Call Home Act of 2006

Mr. President, I salute Senator Hagel for his leadership and his contribution on this issue. I am glad to be here with my colleague, Senator Craig, who is one of the Senate's real authorities on energy.

We have had some trouble passing an energy bill in the Senate. We are having some trouble passing a clean air bill in the Senate. If we are being logical--which is hard for a Senate to be--we would set clean air objectives and pass a clean energy bill to help reach that objective, do it at once, and give ourselves a low cost, reliable supply of energy, less dependent on the rest of the world, and do it in a way that is environmentally sound.

That is our objective. We have different approaches on this, but Senator Hagel has put his emphasis today exactly where it needs to be. The United States of America is a country that has about a third of all the GDP in the world. We have 5 to 6 percent of the people and a third of all the money is one way to put it.

How did we get that money? How did we get our position? The National Academy of Sciences says that since World War II, half our new jobs have come from advances in science and technology. There are other countries in the world--a growing number of countries--that have great capacity for science and technology. Some of the greatest scientists and engineers who have worked in this country have come from other countries in the world. But if any country in the world ought to be putting a focus on science and technology as a way of helping not just their country but the rest of the world deal with the issue of greenhouse gases, it ought to be the United States of America. Senator Hagel is exactly right to put the spotlight there. He does it in a three-part bill. In the first part, he talks about international cooperation. That also makes a lot of sense.

Three weeks ago, I was visiting with the chairman of one of the largest energy companies in Germany. If there is a country in the world that has a more irrational energy policy than we do, it would be Germany. They have just decided to close 19 nuclear powerplants at the same time, across the Rhine river, France is 85 percent nuclear power. Of course, Germany will never do that because they will not be able to meet the Kyoto carbon standards if they close the plants. But the point that my friend from Germany was making is that we are headed, in his words, toward an energy catastrophe.

It is a catastrophe of two kinds. One is energy supply, and one is clean air. Now, why is that? It is because other countries in the world are growing. In China, the average Chinese person uses about one-sixth the amount of energy that the average person in the European Union uses, in the 15 original countries. Now, in China, when the average Chinese person, with all the people there, gets up to three-sixths or four-sixths or five-sixths or six-sixths, as they will, there will be an unbelievable demand for energy in this country. We are already seeing it in the prices for natural gas, in the prices for oil.

The figures we heard in our Energy Committee were that over the next 25 years--and my numbers are approximate--China might build 650 new coal plants to begin to supply its energy, and India might build 800. That does not count the rest of Southeast Asia or what Brazil might do. So we cannot just look at this issue in terms of what is happening in the United States.

If there is not a supply of energy, and the other countries are demanding so much, our prices will be so high that our million chemical jobs in the country will move overseas looking for cheap natural gas. And it will not make much difference how we clean the air in the United States of America if China and India and Brazil build so many old coal plants and throw stuff up in the air because it will blow around the world and come over here.

So we have, on two counts, a major, major challenge: energy supply and clean air. It would make enormous sense for the scientists and engineers in the United States to work with the scientists and engineers in Germany who have exactly the same challenge and the scientists and engineers in China who have even more of a challenge. They have just stopped 26 of their coal plants because of environmental concerns, but they will not be able to stop them for long because of their need for an energy supply.

What the Senator from Nebraska has done is to say to us, hey, we are talking about mandates and rules and regulations, but what we ought to be trying to do is to create a solution to the problem using the thing that we in the United States do better than anybody, or historically have, and that is our science and technology. This is the country with the 50 great research universities. This is the country with the 20 National Laboratories. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in my home State, is already doing important work on how we recapture carbon.

One of the things we can do in the Senate, without arguing about Kyoto, without arguing about mandates, is to say, let's see if we can-- through technology, working with people in other parts of the world, and encouraging our own businesses and laboratories--find better ways to deal with greenhouse gases. I salute the Senator for that. I am glad to have a chance to be associated with this bill.

Now, the second thing I would like to say is that is not all there is to do. We have different opinions in this body about so-called global warming. I believe, of course, there is global warming. Our grandparents can tell us that. The question, as Senator Craig said, is, What is causing it? And do we know enough about it to take steps? We have different opinions about that issue. That does not mean we are all unconcerned about it; we just have different

degrees of understanding of it and different opinions about the evidence we see.

