IDEA Full Funding Act

Madam President, I believe, in accordance with our understanding on both sides, it would be appropriate for me to call up amendment No. 3373, and I do so now.

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

Madam President, this amendment is similar to the one I introduced yesterday, except it provides a different offset to pay for the needed additional funds for the Office of Labor-Management Standards in the 2008 Labor-HHS budget.

This is a program that I believe is critically important. It is a program that has been very successful. It has resulted in over 700 prosecutions in the last several years and restitution to union members and union locals in the amount of about $101 million.

This is an important program. It is a working program. It represents the only required audits, the only required reporting and disclosure for unions in the country. The Securities and Exchange Commission does that for corporations and other institutions that are required to be audited. Other than this program, there is no real integrity to protect union members from fraud and corruption and theft. I will mention in a moment some extraordinary thefts that have occurred from union members, why this is important, and I will express my personal and deep belief that one reason we have as much broad corruption in unions is because we are not auditing them. We are not doing it. Even with the current level of funding, we are way behind and it would take, at this rate, 33 years to do a basic audit of all the unions around the country. That is not acceptable.

People are not being watched. They feel like they are free and temptation and money is coming before them. Obviously, people are succumbing to that temptation. More rigorous enforcement and audits are needed. The Office of Labor-Management Standards is a group that is required to enforce the statutory provision that mandates that unions provide, each year, public disclosure of how they spend their money. It was a bill offered and passed in 1959 by former Senator and former President, John F. Kennedy. It was an important reform.

During the Clinton years, sadly, this reporting requirement was almost totally abandoned and, under Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, in recent years she has worked hard and those reporting numbers are up. But 36 percent still don't report. There is not even a way, with our staffing level, that she can insist on that. So 36 percent are not reporting properly. The members don't know where their money is being used. That is the fundamental question.

The committee mark doesn't even flat fund the Department; it cuts its funding by $2 million. Every other enforcement agency is given an increase, but this one is cut. I think our members ought to ask themselves, do we need to be listening to certain union leaders who don't want disclosure, or do we need to be listening to union members whose funds and dues are being misappropriated? If we do regular audits, they will be more effective, and

I am convinced we will see a dropoff in this kind of problem. It is the right thing to do.

My proposal is to add $5 million, $2 million of which would get us back to last year's budget only, and a $3 million cost of living on top of that, so they can continue an aggressive effort to ensure integrity.

I have Senator Enzi with me, the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Senator Alexander, who are both interested in speaking on this. I will yield to Senator Enzi at this time. I believe I have 30 minutes; is that right?

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Madam President, I thank Senator Alexander for his comments. Indeed, what we are talking about is funds contributed by union members to further union causes, not to line the pockets of persons who embezzle, steal, or otherwise cheat and use the money. That is an important issue we need to keep in mind. It is troubling to me that we have opposition to keeping this program on track.

I have offered this amendment, as I indicated earlier, a new amendment that has a different offset. I know there was concern over the international union funds that go to the U.N.-affiliated agency. There is a big increase in that program, a $10 million increase. I am troubled by that increase, frankly, because last year Secretary Chao met with the people who were receiving this money, and they gave very inadequate explanations of where the money went. In fact, they couldn't explain where it went. I don't know whether it is being well spent.

At any rate, the most important thing for us to do is focus on making sure we are protecting the contributions of union members and that their funds are being protected. That is why I altered the offset to one that takes this $5 million from the administrative, management and related expenses of the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. That is where the funds would come from. I believe that would not be a heavy burden on those agencies. In fact, they can absorb it readily, and this is clearly, as a question of priorities, more important to make sure we are not cutting back on this budget.

Senator Specter talked about the status of the budget. I repeat, I think he understood it and explained it eventually correctly that the committee mark cuts the budget $2 million below last year's funding level. Because of inflation and cost increases, that is a most significant $2 million cut.

What we are proposing is that there be a $3 million increase in the overall budget, a total of $5 million--$2 million to get up to last year's funding and an additional $3 million to increase the funding. I think this is valid. I think it is justified. It is something we really should do. If we don't do it, we are going to have a severe, adverse impact on the ability of OLMS to fulfill their statutory requirement of auditing unions and requiring unions to publicly file their financial disclosures.

Some say this is a burdensome regulation, but in today's day and age, being able to maintain records of where you spend your money is not too much to ask. Most of these records are done by computers now. People have bookkeepers, and if they don't, they are taking serious risks. So to be able to report this information is not too much to ask. It is very valuable to their members. Union members should have the same protection, as Senator Alexander said, as corporate stockholders. This OLMS legislation is to union transparency what the Securities and Exchange Commission is to corporate transparency.

This chart shows the mission of OLMS. The mission of OLMS is a good mission. It is not to harm anybody. It is to assist in the integrity of this system--No. 1, to provide union financial transparency. That is why the bill was passed in 1959, so that union members can know where their money is being spent. That is the report which is required. Then to protect union financial integrity--that is part of the audit function of the OLMS. They are required to audit the union activities, and they do so, but, as I noted, even at this current level of funding, they only get around to doing every union in the country once every 33 years. Until we had some increases in this budget, it was once every 133 years. It is a small agency, $47 million in last year's budget, but it has shown big results.

OLMS does not tell unions how to spend their money; it simply requires them to file accurate and timely reports, which allows union members to determine for themselves whether the expenditures that are being made are appropriate. If they don't know what is happening, they cannot express their opinions in leadership meetings.

That there is a high level of demand from union members for this kind of information is very evident. This is a remarkable number. Between May of 2006 and May of 2007, on the Web site of OLMS where these reports are posted so members can access them--so they don't have to go down and ask the officer or the boss at the local union to ``give me your records,'' they can just access them on the computer--767,980 hits were identified on last year's Web site. People are looking to see where their elected union officers are spending their money. Why shouldn't they? That is an average of 64,000 a month and over 2,100 a day. If union members don't care about how their hard-earned dollars are being spent, I ask, why do they take time to access this Web site? Of course they want to know, they have a right to know, and the only way they are able to get this information in a readily available form is through this reporting requirement.

Unfortunately, the reports are not being submitted, and because of shortage of personnel and a certain lack of legal enforcement ability, only 36 percent of unions are not filing the appropriate forms. The delinquency rate is 36 percent. That is not good for union members.

Now, Secretary Chao has met with union leaders. But let me tell you what happened. Under the Clinton years, this was not being enforced. That is just it. You want to know the truth? It was not being enforced. And the number of personnel went from 427, in about 1990, down to 260. They just weren't enforcing this 1959 mandate. When Secretary Chao realized it was her responsibility to make sure union members could see financial disclosure forms, and she asked that it be done, a lot of grumbling occurred. They said, oh, it was burdensome; oh, there were problems. So she met with them and met with them and they altered plans and they figured out ways to do it that were cheaper and better and less burdensome, but she required them to comply with the law that requires this disclosure.

Now, after our colleagues have gained ascendancy in the Senate, lo and behold we come in and whack their budget. Now, who is being listened to, politically powerful bosses or is it the interest of union members? Embezzlement is not something we ought to

support and put up with. We in Congress are focusing on transparency right here. We talk about it a lot. It is embarrassing to me that our colleagues have seen this budget be reduced.

This chart gives a clear indication of just how significant overall the problem is we are dealing with. From 2001 to 2007, 796 people were convicted. Most of them pled guilty, and court-ordered restitutions totaled $101 million. But I indicated to you that less than 5 percent of the unions per year are being audited, and it appears that for every four of the audits that are conducted, about one person is convicted of something, on average. So we have a problem, we really do. And I submit it is not because people are necessarily bad people. Some of them may be, but a lot of it is because there is no real oversight and accountability, and temptation is too great.

I have been a prosecutor for 15 years. I will tell you, you give people lots and lots of money, it goes through their hands and nobody is watching it. Temptation takes over, and you will rightly expect problems to occur if you don't have tight fiscal controls. We don't have it. I think we need to have a lot more emphasis in this area than we do, other than just a $3 million increase in this department. It is obvious.

We hear a lot of talk about integrity in here about our financial disclosures and other things. Well, if we don't do our duty, people will complain. If businesses don't file their reports, they will complain. And we need to make sure unions do the same, not to beat up on unions but to help unions have integrity.

Now, not to be monotonous--and I find this remarkable--but some may say, well, they are abusing unions and picking on people. But the conviction rate is 95 percent--95 percent of all indictments have resulted in convictions. They do not always get big sentences. I thought some I have seen were pretty light. But the point is, if you are convicted of these kinds of offenses, you lose your leadership position in a union, and that is important. So if you are stealing from a union, you ought not stay in as an officer.

So I would just suggest that from my review of the cases, people are not being abused. They are being fairly treated. Overwhelmingly, the defendants are pleading guilty, and restitution is being made. People who are corrupt are not being able to remain in office to keep their hands in the till where the money is.

The legislation that requires this is not new. This law has been on the books for some time. I will admit that we been very lax, and it was not being enforced, but the conviction rate, the amount of restitution, the number of fraud cases per audit indicates that was not a good decision. And if the audit rates had been maintained, I submit we would have had a lot less crime and fraud and loss of union members' money. This occurred in 1959. One of the leaders of it was our own Senator Robert Byrd. He spoke earlier today. He has been here a long time. He was here in 1959 when this bill passed. And as a Senator from West Virginia, a State with a strong union heritage, a proud union heritage, he decided to vote for this bill.

The bill was actually introduced and led by Senator John F. Kennedy. This is what Senator Kennedy said at the time.

The racketeers will not like it, the antilabor extremists

around the country will not like it, but I am confident that

the American people, and the overwhelmingly honest rank and

file union members, will benefit from this measure for many

years to come.

And until we stopped enforcing it a few years ago, or got lax, it has been beneficial. I think the work that is being done now, the $101 million in restitution, indicates that progress has been occurring that has benefitted union members.

Now, Senator Byrd wrote a letter that was included in the Congressional Record in response to certain criticisms he received from a district president of a union in West Virginia. They sent a letter of condemnation, and Senator Byrd was direct about it. He responded:

The bill which passed the Congress will not hurt honest

unions, and it will give added protection to the rank and

file members in the unions. Honest union leaders have nothing

to fear from this legislation. The corruption and

racketeering that have been revealed in the fields of both

labor and management made it imperative that some kind of

legislation be enacted.

And I think that remains as true today as it was when he made those comments in 1959.

Madam President, since 2001, OLMS has only had the resources to audit 3,275 of the 26,000 unions on record. That means in the past 7 years combined, only 12.5 percent of the unions have been audited. It is able to audit only about 2 to 4 percent of the unions each year. It is important to note that unlike corporations, unions are not required by law to have outside auditors. Most corporations have to have outside auditors. So in many cases, this audit is the only outside audit a union will have.

In 2000, OLMS only did 204 audits out of well over 20,000 unions. That is the equivalent of a union being audited once every 133 years. Last year, they did 736 audits, a better number, but that still translates into an audit only once every 33 years at that rate. It is better, but I think we need to do a lot more.

