-time violators of paperwork reduction deserve some protection.

The third part of the bill would provide regulatory relief for small businesses.

As any increase in the minimum wage places burdens on small employers, it is only fair to simultaneously address the ongoing problem of agencies not fully complying with the congressional directive contained in the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Act.

That is a mouthful.

Under the law, agencies are required to publish small entity compliance guidelines for those rules that require a regulatory flexibility analysis. Unfortunately, agencies have either ignored this requirement or when they tried to comply have not done so fully or carefully.

My amendment does this by including specific provisions that the Government Accountability Office has suggested to improve the clarity of the requirement.

The fourth thing it would do is remove the barriers to flexible time arrangements.

My amendment includes legislation that could have a monumental impact on the lives of thousands of working men and women and families in America.

This legislation would give employees greater flexibility in meeting and balancing the demands of their work and family.

We came up with an idea like this, and it is real important to pay attention to it. We stole it from the Federal

Government. The Federal Government imposes this on agencies. The Federal Government says you are going to give the employees flexibility.

The first time I ever heard of this was in Wyoming. Some people in Wyoming are married to people that work for the government, probably not nearly as strange as out here. Out here, I think a lot of people who work in government are married to people who work in government. But out there, a lot of people who are working in government are married to people who aren't working in government.

We give this benefit to government employees--being able to have a little flex in their time. But we prohibit it in the private sector. We say you cannot do this even though we let the government folks do this. There, it would be a bad idea for your employees. We don't want you to have any flexibility. We know both the Federal employee and the private employee would like to watch their kids play soccer. The private employee better have his soccer schedule done so he doesn't need any flextime. But the government worker ought to be able to take it whenever they feel like it and trade it around.

We give the Federal Government the kind of flex I am talking about in this bill. Particularly in a family where the private employee is married to a government employee, they do not understand why they cannot have the same right as the government employee. They can bank a few hours and have a little longer weekend the next weekend, all in the same pay period. Their spouse can do it. They can have a little longer weekend. They can go use the boat over the longer weekend, but for the one that works for private industry it would be illegal. You cannot do that.

Just try and explain that to a family. That is how I first found out about this problem. I had a mother who wanted to be able to do the same thing as her husband. Her husband worked for the State government. He could do it. He could bank hours. But if it is a private sector, no, that would be stealing overtime from people. Why would it be stealing overtime in the private sector when it is not stealing overtime in the government sector? I don't understand that.

You will hear more, if we debate these things, and if we decide we are going to impose it on the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy authorization. If we decide we are going to impose that, comments will be on this flextime provision. Most of it will be on this because it is kind of a red herring that you can throw up and say, We do not trust business. Yes, we trust government but we don't trust business. You will hear that as the main part of this debate.

That is why I have spent a little time concentrating on it here.

This legislation would give employees in the private sector flexibility like in the government sector in meeting and balancing the demands of work and family.

Whatever we do, remember that part--only asking for private business what we give to government employees. Let me give some of the latest statistics: 70 percent of employees do not think there is a healthy balance between their work and their personal life; 70 percent of employees say family is their most important priority.

The family time provision in my amendment addresses these concerns head on. It gives employees the option of flexing their schedule over a 2-week period. In other words, employees would have 10 flexible hours they can work in 1 week in order to have 10 hours off in the next week.

Flexible work arrangements have been available in the Federal Government for over two decades. Have we had any arguments about them? No, they have been a great idea. They have been accepted and desired and used. But don't let the private sector have that. Because it works in one place doesn't mean it might work in another place. Let's continue to discriminate against private business. That is what we are saying when we do not allow the flextime.

This program has been so successful that in 1994 President Clinton issued an Executive order extending it to parts of the Federal Government that had not yet benefited from the program. President Clinton said:

[The] broad use of flexible arrangements to enable Federal

employees to better balance their work and family

responsibilities can increase employee effectiveness and job

satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism.

It would allow the Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities--that sounds good to me--and it can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. That sounds pretty good, too.

Let's see now. We tried it for over two decades and decided to extend it to all Federal Government, so it has to be a good idea. Would we pass on a bad idea to the Federal Government? Would they stand for it if we did? No. So why can't we give it to the private sector? Why do we say: Private sector, you are just not as good as Government employees. You do not deserve the same breaks we give Government employees.

As I mentioned, this will be the bulk of the debate on this particular issue, the flextime part. It could have been a lot more inclusive. Actually, the Federal Government gets to do more than what I have stated, but we are definitely not going to allow that. We are putting this down to a very small minimum to see if we can get any movement on it at all.

As I said, we have voted on this before, and the answer is, Heck, no, we will not give the private sector that kind of a privilege. We don't care what the Federal Government gets to do, you can't treat the private sector decently. No, they didn't say that, I said that.

I could not agree more with what President Clinton said when he did his Executive order. I am saying now we need to extend this same privilege to the private sector workers. It would allow employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities, it can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction, while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. That was President Clinton talking about this kind of provision for the public sector. I am saying, if it is that great, we ought to do it for the private sector, too.

We know this legislation is not a total solution. We know there are many other provisions under the 65-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act that need our attention, but the flexible time provision is an important part of the solution. It gives employees a choice, the same choice Federal workers have.

The fifth part of this would extend the restaurant employee tip credit. A major employer of entry-level workers is the fast food service industry. Another part of it is the regular food service industry. The regular food service industry relies on what is known as the tip credit, which allows an employer to apply a portion of an employee's tip income against the employer's obligation to pay the minimum wage.

Currently, Federal law requires a cash wage of at least $2.13 an hour for tipped employees and allows an employer to take a tip credit of up to $3.02 of the current minimum wage. To protect tipped employees, current law provides that a tip credit cannot reduce an employee's wages below the required minimum wage. Employees report tips to their employers, ensuring an adequate amount of tips are earned.

Seven states--Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington--do not allow a tip credit; however, requiring raises for all hourly employees when States increase the minimum wage. The lack of a tip credit requires these employers to give raises to their most highly compensated employees, the tipped staff. If you are working in a nice restaurant, the tips will be more than the salary. Nontipped employees in these businesses are negatively impacted by the mandated flow of scarce labor dollars to the tipped position. In addition, employers are put at a competitive disadvantage with the colleagues in the rest of the country who can allocate employee compensation in a more equitable manner.

My amendment expands the tip credit to nontip credit States, consistent with the initial establishment of the credit under the Fair Labor Standards Act, anticipating the increase in minimum wage.

The sixth provision is small business tax relief. If we are going to impose greater burdens on small business, we should give them some tax relief at the same time. My amendment extends small business expensing by 1 year.

Simplify cash accounting methods. I am the only accountant in the Senate, so I probably ought to explain what cash accounting is. That could be a huge debate all by itself. It means that the business can actually use the dollars coming in as part of the accounting as opposed to anticipated dollars that would be coming in. It works off the actual cash flow rather than some of the accrual methods that we use. I will not go into that. Accounting is important, but it often puts people to sleep. It would simplify cash accounting methods and provide restaurant depreciation relief.

All of these tax provisions are fully offset in the bill. That means they are paid for. That means there is some way of covering the cost of them so that it isn't the general budget.

In total, the additional provisions in my amendment are intended to mitigate the small business impact of a $1.10 increase in the minimum wage so people can keep their jobs. I share the view of many of my colleagues that if we are going to impose such a mandate on the Federal level, we must do our best to soften the blow. This may be the best we can do today, but I entreat all of my colleagues to look at the true root of the problem for minimum wage workers. That is the acquisition of job-based skills: more skills, more money.

We all share the same goals, which is to help American workers find and keep good-paying jobs and to keep the best paying jobs in this country. Real job skills, not artificial wage levels, should be our focus. Education, training, and job experience are the solution for low-wage workers. We have to pass the Workforce Investment Act that will train those 900,000 people a year to higher skill jobs.

In terms of education and training, we need to move forward on that kind of meaningful legislation that will lead to increased wages and better jobs that we all want for our Nation's workers.

In terms of job experience, we must always remember that businesses, particularly small businesses, create the jobs and provide the gateway to the working world for the vast majority of low-wage workers.

If we do not balance a minimum wage increase with economic relief for the small businesses, we will stifle job creation and shut the employment door on the very individuals we are trying to help.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment offered by Senator Kennedy and, if we continue to have the debate and I submit my amendment, to support my amendment. Both raise the minimum wage. One covers the cost of the minimum wage so that it would not drive down the number of people employed in this country.

We have been trying to increase employment. We want those people starting with minimum skills to work their way up the ladder to owning the business. That can happen in America. That can happen if we give them an incentive to learn to improve their skills and we don't impose false security of mandated higher wages that drive a spiral upward and eliminate jobs. Elimination of jobs is not the answer. Training people to higher skills so they can demand more money or go to work somewhere else is the answer.

If we are going to have this debate on the Department of Defense bill, I would be happy to submit my amendment to have it voted on, along with Senator Kennedy's amendment. We have done that before. We know what the results will be, I suspect. Both of them will be subject to a point of order. We usually agree not to go for the point of order but just order the vote and have the 60-vote threshold we have always had. We would be willing to do that, but a more appropriate time to debate this would be another time on another bill.

I yield the floor.

I would like to be able to do that. I don't have the numbers that I need to have. I appreciate the question, but I can't give you an answer yet.

In answer to the question, Mr. President, I can't tell how long it will take for the Joint Tax Committee to have the new numbers. But I can tell you, I didn't know that the Senator was going to offer his amendment until yesterday. The estimated revenue effects that we have are from the one that we did and voted on last year which shows over a 10-year period that all costs are covered with a slight surplus.

Mr. President, I send my amendment to the desk for the debate to be done in the morning.

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

Mr. President, the issue we are talking about, my good friend and the chairman of the Committee on Human Resources is talking about, and that I have talked about earlier, is whether we were going to have an opportunity in the Senate to take a few minutes to consider an increase in the minimum wage for the lowest paid workers in America. I had offered that as an amendment on the Defense authorization bill.

