Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2007

Mr. President, this is the seventh day that we have been on this legislation. We voted on 17 amendments. There are 13 others pending to the bill. We will be voting on those very soon.

Over the past week, as the Senate has been in recess for Memorial Day, we witnessed a healthy debate across the country as Americans across the political spectrum have expressed their views on this legislation. Some support our legislation, others oppose it. With all of the editorials and newspaper articles and phone calls from the constituents, one theme occurs loud and strong: Americans know our immigration system is broken and they want us to fix it. This week we have a chance to meet that challenge for the good of the Nation.

We have a bipartisan bill before us. It has the support of the President. I believe when we complete the debate in the Senate we will adopt it. It enforces our borders; it cracks down in the workplace by going after employers who hire illegal workers; it brings the 12 million families who are here out of the shadows; it speeds up the reunion of families waiting legally in line who otherwise may never make it here; it sets up an immigration for the future that continues to reunite families, while stressing our Nation's economic needs. That is our program. It is strong, practical, and it is fair.

I know the Senator from Illinois is looking to address the Senate. First, I want to speak briefly on the Allard amendment.

The Allard amendment seeks to strike a blow at one of the central pillars of comprehensive immigration reform, which is the earned legalization program for undocumented people who are working and contributing in the United States. Virtually every demographic snapshot of the American public supports a practical solution for

bringing the undocumented population into the light of day. The tough and practical solution contained in the bill requires undocumented workers to pay hefty fines and penalties, undergo background checks, clear up back taxes, learn English, continue working for a period of years in a probationary status, and go to the back of the line. Only after 8 years, after getting right with the law and proving their commitment to becoming Americans, are these workers provided an opportunity at legal permanent residence.

The Allard amendment seeks to nullify that shot at the American dream. It does so by eliminating the separate point schedule included in the bill for Z visa holders and the agricultural job applicants. The point schedule for Z visa holders and AgJOB applicants is designed to determine when they can apply for permanent residence, not whether they can apply. Eligibility to apply for permanent residence is earned by complying with tough requirements. I just mentioned them--paying fines, working hard, learning English, going to the back of the current line, and reentering the country legally.

The intent of the Allard amendment is to require undocumented immigrants to compete with other future intending immigrants under the new merit-based system. There are two different merit systems, one for the temporary and one for agriculture. The amendment of the Senator from Colorado eliminates the one designed for agricultural workers. But given the merit-based system and the strong preference for the highly educated, this amendment is an attempt to keep the undocumented workers from ever obtaining permanent residence.

The educational profile of the undocumented workforce is such that these workers will never, ever be able to compete in a meaningful way for the pool of merit-based green cards. As such, if it were to pass, the amendment would create a permanent underclass of lower skilled workers living here in legal limbo indefinitely without the rights or opportunities afforded to legal permanent residents.

Similar situations are played out in other countries, resulting in highly problematic, even disastrous consequences. That is not the American way. I hope people will vote no on the amendment.

Mr. President, the aspect of this legislation that deals with the agricultural workers is called the AgJOBS bill. Senators Craig and Feinstein are two of the principal sponsors. I have been a long-time sponsor. We are talking about agribusiness primarily in California but also in other parts of the Nation. We are talking about an agreement that was worked out between the farm workers and the agribusiness. These are two groups of people who have been at each other's throats for years. I was here when we abolished the Bracero Program, basically the exploitation of workers in the United States. It was a shame and a stain on the American workforce ethic. Then we had, over a long period of time, with the leadership of Cesar Chavez, an attempt to get justice for probably about 900,000 agricultural workers, who do some of the toughest work that is done in this country. No question, half of them are undocumented--probably 600,000 or 700,000 is the best estimate we have. They have been able to work out an agreement between agribusiness and these farm workers, which we basically included in this bill.

What we were saying, basically, under the earlier provisions is that they would be able to gain the opportunity for getting a green card in 5 years. Under this legislation, it is 8 years they have to wait. They have to demonstrate that they have worked hard in the agricultural sector. They have to demonstrate that they paid their taxes and that they are attempting to learn English, and they have to meet all of the other requirements. At the end of that time, this legislation says to those people who have been a part of our system that they will have some opportunity to get a good deal of credit for working in agriculture in America.