With the $2 million reduction in funding which is currently in the bill, it is estimated there will be approximately 350 fewer audits each year, and that is almost cutting the number in half. So we should be seeking more, really, considering that from those 3,267 audits that were completed there came 827 indictments and 796 convictions. OLMS has been funded below the President's requested levels over the past several years. Yet if the proposed cuts in the bill are implemented funding will drop from $47.7 million to $45.7 million. That is below last year's budget. So I would just note again that we had 427 employees in this department in 1990. It fell down to 260, it has been inched up to 331, and if this bill passes in this form, cutting the budget, we are going to see a loss of personnel instead of an increase in personnel. We ought to be closer to the 400, it seems to me. OLMS was the only enforcement agency in the Labor Department that received a budget cut during the congressional markup.

Let me mention this story of the United Transportation Union. We have a picture I think is sad. It is a picture from an undercover operation. The person who is handing off this money that is on this picture is a UTU-designated legal counsel by the name of Victor Bieganowski. The person receiving the money is John Russell Rookard, 58, of Olalla, WA, a top special assistant to Alfred Boyd, Jr., UTU president at the time this bribe money was paid.

In 2004, Boyd, the international president of the Nation's largest railroad operating union, pleaded guilty to participating in a bribery scheme involving Houston lawyers. Union officials extorted bribes from the lawyers in exchange for access to injured union members.

A March 12, 2004, Houston Chronicle article explains that Byron Alfred Boyd, Jr., of Seattle, is the last of four officials of the UTU to plead guilty in a plan to extort bribes from lawyers in exchange for access to these injured members.

Boyd admitted using the bribes he was paid--get this--to gain control of the union. He persuaded former union president Charles Leonard Little of Leander, near Austin, to resign in exchange for $100,000 and a new pickup. This would allow him, Boyd, to assume the presidency of the union. Little resigned, but I guess he didn't get a promissory note or a mortgage because he was never paid his $100,000. Boyd not only stole from his union and breached the trust of his union members, he didn't pay the man he promised to pay to give up his office. Little pleaded guilty last year, as did former union insurance director Ralph John Dennis.

We have too many examples of this kind of disregard for the integrity of the funding of unions. People are being entrusted with this money, and it is not being managed well. And it is something that we need to do more about, in my view.

Madam President, I would just share a few other examples which I think are instructive of some of the problems that have occurred in recent years.

In Pennsylvania, in June of 2007, in the eastern district of Pennsylvania, Lawrence Marable and Deborah Powell, former president and treasurer of AFGE Local 1793, representing employees at the VA Medical Center, both

pled guilty to conspiracy and theft of property in a special territorial case. They conspired to convert dues checks and issued Local 1793 checks for their personal use totaling $184,129. This was a very serious matter, I suggest.

In May of this year, in Michigan, Alan Raines, former financial secretary of Steelworkers Local 1358 was charged with embezzling union funds in the amount of $274,262. That is not chicken feed. That is huge money. A lot of these unions do not have that many members, and the cost per member in one, I remember specifically, was about $1,000 per member in the amount of loss that occurred.

Here, on April 2, 2007, in Puerto Rico, the president of the International Longshoremen's local was found guilty of 12 counts of embezzlement. He was charged among other counts with conspiracy to embezzle union funds in excess of $1,950,000. That is a breathtaking amount. Both of those, in May and April of this year. In March of this year, in New York, John Daley, former chief financial officer of the New York State Nurses Association, was sentenced to time in prison after pleading guilty to grand larceny for taking $1,193,000 in union funds. These are public records. These are huge amounts of money.

In June of last year in Connecticut, a former financial secretary of Local 745 of PACE was charged with taking $138,000, embezzling that much money.

In June of this year, in my hometown, sadly, the Southern District of Alabama, where I at one time was a Federal prosecutor myself in the United States District Court there, Kenneth Mays, the former treasurer of IBEW Local 1053, was sentenced after pleading guilty to embezzlement and ordered to pay $37,000 in restitution, reimbursement. This is right in my home state.

On July of last year, in Fulton County, GA, in the district court, a bookkeeper for IBEW Local 613 was indicted for taking $11,000.

In December of 2005, in the Northern District of Iowa, Debra Herrig was sentenced and pled guilty to embezzling union funds and made restitution in the amount of $13,000.

In December of 2004, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Rodney Fox was charged with embezzling $89,000 of union funds.

In May of 2005, in the Southern District of Iowa, Amanda Kemmer was sentenced to 24 months and ordered to pay $209,000 in full restitution for embezzling union funds.

There are lots more I can indicate.

I will repeat. I don't believe there is any need for this kind of criminal activity to go on. I believe a lot of it occurs because there is so little oversight. If we had a rigorous oversight and audit function by the Department of Labor, we would see a lot less of it. If the unions were required to promptly and fully report the expenditures, union members would be able to watch for problems and pick them up sooner and keep these kind of embezzlements from going to hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars. That is why this office, of all offices, should not be reduced.

I understand some people believe it is a burden, and for a good union that never had any problems I guess filing it is a burden. It may not be a necessary thing. But, really, probably it is because the union members get to see where their funds are being spent, honestly and fairly.

Most unions, of course, are honest and do a good job, and most union members are the salt of the Earth and couldn't be better people, and most union leaders are honest and decent and work hard every day to protect the interests of their own members. They try to make sure they get a fair deal in the workplace.

I am telling you we need to be attuned to that because wages are not what I think they ought to be for the average worker in America today. There are a lot of reasons for that. I suggest one of them is this very large surge of low-wage labor that comes into our country illegally.

But, regardless, we want to help our union members receive the highest possible wage and to be able to know that their leadership is honest and trustworthy and doing the right thing. I believe we have to get this money back into this account. We need to be sure we have at least a modest increase in spending to keep up with the inflation rate so we can continue at least this modest rate of enforcement.

I urge my colleagues to not see this as an action that goes against unions but as an action that will strengthen unions, that will affirm the importance of the union members' money that they contribute, and to make sure it is spent wisely.

It is sad to say, sometimes you get a big restitution order of $1 million--I have been there and seen them, but it is like getting blood from a turnip. It will never come back. It is gone and the members have actually lost it and nobody can do anything about it.

I urge my colleagues to give serious consideration to this amendment. I think it is reasonable and fair and the offset, let me repeat, does not deal with the controversial ILO, International Labor Organization, that does some good. It certainly has good objectives. How well they spend their money, I have my doubts, but it has good objectives. It is an offset against administrative expenses, and across the board it will be a small impact on the administrative budgets of these agencies.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I wish to share a few thoughts on some of the discussion we had earlier today. My colleagues shared some ideas about whether we are funding OSHA sufficiently, that sort of thing. The spending per business from OSHA is different from spending per union. OSHA has many businesses they serve, and so they go out to each one and make their visits and do their inspections and assess penalties. But unions serve many businesses, and one inspector would come there and spend some time and would cover their relationship with quite a number of businesses. All workplaces are not unionized so I don't think that was a fair comparison.

Also, the Department of Labor just reported that the indictment and conviction numbers continue to go up. They now have 798 convictions and 834 indictments. It seems every day they are out there making good progress, where they have the capability to do so, against fraud and corruption.

With regard to the full-time equivalent, the number of employees, in recent years we have seen an increase in the number of employees--that is true--but the truth is those increases have been modest. For example, in 1990, there were over 400 OLMS employees. Now that number dropped down below 300. Mostly during the period of the Clinton administration there was a sharp dropoff. Now it is back up to 331, but that is well below the amount it used to be.

I don't think there is anything that can be said except that Secretary Chao has begun to restore that office a bit, tried to get it on a stronger basis, have it do a better job of enforcing the law. She needs that. One can only interpret this budget cut--the only budget cut within this whole line item of appropriations to her enforcement agency, the agency that requires the unions to publish their expenditures, the enforcement agency that actually does audits--as an indication of something rather serious, especially when the audits are uncovering extraordinary amounts of problems. That is what we have. We have a situation in which we have had so little oversight that there is abuse of union members' money going on on a regular basis. That money is too often being abused. Not by everybody; overwhelmingly, the average union leader is honest and decent. The locals are run by good people elected by their members. But long-term tenures, lack of controls, no audits puts people in a position where their good discipline fails.

I have seen it in churches. People in church have access to large amounts of money. Nobody is monitoring it, and they take it, sometimes large amounts. So we need to understand that oversight, auditing, and financial disclosure is not punishment. It is not demeaning. It is serving the rank-and-file union members. It is serving their interests so they can know their leadership is functioning honestly and with integrity, and they can know what they are spending their money on. It may be an honest expenditure, but a union member might look at it and say: They paid too much for this copy machine because that is his brother-in-law. They might want to complain about that. Isn't that the way we want it to happen? That is what the whole system is about.

It is disappointing to me to see that we have a cut in this agency, of all agencies. I am disappointed in that. I know Secretary Chao would be concerned that people thought that somehow in doing these few audits--and we are so slow in what we are doing and doing so few it would take 33 years to audit all existing unions. But to suggest they were spending so much money on that, and they weren't protecting workers. There is actually some good news there. For example, since fiscal year 2001, the fatality rate among Hispanic workers has fallen by over 18 percent. Since 2002, the injury and illness incident rate has fallen from 5.3 per 100 workers to 4.6 per 100 workers, a drop of more than 13 percent in the injury and illness incident rate, which is a substantial improvement.

With regard to the number of resources, from 1992 to 2002, there were budget cuts and the FTEs dropped 34 percent. That is the number of workers during basically the period in which President Clinton was in office. The audits of unions, the local unions dropped by two-thirds in that decade. That is all we are saying. Secretary Chao has a statutory responsibility to do audits, a statutory and compelling responsibility to insist on these reports being filed on time. They are required by a law that was passed in 1959. Thirty-six percent of the unions are not submitting those reports on time so their members cannot access where their money is going. We had almost a million people in the last year access the Web site where these reports are required to be filed to see where the money is being spent. This is union members accessing these Web sites so they can find out where the money they are contributing to the local union is being spent. What is wrong with that? Why would we want to cut this agency when we still are not where we need to be? We are auditing only a very small fraction of the unions, and a substantial number, over a third, are failing to report as required by law--not a law I am asking us to pass, not a law that is part of this amendment--a law that was passed by then-Senator John F. Kennedy in 1959.

So I believe this is a good government issue. It is the right thing to do. It will not hurt unions. It will strengthen unions. It will make people feel better about their membership. It may be some bosses do not want to have to disclose where they spend their money, and they may be contacting Senators and telling them: Don't give in. Fight. Don't let them go back and make us do these audits. Don't do it. Cut their budget. Stop Elaine Chao from doing what she is required by law to do. Don't give her the money.

Maybe that is what is happening. I do not know. I hope not. I think we ought to keep this going. We ought to at least have this modest increase which is a little more than the inflation rate--a net $3 million increase on a $47 million budget from last year. That modest increase will allow her to keep the momentum, to keep these delinquency rates going down, moving in the right direction, with financial disclosure, sunshine. That is going to help eliminate fraud in itself. Then she will be able to also do a certain number of other audits. Maybe we can see not an increase in convictions, but we might see a decrease, if we know there is more accountability.

Again, there were 796 criminal convictions over the last 6 years, with court-ordered restitution of $101 million. Whose money is that? Whose money was being ordered to be paid back? It is union members' money--working Americans who have trusted their leaders. Maybe in the union hall there are 10 officers and leaders and only one of them found themselves in a position to steal. I am not saying we have this wholesale problem. What I am saying is there is a very real problem. There is no doubt about it. We are finding far too many criminal cases for each audit that is done.