I have a little different opinion than the Senator from Idaho. I support legislation that Senator Carper and Senator Chafee and Senator Gregg and I supported in the last session of Congress that put modest caps on the utilities section for the production of carbon. I was not willing to go further than that because of the science I read and I'm not sure we know exactly how to solve this problem. My reading of it did not persuade me, one, that we know all that we need to know about global warming; and, two, maybe more importantly, I was not sure we knew what we were doing by just saying, OK, we will do this, and without having the solution.

Again, Senator Hagel has suggested, well, let's come up with some technology. Let's come up with some science. And then we can make a better assessment about what we would be able to do if we were to put a cap on it.

I would suggest that in addition to Senator Hagel's technology that he encourages in his legislation--that is one way to do it--a second way to do it is with some kind of caps, and there are a variety of proposals in this body to do that. That also encourages, in my opinion, technology. But then there is also a third point to make, and that takes us out of the debate as to whether it is a good idea or a bad idea to put on mandatory caps.

If China is going to build hundreds of coal-fired powerplants and India is going to build hundreds of coal-fired powerplants because that is the only technology available to them and the only source of fuel they have readily available, then we had better get busy trying to figure out a way to recapture carbon--not to comply with the Kyoto Treaty, but because we are going to have to have it in this world. Any realistic look at the sources of energy in the world says that for the next 20 or 25 years, nuclear power, natural gas, oil, and coal will be almost all of it.

There is a lot of support for renewable energy. Some people want to put up wind turbines taller than football fields covering square miles. I do not. I think that destroys the American landscape, and it does not produce much energy.

But one of the most thoughtful presentations I have heard on the solution to our common issues of clean energy and clean air has come from the National Resources Defense Council, one of the leading environmental organizations in this country. They are in favor of a coal solution--I hope I am attributing this correctly to them--of a coal solution for our clean air, clean energy policy. A big part of their reasoning is, they see what is happening in the rest of the world. If the United States, they reason, can figure out a way to gasify coal and then recapture the carbon, that gets rid of most of the noxious pollutants--sulfur, nitrogen, mercury. It recaptures the carbon, which we have not really figured out how to do yet, but it does not just do that for the United States, it shows the rest of the world how to do it. And then China, instead of building 800 new coal plants with the old technology, will build 800 coal gasification plants and recapture the carbon. India will do the same, and maybe Germany will do the same. There will be more energy, and we will all be able to breathe. And that is quite irrespective of mandatory caps.

One of the things I like about Senator Hagel's proposal is there is not any way to study the technology of how we deal with greenhouse gases without getting into questions of coal gasification and the recapturing of carbon. There is not any way to do that. He is leading us to the tantalizing possibility that in the United States we might one day be able to say: We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have 500 years' worth of it. We can turn it into gas. We can recapture the carbon. We can use that to create the hydrogen for the hydrogen economy that we think might one day be down the road, and that, plus our supplies of natural gas and nuclear power, will give us clean energy and will give us clean air and will show the world how to do the same.

The Senator from Nebraska has put the spotlight where the spotlight ought to be. The United States of America, of all countries, should start with technology and science and say: Greenhouse gases is a problem. We are still researching how much of a problem it is. But we should, working with other countries, use our science and technology to deal with it and, in the process, see if it can lead us toward that brilliant intersection of clean energy and clean air that will one day give us a steady supply of energy and clean air that we can breathe.

I salute the Senator for his leadership and am glad to be a cosponsor. I look forward to working with him. As chairman of the Senate subcommittee on energy, we have some jurisdiction over global warming as well as energy technology commercialization. Senator Domenici, chairman of our full committee, had a full roundtable the other day on natural gas. We have one coming up on coal and coal gasification. I can assure my colleagues that the Hagel legislation will be an important part of that roundtable. I will do my best to make it an important part of energy hearings.

Mr. President, I am very pleased today to join several of my colleagues--Senator Pryor, Senator DeWine, Senator Bingaman, Senator Smith, Senator Lieberman, and the Presiding Officer, Senator Coleman--in introducing the Keeping Families Together Act. This legislation is intended to reduce the barriers to care for children who are struggling with serious mental illness. It is intended to ensure their parents are no longer forced to give up custody of their children solely for the purpose of securing mental health treatment.

As the Presiding Officer is well aware, because he was an active participant in them, the Governmental Affairs Committee in the last Congress held extensive hearings on this issue.

What we heard was a tragedy. We heard case after case where families

made the wrenching choice to give up custody of their children in order to secure the mental health treatment that they needed. No family should ever be forced to make that decision.