One might ask: Why are we doing this on the Defense authorization bill? The answer to that is we would not have another opportunity to do it on any other bill until the recessing of the Senate.

In my opening remarks when I offered that amendment, I indicated to the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services that we would be glad to work out a time for consideration that would not interfere with the general debate and discussion of the issues on the Defense authorization bill, but we have been unable to get that at this particular time. Therefore, we are talking about this issue at this time.

The Senator from Wyoming asked why is this relevant to the Defense authorization. I think the answer is rather compelling. That is, when we think of why the service men and women are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and around the world, they are fighting for American values, American principles. Part of American values and principles is economic fairness, not the exploitation of poor workers in the United States of America. That is why it is relevant.

We are talking about the ideals and the values of the United States of America. We are talking about family values. We are talking about what people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder are going to get paid.

I bet some of these individuals who will be affected by the minimum wage are over in Iraq now fighting. They are wondering, why in the world are we taking up time when we have not increased the minimum wage in the last 9 years and we have taken the time to see six pay increases for the Senate? They are saying: Why aren't you providing that increase for the minimum wage for these workers? That is what we are talking about.

Can anyone imagine that? We are going to get another pay COLA increase next week. We have increased our own salaries $30,000 over the period of the last 9 years. And how much have we given to an increase in the minimum wage? Zero.

We have, I daresay, men and women who are serving in Iraq whose parents are probably earning the minimum wage. We are talking about getting an increase to $7.25 an hour.

This issue never used to be a partisan issue. I regret it has turned out to be a partisan issue. We have been unable to get our Republican friends to give us an opportunity to vote on an increase in the minimum wage. We are caught in this situation because we cannot get an up-or- down vote on the increase in the minimum wage.

Since the time of the initiation of the minimum wage, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, all had an increase in the minimum wage. Richard Nixon, an increase in the minimum wage. George Bush, an increase in the minimum wage. But we do not have anything after Bill Clinton and the increase in the minimum wage. Nine years is the longest period in history for no increase of the minimum wage. If the Senator would let us have an up-or-down vote, we will take a very short time period. We are interested in taking a short time. We only received the Republican alternative about an hour and a half ago. We still don't know what the scoring is on it. The initial statement we have heard is that it is pretty much the same as it was a year ago, and that basically cuts overtime pay. It also undermines the States' opportunities to deal with problems on the tip credit. It also eliminates worker protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That is a fine option that is going to be out. That is what we have gotten in the last hour or so.

If I had the attention of my friend from Wyoming, the managers of the bill are here, I would ask unanimous consent that upon completion of the Defense bill, the Senate turn to the minimum wage bill, the text of which is my amendment, that the Enzi amendment be in order, that there be 4 hours of debate equally divided, and then we would go to a vote.

I have heard the objection. We have had complaints about my offering the minimum wage amendment on this legislation. Then what do we do? We say: OK, let's let this go through. But just give us an opportunity to consider an increase in the minimum wage on the floor of the Senate with a very short time limitation.

And we can't get agreement on that. There you go. That is what this is all about.

I must say the idea that this isn't appropriate, if we could have gotten an option to go ahead and have the individual bill for an increase in the minimum wage, have an opportunity to vote on both the Senator's amendment and our amendment, let's have that and let's go back to the good old days where a majority would carry. That is fine with me. That would be fine with me. I will just take a half an hour on our side. Surely, the Senate can find time to give a half an hour to the issue of increasing the minimum wage for workers. One half hour, let's see where the Senate goes, whoever gets more than 50 votes. That used to be the way around here. But not now. We hear complaining about bringing up the minimum wage on this bill, and they still are going to have to get 60 votes on it because there will be a point of order raised against this on the budget.

We have heard a great deal before, at the time when my good friend was talking about his health care bill about wanting to have a debate on his health care bill. Remember that? It wasn't all that long ago. Let's have a good up-or-down debate. Let's have a vote. What is it, denying the opportunity for people to have this debate?

Well, we would be more than glad to have this legislation. You can have on your side a half an hour. We will take a half an hour. Let the chips fall where they may. If the leader wants to come out and make that, we have offered similar to that. There has been objection to it, but it is a reflection of our good faith.

From an early reading of the amendment of the Senator from Wyoming, they would raise the minimum wage by $1.10. Would the Senator tell me what the cost of the Enzi amendment is? What is the cost? Do we have a budget point of order?

Could I address the Senator from Wyoming? If he could tell me what the budget cost of his amendment would be? While he is doing so, I will mention a couple of other points.

His amendment would raise the minimum wage by $1.10 instead of by $2.10, which our bill does. It cuts overtime, and it also reduces benefits so only 1.8 million workers would be covered. That is 4.8 million fewer than my amendment. Theirs is $1.10 an hour instead of $2.10, and there are 4.8 million fewer than my amendment. Then it also cuts overtime pay. It ends Federal labor standards coverage for over 10 million workers. By raising the gross income of the companies that will be covered, they will eliminate 10 million workers. They will be eliminated from any kind of minimum wage or fair labor standards protections.

Then it basically overturns State actions that are dealing with what they call the wage tip credit which States vary about how they do it. But the Enzi amendment puts a cap on that. The States now, for example, can have a higher minimum wage than we have. We haven't preempted the States because it has always been a flooring. Some States believe that those who depend on tips ought to be given a somewhat additional break. We are talking about people who make $5.15 an hour, maybe make $6 or $7 in tips, and you are trying to nickel-and-dime them on that with the Enzi amendment, preempt the States.

I hope my colleagues have a chance to read through this overnight because we are preempting the States that have reached a different conclusion with regard to tip credit. The Enzi amendment says that is going to be out.

That is quite a mouthful. People understand those issues pretty well. They are very important. I don't know whether we have an answer. I will be glad to hear it later on. Could the Senator give me what the budget cost for his amendment would be?

Well, I imagine we will get them later in the afternoon or get them on tomorrow. Could the Senator indicate when we might anticipate those? The reason this is important is because we are talking about 50 pages of tax issues in the Enzi amendment. Therefore, there is a cost to it. It does seem to me that prior to the time that we have a vote, we ought to know what those particular costs are. We have on the one hand the issues that are directly related to the minimum wage, and then we have the costs in terms of an addition to the deficit.

I don't know whether the Senator could tell us that we are going to get it later this evening. If you can give us the assurance, if you think we will have it this evening, that is fine; otherwise, whatever help the Senator could provide, I would be grateful.

I am not sure that I completely understood the Senator's response in terms of the cost. What is the cost of the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth year? We will try and get that, if we could.

I point out to my colleagues, the amendment I offer is 2\1/2\ pages. The Enzi amendment is 71\1/2\ pages, 50 of which are tax provisions. It does seem to me if we were debating, look, ours is $2.10, yours is $1.10, let's go at it. Let the Senate make a judgment. But it isn't that. We have 50 pages in here of tax provisions that are going to evidently be called incentives on the one hand but to others they are going to increase the deficit on the other hand. I am not exactly sure what those are. Then we are not only being questioned about that, but we also know that we have in that proposal a cut of overtime pay and the ending of Federal Labor Standards Act coverage for 10 million workers and basically a preemption of States that want to treat the tip credit in the way that they want, which is quite a proposal. I would hope that we would have a chance, which I expect we will, to at least examine it over the evening.

This chart says the $1.10 increase leaves 4.8 million workers behind, the difference between the Enzi proposal and the way ours is drafted.

I wanted to address a couple of the issues the Senator has pointed out with regard to small business. This chart shows results of a Gallup Poll of May 2006: 86 percent of small business owners say the minimum wage does not affect their business. The question was: How does the minimum wage affect your business? Eighty-six percent said no effect; 8 percent, negative effect; positive effect, 5 percent; no opinion, the rest.

So it is kind of interesting, we have sort of gone beyond this point in terms of where the small business community is. They have a pretty good understanding of what happens. What we have found out with the increase, for example, on the living wage, you take the most dramatic example is the neighboring city of Baltimore. When they increased it to a living wage, what happened? First of all, they had less turnover. It was less costly on the city in terms of training new workers.

Secondly, they increased their productivity. They got less individuals who stayed home on sick leave because people began to take a greater pride in their work. Why? Because they were being treated with greater respect. And finally, the overall cost of the program, even though they increased it to about $11.50--I am not sure, I think it is even above that; they were one of the first with a living wage-- they found out that the workers were working harder, took greater pride in their work, and there was greater productivity, a greater increase in morale, and their overall costs have actually gone down.

States with higher minimum wages create more small businesses. I was listening to the Senator talk about the burden on small businesses. I just showed a recent Gallup Poll of small businesses which was in May of this year. Here are the 10 States plus DC with minimum wages higher than $5.15, and overall growth of small business is 5.4 percent. Forty States have a minimum wage of $5.15, and there is 4.2 percent growth. The States with the higher increase in the minimum wage saw an increase in the total numbers.

Study after study finds raising the minimum wage does not cause job loss.

This is by David Card and Alan Krueger, from Princeton's reanalysis of the effect of the New Jersey minimum wage increase on the fast food industry and representative payroll data, 1998. The increase in the minimum wage probably had no effect on total employment and possibly had a small positive effect. Four different tests of the two increases on employment impact fail to find any systematic, significant job loss associated with the 1996-1997 increases, Economic Policy Institute. Detailed studies of California's last two decades, the State-increased minimum wage legislation, consistently no employment for workers.

This chart shows the increases in 1996. It is too bad we have to go back so far, but we haven't had an increase in the minimum wage. Here is the increase in the minimum wage to $4.75. I think it was $3.45 prior to that time. We went to $4.75. This is total job growth after we had the increase in the minimum wage. Then we increased to it $5.15. This is a chart that shows the total job growth in the United States during that period. This idea about the impact on jobs is interesting, but it has been refuted time and time again.

This chart shows that the last minimum wage increase did not increase unemployment. These are the figures on unemployment.

The last increase to $5.15 actually shows the unemployment going down over the period of the years, from 1997 until 2000. It doesn't have the most recent figures. But it is a pretty good indication of what was happening during that time. So we find that the States which have a higher increase in the minimum wage are expanding in small business. Eighty-six percent of small business, according to the Gallup poll, said it doesn't have any effect, in terms of employment. The national review about what has happened the last two times we raised the minimum wage was that it had virtually no impact in terms of the employment issue.