As a result, it takes up time by the investigators. It takes up time by the auditors. It results oftentimes in a loss of money that no matter what the judge orders to be restored--no matter how much restitution they order--it may not actually ever be paid back if they do not have it. That is a true fact.

So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Once again, some of you may be concerned that the offset was to take money from the ILO, I believe it is, the U.N.-affiliated international labor group that is supposed to help labor conditions around the world. They certainly have high and good goals. I am not sure they have been very effective. But this money for my amendment is not coming from there anymore. I know a lot of people want to see that budget increased.

So this offset will be an offset from administrative expenses of Labor and HHS and Education. It will be a small impact on their overall budget.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are now back on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies appropriations bill.

I thought I might recap for Senators where we are. We started yesterday. I thought we had a fairly productive afternoon. We, right now, have five pending amendments that we are working on in terms of offsets. We have the Vitter amendment on drug reimportation. That language we are just working on. There is no offset needed.

We have the amendment by Senator Dorgan on heart disease. We are again looking at an offset there. We are working on that.

We have an amendment by Senator Thune on telehealth. Again, we are working on trying to find the proper offsets.

We have another amendment by Senator Dorgan on a NAFTA study. That has not been totally agreed to yet on the other side of the aisle.

We have an amendment by Senator Menendez on patient navigators. Again, I think it is broadly supported. But, again, we are working on trying to find an offset.

We adopted three amendments yesterday: the amendment by Senator Feinstein which was to set up a child abuse registry; the second amendment was by Senator Smith which was a technical fix to the Garrett Lee Smith suicide prevention bill; and then yesterday we accepted an amendment by Senator McCaskill which provides for a link on the Web sites of all of the departments under our jurisdiction to the IG.

I am told we have about 30 amendments filed. We have 10 that we now have worked on, so we are down to about 20 amendments. I hope we can again move rapidly today and have people come over. I see people are here waiting to offer amendments. I appreciate that very much.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these three Members be recognized to call up amendments and that the pending amendments all be set aside for this purpose. In this order it would be: Senator DeMint, Senator Dole, and Senator Brown.

I yield the floor.

Parliamentary inquiry: Would the Chair state the question before the Senate right now?

Mr. President, we have not disposed of amendment No. 3340, if I am correct.

We have looked at 3340. I don't know that it needs an up- or-down vote. We can accept it. I understand Senator Specter will accept it, also, so it is accepted on both sides.

Mr. President, I will probably have more to say about this later, but on the amendment the Senator offered regarding the Rangel Center, I object to this amendment. It is an attack on an institution that is not in the Senate amendment before us. It is a House provision that provides funding for a center at the City College of New York. As I understand it, the center was set up basically to offer interdisciplinary programs for bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, midcareer programs, to get more minority population into management positions. Right now, non-Whites make up nearly 30 percent of our population, yet only 13.8 percent of the men and women who occupy top management and policy positions in the Federal Government are members of minority groups. We need to do more to bring minority Americans into public service. A center for public service at the City College of New York was set up to do this. It was the City College of New York that decided the name of it. As far as I know, we didn't decide that. We didn't do anything to decide the name of it. In this bill, we have funds for the Howard Baker Center in Tennessee. We have funds for a Robert Dole Center. These are centers set up at universities, and they name them. We do not. They decide to put a name on it.

I believe we ought to be in the position of saying, yes, there is a need for course work to help minorities get into midmanagement and senior positions in the Federal Government. That is laudable. But what the university names it ought to be up to the university. It is not up to us.

Surely.

Mr. President, we have in our bill a provision for a Howard Baker Center at the University of Tennessee. I haven't heard the Senator from South Carolina want to go strike the Howard Baker Center. That is in this bill. A couple years ago, we had the provision for the Dole Center at the University of Kansas. I don't remember the Senator objecting to that. This is nothing unusual. This happens all the time. It is up to the university to decide whether they want to name them; it is not up to us.

Mr. President, I believe we are ready for the Dole amendment.

I thank the Senator from North Carolina for her interest in and support of the National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank. This is a program Senator Specter and I created in the 2004 bill when he was chairman. Our bill includes $12 million for this program, enough to sustain the banks that exist and start a new round of grants to startup operations. The Dole amendment codifies this $12 million for the cord blood stem cell banking program. I fully support it. I believe I can speak for Senator Specter. On both sides, we are more than happy to accept the amendment.

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

Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request? I hate to interrupt the Senator.

Mr. President, I think this has been cleared on the other side.

I ask unanimous consent that at 12:30 today, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the DeMint amendment No. 3338, with no amendment in order to the amendment prior to the vote, and that there be 2 minutes of debate prior to the vote with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators DeMint and Schumer or their designees; that upon disposition of the DeMint amendment, Senator Byrd be recognized to call up an amendment on the subject of mine safety.

If the Senator will yield, is there any chance that we could finish the debate after the vote? We are trying to get the vote in prior to some noon things that are happening around here.

Mr. President, I modify my unanimous consent request to say that if the pending debate is not finished at 12:30, that after the vote on amendment No. 3338, we would return to the debate on the Coburn amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Michigan for her very eloquent and very timely statement on what just happened in the House. I guess it just transpired a little while ago. I think probably all of us were hoping that somehow the Members of the other body would come to realize this had broad support across the country-- the SCHIP bill--and the fact that the $35 billion we had in there over 5 years was something that is sorely needed. I think we were all hoping this would pass. So when I just heard the Senator from Michigan say it failed by only getting 273 votes--we need 290 in the House to override a veto--that is a shame because it is obvious that we here in the Senate have the votes to override a veto.

So what can I say? Seventeen people prevented this from becoming law and from providing the health care our children need in this country-- children of working parents. Mostly these are people who are a working parent or parents, they are contributing to society, they are taxpaying individuals, but they simply don't have enough money to buy the kind of health insurance they need to cover their kids. So this really is a slap in the face to the middle class in America, the middle-class people who are struggling to make ends meet and trying to provide a good education for their kids, maybe trying to put something away for a rainy day or for retirement, and they just don't have the money for health insurance. The Senator from Michigan is so right.

I don't mind if the President is opposed to this, but I think he has an obligation to speak truthfully to the American people. When he came out yesterday--I think it was just yesterday I heard this--he said: Well, it would cover kids with families earning up to $83,000 a year. Well, that is just simply not factually true. It would be if he signed it--I mean, it is up to the

President to approve or not approve those. So is he saying that if the bill went through, he would approve it? That doesn't make sense. So that was disingenuous on his part. Also, as the Senator from Michigan pointed out, that somehow this would cover immigrant children, that is absolutely forbidden in the bill.

So I thank the Senator from Michigan for her long efforts in this regard as a member of the Finance Committee, as well as the occupant of the chair, who I know is a member of the Finance Committee and who also has worked very hard to reach a compromise, a bipartisan agreement on this bill to send it to the President. All I can say is, when people ask me now what are we going to do, well, what we are going to do is we are going to try to do something to move this forward. We can't just sit back and say that because of 17 people we can't move ahead.

So I think most of us who feel very strongly about the Children's Health Insurance Program are going to do everything we can between now and the time we adjourn to get this back up and try to get it to the President, and hopefully by then there will be enough momentum behind it that he will sign it. But I don't think we should just sit back and let it linger.

So I thank the Senator from Michigan for all of her strong support for the SCHIP bill.

Amendment No. 3362

Mr. President, turning back now to this bill in front of us, the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Byrd, had offered an amendment on MSHA, the Mine Safety Health Administration, to provide an additional $10 million for that. It was fully offset by a reduction of $10 million in travel expenses for the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that amendment.

Our subcommittee held two hearings on MSHA this year. What we learned is they still don't have two-way communication and tracking technology that would operate after an accident in an underground coal mine. Other countries seem to do quite well in that--Poland, Australia--other countries seem to be able to do that, but we can't. MSHA has been dragging its feet on this for a long time.

Our inspector force has been growing over the last couple of years, again thanks to Senator Byrd, who in the 2006 supplemental put in $25 million to train and to equip the inspectors. But even with that, MSHA still is not capable of conducting 100 percent of the inspections in our Nation's coal mines. That 100 percent is required. That is a requirement. Yet they still can't do it.

This is something I think is sorely needed. I support it, and I hope the Senate will adopt the Byrd amendment to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Amendment No. 3368

Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Specter, and Senator Kennedy. We have seen, in the last 24 hours or so, horrific stories come out about this new bacteria that is invulnerable to our first line of antibiotics. It is a dangerous germ and it is spreading all over the country.

There was a story in the paper this morning about cases nearby here. A teenager died recently in Bedford County, VA, because of methicillin- resistant staphylococcus, or MRSA. As of yesterday, Montgomery County schools had 14 cases, Anne Arundel County had 1 reported MRSA infection. They have received 57 reports from parents about other possible cases. Two cases have been confirmed at Wild Lake High School in Howard County. So something is going on.

Some of these schools are trying to clean up. We have one here, where the Rappahannock County School System finished a comprehensive cleaning of its two campuses, and the cost was more than $10,000. That is one cost. The cost in human life and suffering is growing.

We all are very concerned--and rightfully so--about the number of people losing their lives to the AIDS virus every year. But the fact is more people are dying because of this staphylococcus than they are of AIDS. MRSA was calculated with striking 31.8 out of 100,000 Americans, which translates into 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide a year. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans last year.

So what is happening is that this microbe is spreading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have calculated about 19,000 deaths a year. So, again, it seems to me we need to pay some attention to this and we need to respond to it as rapidly as possible.

This amendment basically says they shall spend a minimum of $5 million--take $5 million out now to focus on identifying and containing and trying to hold down the spread of this terrible bacteria. It is not a virus, it is a bacteria. So, again, Senator Specter, Kennedy, and I wanted to introduce this to let the public know we are trying to get on top of it. Hopefully, we will have hearings with the CDC soon to find out what they are doing.

This amendment would increase activities in hospitals and other health care settings, aimed at preventing the spread of this deadly bacteria. So I will leave it there.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point an article that appeared today on Washingtonpost.com regarding this MRSA.

Mr. President, for the knowledge of other Senators, we are trying to reach an agreement to get to a series of votes. We don't quite have it yet, but hopefully in the next few minutes we will agree to have a series of votes starting fairly soon.

With that, I see my friend, the distinguished Senator from New Jersey on the floor.

I yield the floor at this time.

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from New Jersey for his amendment. Senator Specter and I had put into the bill a prohibition on abstinence-only programs providing information that is medically inaccurate. Again, this is the beauty of having issues such as this come to the floor. Senator Lautenberg and Senator Snowe have offered a suggestion to tighten down on that provision and actually make it more meaningful.

This is what the amendment says:

For purposes of this section, the term ``medically

inaccurate'' means information that is unsupported or

contradicted by peer-reviewed research by leading medical,

psychological, psychiatric, and public health publications,

organizations and agencies.

That clarifies the intent of the amendment. I thank Senator Lautenberg for the amendment, and I intend to support it.