Imagine what it feels like for a child who is suffering from mental illness to be wrenched from his family, put into either the juvenile justice system or the foster care system simply because that is the only way to get that child the care that he so desperately needs.

Serious mental illness afflicts millions of our Nation's children and adolescents. It is estimated that as many as 20 percent of American children under the age of 17 suffer from a mental, emotional or behavioral illness. What I find most disturbing, however, is the fact that two-thirds of all young people who need mental health treatment are not getting it.

Behind each of these statistics is a family that is struggling to do the best it can to help a son or a daughter with serious mental health needs to be just like every other kid--to develop friendships, to do well in school, and to get along with their siblings and other family members. These children are almost always involved with more than one social service agency, including the mental health, special education, child welfare, or the juvenile justice systems. Yet no one agency, at either the State or the Federal level, is clearly responsible or accountable for helping these children and their families.

My interest in this issue was triggered by a compelling series of stories by Barbara Walsh in the Portland Press Herald which detailed the obstacles that many Maine families have faced in getting desperately needed mental health services for their children. Too many families in Maine and elsewhere have been forced to make wrenching decisions when they have been advised that the only way to get the care that their children so desperately need is to relinquish custody and place them in either the child welfare or juvenile justice system.

When a child has a serious physical health problem like diabetes or a heart condition, the family turns to their doctor. When the family includes a child with a serious mental illness, it is often forced to go to the child welfare or juvenile justice system to secure treatment.

Yet neither system is intended to serve children with serious mental illness. Child welfare systems are designed to protect children who have been abused or neglected. Juvenile justice systems are designed to rehabilitate children who have committed criminal or delinquent acts. While neither of these systems is equipped to care for a child with a serious mental illness, in far too many cases, there is nowhere else for the family to turn.

In some extreme cases, families feel forced to file charges against their child or to declare that they have abused or neglected them in order to get the care that they need. As one family advocate observed, ``Beat 'em up, lock 'em up, or give 'em up,'' characterizes the choices that some families face in their efforts to get help for their children's mental illness.

In 2003, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, issued a report that I requested with Representatives Pete Stark and Patrick Kennedy that found that, in 2001, parents placed more than 12,700 children into the child welfare or juvenile justice systems so that these children could receive mental health services. I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg, since 32 States--including five States with the largest populations of children--did not provide the GAO with any data.

Other studies indicate that the problem is even more pervasive. A 1999 survey by the National Alliance for the Mentally III found that 23 percent--or one in four of the parents surveyed--had been told by public officials that they needed to relinquish custody of their children to get care, and that one in five of these families had done so.

Some States have passed laws to limit custody or prohibit custody relinquishment. Simply banning the practice is not a solution, however, since it can leave children with mental illness and their families without services and care. Custody relinquishment is merely a symptom of the much larger problem, which is the lack of available, affordable and appropriate mental health services and support systems for these children and their families.

Last Congress, I chaired a series of hearings in the Governmental Affairs Committee to examine this issue further. We heard compelling testimony from mothers who told us that they were advised that the only way to get the intensive care and services that their children needed was to relinquish custody and place them in the child welfare or juvenile justice system. This is a wrenching decision that no family should be forced to make. No parent should have to give up custody of his or her child just to get the services that the child needs.

The mothers also described the barriers they faced in getting care for their children. They told us about the limitations in both public and private insurance coverage. They also talked about the lack of coordination and communication among the various agencies and programs that service children with mental health needs. One parent, desperate for help for her twin boys, searched for 2 years until she finally located a program--which she characterized as ``the best kept secret in Illinois''--that was able to help.

Parents should not be bounced from agency to agency, knocking on every door they come to, in the hope that they will happen upon someone who has an answer. It simply should not be such a struggle for parents to get services and treatment for their children.

We also need to question what happens to these children when they are turned over to the child welfare or juvenile justice authorities. I released a report last year with Congressman Henry Waxman that found that all too often they are simply left to languish in juvenile detention centers, which are ill-equipped to meet their needs, while they wait for scarce mental health services.