Finally, inflation. That issue is always another canard that is pointed out. They say if you raise the minimum wage, we are going to cause inflation. Look at what we are doing, Mr. President. Increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 is vital to these workers, but it is a drop in the bucket to the national payroll. All Americans combined earned $5.4 trillion a year. A minimum wage increase to $7.25 would be less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the national payroll. There it is. No inflation, no adverse impact on unemployment. Small business feels that it doesn't impact or affect them. The studies show that small businesses have grown in States where they have had an increase in the minimum wage.

These are the economic arguments, but most of all, as we have said day in and day out, this is a fairness issue. These are men and women who work hard and play by the rules and take a sense of pride in their work. They work as teachers aides, in nursing homes, cleaning up the great buildings of American commerce, and they work hard and try to do a decent job. More often than not they have two and sometimes three other jobs. Primarily, they are women. As I have pointed out, it is a women's issue. Primarily, those women have children. It is a children and a women's issue. It is a family issue. It is a family value issue and a civil rights issue because so many of the workers are men and women of color. And fairness, fairness. You don't have an economic argument against increasing it to $7.25, and you don't have an argument that is relevant to decency and fairness in opposing this kind of increase.

Americans understand fairness, they understand decency, and they understand the importance of hard-working Americans who are playing by the rules. A job in America should get you out of poverty, not keep you in it. And the alternative to our increase in the minimum wage will keep you in poverty. We can do better as a country, and we will.

I see my friend from New Jersey who desires to address the Senate on the minimum wage. I hope he will have an opportunity to do that for as long as he likes.

Mr. President, our friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd, is looking forward to addressing the Senate in just a minute or two.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to review for the Senate what has been happening to many families in this country over recent years regarding the important growth of poverty and its relationship to the minimum wage. It has a very direct relationship. The figures are rather startling. It is appropriate, when we are talking about an increase in the minimum wage, that we have some fuller understanding about the growth of poverty in our Nation over recent years.

Mr. President, 5.4 million more Americans are in poverty. We had 31.6 million in 2000, and now there are 37 million. There is a 5.4-million greater number of Americans living in poverty in the United States. Of those 5.4 million, 2.5 million are children.

It is interesting, when we talk about an increase in the minimum wage, if we look at the countries of Western Europe--take Great Britain, for example, which has the second most powerful economy in Western Europe. In October, they will increase the minimum wage, and it will go to $9.80 an hour. Listen to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the pride that he takes as a public servant, Chancellor of the Exchequer--effectively our Secretary of Treasury and the head of OMB combined--in having lifted 2 million children out of poverty over the last 6 years. We have put 2.5 million children into poverty in the last 5 years.

There are 5 million more Americans who are on the verge of hunger. These figures are from Food Security in the United States, USDA. These are not figures from those of us who are supporting an increase in the minimum wage. These are the figures. We have 5 million more Americans who are feeling the pangs of hunger, and the great percentage of those are children, again.

What is consistent in the last 5 years? No increase in the minimum wage, the growth of the number of people in poverty, the growth of the problems of hunger. We have Americans struggling to survive in this current economy, the Bush economy. Too many Americans are living in poverty: 1 in every 10 families; nearly 1 out of every 5 children in this country; 1 out of every 5 Hispanic Americans, and 1 out of every 4 African Americans.

This is interesting. It shows the extraordinary growth of poverty, particularly child poverty, in the failure to increase the minimum wage. So one says: What does that really have to do with the minimum wage no longer lifting a family out of poverty?

In 1965, 1970, 1975, for a period of some 20 years, we had a minimum wage that was above or at the poverty level. Republicans and Democrats did this for 20 years, and now we are seeing an absolute collapse. There was a little blip with the increase in the minimum wage, and now we are down to an alltime low, some $5,888 or less. We know that in the last 9 years, the increase to $5.15 is buying about 15 to 20 percent less. It is not only $5.15 an hour, the purchasing of that $5.15 per hour is less.

The United States has the highest child poverty rate of the industrialized world. Here it is. Of all the industrial nations of the world, we have the highest poverty rate. That obviously has something to do with what their parents are being paid. Not completely; there are other programs in these countries that are directed toward children.

The Presiding Officer, a former Secretary of Education, is familiar with what a number of these countries do in terms of trying to assist and providing special allowances for children in a number of ways. Nonetheless, what comes out of it is the fact that we have the highest child poverty rate of any industrial nation in the world. The fact that we have not had an increase in the minimum wage is directly related to that.

Again, if you look over at this chart here, the States with the highest child poverty have the lowest minimum wages, with the exception of Pennsylvania, and that is a State with 20 percent greater child poverty than the national average but has a higher minimum wage. But the rest are basically States with lower minimum wages, a direct tie-in with the minimum wage and poverty and child poverty.

We have a chance to do something about child poverty and about poverty in this country, and we can do it in a way that is not going to endanger inflation or provide increasing unemployment or threaten the small business community.

As we have gone through this, we have seen those arguments which have been raised and which were raised again this afternoon by my good friends from Wyoming and Georgia. They are arguments I have listened to for the last number of years I have been in the Senate. The fact is that when we have had an increase in the minimum wage, no one has ever said: Let's go back, let's go back, although we are going to be faced with an alternative tomorrow to my increase in the minimum wage that will take us back, will eliminate the coverage, eliminate overtime for a number of workers, and that is unfortunate.

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

Mr. President, earlier today we went through a good deal of the history of the minimum wage, and we also went into the growth of poverty, particularly for children and

for those who receive the minimum wage. I wish to read a couple of real-life stories because I think it is always useful to understand that besides the graphs we have been able to show and the statistics we have been able to show on these charts, we also show in real terms what is happening to a lot of our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans.

This is a story from the Sacramento Bee, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record in its entirety. This is June 18, 2006, last Sunday:

Monique Garcia earned minimum wage for most of a decade

before becoming homeless. She washed dishes, swept floors,

collected parking tickets, worked cash registers, staffed

drive-through windows, and flipped burgers. Despite that, two

months ago, the 26-year-old single mom found herself with too

little money for rent and no place to go.

She moved with her 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son

into St. John's, a family shelter tucked into an industrial

corner of Sacramento. They share a room with another minimum-

wage worker and her two young children. Garcia and her

roommate trade off, one watching the kids while the other

works.

It's hard, you've got a family to support and minimum wage

isn't it, Garcia said last week.

The stories continue along. This is happening out in Sacramento.

Here is a story about, for all intents and purposes, Christie:

Christie did a job that this labor-hungry economy could not

do without. Every morning she drove her battered '86

Volkswagen from her apartment in public housing to the YWCA's

child care center in Akron, OH, where she spent the day

watching over little children so their parents could go to

work. Without her and thousands like her across the country,

there would have been fewer people able to fill the jobs that

fueled America's prosperity. Without her patience and warmth,

children could have been harmed as well, for she was more

than a babysitter. She gave the youngsters an emotionally

safe place, taught and mothered them, and sometimes even

rescued them from abuse at home.

For those valuable services, she received a check for about

$330 every two weeks. She could not afford to put her own two

children in the day care center where she worked.

She is looking out for children, and she is unable to provide the childcare for herself.

Carolyn Payne did everything right but still can't find a job with decent wages.

She had earned a college diploma, albeit a two-year

associate's degree. And she had gone from a homeless shelter

into her own house, although it was mostly owned by a bank.

The third objective, ``a good-paying job,'' as she put it,

still eluded her. Back in the mid-1970s, she earned $6 an

hour in a Vermont factory that made plastic cigarette

lighters and cases for Gillette razors. In 2000, she earned

$6.80 an hour stocking shelves and working cash registers at

a vast Wal-Mart superstore in New Hampshire.

``And that's sad,'' she said.

She just can't make it and is in a homeless shelter. These people, our brothers and sisters of America who want to work, want to provide for their families, will do hard and difficult work. Carolyn Payne should have a greater sense of hope in the richest and the most powerful country in the world. We will give them that if we increase the minimum wage.

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

Mr. President, I am going to describe what I understand is in the amendment which is being offered by Senator Enzi. I think it is important that we have a chance over the evening--because it looks less likely that we are going to be completing this debate tonight. We have others who are on their way over here. But I am going to review this and try to get through it, and then if I have misstated it, I hope I will be corrected.

In the last 9 years, while costs have been rising, the minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour; that is, $10,712 a year, $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Since 1997, the minimum wage has lost 20 percent of its value. The Enzi proposal is a $1.10 increase--far short of making up for this lost value. It won't even make up for the lost value of the purchasing power of the existing minimum wage. It leaves behind 4.8 million workers who would be covered by the Democratic proposal because it only raises the wages of 1.8 million workers.

The raise to $5.15 was historically low, lower than any but for one increase in the 1960s. In fact, before the 1997 increase, the minimum wage had fallen to its lowest level since 1960. So we can't allow such a low increase for hard-working minimum wage workers.

Eighty percent of the 14.9 million Americans who would be affected by the minimum wage are adults, and more than a third are the sole breadwinners in their families. Minimum wage workers have waited 9 years. They deserve one that is fair.

On the issue about the 10 million Americans who will lose the minimum wage in overtime protection, first, the Bush administration and Republican leadership in Congress stripped away overtime protection from 6 million Americans. That has already taken place. That has already taken place. They have done that through rules and regulations. Now they want to deny over 10 million more workers, minimum wage workers, overtime pay by eliminating the fair labor standards coverage entirely. Do you see what I mean? If you eliminate the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, you eliminate the protections for overtime pay.

Currently, all employees who work for employers who are engaged in interstate commerce, have gross annual sales of at least $500,000, are guaranteed the minimum wage and overtime pay. But even in businesses that have less than $500,000 in annual sales, employees still have individual minimum wage and overtime coverage if they are engaged in interstate commerce. The Enzi amendment would raise the $500,000 annual sales to $1 million and eliminate the fair labor standards coverage for workers who are engaged in interstate commerce. No more overtime for those individuals--10 million.