Hopefully, we are going to have clearance soon to begin a series of votes. We do not have that agreement yet, but we hope in the next 15 minutes we will begin a series of four votes. We don't have that agreement yet. Hopefully, we will have that cleared pretty soon. In the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President we now have clearance for a series of votes.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote in relation to Senator Byrd's amendment No. 3362 at 2:30 p.m.; that upon disposition of that amendment, the Senate vote in relation to Senator Harkin's amendment No. 3368; that upon the disposition of that amendment, the Senate vote in relation to the Brown amendment No. 3348; that upon the disposition of that amendment, the Senate vote in relation to the Kyl amendment No. 3321; that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form prior to each vote and that no other amendments be in order prior to these votes.

Mr. President, Senators should be alerted that beginning at 2:30 p.m., there will be a series of four votes. I do not ask for consent now, but I will after the first vote, that the other three votes be 10-minute votes. So there will be four votes starting at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I have a slight change in that unanimous consent agreement. It has been cleared. That the first vote at 2:30 p.m. will be my amendment No. 3368; that following that amendment, it will be Senator Byrd's amendment No. 3362, and the rest as stated earlier.

Mr. President, I ask that Senator Snowe and Senator Rockefeller be added as cosponsors of the amendment I offered on MRSA.

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

Mr. President, the first amendment will be my amendment, and I have not asked for the yeas and nays as yet, so I now ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Madam President, I would like to respond to some of the points made by the Senator from Alabama. First of all, I want to make it clear that I do not know of any Senator on either side of the aisle who is not in favor of going after either fraud, waste and abuse, or any kind of criminal activities--whether it is done in the business community, by corporations, or whether it is done in labor unions. Really, the question is, how do you do it? What is the best way of doing it? Are we getting a good return on the dollar, so to speak, for what we are investing in?

I thought we might take a look and see what has been happening in this whole area in the Department of Labor over the past few years, where their focus has been and where it has not been, and what the priorities are. You can tell a lot about someone's priorities by how they spend their money. The bill before us provides some modest increase in work protections agencies--OSHA, MSHA, Wage and Hour Division. We also provide for the OLMS--that is the office the Senator from Alabama has been talking about, Office of Labor Management Standards--$45.7 million. That is not chicken feed. I will talk more about that in a bit.

But I want to point to some charts to show where we are, to put it in better perspective. Right now at the Department of Labor, for OSHA-- that is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These are the people who go out and make sure your workplaces are safe, that you are not exposed to toxic chemicals, things that cause cancer, or unsafe workplaces where you wind up losing a limb, an arm, a hand, or where you are exposed to different things that may injure your lungs, whether it is asbestos inhalation or any kind of toxic chemicals that may have long-term profound effects. This is OSHA.

What does the administration spend on OSHA? They spend $26 per workplace.

The Wage and Hour Division is the people who go out and make sure you are actually being paid what you say you should be paid, that you are getting overtime pay, that the company is abiding by the wage and hour provisions of the contract, for example, that the union may have signed. So in Wage and Hour, they are spending $26 per workplace. Under Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Labor is spending about $26 per workplace--about the same.

What are they spending at the Office of Labor Management Standards? It is $2,707 per union; $26 per workplace for OSHA, 100 times more for OLMS than they are spending on OSHA investigating where people get injured, damaged, maimed for life due to unsafe working conditions.

There it is, 100 times more for OLMS. Yet they say it is not enough money. They need more. Let's see what that means. OLMS--more staff. More staff and fewer results.

I was listening to the Senator from Alabama. It would be one thing if, over these years they were spending more money and hiring more staff, they actually got more convictions and that

stuff. That is not so. In 2003, there were 297 people working for OLMS. In 2006, that had increased to 384, almost a 40-percent increase, maybe, or 50-percent increase? Anyway, almost 100 people more, 297 to 384. What happened to the number of indictments? The number of indictments in 2003 was 132; the number in 2006 was 118. They have 100 more people, but the number of indictments goes down.

Look at the convictions. We saw the chart. In 2003, we had 152 convictions; in 2006, 129. So we have a lot more people working there. We are spending more money on personnel, and we are getting fewer indictments and fewer convictions. The budget, at that same time, went from $34.3 million to $45.7 million, which is where we are. They put on more people, but they got fewer indictments and fewer convictions.

Now with the Sessions amendment, they want to go to $50.7 million--I guess to hire more people so we can get fewer indictments and fewer convictions.

This really tells the story. What is happening is, they are loading up OLMS with featherbedding. That is classic. They put more and more people on, and they are doing less and less work. When I see a trendline like that, I say: You don't chase bad money with good. We put all that money in there, and it looks as though what we are doing is hiring a bunch of people who are sitting around, not doing very much.

Let's look at labor staffing. I mentioned before--this is the same figure you saw in the previous chart, OLMS went from 297 to 384, a 29- percent increase. How about OSHA? What happened to Occupational Safety and Health? It went from 1,683 down to 1,542. They got rid of people to do inspections. And MSHA, coal mine safety, went down from 2,299 to 2,136. So while OLMS went up, OSHA and MSHA, Mine Safety Health Administration, actually cut personnel.

What does that mean? This next chart shows what it means. Unlike OLMS, where more staff means fewer results, the cutbacks of OSHA and MSHA means less work gets done. This chart demonstrates what has happened over the last several years in President Bush's budget. OSHA inspections, right here, from 2003 to 2006, dropped from 39,884 to 38,589, so we get fewer OSHA inspections and fewer workers are being protected as a result.

Then, the number of employees benefiting from OSHA inspections fell from 1.6 million to 1.2 million. I don't have that number on this chart.

Look at mine safety. Right now, MSHA is unable to do all the inspections that they are required to do by law. What has happened here? Under mine safety, the staff went from 2,299 to 2,136.

The number of inspections they were able to complete went from 98.8 percent to 95.1 percent, which is where we are today. They cannot even inspect all of the mines. Need I remind anyone here of the recent mine disaster in Utah, the mine disasters in West Virginia and Virginia, Pennsylvania.

Miners continue to lose their lives every year in coal mines and other mine disasters, and yet in MSHA, we do not even have enough people there to do the inspections. I think these charts show you what is happening over there.

I think that $45.7 million is more than enough for them to do their job. There it is. It went from 297 to 384 people. Yet the number of indictments and convictions went down. The budget went from $34 to $45 million. Now they want to go to $50 million. Well, something is not right here. Something is not right. It sounds as if they are hiring more and more people, but I do not know what they are doing.

There is one other thing I want to respond to that Senator Sessions brought up. I think if I remember it right--I will have to check the Record, but I thought he said something about 26 percent of the reports were not standard, were not acceptable, did not meet standards of acceptability.

Well, you can go right to the White House, online, go to the Office of Labor Management Standards. It has got program performance measures. It says here: Measure. Increasing union transparency. Increase the percentage of union reports meeting standards of acceptability for public disclosure.

Here is what it says: Explanation. The principle objective of this performance goal is to increase the percentage of union reports meeting standards of acceptability for public disclosure.

Prior to implementation of electronic reporting formats, only 73 percent of union reports filed met standards of the acceptability. Expanded use of electronic report formats is significantly improving the sufficiency of reports for public disclosure.

Here it is. In 2003, 73 percent, that is what I mentioned. I think that is where Senator Sessions got the 26 percent that were not acceptable. Well, that was 2003. In 2004, it went to 94 percent. It is now at 93 percent, 93, 94 percent. So there are only about 6 to 7 percent that are not meeting the standards; again, not 26 percent. It is more like about--well, it is either 6 or 7 percent right now. The goal is 97 percent. Obviously they are getting there with this new electronic reporting.

Now the other thing has to do with financial integrity. I talked about fraud, and I saw the picture of somebody getting money and all of that kind of stuff. Well, again, on the same Web site--you can look it up yourself--the measure: increasing union financial integrity. The percentage of unions with fraud will decrease. That is the outcome. Right here it says that: OLMS conducts audits to monitor compliance, uncover embezzlement, and other criminal and civil violations of the law, using streamlined investigative audit procedures.

In fiscal year 2004, OLMS conducted a union audit study that identified fraud in 9 percent of the unions. That was in 2004. The last reporting period was 2006. It went down to 8 percent. What is the goal? Seven and one-half percent. So it is only half a percent of what the goal is as stated by OLMS. Again, the indicators are there that the electronic reporting and other things are having their effect. So you wonder, why do they need so many personnel if, in fact, they have gone to electronic reporting and they are getting better results and better transparency from that? This sounds to me like a classic case of featherbedding, padding it with people and spending more money for not getting much for results; in fact, getting less results than we have gotten in the past with less money.

Again, I think we have met our obligation with $45.7 million for OLMS. By the way, that should be more than enough for them to do their audits and to do their indictments and convictions. I think this shows that more personnel and more money have not translated into more convictions and more indictments.

There is a balance that has got to be held here. I think our committee did a good job of balancing OLMS, which has a job to do. They should do it. They should investigate, they should audit, they should indict, and they should convict people who are absconding with union money. Absolutely. No one denies that. They should.

The question is, how do we balance that with making sure we have more inspections of workplace safety, or mine safety, the other things that the Department of Labor is supposed to be doing to protect our workers? That is the balance we have struck here in the bill. I think it is a good balance, something that was worked out in a bipartisan fashion with Senator Specter, myself, and other Republicans and Democrats on the committee. As I pointed out, this passed the committee 26 to 3. This was not even an issue. I think everyone figured there was a pretty good balance for what we set up. I hope we can maintain that balance.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, among the amendments that are pending, one is 3349. I ask unanimous consent to have it called up and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam President, this was the amendment offered by Senator

Brown earlier. It had to do with Upward Bound evaluations. It was cleared on both sides of the aisle. We are ready to vote on it.

Madam President, I say to Senators, we are working our way through the amendments. It is now 5:15. I know people do not want to work late tonight, but we are going to be in very late tonight unless Senators who have amendments pending come over and offer their amendments.

As people can tell, there is nothing happening here right now. We hope to get a couple more votes here very shortly. Right now, there is not an amendment pending for which we can have a vote except the Sessions amendment. We had a pretty good debate on that yesterday and just now. I think pretty much all of the debate regarding the amendment offered by Senator Sessions is over. We are prepared to vote on that, but we will hold off until we can get clearance on the other side to have a vote.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Madam President, I have an amendment I offer on behalf of Senator Reid. I send it to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to reduce air pollution and the threat of global warming by enacting strict standards on the four major pollutants from powerplants. I send the legislation to the desk and ask it be introduced.

Mr. President, I am pleased that Senator Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, who chairs a key environmental subcommittee, will be the bill's lead cosponsor, so it will be known as the Alexander-Lieberman Clean Air Climate Change Act of 2007. It will establish an aggressive but practical and achievable set of limits on four key pollutants. This is a little different sort of clean air and climate change bill, and I would like to talk for a few minutes about exactly what it does and why we are doing it this way.

Most of us in the Senate can be measured by where we come from. I come from the Great Smoky Mountains. When I go home tomorrow afternoon, after we hopefully start the competitiveness legislation debate, I will go to my home about 2 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. When the Cherokees named the Great Smoky Mountains, which today have become our most visited national park, they were not talking about smog and soot. Unfortunately, today they probably would be. There has been a lot of recent progress, but air pollution is still a serious health problem, causing illnesses from asthma to premature death, and making it harder to attract new jobs.

To be specific about that, recently, over the last 20 years, the auto industry has become important to Tennessee.