The amendment of the Senator from Colorado strikes that provision. So these individuals who will be competing with the other provisions that have been put into this legislation for the more skilled--there are provisions in there for lower skilled, but it is basically for the higher skills. This undermines the core part of this kind of agreement that was made. There are a number of provisions in this legislation we have spelled out. There is border security and the local law enforcement, which are important; and there is AgJOBS, the DREAM Act, which the Senator from Illinois has fought for and made sure was important. There are other very important features in this legislation.

What we would basically do with the Allard amendment is say we are going to change the mix, change the system. We have worked out a system saying agricultural workers are important. They have been able to work out their agreement. There were 67 Members of the Senate who signed on, Republicans and Democrats. We basically incorporated that, although we have extended the time for those workers. The effect of the Allard amendment, as I read it, is that we are saying that is not an agreement that we are going to continue to be committed to. We are going to say those undocumented workers are going to have to compete with those who are more highly skilled.

This legislation is a balance between the AgJOBS, the DREAM Act, and the fact that we are going to permit those 12\1/2\ million people who are undocumented now to live here without fear of deportation and continue their jobs and give them, if they meet these other requirements after 8 years, in the next 5 years the possibility of getting a green card, and 5 years later be able to get citizenship with a long time in between, with heavy fines. The Allard amendment would undermine this understanding and agreement in a way that will disadvantage in a significant way the agricultural workers and other low-skilled individuals in this whole process.

I think in that sense, as the Senator from Pennsylvania pointed out, it would be unwise and unfair from a policy point of view.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform saying:

We write to urge your opposition to the Allard amendment .

. .

Mr. President, I see the Senator from Illinois. I will take a moment, if we have time, to go through this excellent letter that expresses reservations and opposition to the Allard amendment.

Mr. President, I understand I have 8 minutes; is that correct?

If the Chair will notify me when I have 3\1/2\ minutes, I would appreciate it.

Mr. President, I support the amendment offered by my colleague from Illinois. I think it makes a needed change in the legislation, one that will help provide additional protection for American workers, and I thank him for calling the issue to our attention.

The amendment is very simple. It would require every employer who wants to bring guest workers into the country to advertise for and recruit American workers first. This is a general principle that has been agreed to, certainly by me and my colleagues, and one that I am sure most Members of the Senate would support.

Senator Durbin's language ensures this principle is implemented fairly and effectively with respect to all employers who are looking for more workers. Specifically, it eliminates an exception in those areas where the Department of Labor has determined there is a shortage of U.S. workers in the occupation and area of intended employment.

The shortage occupation idea relies on an exception in existing law which applies to green cards but not in the temporary worker context. So I agree with Senator Durbin that in the context of ensuring that temporary workers do not unfairly compete with Americans, we do need an exception to this rule. This legislation is based upon the principle that guest workers should only be brought in if Americans cannot be found to fill these jobs, and what better way to ensure this is the case than to require all employers advertise these positions broadly.

I know there are some Members who might say that since this exception only applies when the Department of Labor says there is a shortage of workers to fill these jobs, that we shouldn't require employers to advertise. I would argue the opposite: Because we know employers are seeking more American workers, they should easily be able to meet the requirements under these laws.

I mean, the fact remains you might have a shortage in a particular area or region designated by the Department of Labor, but there may be hospitals in those areas that have more than they need; with other hospitals having less. If those other health facilities are looking, they are probably investing in trying to find additional workers and are probably advertising in any event. This makes sure they are going to give the first opportunity--and there are other requirements in the legislation that give the first opportunity to Americans to be protected.

It doesn't seem to me this would be onerous or more costly. It may be, for example, that elsewhere in the country there are Americans who are willing to fill these jobs. Maybe there are groups of Americans who have traditionally been overlooked or discriminated against who will want to know of these opportunities so that they can have a fair chance. For all these reasons, I support the amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well. I think it makes a good deal of sense, and I would hope that it would be accepted.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his graciousness in yielding a minute and a half.

I am opposed to the Allard amendment. We have in this legislation very important commitments to, one, the AgJOB workers, and we have also said for the 12 million: If you pay the fines, you go to the back of the line, you work hard, you demonstrate you are going to be good citizens for the 8 years until all of the line is cleared up, and we have a way for dealing with these individuals to permit them at least to get on the path for a green card and eventually citizenship.

