Veterans' Housing Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Dodd), and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Johnson) are necessarily absent.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise today to again address the terrible crisis in Darfur and the surrounding region. For the last few months, I have come to the floor on a weekly basis to remind my colleagues and those who follow the transactions in the Senate that while we have debated many important issues, we have not done enough when it comes to the genocide in Darfur.

About 4 years ago, President Bush acknowledged that a genocide was taking place. It is a rare occurrence for a President of the United States to make that admission. I saluted him for that and praised him because it took courage. He said what others were afraid to say, that the killing in Darfur of hundreds of thousands of people was, in fact, a genocide--a calculated effort to wipe a people off the map. Several hundred thousand have died, and more than a million have been displaced from their homes. The genocide in Darfur continues to this day. Although we have pronounced this situation to be one of the most uncivilized in the history of our planet, the fact is that little or nothing has been done to save these poor innocent people.

This week's newspapers across the country were full of stories about Sudan. The papers illustrate both the expansion of death, destruction, and chaos in and around Darfur and the inability or unwillingness of the United States and other countries to stop this violence.

Wednesday's Washington Post described how Sudanese jingaweit militiamen crossed over the border into neighboring Chad and killed hundreds of people. This article, which I came across as I was reading the paper, is graphic. A report in the Washington Post through the Associated Press on April 10 says that:

Sudanese Janjaweed militiamen killed as many as 400 people

in the volatile eastern border region near Sudan, leaving an

``apocalyptic'' scene of mass graves and destruction, the

U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in this article:

Estimates of the number of dead have increased

substantially and now range between 200 and 400. Because most

of the dead were buried where their bodies were found--often

in common graves owing to their numbers--we may never know

the exact number.

The article goes on to say:

The attackers encircled the villages, opened fire, pursued

fleeing villagers, robbed women and shot the men, the U.N.

High Commissioner for Refugees said. Many who

survived the initial attack died later from exhaustion and

dehydration, often while fleeing.

Some have argued that the genocide is over, as sad and tragic as it was, that it is finished, but this news article tells us a different story. The report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that 200 to 400 people were slaughtered is a grim reminder that this country, having declared a genocide in Darfur, cannot stand idly by as these reports are made.

When I consider the situation in Darfur, I understand that it is a challenge for the United States to think about what we might do to make this situation better. We know that violence is not only spreading across the border into eastern Chad but continues virtually unabated in this country of Sudan.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is traveling to Sudan this week to deliver a message to Khartoum. I am hopeful. John Negroponte is a seasoned diplomat. He is being sent on an important mission. I hope his message is nothing short of a final warning that the Government of Sudan must accept the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission and that these peacekeeping forces must have the numbers, the equipment, and the mandate to truly protect the innocent people of that country.

I have read newspaper accounts that President Bush is angry and frustrated over Sudan's refusal to accept the peacekeepers and our collective failure to do anything about it. I have spoken personally to the President twice about this issue, and both times I have urged him, having shown the courage to declare a genocide in Darfur, to show the same courage in ordering an action by the United States that will start to protect these people. My frustration and anger grows by the day, but my sadness grows more when I read these press accounts.

I have been told by members of the administration that one thing that would help would be stronger civil penalties to levy against persons who currently violate our sanctions laws against Sudan. I am happy to introduce legislation which would do that. I also believe we need to strengthen sanction laws themselves to provide additional resources to ensure their enforcement. Even more importantly, we must convince the world to act as well.

The largest single economic player in the Sudan today is China. The single greatest export for Sudan is oil. Petrochina, the Chinese company, is a major player in that nation. That offers the Chinese powerful leverage to convince the Khartoum Government to accept U.N. peacekeepers.

In this morning's Washington Post, in what is billed as an unusually strong message, the Chinese urged Sudan on Wednesday to show more flexibility on a peace plan for the devastated Darfur region, but they went on to say the Chinese said that other countries would not help the situation by dictating the terms of action.

This article goes on to talk about China buying oil from Sudan and holding veto power in the U.N. Security Council. There have been many critics of China because, frankly, they have threatened a veto if we try to take action through the Security Council to deal with the genocide in Darfur. Perhaps that is what motivated the Assistant Foreign Minister Ahzi Jun to hold a press conference on his return from a trip to Sudan. He said at the end of that press conference:

We suggest the Sudan side show flexibility and accept this

plan--

That is the peace plan--

offered by the U.N. to deploy a hybrid African Union-U.N.

force into Darfur.

These are moderate words from the Chinese. I really had hoped for more. But at least they are speaking out, I think none too soon, as we read this terrible press account of what is occurring in this region.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal, on March 28, 2007, published an article written by Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow entitled ``The Genocide Olympics.'' That article reminded the readers of the Wall Street Journal of China's slogan for the 2008 Olympics. The slogan is ``One World, One Dream.'' But what they note here is that what is going on in Darfur is a nightmare, and the Chinese have to do something about it. They make a point--and one we all appreciate--that we want to believe that China is moving into the family of civilized nations, that the Olympics will be proof of this change in China over the years, but many of us will judge China not by its slogans or its press releases but by its actions.

This month, the United Kingdom is chairing the U.N. Security Council. Next month, the United States will hold that position. I think it is imperative that the United States force a vote on multilateral actions against the Sudanese. That is the only way to move us toward a peacekeeping force.

Some argue that China may veto that resolution, but that shouldn't stop us. If they want to go on record as standing in the way of stopping this genocide, so be it. It will be a bitter commentary on their aspirations for one world and one dream.

There is also an effort underway in the United States for divestment. The Los Angeles Times reports the Council of Priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has added their voice in calling for divestment of companies operating in Sudan. At the urging of one of their members--a priest who is a former stockbroker--the council wrote to the firm which handles the retirement accounts for the 350 priests in the Archdiocese urging it to sell its shares in Petrochina and Sinopec Corporation. That investment firm is Fidelity, which is the single largest U.S. holder of American shares in Petrochina. They have reportedly been hearing from thousands of their shareholders on this subject.

I am not a shareholder in Fidelity, but I have our family investments through mutual funds in this company, and I will be notifying them that if they do not divest their holdings of this Chinese oil company in Sudan on a timely basis, that I will be changing my company. I think that is a small thing. I don't have that big of an account, but if others will join me in that effort, perhaps they will think twice about these investments.

Petrochina and Sinopec are involved in some of Sudan's largest oil projects. My guess is the retirement accounts of 350 Catholic priests in Los Angeles won't make a big impact on Fidelity, but I certainly hope a number of others will join me in letting them know it is time to divest of this investment.

Along with Senator Cornyn of Texas and a growing number of bipartisan cosponsors, I have introduced legislation to support efforts by State and local governments to divest of holdings in the Sudan. There are some who say that divestment is not the way to go. They claim it is just going to take too long. But is that an excuse for doing nothing to pressure the Sudanese in the midst of a genocide?

The violence in Darfur has been going on for 4 years. The President declared 2 years ago that this was genocide. To say divestment is too slow ignores the fact that every pressure point we apply makes it a little bit harder for the Sudanese Government to continue on their present course. I see no reason we shouldn't take every step we can to end this disaster. Eight States and over fifty colleges and universities are leading the way.

I am proud that my home State of Illinois was the first to pass divestment legislation. Already, investment firms that offer Sudan-free investment vehicles are tracking billions of investments. Several major European and Canadian companies have ended their operations in the Sudan. The divestment campaign is already having an impact.

Some people also criticize divestment efforts because anti-apartheid laws from two decades ago are still on the books in some states and localities. The bipartisan bill I have introduced with Senator Cornyn addresses this issue with a sunset clause: If the Federal Government lifts its sanctions against Sudan, the authorization provided in our bill would expire.

Finally, some argue that State governments should not be making Federal policy. Divestment is about States making choices about how they invest their pensions and other funds. The Durbin-Brownback bill recognizes that choice and extends Federal support for it in the face of ongoing genocide in Sudan.

I ask unanimous consent that an article I am about to refer to be printed in the Record after my reference.

Mr. President, this article is from the Atlantic Magazine,

April 2007 issue. I came across it and was attracted to the title of this article by Steven Faris titled ``The Real Roots of Darfur.''

When we have this debate about global warming and talk about climate change, we talk about the impact it might have on a great State such as Florida over many years and other places around the world. Mr. Faris writes an article that talks about the climate change in this area, the Darfur region, which has taken place over the last several years. What they once billed as an occasional drought or bad agricultural practices now has become a recurring trend.

Here is what Mr. Faris wrote in the Atlantic Magazine:

By the time of the Darfur conflict 4 years ago, scientists

had identified another cause. Climate scientists fed

historical sea-surface temperatures into a variety of

computer models about atmospheric change. Given the

particular pattern of ocean temperature changes worldwide,

the model strongly predicted a disruption in African

monsoons.

Of course, the rainy seasons.

Columbia University's Alessandra Giannini led one of the analyses and said:

This was not caused by people cutting trees or overgrazing.

The roots of the drying of Darfur, she and her colleagues

have found, lay in changes to the global climate.

There is a competition here for land between farmers and those who have livestock, and that is part of the tension in this area.