Tennessee was in competition recently for a Toyota plant that nearly came to Chattanooga but went to Mississippi. In the last 25 years, one- third of our manufacturing jobs have become auto jobs. I can remember when there were not any, and I was Governor, and the Nissan plant decided to come to Tennessee in 1980. The first thing I had to do as Governor was to help them go down to the air quality board and get a permit to paint 500,000 cars and trucks a year. That is a lot of paint, and produces a lot of emissions in the area. If Tennessee had not had clean air at that time, that Nissan plant would have been in Georgia. So clean air is not only about our health, although the more we learn about the effects of nitrogen pollutants and sulfur pollutants, the more that we learn that it and mercury are about our health, clean air is also about our ability to attract jobs. So we want to make sure that when Nissan or Toyota or any of the suppliers of any automobile company--General Motors with a Saturn plant in Tennessee--when they want to look at our State for expansion--they are not limited by our inability to meet clean air standards.

We also have jobs that come from another direction. In Tennessee, tourism is big business. Many people know about Yellowstone in the West, but the Great Smoky Mountains have three times as many visitors as any Western park, nearly 10 million visitors a year, and they come to see the Great Smokies, not to see smog, not to see soot. They want to enjoy it.

When I go into Sevierville, Dolly Parton's hometown, and ask the Chamber of Commerce right there next to Maryville where I grew up, what is your No. 1 issue, these conservative Republicans in Sevier County say to me: Clean air. That is what the Chamber of Commerce there says, clean air. So we Tennesseans think clean air is important for our health, because we love to look at our mountains and because of our jobs.

I am the chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority Congressional Caucus. I sit on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. I am especially delighted that Senator Lieberman, who is the cosponsor of this legislation, not only is on that committee, but he chairs one of the major subcommittees on the Environment and Public Works Committee that has to do with global warming.

What we are hoping is that this legislation, which I am about to describe, along with legislation Senator Carper of Delaware is introducing today or tomorrow, will help move along the debate about how we deal with global warming in our country.

In the legislation I have presented, the Alexander-Lieberman legislation, we seek to preserve our jobs while we clean the air and preserve the planet. We have a number of concerns in our country, and global warming is only one of those. So I would argue that the provisions we have set out are aggressive, but they are practical and they are achievable. They set schedules for powerplants to reduce emissions for sulfur dioxide, for nitrogen oxide, for mercury, and for carbon dioxide. Doing so will relieve some of the worst air-related health environmental problems such as ozone, acid rain, mercury contamination, and global warming.

I think it is important to note that one of the differences with this Alexander-Lieberman bill is it proposes carbon caps only on powerplants that produce electricity; it does not propose carbon caps on the economy as a whole.

Now, why would we only do that? Well, here are the reasons for that: No. 1, when we talk about global warming and carbon, we are dealing with a huge, complex economy. This country of ours produces and uses about 25 percent of all of the energy in the world. We have businesses that range from the shoe shop to Google to chemical plants.

I think we have to be very careful in Washington about coming up with great schemes and great ideas that sound good here but that might not apply to everyone across the country, because everyone across the country has a natural conservatism about the wisdom of those who are in Washington. We could scare them to death with some talk of an economywide global warming bill. So I am more comfortable thinking sector by sector. I want our steps to be practical and cost effective.

I do believe a market-based cap and trade system for powerplants makes a lot of sense. Powerplants are the logical place to start with carbon regulation. Powerplants produce about 40 percent of all the carbon in our economy. Powerplants are increasing emissions of carbon at a rate faster than any other large segment in our economy. We have selected in our legislation what we call a market-based cap and trade system to regulate the amount of carbon that is produced. This is not a new idea. The market-based cap and trade system was actually introduced by a Republican administration in which I served in the Cabinet, the first George Bush. It was a part of the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990. It was introduced because we were concerned about the amount of sulfur coming out of powerplants. Basically it created a lot of flexibility for those powerplants. It used a market system. We have now had 15 years experience with it. It has worked very well. It has significantly reduced the amount of sulfur in the air. It has done it in a way that most everyone concedes is the lowest possible cost of regulation.

It is a minimal amount of rules from here, a maximum amount of market decisions and individual decisions by individual utilities. So we have had that system in effect since 1990. There has been a similar system in effect for nitrogen. There has been a similar cap and trade system in Europe. We have a lot of experience with cap and trade. So we have elected to use a similar cap and trade market-based system to regulate the carbon coming out of the same smokestacks that sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury come out of. We can already measure the amount of carbon coming out, so we do not have to guess about that. We do not have to invent a new system.

We do have to be careful about what the standards are, what the dates are. We want to know what the costs will be to the ratepayers. We want to keep electric rates as low as we possibly can, as well as making the energy clean.

But if we are concerned about global warming in this generation, because I think we should be, then powerplants are a good place to start. It is time to finish the job of cleaning the air of sulfur, of too much sulfur, too much nitrogen, and too much mercury. It is time to take the right first step with controlling carbon emissions. It is time to acknowledge that climate change is real, that human activity is a big part of the problem, and that it is up to us to act.

Now not only am I glad to be working with Senator Lieberman, who will be the lead cosponsor of this legislation, he, of course, is already a leader in this area and he has an economywide piece of legislation which he introduced. Senator McCain in the last session--I am not about to try to speak for another Senator, but I think Senator Lieberman is taking the position he would like to see several good trains moving down the track toward the same station in hopes that one of them eventually gets there, and that we can learn from each other.

That is the attitude I take with the legislation Senator Carper has described today and that he is introducing today or tomorrow. Senator Carper and I have worked together through two Congresses on four pollutant legislation. A lot has happened since we started working. For example, the Administration, to its credit, through the Environmental Protection Agency, has stiffened requirements for sulfur and nitrogen. I applaud President Bush for that. They are very good requirements. They have also proposed the regulation of mercury for the first time in our country's history. I applaud the EPA for that. So a lot has changed since Senator Carper and I first started.

Also we have learned a lot. Senators who do not always have their mouths open learn a lot. We have discovered one of the most difficult areas in fashioning a market-based cap and trade system for sulfur or for nitrogen or for carbon is who pays for it. We called that the allocation system.

Senator Carper and I started out with what we called an output system. We thought that sounded pretty good. It would be based upon the amount of electricity you would be putting out. But the more we studied it, he came to a different conclusion and I came to a different conclusion. I came to the conclusion that we should use historical emissions. In other words, we are saying to a utility in the United States: We are about to impose upon you some requirements for cleaning up more sulfur, cleaning up more nitrogen, cleaning up mercury--for the first time--and regulating the emissions of carbon for the first time, and I understand that is a significant cost.

That capital cost will have to be borne in the end by ratepayers. So, in my view, it seems to me that the fairest way to impose that cost would be through what we call the historical allocation system. That is the way we have done it with allowances for sulfur and nitrogen for the last 15 years.

In fact, the input or the historical allowance system as the way to pay the bill has been the way it is done almost everywhere, I believe.

But there is another way to allocate that is called the output. Senator Carper selected that. There is still a third way to allocate the costs of doing whatever regulation we do, and that is called the auction. A market-based cap and trade system sounds complicated, but it is not so complicated. It basically says to each emitter of one of the pollutants: You have an allowance to emit one ton of that sulfur or of that carbon, and as long as you emit that much, you are okay. If you emit more than that, you are going to have to buy allowances to emit that much more from someone else. So it costs you more. Or if you emit less, you can sell your allowance. Then as the law goes along over the years, 2009 or 2010 to 2015, the amount of pollutants that come down, your allowance total drops down as well.

One of the favored proposals mostly--and especially by many environmental groups--is an auction of those allowances. Well, I have resisted. I have been careful about the auctions. I have been to a lot of auctions. I know they must have them in Minnesota as well as Tennessee. I have yet to see one where the purpose of the auction was not to get the highest possible price.

Well, if I am paying my electric bill down in Memphis, or if I am at Eastman Chemical in east Tennessee or ALCOA trying to keep my electric costs in line, I am not interested in my Senator coming to Washington and having an auction to raise my electric rates to the highest possible price.

So also there is the temptation that if you auction off these allowances, and there are a lot of them when we are talking about carbon allowances, many more than when we are talking about sulfur allowances over the last 15 years. They will bring in a lot of money. And whenever you bring in a lot of money, and 100 different Senators and lots of Congressmen know there is a pot of money, they will come up with a lot of ways to spend that money. And where will that money come from? Well, it has got to come from the man or women or family paying the electric bill in Nashville, or Knoxville. So I have been conservative about the use of auctions.

Senator Lieberman and I, in this bill, say 75 percent of the allowance comes from historical emissions and 25 percent are sold in an auction. This gets way down in the weeds, as we say. But one of the things that I think may be beneficial from Senator Carper going ahead with his bill, which relies on an output system that becomes a 100- percent auction, and way we go ahead in the Alexander-Lieberman bill with 75-percent input and 25-percent auction, may be that our colleagues will do as we have been doing over the last few months, and spend a little more time understanding allowances and auctions, and we can come to a better conclusion about this.

I value greatly my relationship with Senator Carper and respect his leadership in this area. He chairs one of the principal subcommittees on the Environment Committee upon which I serve

and the Presiding Officer serves. What I hope is he and I are moving into a new stage of our working relationship on clean air and climate change, and the result of that will be that all of our ideas will be out in front of our colleagues and that it will move the debate along.

I would emphasize, we agree, he and I, on a lot more than we disagree on. In fact, I believe on all of the standards and deadlines for meeting those standards for nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury, we agree. We agree there should not be a cap and trade system for mercury because mercury is a neurotoxin, and down in east Tennessee where I live, we do not want TVA buying a lot of allowances so they can emit a lot more mercury, because it doesn't go up in the air and blow into North Carolina, it goes up in the air and comes right down on top of us, for the most part. We don't want that.

We don't want that. The more we learn about mercury, the less we want it. We don't have cap and trade for mercury, although we do suggest that for carbon.

Climate change has become the issue of the moment. Everybody is talking about it. There are movies about it. The Vice President was here testifying about it. It is not the only issue that faces us that has to do with air pollution. I am more concerned in Tennessee about sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury than I am about carbon. That is why this is a four-pollutant bill. We ought to address all of these at once.

I was in this body 40 years ago as a staff assistant working for Howard Baker. I remember very well when Senator Baker, a Republican, and Senator Muskie of Maine, a Democrat, worked together on the committee on which the Presiding Officer and I now serve. They passed the first Clean Water Act and the first Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act, some people have said, is the most important piece of urban renewal legislation ever enacted because the rivers of America had gotten so dirty, nobody wanted to live on them. The rivers of America are where most of our great cities are. As soon as they were cleaned up, people moved back to the cities and around the rivers. That was 1970 and 1971.