The Allard amendment changes all of that framework. Under the Allard amendment, we were basically saying to those who are working in agriculture, because as his amendment shows, they get a big chunk of points on this kind of thing, that that would be eliminated, and that agricultural worker who has been playing by the rules, who is a part of the AgJOB's bill, will lose out in any kind of competition in terms of green cards and the opportunity to move on into citizenship, because the other one will have the skills, will have the points, and those agriculture workers and the other lower skilled workers will not have the opportunity to do so. It will change the framework of the bill in a very important way. I know he is looking for equity in terms of all workers here to be able to start a new day. We have worked long and hard in terms of the ag workers in terms of how we are going to treat the undocumented, how we are going to treat newer workers. We have worked that out.

It seems to me that is the fairer way. We can look to the future with the new merit system, but we ought to be able to meet our commitments, which this bill does, to those who have been a part of this system and are playing by the rules, and to whom we have made a commitment.

I hope his amendment would not be accepted.

I think the time has about expired, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I am delighted to deal with the amendment of the Senator from Texas. We have to figure out the order. This is the side of the Republicans now. Senator Cornyn has been waiting, and waiting patiently. The Senator from Texas did mention this. We had contacted the Finance Committee, since it is dealing with Social Security, to see whether they would be able to go, and I hope they will do that and dispose of it very rapidly. The other measures are not in the Finance Committee and we would be glad to deal with those. But dealing

with Social Security is the Finance Committee's jurisdiction, and they had some views on that.

I hope we might be able to do the Cornyn amendment. The leader had asked me if we could do the DeMint amendment after the Cornyn amendment. There may be one on our side dealing with health insurance which we would be prepared to do. It is fine with me. I am here and I am ready to go with these amendments, so I will make every effort to get the Finance Committee, and I will stay here with the Senator from Texas until we are able to get this disposed of this evening. I will give you that, as far as I am concerned.

Absolutely.

Mr. President, I have given assurance to the Senator from Texas, but I wish to see if we can have a short time. She will retain the right to make that request, but let us see if we can't work out the time now with the Finance Committee. Could we try that before getting consent? Because there has been some question about others who wanted to add a number of amendments on both sides, and we are trying to at least dispose of some of those that are on the list. I will give the assurance that this legislation, at least if I have anything to do with it, is not going to pass or be considered or closed out to the Senator from Texas, because, as she has pointed out, she raised these and we gave assurance she would get them. We were prepared on that Thursday evening, as we were running out of time to do the supplemental and to get the Finance Committee over.

The Senator mentioned, before the majority leader left, that she wanted to offer that, and I regret I had not gotten the Finance Committee members over here. They were marking up I think the CHIP program earlier in the day. That is my only reservation about setting aside now, because there has been objection on both sides to adding more until we start to dispose of some of the underlying amendments.

I will certainly try to get the clearance and work with the Senator and do it within the next few hours, if the Senator would withhold that and give us an opportunity to try to work through that. The Senator is quite correct that we have given her those assurances, and I intend to keep my word to the Senator.

Mr. President, reserving the right, I just mentioned to the Senator from Texas that there has been an objection. I would like to go to the Cornyn amendment--we have the side-by-side--get started, debate it, and vote on it tonight. That is what I would like to do. If necessary, we will do something over here in the meantime, come back, and deal with the Senator from Texas. We are ready to go. We have a side-by-side. We can get into general descriptions about that, but why don't we get started on the Cornyn amendment.

I was asked earlier whether we would agree to debate and dispose of the DeMint amendment, and we said fine. But if we are now going to add more and more amendments on this--I agree with those who say let's get to work. Let's do the Cornyn amendment at this time. Respectfully, as I said, we were ready to deal with the DeMint amendment 10 minutes ago. Even now, if we want to debate it and vote on it and dispose of it, we are ready to go. But that isn't it, it is now to just be filed. How can we do that if we object to the Senator from Texas filing?