Our report, which was based on a national survey of juvenile detention centers, found that the use of juvenile detention facilities to ``warehouse'' children with mental disorders is a serious national problem. It found that, over a six month period, nearly 15,000 young people--roughly 7 percent of all of the children in the centers surveyed--were detained solely because they were waiting for mental health services outside the juvenile justice system. Many were held without any charges pending against them, and the young people incarcerated unnecessarily while waiting for treatment were as young as seven years old. Finally, the report estimated that juvenile detention facilities are spending an estimated $100 million of the taxpayers' money each year simply to warehouse children and teenagers while they are waiting for mental health services.

The Keeping Families Together Act, which we are introducing today, will help to improve access to mental health services and assist states in eliminating the practice of parents relinquishing custody of their children solely for the purpose of securing treatment.

The legislation authorizes $55 million over 6 years for competitive grants to states to create an infrastructure to support and sustain statewide systems of care to serve children who are in custody or at risk of entering custody of the State for the purpose of receiving mental health services. States already dedicate significant dollars to serve children in state custody. These Family Support Grants would help States to serve children more effectively and efficiently, while keeping them at home with their families.

The legislation would also remove a current statutory barrier that prevents more States from using the Medicaid home and community-based services waiver to serve children with serious mental health needs. This waiver provides a promising way for States to address the underlying lack of mental health services for children that often leads to custody relinquishment. While a number of States have requested these waivers to serve children with developmental disabilities, very few have done so for children with serious mental health conditions. Our legislation would provide parity to children with mental illness by making it easier for States to offer them home- and community-based services under this waiver as an alternative to institutional care.

And finally, the legislation calls for the creation of a federal interagency task force to examine mental health issues in the child welfare and juvenile

justice systems and the role of those agencies in promoting access by children and youth to needed mental health services. The task force would also be charged with monitoring the Family Support grants, making recommendations to Congress on how to improve mental health services, and fostering interagency cooperation and removing interagency barriers that contribute to the problem of custody relinquishment.

The Keeping Families Together Act takes a critical step forward to meeting the needs of children with serious mental or emotional disorders. Our legislation has been endorsed by a broad coalition of mental health and children's groups, including the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the National Child Welfare League, the National Mental Health Association, the American Correctional Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Fight Crime, Invest in Kids.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that their letters of endorsement for the bill be printed in the Congressional Record, and I urge all of our colleagues to join us as cosponsors.

Mr. President, I rise today to encourage increased production of influenza vaccines in the United States. I am happy to honor my commitment to reintroduce the Flu Protection Act of 2005, along with Senator Bayh.

We dodged a bullet this year because we had a relatively mild flu season. Also, because the administration and public health officials did an excellent job of immediately addressing the vaccine shortage when it was announced in October. While this season's vaccine shortage didn't have as strong an impact as it might have, we should not go a day without looking for a path toward solving this problem so that we don't have the same issues in years to come. We may not always be so fortunate. Scientists believe that the return of an especially strong pandemic strain of flu is overdue. This legislation supports the administration's efforts to take steps to prepare for the imminent threat of avian flu.

The Bush administration has made progress on this issue, but Congress needs to address the underlying problems. The United States is disturbingly underprepared to deal with a massive outbreak or a sudden shortage of vaccine. We don't want to get caught short next year. We must aggressively encourage vaccine companies to come into this market and pass building incentives for existing companies.

I am encouraged that some sections of this legislation have been included in the majority's priority legislative package and look forward to working with other Members of Congress to ensure that the most comprehensive piece of legislation possible can be approved. We must move quickly to pass legislation that ensures sufficient flu vaccine supply, encourages an increase in production capacity, supports a flu vaccine awareness campaign, and prepares the United States to combat a pandemic or epidemic.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor at this moment to join my colleague Chuck Hagel in the introduction of legislation that he has put together out of a variety of avenues of interest and importance to deal with the issue of climate change, a issue in which he and I have been engaged for a good long while. I am not quite sure how many years ago it was that I, as the freshman chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, turned to Chuck to see if he could bring Senators together in a bipartisan way on what we believed at the moment--and we still believe today--was a critically important issue to be addressed.

Out of that effort grew the Hagel-Byrd resolution which passed this body by an overwhelming vote, and was a very clear message to America-- and to the world--on what we believed was necessary and important if we were to responsibly and effectively engage in the debate of climate change outside and well beyond the Kyoto protocol.

The legislation Senator Hagel brings to the floor today, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, is what I believe is a needed and necessary next step to work cooperatively with this administration and with countries around the world to begin to recognize all that is the makeup of this issue.