It is appropriate to think about that now because Earth Day is coming up this weekend. I can remember Earth Day, which began in 1970. Suddenly the environment, which had been an issue that was reserved for only a few people, became a national craze. It was almost like a hula hoop. Everybody was interested in the environment and recycling. Former Senator Gaylord Nelson was a leader in creating Earth Day. I can remember sitting in a meeting of President Nixon and the Republican leadership in 1970 when I was on the White House staff, and President Nixon was trying to explain to the Republican leaders the importance of environmental issues. It was 8 o'clock in the morning, and they weren't listening very well. It was a new subject. But Gaylord Nelson was doing it. The kids were doing it. People were recycling. The Republican President was talking to the Republican leadership, and Senator Baker, Senator Muskie, and the Congress passed the first Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

Many of us who have lived a while can remember things are better today in many ways. When I was a student at Vanderbilt in Nashville, it was so smoggy in the mornings, you couldn't see downtown. Your clothes got dirty during the day. Things got gradually better. In 1990, when the first President Bush was in office, we passed important Clean Air Act amendments, and the first cap and trade system for sulfur began. What also happened was that we learned more about how damaging these pollutants are to our health.

As a result, the standards which we once thought were high seemed low. Knoxville, the biggest city near where I grew up, near the Smoky Mountains, is the 14th most polluted city for ozone. Ozone irritates lung tissue, increases the risk of dying prematurely, increases the swelling of lung tissue. It increases the risk of being hospitalized with worsened lung diseases and triggering asthma attacks. At risk in Knoxville County alone are 176,000 children, 112,000 seniors, 15,000 children with asthma, and 50,000 adults with asthma. Ozone is not emitted directly from tailpipes and smokestacks. The raw ingredients come from coal-fired powerplants and cars.

Sulfur is in many ways our biggest problem. It is the primary contributor to haze. It causes difficulty in breathing. It causes damage to lung tissue and respiratory disease and premature death.

We know that mercury is also a problem. Monitoring by the National Park Service in the Great Smoky Mountains has found high levels of mercury deposits from air pollution. Mercury pollution of rivers and streams contaminates the fish we eat and poses a serious threat to children and pregnant women.

This bill is a clean air and a climate change bill. I hope our committee, as we take advantage of this resurgence of interest in the quality of air and our health and what we need to do about it, we won't just do part of the job. I would like to look at the whole picture. What we do in this bill is take the standards that the EPA has created for nitrogen and sulfur and put them into law. We make them a little stricter, but basically we put them into law. We take the mercury rule of the EPA, and we put it into law. We make it even stricter. The EPA says get rid of 70 percent of it. We say get rid of 90 percent. Then for the first time we put into law carbon caps on electric powerplants which produce 40 percent of all the carbon produced in the United States and are the fastest growing sector producing carbon in America.

I hope my colleagues will carefully consider this sector-by-sector approach to climate change. Carbon caps might be the best way--I believe they are--for dealing with electric powerplants. When it comes to fuel, there may be another strategy that makes sense. We could deal with that sector in a different way. For example, when we were dealing with sulfur, we didn't put a cap and trade on diesel fuel. We did on powerplants. But when we got to diesel fuel, we just said that you have to have ultra low sulfur diesel for big trucks, which just now went into effect.

There is also the large segment of building energy use. If we took the sector of building energy use, the fuel segment, and the electric powerplants, if we added that to a few stationery sources in America and developed strategies that were aggressive but practical and cost- effective for each of those segments, we would be up in the 85 to 90 percent of all the carbon we produce in America. That makes a lot more sense to me than trying to devise some one-size-fits-all system that affects every little shop, store, or farm in America. If we can get most of it this way, maybe we can learn something so that someday we can get the rest of it.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks a section-by-section description of the Alexander-Lieberman bill, a one-page summary of the Alexander-Lieberman Clean Air/Climate Change Act of 2007, as well as a short memorandum which we describe as discussion points and with which I will conclude my remarks by going over in just a moment, and a letter from the National Parks Conservation Association endorsing the bill.

Senator Lieberman and I don't have all the answers with this legislation. I feel much more comfortable with this legislation today than I did with any I helped introduce last year or the year before because I have learned a lot more. But I will guarantee my colleagues that there are several areas in which I would welcome advice. Over the last several weeks, I have met with a dozen, two dozen environmental groups, utilities, Tennessee citizens, others who had suggestions. For example, the discussion points that I have put into the record contain five points that are arguable. I have come to a tentative conclusion on them. That is in the bill. But there is another side to the point. I am looking for advice.

For example, should we cap only carbon or all greenhouse gases emitted from electricity plants? I chose to cap CO2 only. That is because this is a four-pollutant bill--sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and carbon. It is not primarily a climate change bill.

Another consideration is that it seems Europe's experience is that it may be better to cap just carbon and

not all greenhouse gases. That is a question we can debate.

What should the size of an auction be in terms of the allowances? I discussed that earlier. Senator Lieberman and I have chosen 25 percent of the total number of allowances. Senator Carper, in his bill, eventually goes to 100 percent. There are arguments on both sides.

What influenced my decision was, I wanted to keep the costs down as much as possible. I was afraid that if we used some different kind of allowance allocation, we might literally take money away from the emitters that they ought to be using to put scrubbers on to reduce sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, or carbon and pay it to other utilities.

What rules should govern the use of offset allowances by electric plants? Offsets are an ingenious idea. The idea would be that an emitter of carbon might be able to pay somebody else to reduce their output of carbon and, therefore, we would end up with the same amount of carbon. There are many advantages to that. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority might pay a Tennessee farmer to manage his livestock crop in a way as to not produce as much methane, might pay a Tennessee farmer to plant a lot of trees. Both of those things would reduce greenhouse gases, and the farmer would have more money in his pocket. That is a good idea.

The downside of offsets is that if they are unregulated entirely, it seems to me they could become a gimmick or a fad or worse. What we have done in this bill is adopt a system of offsets from a consortium of States ranging from Maryland to Maine--that includes Senator Lieberman's State of Connecticut--and used those model rules on offsets. That tends to limit the way offsets may be used. It is a good place to at least begin. In other words, a utility might produce more carbon, but it might pay someone else who is reducing carbon by using biomass or by sequestering carbon in some other way.

There is a question about how should new coal-fired electric plants be treated. There are probably 160 new coal plants on the drawing boards. Some of them hope to escape the rules Congress is considering about capping the output of carbon. I don't think they should. This bill would apply to all coal-fired powerplants, including those on the drawing boards. It also would give an incentive to the first 30 of those plants to meet a high standard of clean coal technology. We don't want to encourage the use of natural gas in this bill. That is the last thing we want to do. We don't want to discourage the use of coal. We have a lot of coal. It would help make us energy independent. We want to encourage the creation of the kind of technology that will permit us to use coal in a clean way that either recaptures the carbon and stores it or finds some other way to deal with it.

Finally, what should the CO2 cap levels be? We can debate that, and I am sure we will. But the cap level we pick in this legislation is to say, let's freeze at the level of last year, starting with 2011, and go down step by step into 2025 to 1.5 billion metric tons. This is our contribution to the debate.

We have learned enough about our health, about our ability to attract jobs, to know we need to finish the job of cleaning up the air of nitrogen, of sulfur, and of mercury; and we need to take the right first step to begin to control the emission of carbon to deal with global warming. I believe the right first step is a market-based cap and trade system of electricity plants which is described here.

May I also say this: Some people say: Well, let's wait until China does it. Let's wait until India does it. The great danger is that we will not unleash the technological genius of the United States of America to clean our air and to deal efficiently and inexpensively with the emissions of carbon. If we do not figure that out, India and China are going to build so many dirty coal powerplants that it will not make any difference what we do because the wind will blow the dirty air around here, and we will suffer and the planet will suffer whatever the consequences are of global warming and of the other pollutants that come from coal.

So we have an obligation not just to the world to do this, we have to do this for ourselves because 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 new coal-fired powerplants in India and China will obliterate any of the good work we might do here. I believe if we take the aggressive but practical cost- effective steps in this Clean Air/Climate Change Act, we will unleash the great entrepreneurial spirit of our country. We will be able to create an inexpensive way to deal with carbon on a segment-by-segment basis, deal with the other pollutants, and India and China will have to follow. The rest of the world will follow, and we will be better off.

I cannot imagine more interesting and exciting work to be doing. This is the kind of subject on which we should be working together on a bipartisan basis.

I thank Senator Lieberman for joining me in cosponsoring this legislation. I salute Senator Carper for his continued leadership. I look forward to working with him.

Exhibit 1

Clean Air/Climate Change Act of 2007, Section by Section Description,

April 19, 2007

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce America's Red Rock Wilderness Act of 2007. This legislation continues our Nation's commitment to preserve our natural heritage. Preservation of our Nation's vital natural resources will be one of our most important legacies.

America's Red Rock Wilderness Act will designate as wilderness some of our Nation's most remarkable, but currently unprotected public lands. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in Utah harbor some of the largest and most remarkable roadless desert areas anywhere in the world. Included in the 9.4 million acres I seek to protect are well known landscapes, like the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, as well as lesser known areas just outside Zion National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park. Together this wild landscape offers spectacular vistas of rare rock formations, canyons and desert lands, important archaeological sites, and habitat for rare plant and animal species.

I have visited many of the areas this Act would designate as wilderness. I can tell you that the natural beauty of these truly unique landscapes is a compelling reason for Congress to grant these lands wilderness protection. I have the honor of introducing legislation first introduced by my friend and former colleague in the House of Representatives, Wayne Owens. As the representative for much of Utah's Red Rock country, Representative Owens pioneered the Congressional effort to protect Utah wilderness. He did this with broad public support, which still exists not only in Utah, but in all corners of our Nation.

The wilderness designated in this bill was chosen based on more than twenty years of meticulous research and surveying. Volunteers have taken inventories of thousands of square miles of BLM land in Utah to help determine which lands should be protected. These volunteers provided extensive documentation to ensure that these areas meet Federal wilderness criteria. The BLM also completed a reinventory of approximately six million acres of Federal land in the same area in 1999. While only six million acres of the total 9.4 million acres were inventoried by the BLM, the results provide a convincing confirmation that the areas designated for protection under this bill meet Federal wilderness criteria.

For more than 20 years, Utah conservationists have been working to add the last great blocks of undeveloped BLM-administered land in Utah to the National Wilderness Preservation System. The lands proposed for protection surround and connect eight of Utah's nine national park, monument and recreation areas. These proposed BLM wilderness areas easily equal their neighboring national parklands in scenic beauty, opportunities for recreation, and ecological importance. Yet, unlike the parks, most of these scenic treasures lack any form of long-term protection.

Today, the BLM is in the process of making critical decisions about the future stewardship and use of nearly six million acres of wild lands that my legislation would protect. The BLM will decide which areas should be preserved or developed and whether they will be left roadless or have roads cut through them. It also will determine if these wild lands will be open to off-road vehicles or exploited for mineral mining and oil and gas exploration. Any policies put in place will stand for 15 to 20 years, a timespan long enough to leave a lasting mark on this landscape.

Americans understand the need for wise and balanced stewardship of these wild landscapes. Unfortunately, the Administration has proposed little or no serious protections for Utah's most majestic places. Instead, the BLM appears to lack a solid conservation ethic and routinely favors development and consumptive uses of our wild public land. In just the last four years, the BLM has leased for oil and gas development over 125,000 acres of land that would have been designated for wilderness in America's Red Rock Wilderness Act.

This legislation represents a realistic balance between our need to protect our natural heritage and our demand for energy. While wilderness designation has been portrayed as a barrier to energy independence, it is important to note that within the entire 9.4 million acres of America's Red Rock Wilderness Act the amount of ``technically recoverable'' undiscovered natural gas and oil resources amounts to less than four days of oil and four weeks of natural gas at current consumption levels.