Why don't we go to the Cornyn amendment, I ask Senator Specter. We will be helpful and try to get the amendment of Senator DeMint up. We are not trying to close him out. We can deal with that later this evening. I am glad to do that later this evening. We are set to go. It deals with health insurance. I am familiar with the issue. I am ready to go on it. We can deal with Cornyn. In the meantime, we can go to the Finance Committee and find out what we want to do with the amendment of the Senator from Texas, and then the leader asked us to try to dispose of DeMint. We were prepared to go

ahead with the Sessions amendment that deals with the ITC that the Senator from Alabama wanted earlier.

It is not our problem with this. We are ready to go. We are ready to debate and vote. I hope we can go ahead with the Cornyn amendment and the Senator will give us a little time to get this worked out about whether we are going to add and stack additional amendments up. I haven't got anything against the DeMint amendment. I saw it. I think it is a legitimate amendment.

Could we ask consent that we go to the Cornyn amendment?

Could the Chair restate? Is it the request of the Senator that we consider the Cornyn amendment? We are making available now the side-by-side. It is basically similar to the other one but in greater detail. Is it the request of the Senator that we go to his amendment now, we have a 2-hour debate on it, and that we vote on the side-by-side? Is that the Senator's request?

Mr. President, if I understand the request of the Senator, he wants to be able to have 2 hours on the Cornyn amendment to be voted on tomorrow morning. Hopefully we can debate this this evening. I am more than glad to make the side-by-side available. I certainly support the request.

If we can have it more precise, is it just sometime in the morning? Are we going to debate this this evening? I would like to try to get it so at least the leadership and Members know. This is a very important amendment. We want to make sure they are aware--what is the desire of the Senator? That we debate it this evening and we let the leaders set the time for the vote tomorrow but we spend at least 2 hours on the Cornyn amendment and the side-by-side and at some time designated by the leadership we vote on it tomorrow morning at an appropriate time?

Mr. President, we are making that available. I strongly support it and urge it, as I understand the Senator isn't proposing that exactly at this moment but intends to do so, pending the examination of the amendment. I certainly support that process. We will wait. It is not being propounded at this particular time, as I understand it, until he has a chance to look at it, but that would be the intention about the way to proceed. We will make available to him the side-by-side and then hopefully have an opportunity to propose the consent agreement sometime in the very near future. We then would maybe proceed to consider the DeMint amendment, and we will in the meantime get ahold of the Finance Committee to deal with the Senator from Texas, to check with our side to see whether we have an intervening amendment. That is what I would hope. But I hope very much we are going to continue to do the business of the Senate this evening.

I see the Senator on the floor. I was going to try to see if we could not get Senator DeMint over to do that in a timely way. It is on health insurance. We will do it in a timely way. In the meantime, we are working with the Finance Committee to try to be able to deal with the Senator from Texas. I would like to try to do that. I was going to suggest the absence of a quorum. I will not do so.

Mr. President, we have the Hutchison amendment. I have no intention to try to exclude the Senator. We are making a note at this particular time--we have been trying to cooperate. We have been trying to get an amendment up for the last hour or so. But there were others on our side who wanted to offer theirs, and at least our leaders wanted us to try to dispose of the underlying ones before we add one. I will reluctantly object to it, but I give personal assurances we will do everything we can to get it up in a timely way, but at this time I have to object to that consideration.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence a quorum.

Mr. President, if I can have the attention of the Senator from South Carolina.

His amendment will maintain a minimum level of health coverage through a qualified health plan in the meaning of 223(C) of the Internal Revenue Code. Is that right?

That is the health savings accounts?

So if they had other kinds of health coverage at all, they still would not be--unless they have this particular coverage, the high deductible, they would not be able to make--adjust their status.

Is the Senator aware now that the undocumented or aliens are not eligible for any of the Medicaid proposals at the present time?

Why did the Senator select just this particular health coverage rather than being able to participate in HMOs or other kinds of programs?

What is the estimate that the Senator has for this coverage? What is the estimate that they would have to pay out for this coverage?

If there are preexisting conditions--how does this amendment affect preexisting conditions?

Well, we have 47 million Americans who don't have coverage at the present time. But you want to insist that anyone, these undocumented are going to be mandated individual coverage in order to be able to adjust their status?