Our policy must recognize the legitimate needs of our bilateral trading partners to use their resources to meet the needs of their people. Yet, at the same time, the initial debate basically suggested that if in fact human involvement in the climate of the world was changing the climate of the world, the only way you could save the climate was to turn the lights out. It did not address the human need. It did not address the economic growth that was critically necessary at that time. That is why our country pushed back and said no, we would not ratify Kyoto; that we would go much further than that in bringing about the changes that were necessary and that this administration engaged in.

This legislation does a great deal more toward recognizing the need for bringing resources together.

Senator Hagel has made clear the other important things this legislation will do. Above all, this legislation is a true acknowledgment that climate variability and change is a top priority as an issue for the United States--and for all nations--to be involved in.

There can be an honest debate about whether the United States should do more or whether too much reliance is being placed on voluntary initiatives, but to claim that the United States is not acting seriously reflects, at best, a lack of knowledge or, at worst, political posturing.

An objective review of Government and private sector programs to reduce increases in greenhouse gas now and in the future would have to conclude that the United States is doing at least as much, if not more, than countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol which will go into effect tomorrow. The best evidence of this is our domestic rate of improvement in greenhouse gas intensity relative to the improvements other countries are making.

The term I just used, ``greenhouse gas intensity,'' is defined in legislation as the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output. This is a far wiser measure of progress because it complements, rather than conflicts with, a nation's goal of growing its economy and meeting the needs and aspirations of its people.

Too much attention is being paid to the mandatory nature of Kyoto. Too little results are being achieved. It is very interesting to note that most of the countries that ratified Kyoto will not meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets by the deadlines required by Kyoto. Indeed, when I and Senator Craig Thomas and Congressman Joe Barton were in Buenos Aires at the COP-10 conference in December, many nations were quietly acknowledging that they could not get to where they promised they would get, and, in fact, some have even suggested that by 2012 they would find it incumbent upon themselves and their nations to back out of Kyoto. However, all still recognize the importance of this issue, understanding it, and clearly defining it.

What Senator Hagel's legislation does is shape for us a variety of things that are already underway, while still allowing us clearly to define them and to say, both here at home with our domestic policy as well as internationally, that we mean what we say and we mean what we do.

The United States is currently spending in excess of $5 billion annually in scientific and technological initiatives. When we were in Buenos Aires, I was very proud to stand before my colleagues from around the world and before nongovernmental organizational groups and state that the United States is spending more on this issue, in both advances in science and technological change, than the rest of the world combined times two. Then I reminded them that all that we do, they could have also: that our technology would be in the world, that our science would be available to them, and that to work our way out of or to change the character of our economies without damaging those economies would in large part be the responsibility of new technologies.

This legislation does not pick one technology over another or one energy source over another. That has always been the debate. Somehow we had to go around and selectively turn out the lights if we were going to change the climate around us. We knew that was not acceptable to the developing world and in large part that is why the developing world would not come along. How can you deny a country the right to use its resources for the economic, humanitarian, and health benefits of its people? You cannot do that. Nor should we be engaged in trying to do that.

What we can do as a developed and advanced Nation is offer up exactly what we are doing; offer up what the Hagel legislation brings together. That is all we are doing now, and advancing and incentivizing, through this legislation, countries to do more in the area of technology.

These programs are designed to advance our state of knowledge, accelerate the development and the deployment of energy technologies, aid developing countries in using energy more efficiently, and achieve an 18-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2012--a phenomenally responsive goal and something we clearly can take to the world community.

Our administration today in a series of bilateral agreements is working with other countries to help them get to where we want and where they want to get, and for the sake of the environment, where we all want us all to go.

I was extremely proud sitting in different forums in Buenos Aires to see the United States talk about the leadership role it has taken and the bilateral partnerships it has agreed to, and all the things that we can help with in the world of change today. It is clearly to our advantage and to the advantage of the world at large.

What Senator Hagel has effectively done today is to get our arms around this issue to try to more directly define it, and to show that we are sensitive to it; that we are responding to the issue as clearly as our administration has and continues to do.

Domestically, the United States has and continues to make world leading investments in climate change science technology. The United States has also implemented a wide range of national greenhouse control initiatives, cash sequestration programs, and international collaborative programs. All of those are bound up within the bilaterals I have talked about that we are engaged in.

The legislation we have introduced today furthers all of these goals.