America's Red Rock Wilderness Act is a lasting gift to the American public. By protecting this serene yet wild land we are giving future generations the opportunity to enjoy the same untrammeled landscape that so many now cherish.

I'd like to thank my colleagues who are original cosponsors of this measure, many of whom have supported the bill since it was first introduced. Original cosponsors are Senators Kerry, Feingold, Cantwell, Menendez, Cardin, Reed, Harkin, Kennedy, Bayh, Lieberman, Stabenow, Schumer, Lautenberg, Boxer, Whitehouse, Brown and Clinton. Additionally, I would like to thank The Utah Wilderness Coalition, which includes The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club; The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance; and all of the other national, regional and local, hard-working groups who, for years, have championed this legislation.

Theodore Roosevelt once stated:

``The Nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.''

Enactment of this legislation will help us realize Roosevelt's vision. To protect these precious resources in Utah for future generations, I urge my colleagues to support America's Red Rock Wilderness Act.

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

Mr. President, President Eisenhower once stated, ``Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in armaments is not spending its money alone: it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.''

In as trying a time as we live in today, his statement cannot ring more true. We are in the middle of a war with no seeming end in sight. We have daily debates about the numbers in our budget. But President Eisenhower was right. We are not spending our money alone.

In a Nation as rich as ours, we should be able to arrange our priorities to meet the needs of our country, but the unfortunate reality is that in the United States today, children go hungry. Children count on school, not only for education but also for their meals. Seniors are forced to make a choice between life-saving medicines and groceries for their meals. Families are forced to make the difficult choice between paying for food and paying for utilities or their rent or mortgage or even their medicine or medical care. This is the reality of our America.

As Senators, we often hear from families that tell us the difficulty in making ends meet. More and more working families are turning to food banks, pantries and soup kitchens for emergency food assistance. When examining the actual costs of housing, food, utilities and other necessities, researchers have found that in most areas of the country, families need about 200 percent of the poverty level to achieve ``minimal economic self-sufficiency.'' Individuals and families are faced with a cost of living that continues to rise and an increasing gap between what low-wage workers earn and what is required to meet basic needs.

In my State of Illinois, over 158,000 Illinois households experienced hunger in 2005. If we include households that have had to struggle to put food on the table or have had to skip meals to make sure the food would last through the week--that's 440,000 households in Illinois living with food insecurity--9 percent of Illinois households. These are working families who need more to lead healthy, happy lives.

Fortunately, we have some programs in existence to offer hope. Since President Johnson started the war on poverty, we have documented that the Federal nutrition programs work to reduce hunger. When people are able to use Food Stamps, there are enough groceries to last through the week. When new moms are helped by WIC, they and their babies have enough milk and eggs and fruit. When senior citizens are near a Commodity Supplemental Food Program site, they can take home a box of food to fill the pantry AND buy their prescription drugs. Our school children can fill their stomachs and then focus on learning--because of the Federal school food program. In cases of emergency, like the

tragic occurrences of hurricanes, our Federal nutrition assistance programs have been there to assist families in need. These Federal food programs work, but more can be done.

Last Congress, I introduced the Hunger Free Communities Act with Senators Lincoln, Smith and Lugar. The bill creates new grant programs that help communities make the most of the Federal nutrition programs and build on their successes.

First, the bill makes grant money available to local groups that are working to eliminate hunger in their communities. Each day, soup kitchens serve meals, and food pantries give groceries, and volunteers collect food, make sandwiches, and deliver food. Our bill creates an anti-hunger grant program--the first of its kind--that asks communities to assess hunger and hunger relief at the local level. Grant money is available to help with that assessment or grant money can be used to help fill in the gaps that a local plan identifies.

Second, we create a funding stream that food banks and soup kitchens can use to keep up their buildings and trucks and kitchen equipment. The response of the food bank network to the crisis after hurricanes Katrina and Rita was remarkable. Tons of food was donated, transported and delivered by thousands of volunteers from all over the country. But within days, America's Second Harvest recognized the food banks needed freezers, forklifts, delivery trucks and repairs to warehouses and equipment. My bill creates the only Federal funding stream specifically for the capital needs of local hunger relief efforts. Helping these organizations is especially important for those organizations in underserved areas and areas where rates of food insecurity, hunger, poverty, or unemployment are higher than the national average.

Late last Congress, the Hunger Free Communities Act was passed by the Senate. I had hoped that there might be time for the House to act on it before the Session ended, but we ran out of time. This was, however, a small victory. It was a small step toward progress--a step that both Democrats and Republicans want to take for the health and well-being of our communities.

There are still too many parents in this country who skip meals because there is not enough money in the family food budget for them and their children to eat every night. There are still too many babies and toddlers in America who are not getting the nutrition their minds and bodies need to develop to their fullest potential. There are too many seniors, and children, who go to bed hungry. In the richest Nation in the history of the world, that is unacceptable.

Progress against hunger is possible, even with a war abroad and budget deficits at home. I am heartened by the 43 United States Senators who agreed with me and cosponsored the Hunger Free Communities Act last year. I am heartened by the support of the Illinois Coalition on Hunger, Bread for the World and America's Second Harvest. Congress will be reauthorizing many nutrition programs this year with the farm bill, and the Hunger Free Communities Act should be a part of that. I believe this bill can take a modest but meaningful step toward eliminating hunger in this country. We tried to make that first step when the bill passed the Senate late last year. We can do it again and should.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an issue of children's rights and human rights: the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

Hundreds of thousands of children in the world today serve as child soldiers, boys and girls alike.

They serve as combatants, porters, human mine detectors and sex slaves.

Their health and lives are endangered and their childhoods are sacrificed.

The bulk of these children are captured, recruited, or sold into service with rebel groups such as the infamous Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

But some serve with uniformed armed forces or government-supported paramilitaries or militias.

Even more troubling, children have served as child soldiers for governments that receive U.S. military assistance.

Today, Senator Sam Brownback and I are introducing legislation addressing this issue.

Our bill, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, will ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not used to support foreign militaries known to recruit or use child soldiers in government armed forces or government- supported militaries.

U.S. military assistance can continue under this bill, but it will be used to remedy the problem by helping countries successfully demobilize their child soldiers and professionalize their forces.

Under the terms of this bill, Foreign Military Assistance and other defense-related aid would be limited if countries are clearly identified in the State Department's Human Rights report as recruiting or using child soldiers.

Military assistance to these countries would be limited to supporting the professionalization of their forces until they eliminate the use of child soldiers.

If years of abuse continue, then U.S. assistance would eventually be eliminated.

In all circumstances, the President would be able to waive these rules if he deems that it is in the national interest.

What do we mean by professionalization?

We mean creating regular militaries which conform to long-standing international norms, such as not using children, respecting human rights, and functioning as professional armies.

This bill can only affect governmental or government sanctioned military and paramilitary organizations.

But that is where we have leverage through our foreign military assistance programs and we will use whatever leverage we have to address this heinous phenomenon.

In the last year, many of us have read the haunting memoir of Ishmael Beah, A LONG WAY GONE: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Beah is all of 26: that might seem too young to write a memoir, but sadly, his youth was stolen from him many years ago.

Beah grew up in war-torn Sierra Leone. He was born in 1980.

Eleven years later, civil war broke out, killing tens of thousands of people and driving millions from their homes.

At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels.

Beah's parents and his two brothers were among those killed.

By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, but that was no refuge.

Fleeing the rebels who had killed so many of his friends and family, Beah wound up in a village run by government troops.

He wrote of this moment in his life, ``In the beginning it seemed we had found safety the smiles on people's faces assured us that there was nothing to worry about anymore. All that darkened the mood of the village was the sight of orphaned children. There were over thirty boys between the ages of six and sixteen. I was one of them. Apart from this, there were no indications that our childhood was threatened, much less that we would be robbed of it.''

That was exactly what was happening, though.

In Beah's first battle he watched his eleven-year old tent-mate bleed out before his very eyes.

He writes of this awful day, ``My face, my hands, my shirt and gun were covered with blood. I raised the gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was

shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people.''

That was at 13. Thirteen--- an age for junior high soccer games, not for going to war.

Ultimately during his time in the government army, Beah says he killed ``too many people to count.''

In 1998 he fled and in 1999 he was able to come to New York.

Returning to civilization, according to Beah, was actually harder than the act of becoming a child soldier because ``dehumanizing children is a relatively easy task.''

Thank God, Sierra Leone's civil war is over.

But too many children in the world continue to be forced to serve as child soldiers.

Ensuring that countries professionalize their militaries and help their child soldiers make the transition back into civil society is a humanitarian issue but also in the best interest for our own armed forces.

We do not want American soldiers in a position where they have to return fire on children.

Delay in such a moment could cost an American soldier his life, but think also of the psychic costs of having to kill a child in battle.

We want our troops to avoid such a situation and we want to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are used as they should be: for professionalizing the militaries of countries whom we are assisting.

It is not enough for child soldiers simply to be demobilized: U.S.- funded programs assist in the rehabilitation of child soldiers and the reintegration of these young people back into civilian life.

Some of these child veterans of war have witnessed or been forced to do terrible things.

Many of the girls have been victims of rape and may be coming back into civilian life with their own children.

I strongly support programs to provide psychological services, educational and vocational training, and other assistance to these traumatized young people.

I also support efforts to bring to justice those rebel leaders and others who kidnap children for use as child soldiers.

The use of child soldiers represents a basic issue of human rights.

For that reason, next week Senator Coburn, who is the ranking member on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, and I will be holding a Subcommittee hearing on Child Soldiers and the Law.

In this hearing, we will explore the persistent use of child soldiers despite the fact that this practice is widely acknowledged as a war crime.

Is this persistent crime in part a failure of enforcement?

Are reforms needed in U.S. law to criminalize this terrible practice?

How is this issue addressed under our immigration laws?

Expert witnesses from non-governmental and faith-based organizations will speak to these issues in our hearing next Tuesday.

So too will Ishmael Beah, whose words vividly capture the horror of children at war.

I am introducing this bill and our subcommittee is holding this hearing as progressive steps to remedy a terrible and persistent problem.

Here in Washington, on the floor of the Senate, it is hard to imagine the atrocities that children endure every day, as combatants, as sex slaves, and as forced labor for militaries and paramilitaries.

But those atrocities do continue.

At the least we should ensure that U.S. assistance goes to remedy the problem and that it is never used to prolong it.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be laid aside for the purpose of offering an amendment.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3321, which I believe is at the desk and was filed by Senator Coburn. He and I are cosponsors.

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

Mr. President, I can describe the amendment very briefly. Here is the context in which Senator Coburn and I offer this amendment.

This Labor-HHS appropriations bill provides just under $150 billion in total discretionary spending. I believe it is $149.2 billion. This is about $8.95 billion over the President's recommendation. That is well over 6 percent in excess of what the President recommended.

With this kind of excessive spending in the bill, it is important for Congress to address the use of taxpayer dollars within this bill to ensure that anything that is not a critical governmental function is prioritized, and for those things that are not critical, that we not spend money on them.