Raising the annual business threshold to $1 million and eliminating the individual coverage would force greater numbers of hard-working Americans, retail workers, security guards, garment workers, waitresses, and their families into poverty. Raising the annual threshold and eliminating individual coverage would allow businesses to pay their workers less than the Federal minimum wage and require them to work longer hours without overtime pay.

So, on the one hand, you get the $1.10 increase for 1.8 million, which will not even cover the lost value of the $5.15 since the last 9 years. Then you eliminate the overtime protections for these workers as well. Because the Fair Labor Standards Act guarantees overtime and equal pay for women and men, this exemption jeopardizes these rights for over 10 million workers.

The gross annual sales threshold was created as a way to determine that employers were engaged in interstate commerce, not as a way to exempt workers from minimum wage and overtime protection. Doubling the annual sales threshold and eliminating individual coverage would take away those protections for over 10 million workers, contradicting the long-term intent of the Congress to expand the Fair Labor Standards Act.

For over 60 years Congress has repeatedly amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide more protection, more minimum wage and more overtime protection--not less. This will be the first time we will see the significant reduction rather than an expansion.

Instead of trying to exclude over 10 million workers from the guarantee of a minimum wage, we should be trying to raise it. It has been more than 9 years. Americans have waited long enough.

This chart indicates raising the business exemption reverses a tradition of extending worker rights.

Congress amended the business exemption in 1961, 1967, 1969 and 1989, each time to afford more employees minimum wage and overtime protections. The current $500,000 exemption was established deliberately to cover more employees. By raising the exemption, the Republican proposal would reduce the protection for the first time.

That is very important.

I want to cover the last two points. I see the Senator from Connecticut here.

Under the Republican proposal, workers opt into the flextime system, but once they do, they do not control their own schedules. They work a 50-hour workweek when their employer tells them to, not when they choose to.

Under the current system, workers would get overtime for those extra 10 hours a week. Under the Republican proposal, they would not.

The Republicans claim the proposal would give the parent time to see a child's soccer game or attend a child's school play. They, in reality, don't get that freedom. They just get paid less for working a longer workweek.

Public sector workers also have greater protection from being coerced to agree to flextime if they don't want it. Pubic employees generally have the protection of a union contract as well as the constitutional due process protections afforded them in the Civil Service, although this administration is trying to undermine those due process rights as well. Public employees can challenge abuses of flextime within the context of those protections, whereas most public employees cannot.

As then-Governor Ashcroft explained in 1985, when the Senate was considering whether to permit flextime in the public sector:

State and local governments are qualitatively different in

structure and function from private business. Public

employees serve under exceptional circumstance, the most

significant characteristic of which is the protection public

servants enjoy because they work in government.

I am also going to add to the statement an analysis on the tip credit that would show how this effectively preempts the State from being able to make a judgment on this. This is a one-size-fits-all. It is ``the Federal Government knows best.''

If we pass it here, we preempt what Massachusetts can do, what Connecticut can do, what Georgia can do. It doesn't seem to me to be the wise course of action. We permit States to make their own judgment to increase the minimum wage because that is what it is, a minimum. It is a bottom. But this proposal is going to interfere with the States' wage policy in other ways.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a moment?

As all of us know, the Senator has been the chairman of the Children's Caucus here in the Senate. He is the author of the Family and Medical Leave legislation. He worked 5 years to get that legislation passed. It has been a great success. There were extensive hearings in our committee over the course of the years on children and children's needs, children's education.

Does he agree with me that we have seen this remarkable growth of child poverty in the last 5 years? The Senator has just mentioned this. I just want to underline it. In the strongest economy of the world, we are seeing a significant growth in child poverty and child hunger in this Nation, and we have seen, as the Senator pointed out, the virtual lack of increase in the minimum wage and the reduction of purchasing power.

Does the Senator join with me in recognizing what we have seen? The U.K., which is the second strongest economy in Europe, will be going to $9.80 an hour in December. Gordon Brown takes pride in the fact that they have raised 1.8 million children out of poverty in the U.K. over the period of the last 5 years. In Ireland it is $9.60, and they have raised hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

Does the Senator agree with me that the fact of the failure of increasing the minimum wage has had an extremely negative impact on the well-being of children in our country, resulting in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands, even millions more children who are living in poverty because we have failed to do that?

Will the Senator yield?

The Senator has given just an excellent statement about what happens to children when they live in poverty. I was wondering if the Senator would comment about the growth of hunger over the last 5 years. There are 5 million more of these people now, according to the USDA, and more than 20 percent of these are children. Five million more Americans are hungry or on the verge of hunger.

I wonder, I ask someone who chaired the Children's Caucus, I ask about the fact that children are increasingly pressured in terms of the issue of hunger, what does this do to a child in terms of a child's development?

Let me add one addendum. I believe the Senator may remember what happened, I think it was in Philadelphia, where they expanded the school lunch program to include a school breakfast program. They found out that the grades of the children all went up noticeably--I think it was somewhat

close to 10 percent. In any event, it was clearly noticed, as they found out, when children have decent nutrition, their performance--in terms of educationally, culturally, socially, and from a discipline point of view--is very importantly impacted. I wonder if the Senator would tell us from his own experience what he knows about this.

Will the Senator yield for one more question?

Now we find out there is increasing hunger, and now we know it affects more than one million children.

Can the Senator tell us what he knows about Americans and their degree of support to relieve the hunger of children? It is truly overwhelming, is it not?

Mr. President, let me begin, if I may, by once again commending our colleague from Massachusetts for his leadership on this issue. Over the years, no one has been a stronger champion, a louder voice, a stronger voice on behalf of the most disadvantaged in our society than the senior Senator from Massachusetts. Once again he is proving that point with this amendment he has offered. Frankly, as I recall in years past, increases in the minimum wage were the ones that were endorsed by both parties. I am old enough to remember when an increase in the minimum wage would have occurred in far less time than 9 or 10 years.

Nearly a decade has elapsed since the last increase. I am sure my colleague from Massachusetts can tell me on the average, it was probably every 2 or 3 or 4 years that the increase would occur. When it did, when the proposal was offered and it was worked out between the two parties, it went through almost unanimously if not unanimously. But here we are. This is an indication of what has happened in our beloved country over the last number of years.

Nearly 37 million of our fellow citizens, including 13 million children are currently living at or below the poverty level in the United States. Yet we somehow cannot find ways among ourselves here to reach a consensus to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 2 years--a $2.10 increase.

I find that rather shocking. I suppose it is an indication of what has happened to the body politic in this country, that you cannot find common ground to make a difference in the lives of almost 40 million of our fellow citizens.

These Americans are struggling out there every single day and as I mentioned earlier, 13 million of them are totally defenseless--our children. Certainly, while Members of Congress may find it odd, the average citizen out there, even those who are making way beyond the minimum wage, were they here tonight in this Chamber, would tell you how difficult it is to meet the rising cost of living--food, housing, clothing--not to mention soaring energy costs. Yet in the midst of all of that, we find it impossible to provide an increase, after nearly a decade, of $2.10 per hour for these families in our country.

I am happy to yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.

Mr. President, I say to my colleague, if he will yield back, I couldn't agree with him more. This is one of the great myths about the minimum wage increase. You will hear over and over again; in fact, we have heard it here already today: If you increase the minimum wage, this hurts business. This makes it more difficult to hire people, to employ people.

I found it rather interesting that in surveys done among the business community, particularly the small business community, 86 percent of small business owners do not think the minimum wage affects their business.

The Senator from Massachusetts is absolutely correct that raising children out of poverty is directly related to the ability of their parents to provide for them.

Again, it should not take lecturing here to my colleagues in this great body to make the case, in the 21st century, that we are going to have to have the best prepared, best educated, healthiest generation we can produce if we are going to remain competitive in a global economy. When you have 13 million of your children growing up in poverty, how are these children going to effectively compete? How are they going to be well educated? How are they going to be healthy enough not only to be good parents themselves, but good workers, and good citizens?

It seems axiomatic. It should be understood on its face. If we continue on the road we are traveling, with the number of children in our country growing up in poverty increasing, it is going to make it more difficult for our country to compete in the 21st century.

There is a graph here which I know the Senator has seen, but it makes the case of what is happening. The United States has the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world: Denmark, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Japan, Canada, U.K., Italy. All of these countries, major competitors in the world, do a far better job seeing to it that their children are better prepared to meet those challenges.

Our future is lagging behind when a substantial number of children are growing up, in our great country, in poverty. This is through no fault of their own. It is through the accident of birth, being born into a family where their parents are struggling to earn a decent wage and make ends meet. These are working families, by the way. These are not families collecting subsistence or some kind of charity. They are out there working, earning an income that does not allow them to meet the basic necessities of life.

I am glad to yield to my colleague.

I thank my colleague for bringing up this chart to emphasize the point. I think these numbers are from the Department of Agriculture.

Again, the Senator is making an excellent point. If you have a hard time understanding what the Senator from Massachusetts is saying or the Senator from Connecticut, ask any teacher. Ask any teacher in this country, particularly at the elementary school level, what sort of academic performance, what sort of attention spans you have with a child who has received adequate nutrition, a decent meal, compared to those who have not. You will hear anecdote after anecdote of what happens with children who do not have proper nutrition--not to mention the growing health care problems that can emerge.

This is just good, sound investment policy. If you really care about the future of your country, if you really care about whether or not our Nation's children are going to be able to perform adequately in this century, then clearly making sure that they have the basic essentials is, again, so obvious that it should not require a debate on the floor of the Senate to make the point.

Yes.

It is not surprising but it is worthy of being repeated.

Ninety-four percent of our fellow citizens across this country, regardless of geography and economic circumstance, of gender, ethnicity, whatever the differences may be, agree with the following quotation: People who work should be able to feed their families. Ninety-four percent subscribe to that notion.

The Senator from Massachusetts is talking about working families. Our fellow citizens believe that if you are a working family, you should be able to make enough money to feed your family.