President Bush has consistently acknowledged how human activity can affect our climate, and that the climate variability does not recognize national borders. The key issue is not whether there is any human- influenced effect. Instead, the issues are how large any human influence may be as compared to natural variability; how costly and how effective human intervention may be in reversing climate variability; and how and what technology may be required over the near and the long term as determined by developments in climate science.

As I said, there can be a legitimate debate about whether more can be done while meeting our Nation's economic objectives. I, for one, support doing more in the areas of technological development to help lift developing countries from the depths of their plights and to advance their cause as we advance ours. That is why I am proud to be working with my colleagues in the Senate. I thank Senator Hagel, Senator Alexander, Senator Dole, and others for the hard work they have put in and the cooperative effort reflected in the bill introduced this afternoon.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on Wednesday, the U.N. Global Climate Treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol will enter into force, requiring more than 30 industrialized nations to significantly cut manmade greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

I rise today to introduce three pieces of legislation which I believe can help contribute to a new domestic and international consensus on climate change. This legislation builds upon three principles: the need for shared responsibilities between developed and developing countries; the linkages between environmental, economic, and energy policies; and the employment of greenhouse gas intensity as the best measurement upon which to build an effective climate policy.

I thank Senators Alexander, Craig, and Dole for their support and for agreeing to cosponsor these bills, which are titled: The Climate Change Technology Deployment in Developing Countries Act; The Climate Change Technology Deployment Act; and, The Climate Change Technology Tax Incentives Act.

Global climate policy affects the world's economic, energy, and environmental policies. These circles of interest in policy are interconnected. Climate change does not recognize national borders. It is a shared responsibility for all nations. Dealing with global climate policy requires a level of diplomatic intensity and coordination worthy of the magnitude of the challenge.

We all agree on the need for a clean environment and stable climate. The debate is about solutions. The question we face is not whether we should take action, but what kind of action we should take.

Climate change initiatives should include commitments to research and development, technology, and a more efficient and productive use of energy and resources.

My climate change legislation authorizes new programs, policies, and incentives to address the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

It focuses on the role of technology, private and public partnerships, and developing countries.

Any climate policy initiative must include clear metrics that recognize the links between energy, the economy, and the environment. Too often these policies are considered in vacuums. It is a global issue.

Bringing in the private sector and creating incentives for technological innovation will be critical to real progress on global climate policy. I believe that greenhouse gas intensity, or the amount of carbon emitted relative to economic output, is the best measurement for dealing with climate change.

Greenhouse gas emission intensity is the measurement of how efficiently a nation uses carbon emitting fuels and technology in producing goods and services. It captures the links between energy efficiency, economic development, and the environment.

The first bill, the Climate Change Technology Deployment in Developing Countries Act, provides the Secretary of State with new authority for coordinating assistance to developing countries for projects and technologies that reduce greenhouse gas intensity.

It supports the development of a U.S. global climate strategy to expand the role of the private sector, develop public-private partnerships, and encourage the deployment of greenhouse gas reducing technologies in developing countries. This bill directs the Secretary of State to engage global climate change as a foreign policy issue.

It directs the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate the removal of trade-related barriers to the export of greenhouse gas intensity reducing technologies, and establishes an inter-agency working group to promote the export of greenhouse gas intensity reducing technologies and practices from the United States.

The legislation authorizes fellowship and exchange programs for foreign officials to visit the United States and acquire the expertise and knowledge to reduce greenhouse gas intensity in their countries. Current international approaches to global climate change overlook the role of developing countries as part of either the problem or the solution.

In July 1997, months before the Protocol was signed, the Senate unanimously passed. S. Res. 98, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which called on the President not to sign any treaty or agreement in Kyoto unless two conditions were met.

First, the United States should not be party to any legally binding obligations on greenhouse gas emission reductions unless developing country, parties are required to meet the same standards. Second, the President should not sign any treaty that ``would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.''

Kyoto does not meet either of these conditions. As it stands, developing countries are exempt from the Kyoto obligations, leaving more than 30 developed countries to address greenhouse gas emissions. Developing nations are becoming the major emitters of greenhouse gases, but they are exempted from the Kyoto Protocol.

A recent Congressional Budget Office--CB0--report explains that developing countries are projected within the next 20 years to account for two-thirds of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions as their populations and economies expand. There are reasons for this.

Developing nations cannot achieve. greenhouse gas reductions until they achieve higher standards of living. They lack clean energy technology and they cannot absorb the economic impact of the changes necessary for emissions reductions. New policies will require recognition of the limitations of developing nations to meet these standards, and the necessity of including them in any successful future initiative.