Now, this bill contains a $1 million earmark for a museum located at the Bethel Performing Arts Center in Bethel, NY--the site of the original 1969 Woodstock Festival. The museum, which is scheduled to open in 2008, apparently will house exhibits on the Woodstock Festival and the 1960s in which it occurred. According to the museum's Web site--I am quoting now--

Through dramatic imagery, audio-visual technology and

immersive interactives, this exhibition tells the story of

the 1969 [Woodstock] festival and its significance in a time

of unrest and change, concluding with the myth, reality, and

impact of the Woodstock Festival today.

Our amendment is very simple. We simply strike that $1 million earmark.

For those who thought the Woodstock Festival was a neat thing and something that needs to be commemorated in American history, it is happening. It does not need the Federal Government, the taxpayers in my State and others, to subsidize that museum.

The Gerry Foundation, which is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, oversees the Bethel Center, and it reported an adjusted net income of $7.7 million, investment income of more than $24 million, and total net assets of over $150 million at the end of 2004, the last year for which statistics are available. So why are we asking for $1 million to be earmarked out of this particular bill, the Labor-HHS bill, for the funding of this particular museum? As I said, our amendment would eliminate the earmark for this Woodstock museum, and it would transfer the funding to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant program-- something that is relevant to the Labor-HHS bill.

The Maternal and Child Health Block Grant program provides funding to States to meet their most pressing maternal and child health needs, encouraging the development of community-based networks for both private and public health care services and programs designed to meet the health needs of pregnant women, mothers, infants, children, and adolescents. This is what this bill is supposed to be about.

We have had a lot of debate recently about protecting children's health. It seems to me if that is something we are concerned about, we could use this $1 million for children's health rather than helping to pay the expenses of an already very well-funded museum to celebrate the festival at Woodstock.

The amendment basically asks some questions about our priorities as Members of Congress, stewards of taxpayer dollars. Remember, the money has not grown on trees. It has been collected from hard-working families who expect us to put it to good use. They are frustrated about wasteful Washington spending. They criticize us every day for the priorities we set. It seems to me we do have to ask questions such as whether it is the will of this body to fund an earmark for a museum celebrating a weekend-long party that occurred 38 years ago or funding child health.

The American people, as I said, are sick and tired of the kind of spending that this particular kind of earmark represents. They see us as a government that is not accountable to them, that is out of touch with their needs and realities in trying to provide for their own families, and they then send what the Government needs by way of taxes. They are not against paying taxes, but they do not want us to waste their money.

It is beyond me how, with an entity as well funded as the Gerry Foundation, the Government would have to then take taxpayer money and fund this particular museum to the tune of $1 million. It is clearly not a high priority. It is clearly not needed. It is not critical to our future. It may be a nice thing for some people to visit to relive their memories of the good old days, but, frankly, it is a handout from taxpayers to a foundation that otherwise has plenty of money to commemorate this particular event.

I close by noting that recently there was a festival at the Bethel site, the site of Woodstock, on August 11 of this year. They hosted an event called the ``HIPPIEFEST,'' with tickets priced up to $60 a person. Here is how it was advertised:

Return to the flower-powered days of the 1960's with our

oh-so-hippie line-up of truly talented artists.

The center's advertisement for the concert further states:

[G]ather your groovy beads and we'll see you on the lawn

for a trip down memory lane.

Well, the trip down memory lane may be fine for folks. I suggest if they want to participate in that, they can pay the admission price. If a rich entrepreneur in New York wishes to fund the creation of this museum, as he has done, he obviously has plenty of money to do it, as I indicated. It is not something American taxpayers should pay for.

I will conclude by saying this: The reason why this Congress has a lower approval rating than the President of the United States--the lowest approval rating in its history, according to the public opinion surveys--is because they do not trust us to do the right thing. They believe we are wasteful stewards of their money. We have to start somewhere in convincing them that we are serious about the business they want us to conduct, that we can set priorities, and that we are not going to continue to waste their money.

How can we, with a straight face, argue to them that we are not wasting their hard-earned, taxpayer money when we take $1 million of it to spend on a memorial or a museum for a party, as I said, that occurred 38 years ago, and which is already plenty adequately funded? It makes no sense at all.

I urge my colleagues, when this comes up for a vote, let's at least demonstrate in a symbolic way, at a minimum, that we are serious about not wasting their money. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment.

Mr. President, let me return the compliment to our colleague from New York. Nobody is questioning anybody's beliefs. He certainly made that point, and we make the same point. In Senator Schumer, the citizens of New York have a very worthy and persuasive advocate. I say this with no disrespect. He could literally make the sow's ear into a silk purse, which I think is what is being done with respect to this particular program. He fights for his constituents' interests and beliefs. But I say thank you.

If this is a jobs program, and that is the justification for it, I think we need to take a look at this again. I am informed that the unemployment rate in Sullivan County is 4.1 percent, contrasted with 4.6 percent nationwide.

Our colleague talked about the counties in northwest Arizona. He mentioned the Grand Canyon. One of the counties next to the Grand Canyon incorporates the Navajo Indian Reservation.

I think about Tuba City. The unemployment rate on the Navajo Indian Reservation is about 40 percent as opposed to a little over 4 percent in Sullivan County, NY. We could use a lot of jobs programs. We can use other programs more than that. I cannot get money for a roof on the Tuba City jail which leaks. There are parts of Arizona where it actually rains, and on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Tuba City, AZ, it rains.

I went up there on a Saturday night about 6 months ago. Hope MacDonald said: You need to come up, we have to get a new jail; this thing is falling apart. I walked in and, yes, it is falling apart. It happened to be raining and, yes, the roof leaks.

There are huge needs on these Indian reservations in poor counties of Arizona. There are a lot of events we can commemorate on the Navajo Reservation in terms of a museum that would be worthwhile for everybody in this country to visit. There is a rich, long, wonderful history there. But I don't think we should have an earmark in the Health and Human Services bill to create a museum as a jobs program. If we want to do that, let's focus on the real need.

I don't know how many jobs this would create or what the cost-benefit ratio of the expenditure of this money is for job creation, but there surely has to be a better way to do it than creating a museum. If we are prioritizing, I can tell you areas in Arizona that are far greater in terms of unemployment and could use the money in much more direct ways to benefit the citizens of the State.

The second point that our colleague from New York made--I will stand guilty with respect to Senator Schumer's charge, which is that I don't believe we should always raise taxes when we cut taxes. That is what this so-called pay-go rule is all about. It is supposed to work this way. You either cut spending or you raise taxes.

We had a Finance Committee meeting, I believe it was yesterday, an informal meeting. I asked my colleagues, because it was all about raising taxes: Does anybody here have an idea about how we could cut spending in order to pay for this? Dead silence. Not a one. I know my colleague from Oklahoma has lots of good ideas about how to cut spending, but nobody in the Finance Committee was willing to put forth an idea of cutting spending. No, it had to be to raise taxes.

What I am curious about is whoever decided that the amount of revenue the Federal Government collects today is exactly the amount of revenue it has to collect from now into the future so that if we are ever going to reduce taxes on hard-working Americans, we have to raise their taxes in some other area so the Government can still collect the same amount of money?

It is interesting, we collect about 18.4 percent of the gross domestic product in taxes today. We could prevent any of the existing tax rates from increasing--take the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts--and eliminate AMT, the alternative minimum tax, and we would still be collecting 18 percent of our gross domestic product in taxes. Isn't that enough?

If we don't do these things, we will be over 20 percent. The historic 40-year average is 18.2 percent. Clearly, we don't have to keep raising taxes on Americans. That is why some of us believe, when we try to help people by cutting taxes, we ought to leave well enough alone and not raise taxes somewhere else so we can keep the Government whole. The object is not to make sure the Government always has the same amount of money. It is to try to help the people who pay the taxes. They are the ones who generate the jobs.

If we are talking about unemployment, let's talk about who creates the jobs. It is mostly small businesses. So if we help small businesses by not raising their taxes, they can create the jobs and that creates wealth and, by the way, it produces more income tax revenue to the Federal Government.

I conclude by saying I plead guilty to not wanting to raise taxes every time I am in favor of cutting taxes, but that debate is irrelevant to the question before us today, which is simply, as a symbolic measure, can we at least find $1 million in this multibillion- dollar bill that we can all agree could better be spent on something else? Can we set some priorities once and for all?

This Woodstock museum, maybe it is a good idea--I am not so sold on it--but if it is a great job creator, and it is pretty clear the people in New York have concluded that, they have the money to fund a museum. They do not have to rely on the taxpayers in my State or other States to fund a museum.

I hope my colleagues agree that in setting priorities, we can strike this one earmark from this bill.

Madam President, this amendment strikes an earmark of $1 million in the bill, an earmark that would create a Woodstock museum celebrating the Woodstock Festival in northern New York 38 years ago.

Now, some of you may believe it would be neat to celebrate Woodstock again and to do so with a museum. To the extent you believe that, there is a private foundation as well as money available from the State of New York that provides the funding.

To the extent one would argue it is only $1 million, and therefore symbolic, the answer to that is, yes, it is, but I think the American people want us to begin to make some votes that demonstrate we care about setting priorities. Funding a Woodstock museum in New York is not a priority above the funds that would help the children and the pregnant women to whom this $1 million would otherwise go.

As to jobs, every one of us could spend $1 million in our States to help create jobs. But to justify this on the basis of it being a job- creation program goes too far. The unemployment rate in this county, I am told, is less than the average nationwide.

So let's strike a blow for priorities. Let the American taxpayer know we are willing to at least start somewhere to save their money and not waste it on the Woodstock museum.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up an amendment which I will then later withdraw.

Madam President, I call up amendment No. 3356.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, the Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, was designed to provide funds to low-income individuals who cannot cover rising home energy prices. The program does not discriminate between cold and hot weather States. However, upon implementation, cold weather States have unfairly received the majority of the LIHEAP funds.

My amendment eliminates the discretionary nature in which the funds are disbursed and frees up money and allocates it on a nondiscretionary basis.

Before I go into specifics of my amendment, I would first like to discuss how Arizona is affected by LIHEAP funds. This summer, record level temperatures have devastated the State. Phoenix set a record with 32 days of temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. In August alone, Phoenix experienced 9 days of temperatures of 110 degrees or above. The State of Arizona's average temperature for August 2007 was 105.8 degrees. It was the second hottest summer on record in Arizona and the Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service reached peak demand for energy service. Just imagine the cost to the people of Arizona to cool their homes during such extreme heat. Therefore, LIHEAP funds are crucial to many Arizonans who cannot meet their energy costs alone.

Let me now turn to the way in which LIHEAP funds are distributed. Currently, LIHEAP funding is divided between two pots of money. The first pot is distributed based on a tiered funding formula, while the second pot of money is deemed a contingency fund distributed based on ``emergencies.'' Historically, the contingency fund is overwhelmingly distributed to cold weather States. My amendment would eliminate the bias inherent in the contingency fund distribution and allocate all LIHEAP money to the funding formula account that is more equitably distributed to all 50 States. I would implore my colleagues to think of all Americans when considering my amendment, and vote to provide a more equitable distribution of LIHEAP funds.

Amendment No. 3356 withdrawn

Madam President, having spoken to the manager of the bill, and appreciating the fact that the amendment was offered too late in the process, probably, to receive the consideration it deserves, we will work on this at a later date. I withdraw the amendment.