The article goes on to conclude:

With countries across the region and around the world

suffering similar pressures, some see Darfur as a canary in

the coal mine, a foretaste of climate-driven political chaos.

Environmental degradation creates very dry tinder, so if someone wants to light a match to it, they can light it up.

I wish to put this into the Congressional Record for those who follow this debate because I have spoken about a lot of reasons for the violence here, and it is the first time I have seen a suggestion of environmental causation.

Exhibit 1

The Real Roots of Darfur

(By Stephan Faris)

To truly understand the crisis in Darfur--and it has been

profoundly misunderstood--you need to look back to the mid-

1980s, before the violence between African and Arab began to

simmer. Alex de Waal, now a program director at the Social

Science Research Council, was there at that time, as a

doctoral candidate doing anthropological fieldwork. Earlier

this year, he told me a story that, he says, keeps coming

back to him. De Waal was traveling through the dry scrub of

Darfur, studying indigenous reactions to the drought that

gripped the region. In a herders' camp near the desert's

border, he met with a bedridden and nearly blind Arab sheikh

named Hilal Abdalla, who said he was noticing things he had

never seen before: Sand blew into fertile land, and the rare

rain washed away alluvial soil. Farmers who had once hosted

his tribe and his camels were now blocking their migration;

the land could no longer support both herder and farmer. Many

tribesmen had lost their stock and scratched at millet

farming on marginal plots.

The God-given order was broken, the sheikh said, and he

feared the future. ``The way the world was set up since time

immemorial was being disturbed,'' recalled de Waal. And it

was bewildering, depressing. And the consequences were

terrible.''

In 2003, another scourge, now infamous, swept across

Darfur. Janjaweed fighters in military uniforms, mounted on

camels and horses, laid waste to the region. In a campaign of

ethnic cleansing targeting Darfur's blacks, the armed

militiamen raped women, burned houses, and tortured and

killed men offighting age. Through whole swaths of the

region, they left only smoke curling into the sky.

At their head was a 6-foot-4 Arab with an athletic build

and a commanding presence. In a conflict the United States

would later call genocide, he topped the State Department's

list of suspected war criminals. De Waal recognized him: His

name was Musa Hilal, and he was the sheikh's son.

The fighting in Darfur is usually described as racially

motivated, pitting mounted Arabs against black rebels and

civilians. But the fault lines have their origins in another

distinction, between settled farmers and nomadic herders

fighting over failing lands. The aggression of the warlord

Musa Hilal can be traced to the fears of his father, and to

how climate change shattered a way of life.

Until the rains began to fail, the sheikh's people lived

amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome

passers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides

that separated the fertile plots. The farmers would share

their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the

leavings from the harvest. But with the drought, the farmers

began to fence off their land-even fallow land--for fear it

would be ruined by passing herds. A few tribes drifted

elsewhere or took up farming, but the Arab herders stuck to

their fraying livelihoods--nomadic herding was central to

their cultural identity. (The distinction between ``Arab''

and ``African'' in Darfur is defined more by lifestyle than

any physical difference: Arabs are generally herders,

Africans typically farmers. The two groups are not racially

distinct.)

The name Darfur means ``Land of the Fur'' (the largest

single tribe of farmers in Darfur), but the vast region holds

the tribal lands--the dars--of many tribes. In the late

1980s, landless and increasingly desperate Arabs began

banding together to wrest their own dar from the black

farmers. In 1987, they published a manifesto of racial

superiority, and clashes broke out between Arabs and Fur.

About 3,000 people, mostly Fur, were killed, and hundreds of

villages and nomadic camps were burned before a peace

agreement was signed in 1989. More fighting in the 1990s

entrenched the divisions between Arabs and non-Arabs, pitting

the Arab pastoralists against the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit

farmers. In these disputes, Sudan's central government,

seated in Khartoum, often supported the Arabs politically and

sometimes provided arms.

In 2003, a rebellion began in Darfur--a reaction against

Khartoum's neglect and political marginalization of the

region. And while the rebels initially sought a pan-ethnic

front, the schism between those who opposed the government

and those who supported it broke largely on ethnic lines.

Even so, the conflict was rooted more in land envy than in

ethnic hatred. ``Interestingly, most of the Arab tribes who

have their own land rights did not join the government's

fight,'' says David Mozersky, the International Crisis

Group's project director for the Horn of Africa.

Why did Darfur's lands fail? For much of the 1980s and

'90s, environmental degradation in Darfur and other parts of

the Sahel (the semi-arid region just south of the Sahara) was

blamed on the inhabitants. Dramatic declines in rainfall were

attributed to mistreatment of the region's vegetation.

Imprudent land use, it was argued, exposed more rock and

sand, which absorb less sunlight than plants, instead

reflecting it back toward space. This cooled the air near the

surface, drawing clouds downward and reducing the chance of

rain. `Africans were said to be doing it to themselves;' says

Isaac Held, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration.

But by the time of the Darfur conflict four years ago,

scientists had identified another cause. Climate scientists

fed historical sea-surface temperatures into a variety of

computer models of atmospheric change. Given the particular

pattern of ocean-temperature changes worldwide, the models

strongly predicted a disruption in African monsoons. ``This

was not caused by people cutting trees, or overgrazing; says

Columbia University's Alessandra Giannini, who led one of the

analyses. The roots of the drying of Darfur, she and her

colleagues had found, lay in changes to the global climate.

The extent to which those changes can be blamed on human

activities remains an open question. Most scientists agree

that greenhouse gases have warmed the tropical and southern

oceans. But just how much artificial warming--as opposed to

natural drifts in oceanic temperatures--contributed to the

drought that struck Darfur is as debatable as the

relationship between global warming and the destruction of

New Orleans. ``Nobody can say that Hurricane Katrina was

definitely caused by climate change,'' says Peter Schwartz,

the co-author of a 2003 Pentagon report on climate change and

national security. ``But we can say that climate change means

more Katrinas. For any single storm, as with any single

drought, it's difficult to say. But we can say we'll get more

big storms and more severe droughts.''

With countries across the region and around the world

suffering similar pressures, some see Darfur as a canary in

the coal mine, a foretaste of climate-driven political chaos.

Environmental degradation ``creates very dry tinder,'' says

de Waal. ``So if anyone wants to put a match to it, they can

light it up.'' Combustion might be particularly likely in

areas where the political or social geography is already

fragile. ``Climate change is likely to cause tension all over

the world,'' says Idean Salehyan, a political scientist at

the University of North Texas. Whether or not it sparks

conflict, he says, depends on the strength, goodwill, and

competence of local and national governments. (For more on

the economic, political, and military tensions that global

warming might create, see ``Global Warming: What's in It for

You?'' by Gregg Easterbrook, on page 52.)

In Darfur itself, recognizing climate change as a player in

the conflict means seeking a solution beyond a political

treaty between the rebels and the government. ``One can see a

way of de-escalating the war,'' says de Waal. ``But unless

you get at the underlying roots, it'll just spring back.''

One goal of the internationally sponsored peace process is

the eventual return of locals to their land. But what if

there's no longer enough decent land to go around?

To create a new status quo, one with the moral authority of

the God-given order mourned by Musa Hilal's father, local

leaders would have to put aside old agreements and carve out

new ones. Lifestyles and agricultural practices would likely

need to

change to accommodate many tribes on more fragile land.

Widespread investment and education would be necessary.

But with Khartoum uncooperative, creating the conditions

conducive to these sorts of solutions would probably require

not only forceful foreign intervention but also a long-term

stay. Environmental degradation means the local authorities

have little or no surplus to use for tribal buy-offs, land

deals, or coalition building. And fighting makes it nearly

impossible to rethink land ownership or management. ``The

first thing you've got to do is stop the carnage and allow

moderates to come to the fore,'' says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a

political scientist at the University of Toronto. Yet even

once that happens, he admits, ``these processes can take

decades.''

Among the implications arising from the ecological origin

of the Darfur crisis, the most significant may be moral. If

the region's collapse was in some part caused by the

emissions from our factories, power plants, and automobiles,

we bear some responsibility for the dying. ``This changes us

from the position of Good Samaritans--disinterested,

uninvolved people who may feel a moral obligation--to a

position where we, unconsciously and without malice, created

the conditions that led to this crisis,'' says Michael Byers,

a political scientist at the University of British Columbia.

``We cannot stand by and look at it as a situation of

discretionary involvement. We are already involved.''

Mr. President, I would like to also ask unanimous consent that the article I referred to in the Wall Street Journal be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

Divestment is not the only answer, nor are stepped-up U.S. sanctions or even multilateral U.S. sanctions, but together these steps might work. Hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur have been killed, and millions have been driven from their homes. It is too late to repeat the empty promise of ``never again,'' but we can at least live up to the pledge of no more.

I am reminded of my former colleague, boss, and mentor, Paul Simon of Illinois, who in 1994 joined Senator Jim Jeffords in asking that troops be sent to Rwanda to try to stop the massacre. We were told that 5,000 soldiers could have stopped that massacre of 800,000 innocent people. No action was taken. These innocent people died. Senator Simon and Senator Jeffords did their best to try to call the attention of Congress and the Government and the world to what was happening in that nation, to no avail.