Because Kyoto does not include developing countries, its approach is unrealistic. Any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the United States and other developed countries will soon be eclipsed by emissions from developing nations, such as China, which will soon be the world's largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases.

It is in the shared interests of the United States and industrialized nations to help developing countries by sharing cleaner technology. Developing countries can then ``leapfrog'' over the highly polluting stages of development that countries like the U.S. have already been through.

My legislation includes tax incentives for American businesses to work with foreign countries to help develop clean energy projects and fuel-efficient technologies.

Our second bill, the Climate Change Technology Deployment Act, supports establishing domestic public-private partnerships for demonstration projects that employ greenhouse gas intensity reduction technologies. Our plan provides credit-based financial assistance and investment protection for American businesses and projects that deploy advanced climate technologies or systems. Federal financial assistance includes direct loans, loan guarantees, standby interest coverage, and power production incentive payments.

We are most successful in confronting the most difficult issues when we draw on the strength of the private sector. Public-private partnerships meld together the institutional leverage of the government with the innovation of industry.

This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to lead an inter-agency process to develop and implement a national climate strategy provided by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It establishes a Climate Coordinating Committee and Climate Credit Board to assess, approve, and fund these projects.

Our third bill, the Climate Change Technology Tax Incentives Act, amends the tax code to provide incentives for investment in climate change technology. It also expresses our support for making permanent the current research and development tax credit, which otherwise expires on December 31, 2005. An article in the Wall Street Journal on February 4, 2005, reported on the potential for ``geologic storage'' of carbon dioxide as a means to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Geologic storage involves pumping carbon dioxide into the ground, rather than dumping it into the atmosphere. BP has been using geologic storage in Algeria's Sahara Desert and Statoil has been working on this in Norway's North Sea. Chevron Texaco is planning a project off the coast of Australia.

The article reports that:

the concept is drawing growing interest because it could

curb global warming more quickly than switching to

alternative energy sources or cutting energy use.

There is still much work to be done. But this kind of technology that was described in the Wall Street Journal article is the kind of technology that must be employed around the world to achieve results in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. My legislation would support more of this type of activity.

The American people and all global citizens need to better understand global climate change, its connections to our economic and energy policies, and what the realistic options are for addressing this challenge. Any recommendations regarding climate policy must meet the demands of economic growth and development, especially in the developing world. This will require a market-driven, technology-based approach that complements the world's environmental interests, and connects the public and private sectors.

Achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is one of the important challenges of our time. America has an opportunity and a responsibility for global climate policy leadership. But it is a responsibility to be shared by all nations. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress, the Bush administration, the private sector, public interest groups, and America's allies on achievable climate change policy.

By harnessing our many strengths, we can help shape a worthy future for all people, and build a better world.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I join my friend and fellow cochair of the Senate National Guard caucus, Senator Pat Leahy, in introducing bipartisan legislation to strengthen one of our Nation's most important military and civilian resources--the National Guard.

The Guard has a long and proud history of contributing to America's military away game, while providing vital support and security to civil authorities in the home game. Since September 11, 2001, our citizen- soldiers have taken on greater responsibilities and risks from fighting the war on terror to disaster assistance.

Today, the Guard supports the Nation's military strategy overseas, functions as a primary line of defense here at home, and helps local responders deal with overwhelming natural disasters.

We have seen the tremendous value of Guard forces as they confront terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other hotspots, and as they provide water, food, and health supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters.

More than 1,300 guardsmen from my home State of Missouri were deployed in less than 72 hours following Hurricane Katrina, providing medical, transportation, airlift, military police, engineering, and communications capabilities. For example, the 139th Airlift Wing evacuated 23 critically ill young patients from Children's Hospital in New Orleans and brought them to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City for the high-level care they needed.

Stories such as this were repeated all over the country in most if not all our States.

Why was the Guard successful when other elements of the Katrina response were not? Quite simply, the Guard is the entity best organized and trained to initiate and coordinate a civil response to any disaster on the scale of Katrina.

In addition, more than 200,000 Guard troops have left their homes, their

jobs, and their families to participate in another critical mission: the global war on terror. The National Guard has provided as much as half the combat force and 40 percent of the total force in Iraq.