This is the United States of America. This is not some Third or Fourth World country we are talking about. Yet with 37 million of our fellow citizens, adults and children, unable to meet the requirements of basic food and nutrition, it ought to stun everyone in our country.

What we are trying to do is make it possible for these people who are working hard to be able to provide for their families. That is all we are talking about.

I point out to colleagues who have offered an alternative to this proposal, that a $1.10 per hour increase to $6.25 per hour over the next 2 years, means that millions of children would be left behind.

What the Senator from Massachusetts is offering--with a bipartisan group of support, we hope--is a $2.10 per hour increase to provide for the needs of working families. What the Senator from Massachusetts has laid out I couldn't agree more with him. If you are truly interested in making a difference in this country, that extra $1 per hour could make a huge difference in the ability of these families to make ends meet.

Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has increased by 50 percent since the 1970s. Minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year are earning $10,700 a year. That is almost $6,000 below the Federal poverty guidelines of $16,600 for a family of three-- $6,000 less than you ought to be able to have if you are going to meet the poverty guidelines.

Here we are in the 21st century, and the minimum wage is losing its value as well. Since the minimum wage was last raised nearly 10 years ago, its real value has eroded by 20 percent. Minimum wage workers have already lost all of the gains from the 1996-1997 increase.

Today, the real value of the minimum wage is more than $4 below what it was in 1968. To have the purchasing power it had in 1968, the minimum wage would have to be more than $9.25 per hour--not the $5.15 we are currently at.

I want to make a point as well about what the impact of this minimum wage increase would have on the lives of working families.

Nearly 15 million Americans would benefit from the minimum wage increase to $7.25 per hour. That is 6.6 million people directly affected in a positive way and another 8.3 million affected indirectly. Almost 60 percent of these workers are women, and 40 percent are people of color. Eighty percent of those who would benefit are adult workers, not teenagers seeking pocket change, as some have said, and more than a third of these are adults are the sole providers for their families.

Again, we are talking about an increase to $7.25 per hour, which is still hardly enough to make ends meet when you consider the cost of food, clothing, housing, not to mention the skyrocketing cost of energy that has hit everybody in this country. We all know how hard it is to provide for our families.

If you raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, it would mean an additional $4,400 a year. That additional money would be enough for a low-income family of three to buy 15 months of groceries which they couldn't otherwise get, 19 months of utilities which they would not otherwise be able to afford, 8 months of rent, over 2 years of health care, 20 months of child care, 30 months of college tuition at a public 2-year college. Consider those numbers--20 months of child care that these working families need if they are going to keep their jobs and keep their children safe, not to mention 30 months of college tuition. It may not seem like much, but it is important.

In 10 years, the person earning minimum wage has received no pay increases, unless they have been lucky enough to live in a State that increased the minimum wage.

But for most of our fellow citizens, that has not been the case. And we now have nearly 40 million of our fellow citizens living at or below the poverty level.

I repeat this because I know my colleagues care so much about it. To have 13 million of our children in this country who, except by accident of birth, have found themselves living under these circumstances and having to survive at that level is unacceptable.

This is the United States of America. We ought to be doing far better.

To find out, as we recently pointed out on the chart, that almost every other industrialized country in Western Europe is doing far better by their children, far better by their minimum wage workers, ought to be a source of collective embarrassment for this great country of ours.

I don't think I have to make this case too often. We know how difficult it is going to be to compete in the 21st century. If we don't have a generation coming along that is well educated and well prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century, it is going to be hard for Americans to remain strong and competitive.

You just have to read about what is happening in our major competitive countries. We take great pride in 60,000 high school students in this country who competed last year in the science fair, a great number. Compare that with 6 million who competed in the same science fair in the People's Republic of China last year.

That is the challenge of the 21st century.

With 13 million kids in this country going without getting a decent meal every day, we are going to have a real problem on our hands if you do not begin to address that.

I feel strongly about this and I wish we could reach agreement quickly. I remember the days when the minimum wage increase was done by a voice vote. We worked out the differences and sat down and negotiated, and it was passed unanimously on a record vote or a voice vote. How sad it is that we have come to this, where nearly a decade later we are sitting here arguing with each other about whether 15 million of our fellow citizens could get a bump of $2.10 per hour up to $7.25 an hour.

This ought to be something we can all agree on and not engage in this kind of acrimonious debate.

I want to point out, as well, that there are other provisions that will be offered by the majority that are very troublesome to me, including a fundamental change in the overtime pay schedule that I think is very unfair to people. This goes beyond the minimum wage worker. Here we have always provided that if you work more than a 40- hour week in that week, then you get time and a half. That has been Federal law. We are now saying we are going to apply a 2-week standard. An employer could have you work 50 hours in 1 week and 30 hours in the next. That is 80 hours, but for the 10 hours more in the first week, you don't get the additional pay.

That is unfair to a lot of people in this country. If you work an additional 10 hours in a week, that can be hard labor, and you ought to get time and a half. The law requires it. That would be a $3,000 per year pay cut for a median income worker and an $800 pay cut for minimum wage workers. That additional 10 hours of overtime pay could make a big difference.

I don't know why the majority decided to add that provision. It seems to me that is unduly harsh to an awful lot of people.

We talked about the poverty level working with the minimum wage. I am talking about people who are above the poverty level but are struggling and don't have to be making $16,000 or $10,000 to be struggling in this country. You could be making $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 a year. If you are a family of four, you may very well be struggling, considering the cost-of-living increases that have gone on. For that man or woman who works an additional 10 hours a week, 10 hours away from their families after putting in 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that additional 10 hours can be hard. And to say I am not going to give time and a half for those 10 hours I think is unfair to those people.

If that ends up being adopted, I think it is a great step back as well.

I hope we will adopt the proposal that the Senator from Massachusetts has offered. I commend him, once again, for making a strong case.

Again, on behalf of 13 million children in this country, and million of people who are out there struggling tonight to take care of their families, to raise good families, I urge adoption of the amendment being proposed by our colleague from Massachusetts. I hope it will be adopted by our colleagues when voted on tomorrow. It is an important contribution. Nine years is too long to wait for an increase in the minimum wage.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I express my appreciation to the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Michigan. I have an amendment I am considering offering dealing with Guantanamo Bay.

I inquire as to whether there is an opportunity to work that out?

I thank the chairman.

I wanted to make sure in the discussion there was a space for that.

Reserving the right to object, I know we have had a discussion with the distinguished chairman of the committee. Senator Bingaman and I are interested in offering amendments at the appropriate time precloture on the Guantanamo situation. I am wondering if we could allocate an hour before the cloture motion is filed to raise that amendment and then have a vote on it, either one or two of those amendments.

I say to my colleague--

If we could agree to a vote on one or two amendments on the Gitmo situation and allow us the opportunity to debate this evening or possibly an hour tomorrow morning before the vote, that would accommodate us completely. If we could accommodate that request, then we can go forward. That is the request we would like to make.

Is that the understanding, that that would be the case?

Why don't we say around 7 o'clock. Say at 7 o'clock.

I would say at 7 p.m.

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

I appreciate the comments of others about Guantanamo Bay and the individuals who are being held here. I listened to the discussion earlier between the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Graham, and my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Sessions from Alabama, who discussed the issue of those who are being detained in Guantanamo and the very facility itself.

I had thought about offering an amendment on this matter, but it is getting confusing, with the number of amendments being offered tomorrow and the length of debate. Senator Bingaman is offering an amendment which I think is worthy of consideration. I may withhold the amendment I intended to offer until a later time, on another matter, when there is more of an opportunity to have debate. There is at best only a limited amount of time we may get tomorrow for discussion. I have been told I might have only a few minutes.

I regret that. I wish we had more time to offer this amendment. But I think in the interests of my colleagues here, given the seriousness of the issue, it probably deserves more time. So, I will reserve offering that amendment until another time when we have more of an opportunity to discuss it.

Let me, if I can, discuss some issues that have been raised here this evening that I think are important. I have listened to my colleagues talk about, first of all, the individuals being held in Guantanamo. We talk about people here, some of whom clearly have the very worst intentions for the United States. Some of these individuals have attacked our soldiers, attacked innocent citizens, and pose serious threats. There is no debate about that. We are not arguing about whether or not that is true for many of these people.

There may, obviously, be some exceptions that fall out of that category--individuals who have been improperly retained or restrained and sent to Guantanamo or elsewhere. That certainly may be the case. But there is no question that many of these individuals are people to worry about. That is not the issue.

The issue is: We are a nation of laws. We say this all the time. It is something about which we take great pride. We have celebrated it over and over again. It is one of the distinguishing features of this great country of ours. We proved that we are a nation of laws categorically 60 years ago this very year when, in a different set of circumstances, the United States, along with our allies, some of whom reluctantly joined us in this effort, held a series of trials in a place called Nuremberg. We made the decision at Nuremberg that the defendants in those trials--these thugs, these people who had murdered 11 million innocents, 6 million Jews because of their religion, not to mention the millions more who lost their lives as a result of the Nazi war effort--would be afforded a trial instead of just being summarily executed. Winston Churchill advocated summary execution, and many others did as well. Why would you possibly give these defendants, it was asked--these thugs that I have mentioned, who carried out the orders of Adolph Hitler--why would you give them a trial? Why would they get a lawyer? Why would they be allowed to present evidence in a court of law?

It was the conclusion of the United States, under the leadership of people like Justice Robert Jackson, that the rule of law should be paramount. Justice Jackson and others argued very strongly that it was going to be critically important that the United States and others join in showing the world that there is a difference between these fascists--who had summarily executed people merely because of their ethnicity or religion--and this great country of ours.

In fact, Nuremberg was an interesting choice for the venue of those trials. In a sense, the Nazis chose Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Laws created a legal justification for every atrocity they committed, and so having a trial at Nuremberg, trying the very people who perpetrated these crimes, was somehow a fitting coincidence.