But they can at least take satisfaction--the late Paul Simon and Jim Jeffords--that they did their best as Members of the Senate. So many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle joined me in this bipartisan effort to call attention to the genocide in Darfur and to urge our Government to take decisive, meaningful action as quickly as possible to spare these suffering people.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 2

[From the Wall Street Journal]

The Genocide Olympics

(By Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow)

``One World, One Dream'' is China's slogan for its 2008

Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn't be

allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur,

where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than

two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the

Chinese-backed government of Sudan.

That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away

from that atrocity during the games is bad enough. But

equally disappointing is the decision of artists like

director Steven Spielberg--who quietly visited China this

month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies--to

sanitize Beijing's image. Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994

founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of

survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling

Darfur's genocide?

China is pouring billions of dollars into Sudan. Beijing

purchases an overwhelming majority of Sudan's annual oil

exports and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.--an

official partner of the upcoming Olympic Games--owns the

largest shares in each of Sudan's two major oil consortia.

The Sudanese government uses as much as 80% of proceeds from

those sales to fund its brutal Janjaweed proxy militia and

purchase their instruments of destruction: bombers, assault

helicopters, armored vehicles and small arms, most of them of

Chinese manufacture. Airstrips constructed and operated by

the Chinese have been used to launch bombing campaigns on

villages. And China has used its veto power on the U.N.

Security Council to repeatedly obstruct efforts by the U.S.

and the U.K. to introduce peacekeepers to curtail the

slaughter.

As one of the few players whose support is indispensable to

Sudan, China has the power to, at the very least, insist that

Khartoum accept a robust international peacekeeping force to

protect defenseless civilians in Darfur. Beijing is uniquely

positioned to put a stop to the slaughter, yet they have so

far been unabashed in their refusal to do so.

But there is now one thing that China may hold more dear

than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their

successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That desire

may provide a lone point of leverage with a country that has

otherwise been impervious to all criticism.

Whether that opportunity goes unexploited lies in the hands

of the high-profile supporters of these Olympic Games.

Corporate sponsors like Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, General

Electric and McDonalds, and key collaborators like Mr.

Spielberg, should be put on notice. For there is another

slogan afoot, one that is fast becoming viral amongst

advocacy groups; rather than ``One World, One Dream,'' people

are beginning to speak of the coming ``Genocide Olympics.''

Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the

Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games? Do the various

television sponsors around the world want to share in that

shame? Because they will. Unless, of course, all of them add

their singularly well-positioned voices to the growing calls

for Chinese action to end the slaughter in Darfur.

Imagine if such calls were to succeed in pushing the

Chinese government to use its leverage over Sudan to protect

civilians in Darfur. The 2008 Beijing Olympics really could

become an occasion for pride and celebration, a truly

international honoring of the authentic spirit of ``one

world'' and ``one dream.''

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

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

I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed in morning business and that I be followed by the Senator from North Dakota.

I also ask unanimous consent that the time be charged to the postcloture time.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the situation in Iraq, notwithstanding that the headlines and the television shows over the last days have been consumed by discussions about what happened with the Duke lacrosse team and comments made by Don Imus and other things.

Yesterday, I attended another funeral for a young soldier, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, 10th Mountain Division, Chris Wilson, at Arlington. That is where the real focus of our country ought to be right now, on the war in Iraq, about which yesterday the Senator from Arizona gave a speech that I thought was divisive, a speech that was more political than one that offered a solution, because the solution is not more of the same. The solution is not to characterize the war as it has been characterized over the course of the last 4\1/2\ years, as a do-or-die fight against al-Qaida over there or it is going to be over here. This is the most amazing scare tactic we have seen employed over the last years. It avoids reality, and it draws the United States deeper and deeper into a position of loss of credibility and loss of leverage in our ability to do what we need to do.

I don't know one person in the Senate who cheers for surrender or cheers for loss or for chaos in Iraq. To suggest that is an insult to the Members of the Senate. It is an insult to those of us who care as much about victory and as much about success and as much about the lives and support of our troops as anybody in public life today. The devastating attack in Baghdad yesterday, the lack of any real political progress as a result of the President's escalation, and the incredible toll this is taking on our Armed Forces deserves a real debate, not a polarized, divisive appeal to the lowest common denominator of fear in American politics.

It also deserves a debate about what this administration could learn if it listened to our generals. We are now more than 4 years into the war in Iraq and, tragically, it is only now that the administration suddenly realizes: Wow, maybe we ought to find one individual who can coordinate the war efforts between Afghanistan and Iraq and have the authority to coordinate the military efforts and civilian efforts. But they are doing it at a time where apparently no one wants the job, and no one wants the job in the most extraordinary way. It says a lot, when the President finally decides to appoint a war czar in order to get everybody on the same page, that the situation in Iraq is actually so bad and the administration's stubborn willingness to change course so persistent that they can't, at least as of now, find anybody to take the job.

I read yesterday's articles on the front pages of our paper in Washington. I was really stunned. This administration has approached three retired four-star generals about taking on this task. Maybe Senator McCain ought to stop and think about why those generals resisted an appeal to their patriotism, to their sense of duty, to their service to country after years of a career in the U.S. military. What did Marine GEN Jack Sheehan say? He is not an opponent of this administration, nor is Army GEN Jack Keane, nor retired Air Force GEN Joseph Ralston. All three declined. None of them are opponents of this administration. In fact, they all have established ties with this administration. Why would our top military commanders decline such a high-level position?

General Sheehan, a 35-year marine who once served as the top NATO commander, summed it up pretty well in what I thought was an extraordinary statement.

He said:

The very fundamental issue is they [the administration]

don't know where the hell they're going.

That is a 35-year retired Marine general:

. . . they don't know where the hell they're going.

Then he said:

So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and

eventually leave, I said no thanks.

It is pretty incredible that three retired four-star generals, whose careers, whose service to the Nation, whose understanding of the military is a lifetime of experience, all said no to the Commander in Chief.

The President insists he listens to the generals, not the politicians. He ought to heed his own advice and end the disgraceful record of ignoring the very military administration he professes to believe in. Again and again this administration has turned its back on the best advice of the military. Each time they have done so at our peril. Start with General Shinseki, who we all now agree was right when he said we needed a lot more troops and was met with dismissal. As the former top operating officer at the Pentagon, a different Marine lieutenant general put it:

The commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a

casualness and swagger that are the special province of those

who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the

results.

Instead of listening to General Shinseki, the administration decided to push him aside, give him the cold shoulder, and eventually retirement.

Last year, retired high-ranking military leaders, many of whom played key combat or planning roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, came forward and publicly called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Across the administration, the warnings of those who wore the uniform of their country all their lives and who, retired or not, did not resign their citizenship in order to serve their country all were dismissed as acts of disloyalty or as threats to civilian control of the Armed Forces. Think about that. A retired military officer who isn't wearing the uniform, earned their retirement, speaks out about a war they were personally involved in helping to plan, saying: We have to change course. They are somehow called unpatriotic and disloyal, and somehow that threatens the civilian control of the Armed Forces. How does an ex-military officer who has the right to speak out threaten civilian control of the Armed Forces? It is the scare tactic, the usual approach of this administration--try to throw out a big red herring, put the straw man out there and debate the straw man instead of debating the real strategy of the war.

In the end, it took an election. The American people spoke out. That is what replaced Secretary Rumsfeld, not the advice of the men and women who had seen him nearly break the military they had served for decades. That was the administration's choice. But it didn't stop there. Ask General Casey or General Abizaid, who warned that more U.S. troops would not solve Iraq's security problem and could actually slow the process of getting Iraqi security forces to assume more responsibility. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who unanimously opposed this escalation--what happened to listening to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their recommendation? General Abizaid was replaced. General Casey was reassigned. The Joint Chiefs were overruled. Yesterday, we learned that the Pentagon is going to stretch our overextended military even further by extending combat tours and reducing the time between rotations to provide the additional troops necessary for the President's misguided escalation. What do our military leaders have to say about that? Robert Scales, a retired Army two-star general, said that to sustain this deployment while giving soldiers the training and the rest they need would require twice as many Army and Marine Corps brigades as we have today. Then he warned, this two-star Army general, that the Army is about to be ``broken.''

We are hearing our own generals talk to us again about what is happening to our military that is overstretched and about to be broken. Those are not our words; those are the words of military personnel. Barry McCaffrey, retired Army four-star general, who recently returned from another factfinding trip to Iraq, tells us that combat equipment for both the Active and Reserve components ``is shot.'' His conclusion was simple:

There is no argument of whether the U.S. Army is rapidly

unravelling.

At a time when mistake after mistake is being compounded by the very civilian leadership that ignored expert military advice in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, those who understand that the price for each mistake is being paid by our troops must be heard. The message from the generals who were offered the war czar position has been crystal clear. If they really thought the administration had a strategy that could succeed in Iraq, why would they turn down the job? There is a very good reason for their skepticism. This administration simply refuses to accept the reality of how you change course or even that you must fundamentally change course in Iraq.