I point out that the Guard is a tremendous value for the capabilities it provides. It gives 40 percent of the total military force for around 4.5 percent of the budget. Whether at home or abroad, the men and women of the Guard are performing their duties with honor and valor, often at great sacrifice to their families and their own lives. As they willingly make these sacrifices to preserve American lives and freedoms, we have a responsibility to support them as they carry out their unique dual mission.

While serving abroad, National Guard troops serve under Air Force and Army commands under title 10 status. But when the Guard operates at home, they serve under the command and control of the Nation's Governors in title 32 status.

There is a lot more we can do to make this work more smoothly.

Despite their importance on the street, as it were, the Guard is often given short shrift back at Pentagon headquarters, which has proposed repeatedly to cut Guard personnel and equipment budgets.

The Guard will play a critical role in response to another terrorist attack or natural disaster, but the Pentagon has allowed its equipment levels to sink to dangerously low levels. Currently, the National Guard has only about 35 percent of the equipment it needs. In Missouri, only one of two engineering battalions that were requested to assist with Katrina could respond because the other one did not have the equipment they needed.

With the support of 75 of my colleagues, Senator Leahy and I led an effort to increase equipment funding for the Guard by almost $1 billion. We are going to continue that fight this year to ensure the Guard has equipment it needs to carry out both missions.

Just a few months ago, the Army proposed significant cuts to Guard troop strength. Three-quarters of the Senate again joined us in a letter opposing this, and I thank all of our colleagues who joined us.

We need to do more to empower the Guard. We need to give the Guard more bureaucratic muscle. Time and again, the Guard has had to rely on Congress, not its total force partners in the active duty, to provide and equip fully the resources it needs to fulfill its missions.

That the Guard is left out of the Pentagon decisionmaking process is beyond dispute. In the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, during the BRAC review process of 2004 and 2005, when the Army and Air Force reduced National Guard force structure in 2005, and when equipment levels of the Army and National Guard reached the dangerously low levels of 35 percent, Congress has had to step in.

To remedy this, the legislation we introduce today to strengthen the Guard consists of three central planks.

One, we will allow the National Guard Bureau to establish more formal relationships with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs.

We will give the Guard more muscle in existing relationships, elevating the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to a four-star position and providing a seat for him on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It goes without saying that to be a part of a big decision, you have to be at the table. Having a four-star Guard general providing advice to the SECDEF instead of a two-star major general will give our governors and 450,000 citizen-soldiers and airmen access to the highest level of the DOD and ensure key policy decisions are heard and taken into account.

To put things in perspective, the Active-Duty Army has 12 four-star generals and 46 lieutenant generals. The Air Force has 13 four-star generals and 35 lieutenant generals. The National Guard, which represents over 40 percent of the entire force structure, is represented by three lieutenant generals and zero four-star generals.

Can anyone tell me with a straight face how the Guard one four-star general and an additional three-star will endanger our national security? The only element endangered would be the Pentagon status quo which is outdated.

Facts are stubborn things. Clearly, the facts demonstrate a glaring, disproportionate number of three- and four-star generals in the Army and the Air Force when compared with the Guard.

Second, we will ensure that the Deputy Commander of the Northern Command is a member of the Guard, a new command with the mission of coordinating responses to emergencies within the United States.

The Guard is the entity best suited to respond to major incidents, and they need that capability. With both the Guard and NorthCom's missions being defense of the homeland, it only makes sense to have substantive input through a lieutenant general as deputy commander.

Finally, we must ensure the Guard plays a role in identifying and filling any gaps between civilian emergency response capabilities and those of the military. Current DOD policy prohibits procurement of supplies or equipment for providing military support to civilian authorities during emergencies except with the permission of SECDEF. That policy is outdated. It will give the National Guard Bureau, in consultation with the State adjutant generals, the budgetary power to research, validate, and make those equipment purchases.

Neither the homeland support nor the military support missions of the Guard are likely to diminish. They are needed more now than ever. But we must strengthen the decisionmaking capability of Guard leaders within the Department of Defense.

As we heard today from General Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, before the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee when he was asked questions by Senator Inouye, he responded with a football analogy. When we asked him if he was in the huddle, he said he was ``not in the huddle'' during the QDR.

This legislation would empower the Guard to respond in the affirmative the next time it is asked, ``are you in the huddle'' on this major decision.

I thank my colleagues for their past support. I ask for their support of this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that congressional findings regarding National Guard Forces be printed in the Record.