I speak about this because as a child growing up I heard night after night my father, who was the Executive Trial Counsel under Robert Jackson at Nuremberg, speak of these days. I was 1 year old in the summer of 1945 when my father left for a few short weeks merely to be an interrogator of these defendants at Nuremberg. He ended up replacing Judge Story as Executive Trial Counsel under Robert Jackson, and spent a year and a half trying a number of defendants at Nuremberg. He wrote my mother every single day 15 to 20-page letters describing in great detail his views and thoughts about the defendants and our allies in that effort, the Russians, the British, the French. He had some choice thoughts about a number of those people who were at Nuremberg. And he talked to his children growing up over the years about what happened at Nuremberg.

There was a great debate. In fact, half of the Supreme Court argued against Robert Jackson even going. There were colleagues here who argued that it was ex post facto juris prudence--that we had no right to go back and create a body of law to try the defendants at Nuremberg.

My father and others argued strenuously that the natural law should require that individuals who had committed such crimes--who had committed summary executions based on religion or ethnicity--that these people should be taken to task for what they had done, but also, critically, be afforded rights--the right to a fair trial, the right to have legal representation.

Imagine--people like Goering and von Ribbentrop and Keitel and Speer and others--actually be given a lawyer to represent them in a trial, so that they could stand up and make a case for themselves, as Goering did for days on end at Nuremberg.

Obviously, the facts are different here. At Nuremberg, the war was over. There was a different set of circumstances. I would be the first to acknowledge it.

That is not the comparison I am trying to draw. The comparison I am trying to draw here is about the rule of law.

We can characterize these individuals at Guantanamo in words that none of us are going to terribly argue about. But I come back to the point that those who were at Nuremberg, who made the case for the trial such as I described, need to be heard again today, 60 years later.

We are a nation of laws. We are different. We are not like these people who are being held at Guantanamo. The rule of law is something we cherish in this country, even to the point where we are willing to stand up and defend the rights of people who do things we find abhorrent.

Whenever I talk to students about the Bill of Rights and the first amendment, I tell them that it doesn't just protect their rights when they say something I agree with. It is important also to protect those individuals who stand up and say something I totally disagree with or find obnoxious, to put it mildly.

That is the rule of law. That is what makes us different. That is what distinguishes us.

What has happened already is that there is confusion. Are these prisoners of war? If they are, obviously the Geneva Conventions prevail. If they are not prisoners of war but enemy combatants, the Supreme Court has ruled already that they have certain rights, that they have a right to appeal that status. Yet, we find that a substantial number of these people are being held without any definition of who they are, what their status is legally, whether or not they are POWs, enemy combatants, or something else.

When Senator Bingaman offers his language here to get some clarity, why is that important? I think it is important because we are, again, a nation of laws. We determine that people ought to be given one status or another. We need some clarity as to who these individuals are and how they are going to be dealt with.

Why do I say that? First, because we ought to care, particularly in this a

body, the U.S. Senate, that the rule of law is defended. But second, and not unimportant, is the question of how we are being perceived in the fight against terrorism--something that requires international cooperation. It is critically important that the United States not only lead on this issue but that other nations around the world and their citizenry following us, join us, if you will, in this effort.

Today, as I speak about this issue--unfortunate symbols are important. Guantanamo has become a symbol of things that have gone wrong without clarity, without definition, and that lack of clarity is hurting our cause.

As we try to build a coalition, it is crucial that we win support for what we are trying to achieve. Without allies in this effort, we will never ever win this war on terrorism. It is a transnational problem that insists upon a transnational response.

It is critically important that we understand the necessity of building the kind of relationships that are going to be absolutely critical if we are going to succeed in this effort, as I believe we must. We have no choice but to succeed in this effort.

But to disregard the feelings or sentiments of others on whom we must support and depend in the future, if we are going to succeed in this effort, is something that ought not to be lost on the membership of this institution.

I am deeply concerned about the direction we are heading here, one that is lacking clarity, any clarity at all, in dealing with these individuals that are being held. What is their status? Is it one thing or do we need a determination of that.

The administration I think bears the responsibility to come forward and say what the status is. Just saying we are going to hold people without some clarity is not good enough. If you want to hold them, fine. Decide what they are. Are they prisoners of war? If they are, then that is one set of circumstances. If they are not prisoners of war but enemy combatants, that is a different set of criteria that applies. But the rule of law must apply.

The criticism we are receiving here is that again we just do not have any definition. This ought not be an issue that divides us and people trying to inflame the passions of others: Who cares more about terrorism or who is willing to stand up and fight against terrorism more than anyone else. That is not the issue. The issue is the rule of law which joins people of different political persuasions but of like mind about insisting that the rule of law be applied. That has never divided us. When we move that important criteria, that important definition of who we are as Americans--the rule of law--and engage in this sort of demagogic debate about who cares more about terrorism, or you don't care about terrorism at all, if you are only willing to talk about the rule of law, that somehow makes you weak on this issue, that you lack the kind of conviction and spine when it comes to dealing with terrorists because you start talking about the rule of law, how strong an American are you, if you only get up and talk about the rule of law?

We have all learned painfully when you begin to disregard the rule of law because you don't like the individuals that you want to apply it to, it comes back to hurt all of us.

Those who made the case more than 50 years ago at another place in another set of circumstances but facing the same criticism--the emotional response was certainly warranted. The Nazis brutalized people, incinerated millions, and certainly lit passions that said, Why would you ever give that kind of individual a lawyer and a right to present a case? And you can understand the emotions that people felt at the time--to give them the right to present a case? Did they ever give any of their victims a right to present a case in the incinerators of Buchenwald or Dachau? They never did. Why should we do it now?

Because people stood up and said we are different than they are. That is why we insist upon the rule of law.

Today, we need to remind ourselves--conservative, liberals, centrists--who we are. The rule of law unites us. It ought not divide us when we have these debates and discussions.

Guantanamo has unfortunately become a symbol of things that need to change.

The President himself, to his credit, a week or so ago in a press conference on June 14, acknowledged that fact. He said:

No question, Guantanamo sends . . . a signal to some of our

friends . . . provides an excuse, for example, to say, ``The

United States is not upholding the values that they're trying

to encourage other countries to adhere to.'' He also stated

clearly that he ``would like to close Guantanamo.''

That was the President of the United States. I am not making a case on my own. He recognizes what is happening with the symbol of Guantanamo, and how difficult it is to build the kind of relationships that are critical if we are going to succeed as we must in this war against terrorism.

I am not going to be offering an amendment. I think there is not adequate time to debate and discuss these things at this late hour in the evening. But I will find an opportunity at the appropriate time to raise the issue.

I hope we can build a broad, bipartisan consensus on these points. We ought not have division over the rule of law; to get clarification about how we talk about POWs, enemy combatants, and what the status of these people is because different sets of rules apply. Having no status at all and not fitting into one category or another is something that ought to be unacceptable to all of us.

I think having a facility that has become the symbol of something which none of us believe we stand for--we know we stand for the rule of law, we know we believe in that, and we embrace it--is raising serious reservations and concerns among people who ought to be joining us in this effort. If that is the case, as General McCaffrey said in talking about Guantanamo, close it down. He said he would like to close it down, and others believe as well that we ought to find other venues to deal with these issues as well as, of course, determining the legal status of these individuals so we can move on and again build the kind of coalitions necessary to have a successful coalition to fight the war on terrorism.

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

Mr. President, I have been to Guantanamo twice, and I have seen the work of our military personnel, the good morale they have under difficult conditions, their determination to provide every decent and right request and treatment to the prisoners who are there. I have seen areas where they are detained, the religious freedom that they give them, including a Koran and prayer rugs and things that they have requested, the exercise that they obtain. It is, I believe, in all respects a very fine prison that treats people in a decent way.

But as the Senator from South Carolina noted, these individuals are prisoners of war, and prisoners of war are not given trials. In the history of the United States of America, we do not give prisoners of war trials. They are detained until the conflict is over.

What about those who have gone beyond just being a combatant against the United States but have become an unlawful combatant, violating all the rules of warfare and are therefore apprehended and detained? Should they be given more rights than a properly uniformed and properly lawful combatant is given who is detained by an enemy? I think not. I would suggest these are matters that are within the parameters of the U.S. military to handle. They have no desire to maintain a single prisoner any longer than they have to. They have released several hundred already, and 15 of those have been rearrested on the battlefield where they are presumably attempting to fight the United States of America and our soldiers and our allies around the world.

So I would say to my colleagues, these are not academic questions. They are matters of real life and death and must be carefully thought through. Under the circumstances we are now dealing with regarding prisoners in Guantanamo, we don't need to micro-manage the military. I would agree with Senator Bingaman that his amendment at first glance says that they must be charged with a crime, filed in an appropriate Federal district court of the United States or a military tribunal or an international criminal tribunal or repatriated to the country of origin or some other country. That is a mandate. The amendment goes on to say: But with respect to those who are not so charged, the Department of Defense must submit a report saying why they haven't been charged and when they will be handled in this matter. So I think in conflict, as Senator Graham has detailed, it goes to the historic manner by which any nation, and in particular the United States, handles prisoners of war.

Again, I have seen the conduct at Guantanamo. I think it is an appropriate facility considering the danger that these individuals pose. It is an appropriate location. It makes it very difficult for them to break free and kill other people. The Department of Defense actually is continuing to improve it. They give the prisoners first- rate meals, first-rate medical care. Until the three suicides we saw recently, not a single prisoner had died in Guantanamo of any kind of causes, natural or otherwise.

So I believe this amendment is not necessary. I think it would have the effect of restricting the power of the executive branch to carry out this war on terrorism and manage the military's treatment of prisoners. The Department of Defense wants to get rid of them. They have tried to repatriate numbers of them. But some of them are just dangerous and must be detained.

I would ask, how would a prosecutor prove a case? Some would say we will just give them a trial. What if they were captured in the mountains of Afghanistan and maybe the soldier who captured them was later killed, or maybe he was reassigned to Korea or some other place? It is not so easy to have trials of prisoners of war, and that is why it has never been done and why I think the amendment, which is carefully drafted and attempts to avoid some of the worst criticisms that might be made of it, is, nevertheless, a step too far, and I believe we should reject it.