We keep hearing that the escalation is showing progress. While the level of Iraqi civilian casualties may have gone down in Baghdad, it has gone up in other parts of the country. Why? For the obvious reason that they have the flexibility of choosing where they will engage. Almost a certainty, some came to the floor and predicted: Put more troops into Baghdad, they will retreat into the shadows, into other communities. They will probe, they will find the weaknesses, and that is where they will reengage. That is precisely what has happened. The overall casualty rate in Iraq has remained essentially the same.

Just today we learned of a devastating suicide bombing in the Iraqi Parliament, right in the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone. Ten people died, including two Iraqi lawmakers, along with any sense of personal security in what is supposed to be the safest part of Baghdad. It is a strange definition of the progress we have been hearing about. How are more American troops going to stop a single fanatic with explosives strapped to his or her chest?

One thing we do know is American troops are paying the ultimate price for this escalation. In the first 7 weeks, the number of U.S. troops who died in Baghdad doubled. On Monday alone, we learned of two more soldiers from Massachusetts who died in Iraq, CAPT Anthony Palermo, age 26, of Boston, MA, and SGT Adam P. Kennedy, 25, of Norfolk, MA. The administration says that these men and women are giving their lives because the purpose of this escalation is to allow the Iraqis space to make the political deals that we all agree are the only hope for ending the civil war. But if the violence is going down in Baghdad, where is the political progress? We keep hearing that the Iraqis are getting closer to a deal on sharing oil revenues. I think we have had the Secretary of State in front of the Foreign Relations Committee at least twice that I can think of in which she has said: We are almost there, we are nearing a deal. The last time was a month and a half ago, maybe 2 months ago. Where is the deal? Every time, hopes for a final deal turn out to be an illusion. Where is the rapidity of the Iraqi response to the political compromises that need to be made to resolve this?

The de-Baathification law that is a key part of the national reconciliation process was recently denounced by Ayatollah Sistani and is nowhere near completion. The Iraqis are still at square one when it comes to amending the Constitution and disarming the militias. Still the President refuses to impose any meaningful consequences on the Iraqis for failure to meet these benchmarks.

Now, again, I listened to the speech of the Senator from Arizona yesterday in which he talked about those who advocate surrender and those who cheer for the potential of loss. Again and again, our military leaders have said there is no military solution in Iraq. General Abizaid said it. General Casey said it. Most recently, General Petraeus--new on the job--reiterated there is no military solution. The President has said it. The Secretary of State has said it. Donald Rumsfeld said it.

But where is the diplomatic effort necessary within the whole Middle

East, let alone in Iraq alone, to leverage the kind of transformation that is necessary to end the civil war? And how dare the Senator from Arizona only talk about the fundamentals of al-Qaida and how if we don't fight them over there we will fight them over here, when the fight is really one between civil parties in Iraq?

Yes, al-Qaida is in Iraq. We understand that. Yes, al-Qaida has the ability to be able to bomb something and create trouble as a consequence of that. But the real violence, the fundamental divisions, the piece of this which is extending the stalemate and the American presence at the same time is the unwillingness of the Shia and Sunni and the politicians who are fighting for position and for the future spoils of Iraq itself--their unwillingness to resolve those differences.

The longer the U.S. military stays there saying: We are here, we are going to do this, we are going to go out and do the pacification, we will do the military backup--as long as that security blanket is there, those politicians know they can take as long as they want to come to any compromise.

I have heard some of our own diplomats in the region express their concern about the open-endedness and express the lack of leverage over the Iraqis themselves that helps us bring a resolution here.

The only way in which you can change the dynamic on the ground is when the administration accepts the simple reality that this Congress has now voted on, that the Iraqi politicians have repeatedly shown they only respond to a deadline, a deadline to transfer the authority. Remember that, back when Ambassador Bremer was there and we said: ``We are going to change the provisional government. We are going to transfer authority to Iraq,'' and they said: ``Oh, no, we're not ready. Don't do this.''? But we said: ``It is going to happen. It is going to happen on this date. Get ready.'' And it did, and we did transfer the authority. The same thing for the two elections and the referendum. I remember them saying: ``We have to push this off. We are not ready for the election. Can't participate.'' We said: ``No. We're going to have this firm date. We're going to have an election.'' And guess what. We had the two elections. We had the referendum. We got the Constitution, flawed as it is. But we pushed people to understand this was not open- ended and interminable.

The fact is, I do not believe young Americans ought to be dying or maimed to provide a window of opportunity for Iraqi politicians to continue to procrastinate, to give them the cover they need and want to be able to manipulate and maneuver and position themselves for power. That is not what our troops went over there to do. If you go back and reread the resolution we voted on here, it was to deal with Saddam Hussein, it was to deal with the weapons of mass destruction; it was not to put our troops in the middle of a civil war and engage in the kind of struggle we are involved in today.

Mr. President, another thought about this issue. Again, there are those running for President on the Republican side who I guess have found that the orthodoxy of their primaries requires them to go out and suggest that Democrats want something they do not want. So maybe we have not learned anything about the truth in American politics. But the fact is, no Democrat whom I know of has suggested abandoning Iraq. No Democrat has suggested inviting chaos--more than the chaos that exists today.

In fact, we have what we believe is a plan for success, and it does not leave Iraq without the presence of American troops--I might add, to the chagrin of some people in this country who think it ought to. It leaves the President the discretion to finish the training of Iraqis. That is the principal thing we ought to be there to do. And it leaves the President the ability to be able to decide how many troops are necessary to complete the task of training the Iraqis. It also leaves the President the discretion to decide what the President needs in order to prosecute al-Qaida. It does not walk away from the battle against al-Qaida. It leaves those special forces and special operations and intelligence-gathering and other operations necessary to continue to prosecute al-Qaida. Finally, it leaves the President the discretion to be able to leave such forces as are necessary to protect American facilities and personnel.

Now, how much more discretion, at this point in time, after 4-plus years of war, when they have made every decision wrong, should we allow the President? People say: Don't micromanage the war. Somebody has to manage this war because the folks who are in there, obviously, are not doing it effectively. When you have your own generals coming back and telling you the troops still do not have the armor, they still do not have the level of up-armored Humvees, they are still going out on patrols in ways that are, in many cases, provocatively dangerous and invite the kinds of injuries they are getting, without the gain on the back end as a consequence of the risk they have taken, I think that is unacceptable.

Last month, Iraq's neighbors and key players from the international community finally got together at a conference in Baghdad. Guess what. Nothing tangible came out of the conference. There is no sense of urgency about the upcoming meeting in Egypt, which is why a deadline is so essential. The countries in the region need to know this dynamic is going to change.

To the degree they are concerned about Iran, to the degree they are concerned about their Sunni brothers--and they are; Saudi Arabians, Jordanians, Egyptians are predominantly Sunni, and they are deeply concerned about the Sunni minority in Iraq. But they need to translate that concern into a regional security plan where there is a greater level of assistance in order to force the kinds of compromises necessary between the parties. Absent that, this is just going to go on.

We owe it to our troops and to our country to have an honest debate and to try to work together to find the way forward in Iraq. I think the speech Senator McCain gave yesterday, in which he said Democrats were cheering for defeat and surrender in Iraq, does a disservice to the Senator from Arizona as well as to the U.S. Senate. I think he knows better. And he knows full well that no one here wants to see Iraq fall apart. But we have a different plan for how you prevent it. We have a different plan for how you achieve success.

It seems to me that a plan that says the President has the discretion to leave troops that are necessary to complete the training is not, on its face, an abandonment of Iraq. It is an alternative way of achieving the leverage necessary to be able to get the responses we have not gotten over the last 4 years.

So, Mr. President, we disagree on the strategy, but we do not disagree on the stakes. The Vice President hides behind similar rhetoric. He dares to claim that those who offer a new way forward are ``undermining'' our troops. Well, I have had enough of that rhetoric. I have had enough. And I think most of my colleagues have.

Undermining our troops? Let's have that debate, Mr. Vice President. This is a Vice President who helped send them into combat without adequate protection, without adequate numbers of troops, without an adequate plan, without the guarding of the ammo dumps, without the kind of engagement diplomatically that helps them, without the humvees that were up-armored, without the armor--that's why parents in America are going out and buying the state-of-the-art armor for those troops. And this President and Vice President want to talk about undermining the troops?

Let's have a debate with an administration that sent them into battle in Iraq with serious injuries and other medical problems, including some whose doctors said they were too injured to even wear their body armor. You want to have a debate about undermining the troops? Then how about failing to provide them with the proper medical care when they come home with broken bodies and minds, with a VA budget that is inadequate, with a hospital situation that does not follow up and honor the sacrifice they have made? How about the extended tours in Iraq, where people have given up their jobs and their livelihoods because they are in the National Guard and they have been called up repeatedly, and they are the sole proprietor of a business? How about that?

It seems to me Congress has done what the President and this administration have stubbornly refused to do.

We have recognized the best way you support the troops is to change a failed policy. The best way you support the troops is to implement a strategy that works for those troops. The best way you support the troops is to guarantee we put in place a strategy that honors their sacrifice and really leverages the real interests and real stakes of the United States in the region.

I think we ought to honor the lives lost, not with words and not with divisive speeches, but we ought to honor them with lives saved. That starts by putting aside the hollow rhetoric and the straw men that have undermined a real debate for far too long and by supporting an exit strategy that preserves our core interests in Iraq, a strategy that negotiates a new security arrangement for the region; helps to leverage the kind of participation of other countries that have an interest in standing up to Iran; and regains our credibility in the region, which has been tattered with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, not to mention the policies in Iraq themselves.

Our own CIA has told us the current strategy is creating more terrorists, that it is emboldening the radical Islam extremists. What we are offering is a strategy that we believe better speaks to America's values, to America's interests, and, most of all, to our obligation to the troops.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, when I am done--and I think that will be in about 15 or 20 minutes--I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn, follow me.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago we passed the budget resolution in the Senate. One week after that, the House passed their budget resolution. So we are in a position of being conferenced between the House and the Senate on a budget resolution, and I thought at this point I ought to give some updates, particularly as it relates to the work of the Committee on Finance, and particularly as it relates to the issue of taxes and an impending tax increase that is out there-- tomorrow, almost--a few years away if we don't do anything to stop the biggest tax increase in the country, or that will be, in fact, the biggest tax increase in the country.

So as the budget resolution slowly works its way through Congress, one especially important issue wrapped up in this whole great big budget resolution and document is the longevity of the bipartisan tax relief that was enacted in 2001 and 2003, and this very day those tax decreases for working men and women are still in place and will be in place through the year 2010. It has always been my goal, when you have Chairman Greenspan saying that this tax relief for working men and women is the reason the economy has rebounded, that we should continue this tax relief into the future, because if it is the goose that laid the golden egg of 7.8 billion new jobs being created since the recession, then we ought to keep that golden egg working for the American taxpayer.

Some people may not give the contents of a budget resolution much consideration since it does not get signed into law by the President but is merely a set of guidelines for tax and spending decisions that apply to Congress as we make permanent law and as we make decisions on tax policy for the future. Those tax and spending decisions must go to the President for his acting on them and then become law.

For this reason, along with anyone who supports tax relief, we are very concerned about the budget resolutions passed by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate that are now in conference. Yes, this is a Republican Senator. I am in the minority now since the last election. So I want to raise these concerns as a responsibility of the majority and to alert the American people about what the majority might be up to, or if they are not up to it, what the consequences are if nothing happens.

This concern is derived from the fact that the two budget resolutions--the one in the House and the one in the Senate--do not provide for the extension of tax relief beyond 2010. What does it mean when I use the words the budget resolutions do not provide for ``the extension'' of tax relief beyond 2010? That means, if Congress takes no action, we will have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country, and we will have that tax increase without even a vote of the Congress.

For the first time in more than 6 years, Congress is sending a message, then, that there is no guarantee of continued tax relief. In fact, the Democratic budget resolutions say the very opposite. The budget resolution passed by the Senate only provides 44 percent of the revenue necessary to extend these popular, bipartisan--and let me emphasize bipartisan--tax relief bills of 2001. Mr. President, 44 percent is not enough, but that 44 percent is more than the big fat zero percent in the House-passed budget resolution. The House-passed budget resolution provides no revenue room for the extension of tax relief, meaning that the majority of the House of Representatives right now is taking a position on the budget to let the biggest tax increase in the history of our country go into effect without a vote of Congress.

What does that mean, besides the biggest tax increase in history? It means things such as no tuition deduction for people sending their kids to college, no teacher deduction for the supplies the teacher might buy out of their own pocket. Those are just a couple of popular items that would expire at that particular time that would be a small part of the biggest tax increase in the history of the country, happening without the vote of the people.

I would like to think that I am an optimist, but in conferencing two resolutions, which cover 44 percent on the part of the Senate and zero percent on the part of the House, I am doubtful of reaching a number greater than the already inadequate number of 44 percent provided in the Senate. This stands in stark contrast to the budget that the President submitted this February and to the budgets the President has submitted over each of the last 6 years. All of those budgets provided the revenue room to make bipartisan tax relief permanent. In other words, the President is asking Congress to take action so that the biggest tax increase in the history of our country would not happen; and if it did happen, it would happen without a vote of the people. He thinks that Congress making a decision for tax relief for working men and women provided the incentive, according to Chairman Greenspan, for the economic recovery--and we have now created 7.8 million new jobs-- and ought to be made permanent tax policy. In other words, don't kill the goose that has laid the golden egg.

The Democratic budget resolutions can be best represented by a chart that I have here which shows that in terms of the guaranteed tax relief proposal, they amount to a big goose egg for the American taxpayer. We have it right here on the chart. That is a big fat zero. If they are lucky, I suppose college-bound taxpayers could sell this goose egg back to the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate because they will need the money if they are not able to deduct the cost of tuition.

What is even more inexplicable than the Democrats' failure to extend the popular and bipartisan tax relief enacted in 2001 and 2003 are some of the reasons given. The chairman of the Budget Committee this year basically said that since the Republicans wrote that law--forgetting that it was bipartisan in 2001; how clever to ignore that fact--it is our problem. The leftwing of the blogosphere has echoed that message of the Democratic leadership.

In regard to the left side of the blogosphere, I will briefly describe two posts my staff found on the Internet. The first comes from a scholar of government who posts the Daily Kos under the name of ``piec.'' I may be mispronouncing that, and if so, it is unintentional.

According to piec's analysis, the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, which was signed last May by President Bush, was a ``poison pill'' designed to sabotage the economy to increase the prospects of Republican candidates in 2012. The argument seems to be that having popular and bipartisan tax relief from 2001 and 2003 all sunset at the end of 2010 would cause such an economic mess that the Democrats, assumed by the blogger, piec, to be in power at that time, will take the blame and suffer at the polls.

Wouldn't it have been nice if I could think as chairman, when we wrote that bill, that I was smart enough to see ahead from 2001 to 2012? Thank you, piec, for giving me that credit. But I didn't know that. We passed it because of the rules in place at that particular time. It had to sunset.

Another observer of Government posted comments under the name of ``Blue Bunting'' to the ``Care2 News Network.'' In a posting titled ``The Monster Republican Tax Hike,'' Blue Bunting says that the ``Republican Congresses chose not to make their tax cuts . . . permanent.'' Her argument seems to be that Republicans put sunset clauses in a bill solely to improve the long-term budget projections and that responsibility for the expiration of tax relief rests completely with the Republicans, even though the Republicans are in the minority. The implication is that by lowering taxes, Republicans are responsible for a tax increase that would occur when the Democratic majorities control both Houses of Congress, even though taxes coming in from all the taxes that the Federal Government collects run to a 50- year average of what they have been, 18.6 percent of GDP. If it has been that way for 50 years, what is the problem?

Now, these blogs I have just referred to, these commentaries, are available to anyone if you want to read them online. But to make it easier, I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Congressional Record.

To begin with, it is completely ridiculous to suggest that President Bush and Republicans in general did not intend or desire the permanence of tax relief. President Bush and my party generally have favored permanence of tax relief--not just because it brings in less money, but because permanence of tax policy--when investors and laborers can depend on the tax policy, you are going to get better planning long term. It is better for the economy.

Mr. President, you need to look no further than the budgets to which I have referred. The administration and the Republican Congress have budgeted for an extension of the bipartisan tax relief provisions. That action has affected the bottom lines of these budgets. And as we heard over and over again, the Democratic leadership, the liberal think tanks, and sympathetic east coast media have criticized the bottom lines of those budgets. So the Democratic leadership, the liberal think tanks, and the sympathetic east coast media cannot have it both ways. We are not going to let them have it both ways. They cannot shut off the bipartisan tax relief, take credit for the supposed deficit reduction, and also claim that there is tax relief in this budget that passed the Senate 2 weeks ago and the House a week ago.

Getting back to the blog I referred to, the Daily Kos, one posted as ``Ortcutt'' agrees with this point. Ortcutt, however, incorrectly identifies the purveyor of the phony logic. The blogger puts it on Congressional Republicans and President Bush. As the hard, cold numbers in the Democratic budget resolutions and floor debate in the Congressional Record show, Democrats claim that expired tax relief is not a tax hike. Let me emphasize that.

Are we going to let people get away with that, when they know what the law is on December 31, 2010, and the biggest tax increase in the history of the country is going to happen, without a vote of the people? And when that happens, they are saying it is not a tax hike?

Surely, they don't think the American people are that stupid. The Democratic leadership are the folks trying to claim that their budgets, which don't provide the revenue room for expired tax relief, don't contain tax hikes. Hogwash.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Ortcutt comment.

Mr. President, responding to another criticism, it is completely off the mark to say the tax relief bills were written by Republicans. It is almost as if the Democratic leadership is saying that tax relief was passed by a National Republican Congress and not by the Congress.

The 2001 bill was written by a bipartisan majority and was opposed by a partisan minority led by the Democratic leadership. The conference report to accompany the law that was entitled the Economic Growth and Tax Relief and Reconciliation Act passed the Senate on May 26, 2001.