I just want to point out a number of things that are important about how careful our military is, unlike what happens when American military prisoners are captured, apparently, as we saw today, the horror of being captured, tortured and killed by the al-Qaida forces in Iraq, who are just brutal in their treatment of American prisoners. We give the prisoners at Guantanamo a combatant status review tribunal--a tribunal consisting of three people, the Department of Defense Combatant Status Review Tribunal process pursuant to a Supreme Court plurality opinion in Hamdi. Hamdi dealt with due process for American citizens. The process created was applied to all foreign nationals detained at Guantanamo and went beyond the process referred to by the Supreme Court of the United States. It went beyond that.

The Combatant Status Review Tribunal provides a venue for detainees to personally challenge their status as enemy combatants. They were given that opportunity. As of January 22, 2005, the Department of Defense had completed 558 CSRTs. Of the 558 hearings that were conducted, the enemy combatant status of 520 detainees was confirmed, and 38 detainees were found to be no longer meeting the criteria to be designated as enemy combatants.

The Administrative Review Board is another process the Department of Defense has implemented. This administrative review process makes an annual assessment of whether there is continued reason to believe that the enemy combatant poses a threat to the United States or its allies, or whether there are factors bearing upon the need or the continued detention, including the enemy combatant's intelligence value, in the global war on terror. That is what this board does every year for every prisoner.

Based on this assessment, the Administrative Review Board can recommend that individuals should be released or should be transferred with conditions or should continue to be detained. Allowing detained enemy fighters to be heard and potentially released or transferred while hostilities are ongoing, as they are this very minute in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a historic and unprecedented step. We have never done that before in war.

The first year, the Administrative Review Board resulted in 330 continue-to-detain decisions, 119 transfer decisions, and 14 release decisions. So these are not rubber stamps. The Department of Defense is attempting to move people out, to transfer them, or release the people they can justify releasing. But remember, 15 of those former prisoners at Guantanamo, who have been released, have later been detained and captured on the battlefield seeking to fight America.

The second year of the Administrative Review Board process, in this annual process, resulted thus far in 12 continue-to-detain decisions, 6 transfer decisions, and no release decisions. That is as of June 20 of this year.

So the Department of Defense has created a system that goes beyond what this Nation has ever utilized in time of war to deal with an attempt to release persons who have been captured as prisoners of war fighting the United States of America. They didn't do that for German prisoners. They didn't do it for Japanese prisoners. They didn't do it for North Korean prisoners. They didn't do it for Vietnamese prisoners. These are unprecedented steps. I think it is more than is required, but it is a generous step for the United States to take, and I certainly support that.

Mr. President, as of May of 2006, 287 detainees have departed Guantanamo,

192 have been released, 95 have been transferred to other governments, including Albania, Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, and Uganda. We would like to release them all, if we could.

But the President of the United States took an oath to protect the people of the United States from attack by enemies. If he releases prisoners who we believe will have any reasonable basis to continue to attempt to kill American citizens or American soldiers, he is derelict in his duty. This is not some game he is playing. This is not some academic process that the generals who are supervising this are involved in or the Administrative Review Board members or the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are dealing with. They can't make a mistake. If they make a mistake, somebody could die.

I know the operations at Guantanamo have raised complaints from some of our allies, specifically a complaint from one British official. I am so proud of the support the British government and population has shown to the United States, but I have to tell you, I don't know what the man expected us to do. Did he want us to release all 500 of them? Is that what he would want? Is that what the other people on our editorial boards like to write about? We should just release them? Well, maybe Great Britain would like to take them. Maybe the United Kingdom would like to take them and house them in their jails. Would they really? Would they release them? Would they want to release them on their subways or on their buses or on their trains in London?

Three prisoners just committed suicide last week at Guantanamo, and amazingly, we had newspapers in this great Nation that purport to be wise and thoughtful pandering to those seeking to close Guantanamo by suggesting that they are somehow killing themselves because they are depressed.

One of these was an active member of the Taliban forces who fought against the United States. One was a recognized leader in al-Qaida-- they are from Yemen and Saudi Arabia and other places. I believe two were from Saudi Arabia and one was from Yemen. Do we want to release prisoners like these?

They hanged themselves. I suggest, with all sincerity, that these three prisoners did not commit suicide together, the same day, because they got depressed over mistreatment. Most of them have gained weight and have been well treated, well fed, and given superb medical care. That is not why they committed suicide. They committed suicide as a continuation of their commitment to jihad and to prepare to commit suicide to further jihad.

If they had a bomb with which they could have blown themselves up and others, Americans or other people, they would have done that. They absolutely would have done that. But because they were in our custody and couldn't get hold of a bomb and wrap it around their body and kill men, women and children on buses or trains or something like that. The only thing they could do was kill themselves in hopes they would have editorials around the world, editorials in New York City and Washington, DC, have Senators and Congressmen on the floor of the House and the Senate saying how badly we are treating these prisoners of war, these unlawful combatants, and suggesting they all ought to be turned loose and how this is America's fault.

The fact that these three prisoners, clearly terrorists, committed suicide the same day is absolute proof that they were threats to innocent people and to the United States of America. It is proof that they had that threat capability. If they had been released, do you think they would have just gone nicely back home to work a job in Yemen or work on a pipeline in Saudi Arabia? No, they are committed jihadists. They are terrorists. That is why they were in Guantanamo. I am glad they hadn't been released like some of the others and I am glad that those like them are still being detained there. They are not entitled to trial.

I don't know what we will do with Guantanamo. The President said he would like to close it. I guess it would make some people happy around the world. Maybe they would get off his back. But somebody has to do something with them. I will tell you one thing, we can't release them all. Do we release them any better if they are brought back to the United States? Do we release them any better if we take them over to London or Madrid? I submit not. We have them in a safe place. They are being well taken care of. We have invested a lot of the taxpayers' money in making that facility at Guantanamo a good facility, a safe facility. I don't know why we would want to move them, other than just to make people feel better and stop fussing.

But we are going to continue to apprehend people. When we went out after the bombing of Zarqawi and did these raids in 17 different spots and they arrested quite a number of people, what are they going to do with them? Turn them loose?

When I was in Iraq recently, I heard about two brothers who were known bomb makers. Can you imagine someone a greater target of the United States military than a skilled bomb maker who is making bombs that kill American soldiers on a regular basis? They caught them and they thought they had enough proof. But the military decided they didn't. Or the court or somebody did, and they turned them loose.

I am telling you, those military personnel and the civilians that worked with them to help build that case and to identify these bombers were really heartbroken. It was very painful for them to have to release somebody whom they believed had been responsible for killing innocent civilians in Iraq and American soldiers. But we didn't have enough proof, apparently, and we let them go.

We don't need to keep pushing the military, pushing that you have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt like you have to before you can lock up an American citizen--let's not put that kind of burden on our military.

I think this Guantanamo matter is greatly overblown. We fail to realize just how dangerous some of the prisoners are. Hopefully, we can sift through them and find some more who are not dangerous and they can be released. Hopefully, we can send them back to foreign countries. But you know, when you send them back to a foreign country, things don't always work out right. You turn around and 6 months later, 2 years later, they are released. Or sometimes we have Members of the Senate who have made speeches and complained because, if we send them back to their home countries, the home countries realize they are terrorists, maybe even applied those tactics against their country, and they mistreat them. Now we are blamed for some treatment by a foreign government where we sent these prisoners.

We were aggressive in interviewing prisoners at the outset of opening Guantanamo. We had a very good briefing last time I was there where the people said they really reduced the intensity of interrogations. In the weeks and days following September 11 when we thought and had every reason to believe that there were cells probably operating all over this country, the military and our intelligence people were aggressive in asking questions of them and pursuing interrogations. They did not torture them. I do not believe there has been a single allegation that has been substantiated of any torture at Guantanamo. But people took it farther and said the military was too harsh with these prisoners. So for a whole lot of reasons we don't pursue those tactics as strongly today.

The standards are very lax in that regard--or strong in the sense that prisoners are not stressed and not abused in any way as they are being interrogated. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Occasionally, it is odd, after time goes by, somebody begins to talk. Some people never talk.

I appreciate the interest of my colleagues in wanting to run the cleanest prison system we possibly can, to comply with the highest ideals of the United States. I believe if they went there and examined what was going on they would conclude, with me, that the prisoners are being treated well, that they are being given every help and dietary and religious values that they need. We should continue to do that.

Sometime in the future we will have to wrestle with how we are going to handle them and maybe we can continue to repatriate them to the countries of origin. Maybe some actually

ought to be tried and executed. Others simply need to be detained until the war is over. That is just the way it is, and that is the way it has always been.

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

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

Mr. President, the pending business is the DOD authorization bill and most specifically the amendments by Senator McConnell and Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. The McConnell amendment is to be voted on first, followed by a vote on the second amendment. Am I correct?

I shall address the McConnell amendment.

First, the amendments have a great likeness. But I felt, in working with the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, that his amendment--I ask unanimous consent that I be a cosponsor of that amendment.

I believe very strongly that a second amendment was needed because of what we have been working toward--the United States and its coalition partners--from the very beginning, and that is to provide the Iraqi people with a sovereign nation in which they can exercise the full range of authorities and responsibilities of a sovereign nation. Therefore, they went about a series of elections. Every Member of this Chamber recognizes the courage of the Iraqi people in three elections. Then there was the formation of a permanent government, a unity government. Having achieved that, they are now beginning to exercise the full responsibilities of a sovereign nation. I was concerned that we, as a legislative body of our Nation, not indicate that we are infringing on their rights of sovereignty.