I ask unanimous consent that the information pertaining to that rollcall be printed in the Congressional Record so we can show it was a bipartisan rollcall.

Mr. President, the 2001 tax relief bill passed the Senate with 58 yeas. At that time, the Senate was evenly divided--50 Republicans and 50 Democrats--with the Republicans technically having control because of the Vice President's vote. However, not every single Republican voted for that tax relief measure. Those 58 yeas included 12 Democrats, nearly one-quarter of the 50 Democrats sitting in the Senate at that particular time. If all of those Democrats had voted against the conference report, it would have failed.

Clearly, it is ridiculous to say this was purely a Republican bill. Given the experience the Democratic leadership has had with cloture votes in the past few months, I would expect them to appreciate the necessity of working on a bipartisan basis in this body. This is the only political institution of our system where minority views are protected and must be respected because of no limit on debate, called a filibuster, and it takes 60 percent, a supermajority, to overcome a filibuster to get to finality. That is where Democrats were protected when they were in the minority for the last 6 years. This is where Republicans are going to be protected for the next 2 years--and hopefully no longer than 2 years--as a minority.

It takes 60 votes to get permanent tax relief. The bottom line is, we didn't have the 60 votes in 2001 and 2003 for making these bipartisan tax relief plans permanent. And with a couple exceptions I will discuss shortly, over the last 6 years, we haven't had the 60 votes for permanent tax relief.

So tax relief in 2001 was not made permanent because the Democratic leadership and the liberal core of the Democratic caucus have refused to support permanence, and that is apparent now more than ever with the budget that is in conference between the House and Senate.

Of course, last November, the Democrats won control of both Houses of Congress. I wonder if the House Democratic leadership will be sending over any bills to make tax relief permanent. I doubt it. Even if the House Democratic leadership did send over such a bill, I would not expect the Senate Democratic leadership to take it up. When in Republican hands, the House regularly sent over bills to provide permanence for various components of the bipartisan tax relief bill which they couldn't get through the Senate.

Senate Democrats are clearly capable of working with Republicans to make tax relief provisions permanent if they like what they want to make permanent. And we have done it in the past. The Holocaust Restitution Tax Fairness Act of 2001 repealed the sunset of a provision originally contained in the 2001 tax relief bill that allowed Holocaust survivors and their heirs and estates to receive restitution payments tax free. Making this provision permanent was absolutely the right thing to do, and the fact that it passed the Senate by unanimous consent proves that, and it passed it during a period when the Democrats controlled the Chamber, indicating the level of cooperation that occurred between Senate Republicans and Democrats when Democrats want to make a provision of the tax law permanent law.

As I go through these examples, everyone needs to remember that holding the majority in the Senate is not a

ticket for either party to force its agenda down the other party's throat. Senate rules encourage cooperation by giving the minority many opportunities to check the majority, and this becomes even more evident when those majorities are very slim as they are right now--51 Democrats, 49 Republicans. And they have been very slim for the last several Congresses.

I say this to point out that the Holocaust Restitution Act became permanent because Republicans and Democrats worked together to make it permanent, and it would not have been sent to the President if one side or the other wanted to block it.

I will give one more example that occurred last summer as part of the pension reform bill. We call that the Pension Protection Act of 2001. It passed the Senate 93 yea votes and made permanent--now here we have bipartisan cooperation to make permanent other parts of the tax bill-- the retirement security provisions of that 2001 tax bill. Even if every Republican supported the bill, a united Democratic caucus could have held back the five additional votes needed for final passage if they chose.

Clearly, Democrats have a record of working with Republicans to make tax relief provisions permanent when they choose to do it. So why not work in the same way to make the rest of that tax law of 2001 and 2003 permanent so we don't have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country without a vote of the American people, so we will have permanence of tax law, so working men and women can plan on the future, so investors who create jobs can plan on the future as well? That is better for the economy.

Let me return to the present day. The House and Senate, then, as I have said so many times, passed separate budget resolutions, now in conference, but currently would end up subjecting Americans to the largest tax increase in history, and the Democrats have responded by basically declaring it is not their responsibility. How can a majority so avoid the responsibility of being a majority?

The Democratic leadership and the liberal core have the power to make these provisions permanent. I assure my colleagues we will be there working with them as we did on the retirement portions of the pension bill, as we did on the Holocaust relief bill, to make sure it becomes permanent law.

I think they should, but I realize they may not agree with me. However, if they do let tax relief expire, they have to take responsibility for letting that happen. They have to take responsibility for the biggest tax increase in the history of the country happening without a vote of the people when they would have had the cooperation of Republicans to make sure it was permanent and to make sure this biggest tax increase doesn't happen.

Several times since November, I have heard that elections have consequences, and one of those consequences is for the winner having increased responsibility. Since Democrats have made tax relief provisions permanent in the past--and I have given only two examples-- they can likewise do it again, and they will have Republican cooperation to make it happen.

One of the bloggers I cited earlier points out the economic calamity that would befall our country if all tax relief was allowed to expire at the end of 2010. On this specific point, he is correct, and I gave a speech to this effect right here on this floor on March 1 where I cited a study done by the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs.

If something is not done to extend or make permanent tax relief before the end of 2010, American families, working families, will be hit with a wall of tax increases that is currently built into the Democratic budget resolution.

I have a chart. This chart shows, according to the U.S. Treasury, not according to this Senator from Iowa, a family of four with $40,000 of income will be subjected to an average tax increase of $2,052 all at once. The Democrats, now in the driver's seat, need to decide whether they are going to let that wall go up, whether that wall is going to stand between this taxpayer and more money for them to spend instead of more money for me to spend for them, or are they going to take advantage of the opportunity we give them to cooperate to prevent that big tax increase of 2,000 and more dollars to go into effect for a family with an income of $40,000, as though there is something about being rich making $40,000 a year.

I want to conclude with a reference to a story about a man who cared a great deal about the typical taxpayer, President Ronald Reagan. During the Cold War, while in West Berlin, President Reagan challenged Soviet President Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. I challenge the Democratic leadership to tear down the wall of tax increases built into their budgets. I hope my liberal friends in the core of the Democratic caucus will urge the Democratic leaders to tear down the wall of tax increases they have built. This is not a wall Republicans built. This is a wall Democrats through their budget built because they have the power, they have a minority that is willing to cooperate with them, as we have on two other instances I have given in these remarks. Join with us in the Republican conference and tear down the wall of tax increases that has been built.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am proud to join my colleague, Senator Bingaman, to introduce a package of four bills aimed at helping seniors get the assistance they need with their Medicare prescription drug costs. Thirty-nine million individuals now have access to affordable prescription drug therapies through Medicare Part D, many for the very first time. But low-income beneficiaries still are experiencing difficulties taking full advantage of the program's benefits. I believe the bipartisan package of legislation we have developed will go a long way to removing programmatic barriers that are limiting seniors from getting the help we intended them to have when we created Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Program.

The low-income subsidy (LIS) is one of the best features of Medicare's new prescription drug benefit. Over the past few years, I have conducted extensive oversight of the program's implementation, especially through my work as Chairman and now Ranking Member of the Special Committee on Aging. Through hearings and staff-level investigations, I have identified a number of concerns with both the administration and the overall effectiveness of Medicare Part D's LIS. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) have made a great deal of progress to ensure that the benefit is working well for all beneficiaries. But their efforts can only go so far. Ultimately, it is Congress' responsibility to ensure that all low-income seniors who have difficulty paying their prescription drugs costs get the help they need.

Two of the four bills that Senator Bingaman and I are filing today are based upon initiatives that I introduced during the 109th Congress. The first is a measure that would create parity in the cost-sharing charged beneficiaries living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Under current law, dual-eligible Medicare beneficiaries, those who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare coverage, receive a subsidy from the government to pay the benefit's required $250 deductible. These individuals also qualify for reduced copayments for both generic and brand named drugs in the amount of one and three dollars respectively. If a dual-eligible beneficiary receives long-term care services in an institutional setting, such as a nursing home, he or she is exempt from paying the required copayment. Congress decided to provide this assistance because dual-eligible beneficiaries residing in nursing homes live off of very limited incomes. For instance, in Oregon the personal needs allowance beneficiaries receive each month for incidentals, including medications, is only $30. As many institutionalized beneficiaries are on multiple medications, they would not be able to meet their share of drug costs.

This is the very reason Congress provided institutionalized dual- eligible beneficiaries with an exemption from all copayments under Medicare Part D. However, many dual-eligible beneficiaries choose to receive long-term care services in home or community-based settings, such as assisted living or resident care program facilities. Almost all states have chosen to establish Home and Community Based Services (HCS) Medicaid demonstration projects that have expanded access to community based alternatives to an even greater number of low-income elderly Americans. The State of Oregon operates one of the Nation's most successful HCS waivers, serving an average of 23,500 dual-eligible beneficiaries

each year. My state has a thriving community based care industry that has provided many dual-eligible Oregonians the freedom to choose the care setting that best meets their own physical and social needs.

While dual-eligible beneficiaries are exempted from prescription drug copayments under Medicare Part D, those choosing community-based alternatives are required to pay them. This is despite the fact that beneficiaries choosing community based care options typically live off of the same limited incomes as those residing in nursing homes. While some states provide HCS beneficiaries' a larger personal stipend each month, many may have greater financial demands. At the end of the day, they are in no better position to pay the costs of prescription drugs than those beneficiaries living in nursing homes.

I also should note that their less restrictive living environments may require them to take additional medications to support their daily routines. It is not uncommon for dual-eligible beneficiaries in community-based care settings to be on 8 to 10 medications at a given time. At that level, even minimal copayments create a significant financial burden to these individuals.

The current dual-eligible copayment exemption policy not only is creating inequity in Medicare Part D, it is potentially restricting access to life-saving medications. This is not what Congress intended. I believe we need to do everything possible to support choice in long- term care, and by applying the current institutional copayment exemption more uniformly, Congress will ensure the Medicare drug benefit does not adversely affect beneficiaries' choices.

The second measure I am introducing today is based upon a bill I filed last year. That legislation sought to provide beneficiaries applying for LIS extra time to enroll into Part D if they had not received notification of their eligibility status by the time an open enrollment period ended. The bill also would have also waived the late enrollment penalty assessed to all beneficiaries who enroll outside of an enrollment period. Fortunately, CMS enacted an administrative solution to this problem, and allowed all LIS eligible beneficiaries to enroll into Medicare Part D at any point during 2006, and later extended that policy into 2007.

Now that Medicare Part D is fully implemented and policymakers have had an opportunity to assess how well the program is working, I believe that the administrative actions taken by CMS last year to create a special enrollment period for LIS beneficiaries should be made permanent. The Medicare Part D Outreach Enrollment Enhancement Act of 2007 does just that. It would create a 90-day special enrollment period for any beneficiary who applies and is approved for the LIS at any point during the year. It also would allow them to undergo a facilitated enrollment process overseen by CMS, so they get the help they need to select a prescription drug plan that best meets their needs.

Additionally, the bill exempts low-income beneficiaries from Medicare Part D's late enrollment penalty. While an enrollment penalty can be an effective means of helping drug plans better assess their risk in a given period, it is not fair to ask our low-income seniors--many who struggle with a number of challenging healthcare problems--to pay a higher cost simply because they need additional time to enroll in the program. Selecting a prescription drug plan can be a challenging feat, and it can be even more complicated if you are trying to make your limited income stretch as far as it can. We need to guarantee that beneficiaries have sufficient time to choose the most affordable plan that also meets all their prescription drug needs.

The measure also would create a new authorization to support the valuable work of State Health Insurance Programs (SHIPs). SHIPs provide a range of services to our nation's seniors, such as help choosing a quality prescription drug plan, applying for financial assistance with their drug costs and resolving general problems experienced with the drug benefit. Unfortunately, funding for SHIPs has not kept pace with the number of beneficiaries that age into Medicare each year. To remedy that, my bill creates a new authorization that increases funding in conjunction with growth in enrollment. The bill also provides funding for the new National Center of Senior Benefits and Outreach, created in the Older Americans Act last year. The Center is charged with developing ways to assist organizations like SHIPs to better target their efforts so that all seniors are fully aware of the benefits that might be available to them.

The next bill in the package we are filing today addresses a problem low-income seniors encounter if and when they enter into the drug benefit's coverage gap. While beneficiaries still have access to medications through their drug plans during the coverage gap, they may have to pay more for them. For those living on fixed incomes, this could present a serious problem as the out-of-pocket cost of many common prescription drugs can be quite steep. Fortunately, many safety- net programs, like community health centers and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), provide assistance to eligible low-income beneficiaries during the coverage gap. Effectively, they fill the role of the drug plan in providing beneficiaries access to their medications at a heavily subsidized cost.

This scenario presently works well for a number of low-income beneficiaries, but it is simply unsustainable in the long-run for two key reasons. First, from the perspective of beneficiaries, it is not right to ask them to continue paying premiums to their drug plans during the coverage gap when they are unable to generate sufficient out-of-pocket expenses to qualify for the program's catastrophic benefit. Many low-income beneficiaries who get ``caught'' in the coverage gap struggle with significant health problems, such as cancer or HIV/AIDS. These conditions often require costly treatment that a low-income beneficiary would likely have to forge without the assistance of a safety-net provider.

Second, the current scenario is placing a disadvantageous strain on the safety-net programs that assist low-income beneficiaries with their drug costs during the coverage gap. One of the primary reasons Medicare Part D was created was to provide relief to states and other safety-net providers who bore a lion's share of the responsibility of providing access to drug therapies for the Nation's seniors. While Part D has gone a long way to fulfill that intention, there is still much that can be done to help our safety-net providers. It is not right that service providers like community health centers and ADAP have been forced to provide discounted medications to low-income beneficiaries during the coverage gap, especially when the beneficiary has no way of accruing enough out-of-pocket costs for their Part D coverage to resume.

The bill Senator Bingaman and I are filing today resolves both these problems. It would allow safety net providers' drug costs to count toward a beneficiary's out-of-pocket costs so they are able to reach Medicare Part D's catastrophic benefit at some point. This will ensure that low-income beneficiaries have access to the full range of coverage under the program and will provide much needed fiscal relief to already strained safety net providers. Congress intended for all beneficiaries--especially those with limited incomes--to have full access to the benefits through Medicare Part D. This bill will guarantee that happens.

Despite the progress we have made in providing low-income seniors access to affordable prescription drugs, I find it troubling that recent estimates still show that there may be at least three million seniors eligible for the low-income subsidy who have yet to apply for it. While CMS, SSA and their community partners continue their vital outreach to capture these seniors, I believe the existing LIS application is too complex and is preventing seniors from getting the help they need. We need a simpler process that better reflects the true levels of assets and resources held by low-income seniors.

The last bill in the package I am filing today does just that. The Part D Equity for Low-Income Seniors Act is the product of months of bipartisan collaboration with representatives of groups like AARP, the National Council on Aging and Families USA. It aims to help SSA better target potentially

eligible beneficiaries and make the application process much simpler to complete.

First, drawing from a recommendation from the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, SSA is given the authority to use select tax information to help determine which Medicare beneficiaries might be eligible for extra help with their drug costs. With this data, they would be able to more efficiently contact beneficiaries and prescreen them for potential eligibility. I realize that some of my colleagues might have privacy concerns with such an arrangement, but I want to make clear that my bill is not giving SSA access to any data that they already do not have. In order to implement the Part B subsidy adjustment, the Medicare Modernization Act requires that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) send tax data to the SSA--they are legally prohibited from using it for any other purpose than Part B. We simply are establishing the same process for data exchange that already exists between the IRS and SSA so that SSA can more efficiently conduct its outreach work for Medicare Part D's low-income subsidy.

The bill also seeks to make the LIS application easier for seniors to complete. I have heard a number of complaints that the current form uses confusing verbiage and is overly burdensome in its reporting requirements. As a remedy, we eliminate the reporting of retirement account balances, the face value of life savings policies and in-kind contributions. This not only will make the form easier to complete, it will prevent seniors from the pressure of having to determine whether they should sacrifice their retirement income or long-term risk protection in order to pay their healthcare bills. I believe we need to be encouraging seniors to save for their later years in life, not requiring them to liquidate their futures to fill their prescriptions.

In order to make the LIS benefit more accurately reflect the assets and resources low-income seniors possess, our bill also proposes raising the current asset test limit to $27,500 for an individual and $55,000 for a couple. According to data from the SSA, this increase should help capture almost 40 percent of the individuals who are ineligible for the LIS benefit due to excess resources, and 50 percent of the couples. I realize this can be a sensitive issue for some of my colleagues--especially on my side of the aisle. We want to ensure that only those beneficiaries who truly are in need of help with their drug are eligible for government assistance. But, I also believe that we can be too heavyhanded and prevent those with legitimate need from getting it. The new asset/resource limits Senator Bingaman and I have proposed represent a good, bipartisan solution to the problem. I know many would like to see the full asset test repealed, but this year that may be a difficult feat to accomplish politically and financially. This is a reasonable step forward, one the advocates support. I hope my colleagues will as well.

I believe that the Medicare Prescription Drug Program is working for America's seniors and that we should not undertake a significant overhaul of the new benefit in this Congress. However, there is room for improvement, especially in regard to making the program work better for America's low-income seniors. I firmly believe that if Congress does not address some of these lingering problems this year, Medicare's long-term public image could be severely tarnished in the eyes of the very people it was created to serve.

One can learn a great deal about the character of a society by looking at how well it cares for its poor and vulnerable citizens. I believe my four bills that improve upon how Medicare Part D serves low- income beneficiaries will help cement the United States as a country that looks out for its citizens in need. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting the full package and assist me in moving it through the process.