This whole issue of amnesty is an important one. I do not, in any measure, suggest it is not important. But I think we have to observe that they are a sovereign nation. How they go about it should largely be within the confines of their own wisdom and goals because our whole future is dependent on this Government and the people of Iraq taking back their country such that our forces can come back home. Whatever that Government does that is constructive toward reaching that goal I want to support. So in working on this amendment, I, working with the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, drafted one or two provisions with him which state as follows:

It is the sense of Congress that the goal of the United

States and our Coalition partners has been to empower the

Iraqi Nation with full sovereignty thereby recognizing their

freedom to exercise that sovereignty. Through successive

elections and difficult political agreements the unity

government is now in place exercising that sovereignty. We

must respect that exercise of that sovereignty in accordance

with their own wisdom;

History records that governments derived of free elections

should not grant amnesty to those who have committed war

crimes or terrorist acts, and; [further]

The United States should continue with the historic

tradition of diplomatically, economically, and in a

humanitarian manner assisting nations and the people whom

have fought once a conflict is concluded.

I am happy to yield the floor, if the Senator so desires.

Mr. President, he was fired.

Mr. President, the Senator is exactly correct.

That is correct. Based on my discussions with Senator Nelson, he in good faith read those reports and felt very strongly, as I think many of us do, about the issue of amnesty and came forward with that amendment. Then, we purposely delayed final action on these two amendments last week, such that in the intervening time there would be further clarification. I do believe there has been some further clarification of this matter. I can address that in the context of a communication from the Department of State, I say to my good friend from Kentucky. I was able to obtain this information, which hopefully will be forthcoming momentarily, stating just that: The Iraqi Government understands precisely what the situation is, that an error was made and they have put in place I think adequate corrections.

Mr. President, I think, certainly in my judgment, that would be an acceptable situation because there is clarity in the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky about a point that is very important to me; i.e, sovereignty, exercise of that. With no disrespect to the Senator from Florida, I believed his amendment as originally drafted, and the intent, was to reach across the ocean and have the U.S.A. reach into the Government and try to dictate what was to be done. So I believe the Senator is correct in that, and I join him in that suggestion to our colleagues.

Yes, of course.

President, first, the distinguished Senator from Florida referred to a Los Angeles Times article. I think that article should be placed in the Record following the colloquy between myself and the distinguished Senator from Florida and the Senator from Texas.

Also, I am not sure that we should make decisions here based on one report of one newspaper. I am not impugning the Times; it is an outstanding newspaper. But we just do not have any corroboration of some of the statements.

I point out they refer to the amnesty plan which currently would include insurgents alleged to have staged attacks against Americans and Iraqis.

The second sentence down is the reconciliation plan which is expected to be formally announced soon. So that plan is in the making. There is still some formulation of policy going on.

It is for that reason that I believe a strong vote on both of these amendments sends a subtle message about our concern. Let us assume for the moment that that plan has not been made formal.

I inquired of the Department of State as to whether or not anything had transpired over the weekend. There was one meeting between Prime Minister Maliki and the charges d'affaires of the American Embassy. The charges d'affaires reported back to the Department of State.

Has the 15 minutes allocated to the Senator from Virginia expired?

I ask unanimous consent that both sides be extended 5 minutes in this debate.

It was stated that there was a meeting between the charges d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy and Prime Minister Maliki on 17 June. Prime Minister Maliki affirmed that any future amnesty would not differentiate between those who killed Iraqis and those who killed coalition forces. None of these people would be pardoned.

Second, Prime Minister Maliki confirmed that there should not be a concern that his reconciliation plan would prohibit Multinational Forces-Iraqi--MNFI--operations or impose a timeline for future Iraqi support of the MNFI, the point being that they are looking at this situation.

I think that these two amendments will send not a message that invades or impairs their exercise of the right of sovereignty but expresses the concern on behalf of all.

The distinguished Senator mentioned the tragic loss of our two servicepersons. It has not, to the best of my knowledge, been confirmed officially, but nevertheless earlier media reports the tragic killing and mutilation of these two brave American soldiers, which is just an example of the ferocity of this conflict that we are experiencing over there and the enormous risks being taken by the men and women of our Armed Forces.

So I think the message sent by both of these amendments is a timely one.

I urge Senators to vote for both.

I yield the floor.

If I might on the Senator's time because ours is down to about 1 minute.

Mr. President, I think we should visit that issue only if in fact at some point in time that position is made official. The purpose of that language--and I accept full responsibility for that language--is I feel fervently that the ability for us to conclude our operation with our coalition partners in Iraq and to bring our troops home is predicated on the strength of the sovereignty exercised by this government.

The Senator knows full well as do others in this Chamber that there is a high disrespect, unfortunately, among many Iraqis for the United States and its government. If there are any of our fingerprints that we are trying to dictate to that sovereign nation how they must make decisions, I fear it could impede the progress to bring our forces home. That is why that is in there.

Mr. President, I may call the Senator's attention to page 1 of the McConnell-Warner amendment. It says:

Sense of the Congress commending the government of Iraq for

affirming its position of no amnesty for terrorists who

attack United States Armed Forces.

Could that be any clearer?

Mr. President, I am certain that working on the predicate that they are a sovereign nation, they can make decisions. There will be decisions which are inconsistent with the views that we hold in this country. How do we enforce our views without interfering with their sovereignty?

First, let them speak with absolute clarity to this. The McConnell amendment--and the Senator keeps saying within the four corners. Look at corner No. 1. The introductory has very clear and expressed language against the policy.

Will there be times that we disagree with their exercise of sovereignty and their own wisdom? Yes. But if we are to obtain what we hope is our goal of giving that nation its sovereign right, we cannot be dictating to them how they reach their final decision.

Mr. President, I say to my friend at this point in time that we believe the amendment speaks for itself. The first section of the amendment cites a sense of the Congress commending the Government of Iraq for affirming its position of no amnesty for terrorists who attack U.S. Armed Forces. What could be clearer than that? That sets the tone and the thrust for the entire amendment.

I have said to my colleagues, it seems to me, in the spirit of comity, we have had a good debate, we have seen some further clarification of this issue in the time that has evolved since Thursday and today; secondly, assuming time is a measure of accuracy, this policy is undergoing evaluation in Iraq right now.

These two amendments, side by side, receiving a strong vote of the Senate, should suffice in the mission the Senator from Florida set out on and on which I join him.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Are the yeas and nays ordered on the Nelson amendment?

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, the two managers have been working with Members. We have reconciled a series of amendments, and I believe at this point in time I will make the following statement: I have sent a series of amendments to the desk which have been cleared by myself and the ranking member. I ask, therefore, unanimous consent that the Senate consider these amendments en bloc, the amendments be agreed to, and motions to reconsider be laid on the table. Finally, I ask that any statements relating to any of these individual amendments be printed at this point in the Record.

Mr. President, we first ask that you act on the unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would respond that we have concluded all the work at the moment. I believe our leaders are working out a procedure by which the minimum wage amendments are being addressed.

Mr. President, at this moment I think there has been a request to go off of our bill. Is that the request of the Senator from Wyoming?

The Senator is quite correct, quite correct. We will remain on the bill for the purpose of debate on such amendments relative to minimum wage that may be brought forward, correct. Senator Kennedy's is at the desk and you wish to speak to it?

Mr. President, I would have to object.

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

Mr. President, on behalf of the leadership, I make this unanimous consent request.

I ask unanimous consent that the first amendment, No. 4323, be withdrawn; provided further that Senator Enzi be recognized in order to offer a first-degree amendment relating to the minimum wage; provided further that the Senate then resume debate at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday and that there be 1\1/2\ hours of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the HELP Committee or their designees. I further ask unanimous consent that at the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to a vote on Kennedy amendment No. 4322, to be followed by a vote on the Enzi amendment, with no amendments to the amendments in order; provided further, if either amendment does not get 60 votes in the affirmative, then that amendment would be automatically withdrawn.

I further ask unanimous consent that following those votes, Senator Levin be recognized in order to offer amendment number No. 4320 related to Iraq. There will be 5 hours equally divided in relation to that amendment, and following that debate, the amendment be set aside and Senator Kerry be recognized to offer his amendment related to Iraq.

I simply say, I understood the Senator has that amendment. I have asked colleagues on this side to be here. They are now present.

The Senator indicated you would lay it down now for the purpose of introducing the amendment, having a colloquy on the amendment, and the time for the voting would be established by the leadership at some point in the future.

The Senator is now ready to proceed.

I didn't hear what the distinguished Democratic leader said.

Mr. President, I presume that the request is as read and that there have been no changes, and we will then have the sequence of recognition of Senators Levin and Kerry; and I add to it that thereafter the Senator from Virginia would be recognized for the purpose of submitting whatever amendment.

I ask for recognition for the purpose of offering the amendment from our side on whatever subject that comes up at that time at the conclusion of these two.

I said it could be on anything.

We have been going back and forth.

Mr. President, I withdraw that and ask unanimous consent that we approve the request as read earlier.

Mr. President, we are perfectly willing to make that eminently clear.

We have not seen his amendment.

Has the Chair ruled on the underlying UC request?

Mr. President, I have been trying to get the minimum wage put aside so that you could move. And you are going to argue tonight your amendment; is that correct?

And Senator Bingaman likewise. I think he has an amendment pending at the desk.

But he has spoken to it.

What is the desire? I have to ask my colleagues, we are trying as best we can to accommodate all interested parties. The amendments are coming from this side. It is really incumbent on you all to try and reconcile how you wish to proceed. We are about to lock up the two significant amendments of the Senator from

Michigan and the Senator from Massachusetts. I recognize you have had that amendment. You asked to bring it up tonight. I have assembled a group of my colleagues to debate the amendment. What is the pleasure?

Mr. President, we had understood that the debate would be held tonight. We were willing to have a vote on Gitmo tomorrow right after the minimum wage. There it is.

We will try and do our very best.

If the Senator would yield just for a moment, I would like to ask my two colleagues, for the knowledge of my two colleagues on this side, how soon may we start the debate on the Guantanamo amendments?

We will certainly accommodate the Senator from Iowa. I have two colleagues who withdrew from their schedules to come over here tonight because we were told that we would start this debate.

All right, 7 p.m.

Mr. President, my understanding is that we will have two amendments introduced by the other side with regard to Guantanamo. They will be debated tonight. We are going to work toward making certain they get a vote on those amendments. I ask my ranking member.

Mr. President, in the interim, seeing no Senator desiring to address the Senate, I suggest the absence of a quorum.