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

Mr. President, there is a poignant story about the days following the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As his body lie in state here in the U.S. Capitol, long lines of people formed in order to file past the body of the dead President. A journalist interviewed a worker who was standing there, with his hat in his hand held in front of him, with tears in his eyes. The journalist asked this working man, who had been standing in line for some long while: Did you know Franklin Delano Roosevelt? The working man looked back at him and said: No, I didn't. But he knew me.

The question is, Who knows American workers today? I ask that question because I read in the paper that Circuit City, a pretty well- known corporation in this country, has decided it wants to lay off 3,400 workers. Here is what Circuit City said about those workers:

It had nothing to do with their skills or whether they were

a good worker or not.

That is according to a Circuit City spokesperson.

Now, this sort of thing follows on the heels of the offshore outsourcing of many other American jobs, American companies shutting down. There is no more Fruit of the Loom underwear made in America, no more Levi's made in America, no more Huffy bicycles made here, no more Fig Newton cookies made here. There are no more Radio Flyer little red wagons made in America. It is all gone. It is all outsourced. Those workers all got fired. Pennsylvania House Furniture. I could go through the long list.

We understand that even as companies outsource jobs to China in search of 30-cents-an-hour labor, other companies that keep their jobs here have decided to put downward pressure on wages to be competitive, so we see the announcement of Circuit City. Three thousand four hundred workers need to be laid off because they are paid an average of $10 to $11 an hour; they are firing workers making 50 cents above the average. They plan to replace them with new workers who will work for substantially less, and they say they are going to save $110 million through these firings and replacements.

But Circuit City executives actually seem to be doing a little better than the workers. The employees are losing their jobs, but the CEO gets $10 million a year. The chairman gets $10 million, the CEO gets $10 million, the executive VP gets $6 million. This is from a company that lost money. I don't know. Maybe in some towns that seems to work. In my hometown, it wouldn't work very long.

It seems to me we are becoming a society of disposable workers, run by those who don't think workers make much of a difference in this country. Circuit City said they will start hiring replacements immediately. Anybody can apply for the jobs except for the Circuit City workers who were fired. They have to wait 10 weeks, and then they can reapply for the job at a lower salary.

So let's put some names to these 3,400 workers. I pulled some out of the newspaper.

Bobby Young worked 20 years for Circuit City. He got a letter from his boss saying he was fired. It was addressed ``To Whom It May Concern.'' It is unbelievable. He said he is 47 years old. ``What they did as a company to me, it's not the American way,'' he says. To Whom It May Concern: You are fired. It tells you a little something about the concern about the workers, doesn't it?

Alan Hartley, Charlotte, NC. He thought he and other top employees were being called into a special meeting because he thought they were going to be recognized for outstanding performance, but it wasn't quite that way. They decided they were going to be recognized to be laid off because they should be replaced with lower paid workers. Now he says they are going to hire people who aren't properly trained for the jobs to help take care of the customers.

I haven't told my kids yet. They don't know I just got

fired for doing a good job.

Steven Rash made $11.59 an hour; worked for the company 7 years. He was working another full-time job as well--two jobs to pay off his student debt.

It is not just Circuit City. There are other companies. I will not go through the whole list of companies. David Leonhart of the New York Times said that companies are wringing out what they see as inefficiencies. The inefficiency of paying $11.50 an hour; God forbid we should overpay people by $11.50 an hour, plus give them a little health insurance and retirement as part of their compensation. Well, when pensions and health insurance and $11.50-an-hour salary is viewed as an inefficiency, there is something wrong in this country. He also says this is a corporate safety net that is being taken away. There is no corporate safety net. It is a basic American standard of living that workers have bargained for.

Let me ask the question whether this applies to everybody. No, it doesn't. It just applies to workers, the people who take a shower after work. It just applies to those people. Top executives--in 2006 there were 35 chief executives who were fired for poor performance and, combined, they got $799 million payment as they went out the door. Pfizer's chairman, he got $200 million when he bailed out of that company, despite the fact the company had lost more than $130 billion in value. Home Depot chairman, he got fired on the very first day of 2007. He got $210 million as he went out the door. United Health Group, he somehow ended up with $1.1 billion in stock options as he went out the door. I don't quite understand all these things.

Jack Welch, a celebrated CEO, wrote the book ``Winning,'' and after he retired from General Electric, he got a package he was sufficiently embarrassed about, once it was disclosed, that he decided to give some of it back.

His package included an $80,000-a-month Central Park apartment during his retirement, lifetime use of the company jet, membership at an array of country clubs, maid service at multiple homes, limousines and prime tickets and several homes.

I don't understand how we have come to the point where the average CEO in this country, the average CEO of Standard & Poor's 500 companies, made $14.7 million. CEOs on average are paid 411 times more than the average workers in this company. Think of that. In 1965, CEOs on average were paid 25 times more than the average worker. Now it is 411 times more. Yesterday I opened the paper and read that Sprint CEO got a compensation package of $21.3 million, the former Nextel chairman got $36.2 million. Sallie Mae, by the way, in the business of providing student loans, their chief executive officer got a package of $16.6 million and a bonus of $2.5 million as a part of that. Ford Motor lost $12.6 billion last year. It went out and recruited a new chairman--oh, by the way, for the chairman, when the company lost $12.6 billion, that chairman got $10.5 million last year. They just went to hire a new guy and he got a $28 million package which includes an $18 million bonus.

The average CEO who was fired last year got $9 million in severance.

Abraham Lincoln once said there is no America without labor and to fleece the one is to rob the other.

There is a man named Bob Negley. Bob Negley is quite a remarkable businessman, a very unusual businessman. He ran a company called Rollerblade. Most of us know about Rollerblade. I like to rollerblade, personally--inline skates. I think it is a great sport. I haven't even broken a bone. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but I like to rollerblade. Bob Negley ran Rollerblade and then he sold it. After he sold it, he did something that is very unusual in this country. He moved to Florida, midyear, sold his position in Rollerblade, that controlling position, and moved to Florida. Then Christmastime came around and all the workers who worked for Bob Negley who made Rollerblades began to get Christmas cards from Bob Negley and his wife. In the Christmas card as they opened it up was a check from this man who had previously owned the company 6 months before. With the check was a note and it said this: I sold this company and I made a lot of money, but I understand what made this company successful. It was all of you. You worked out there in the plants and in the factories, you worked in engineering, you worked in marketing, you are the ones who made this company successful and, as a result, I made a lot of money. I want to share some of it with you. He included in the Christmas card a check computed on the number of years of service which some employees found to be over $20,000, and, by the way, he said, I have prepaid your Federal income taxes on this money. Accept this as a token of my appreciation because you were the company, you made this company successful.

Contrast that, if you will, with these days all the discussions in the newspaper about Circuit City who has to get rid of 3,400 workers. Why? Because we want to hire less-experienced workers, and we want to bring them on for less money; $11 an hour is too much.

Or, perhaps, Wal-Mart, which sends an internal memorandum around. A top executive writes a memo in Wal-Mart and says the cost of an associate--that is an employee, by the way, but you know this notion of ``associate.'' In my hometown there was a one-eyed, 3-legged dog with fleas they named ``Lucky,'' so names don't mean very much.

So he says, the cost of an associate with 7 years of tenure is 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with 1 year of tenure, and yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Message? Don't let people stay around very long. Let's have a lot of turnover here. Let's have people around who don't know anything so we can pay them nothing. This is going on in this country, and the question is, Who is going to stand up for American workers? Who decides for a change that the expansion of the middle class in this country, where workers were paid well, was something that represented the success of the American economic engine? Who is going to decide that? These companies that decide that workers are like wrenches: use them up and throw them away, it doesn't matter, or will they decide, once again, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, or as did that worker standing with his hat in his hands said: I know American workers. That President knew American workers. Will we decide finally that American workers have value in this economic system?

Sure, we can outsource everything. We can ship all these jobs to China and pay people 30 cents an hour to make bicycles to be sold in America. We can decide that we are going to get rid of all these workers and replace them with $8- or $6-an-hour people. Is that what is going to build a better country? Is that what is going to expand the middle class? There is no social program in this Chamber that we debate and talk about that is as important to the American people as a good job that pays well with good benefits. It is time, long past the time we start to remember that.

Yes, I used some company names here and I have described some severance packages. Perhaps I shouldn't single those companies out, but the fact is they put themselves on the front section of the business section of these newspapers with their own news: We want to get rid of 3,400 employees; that's what Circuit City says. I am saying that is a value system which ignores the fact that workers are your company. I told a company that was in to see me not so long ago: Your brand is a brand all of us recognize. Your brand is not just something painted someplace; it is the people who work for your company. If you don't understand that, at some point that brand will be worth virtually nothing. This country needs to begin to understand, once again, and honor, once again, work and working men and women who struggle every day. They get up, they work, they work hard, they give you an honest day's work, and they come home and try and raise a family and do all the things that make life in this country worthwhile. All too often these days we see this notion that somehow, by some companies, workers don't have value, don't have worth. That is a very serious mistake. Both in public policy and I hope in the private sector, we need to turn this around and understand this country's success depends on expanding the middle class, on providing opportunities for the people in this country--opportunities, yes, for a good job that pays well, to take care of families and provide the things you want for a good life in this country's future.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.