Of course, CBO studies which have been released in the last few days show that immigrant workers contribute much more in terms of taxes than they use in terms of services by about $24 billion over the estimate of the length of this plan.

I have heard studies quoted. Generally, around here we use Congressional Budget Office figures for actions in the State. They reach a rather dramatically different conclusion than the studies the Senator has mentioned.

Of course, the workers themselves have to contribute $550 as part of their cost anyway, their contribution to the State. In terms of consideration of covering any of the costs, that was sort of put into the legislation itself, in terms of the additional fees and additional fines as well, that addition to help offset any of the expenses that would be carried in the State itself.

It is important to get health care and health care coverage for all who do not have it. The real issue is the best way to pursue that. That is something we have to take a look at.

I see the Senator from West Virginia is here and wishes to address the Senate on an important matter about our friend and colleague from Wyoming.

I yield the floor and thank the Senator.

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

Mr. President, to give some information to the Members, as I understand, Senator Hutchison and the members of the Finance Committee are meeting. As a point of information, the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, and staff are meeting with the Finance Committee staff to consider those particular proposals. We have given the assurance to her that the Senate will address those issues at some time, but since it was just dealing with Social Security, although there are provisions in here that deal with Social Security, it is entirely appropriate that we ought to have the Finance Committee work on that.

The Senator from New Mexico has offered an alternative on the temporary worker program that is a serious amendment, and we could, if we are--we will have to find out what the pathway is between voting on one side and voting on the other, to be able to consider that, but that is an important alternative to what is the underlying legislation. I know there is going to be some response to that from Members very shortly.

On the amendment of Senator DeMint, he had indicated he was going to come to the floor to offer it. We were hopeful we might be able to consider that and have a vote on that later on as well.

At the present time, we are trying to work to see if we cannot find a situation where we can get two votes, one from the Democratic side and one from the Republican side, on measures that have been included on that list that have been talked about earlier, and the Members of the staffs on the Republican and Democratic side are working to see if we can't refine the list of different amendments to see what might be acceptable and then what might be germane and see if we can't refine this list. So that, I know for people outside the Senate, doesn't sound like much of an explanation about what is going on, but it is important and often produces additional motions here in the Senate. So we will have more information on this.

A very brief word on the DeMint amendment. His amendment requires a high deductible health insurance for each undocumented; otherwise, they would not be able to proceed with their earned legalization program which includes payments of the fines, demonstration of the work product, the investigations that show they have not had challenges in terms of the law, and the series of requirements that are out there. He would add to this the additional expenditures which would be necessary for coverage with a high deductible health insurance.

There are several points to mention here. First of all, in the underlying legislation, we have included a payment, some $500, that will be paid by each of the 12.5 million immigrants who are out there, many of whom will adjust their status. If they pay that $500, that is in excess of $1 billion--$1 billion that will be paid to those high- impact States, which is not insignificant, to help offset any of the kinds of utilization of these individuals in terms of the services within these various States. That is not insignificant.

Secondly, all of us are hopeful of trying to get universal coverage for people in this country, but we know we have 47 million who don't, and the ones who don't, it isn't that they don't want to have health insurance, it is because they cannot afford it. When you look at these individuals whom we are talking about, the undocumented and their income, we are talking about individuals who are earning $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 a year. If they have the adjustment of the status, they are going to be part of the whole kind of American system, hopefully, and meeting the other kinds of requirements, and therefore their enhanced opportunities are going to be there so they will be able to afford health care in the future. But making the requirement now will only state to those individuals to keep them in the shadows. It is one more barrier that is going to prohibit them from being involved.

A final point--and I ask unanimous consent to have this material printed in the record--the utilization of these health care facilities as we have seen in the most recent study, particularly in the State of Texas, which shows that, by and large, these are individuals who are younger, have used these health emergency centers very rarely. We have the studies that have been done, particularly the most recent one in Texas.

So at the appropriate time, I hope the DeMint amendment would not be accepted. We might have more time to consider it, if the Senator wants to, when we have more of our colleagues here later, prior to the disposal of it. I was sort of hoping we could see a continued movement on several of these amendments, but we are being told now we have to have this clearance from the leadership on some of these measures, but we are hopeful we will announce to our colleagues very shortly what the plan is for the rest of the evening.

We are prepared to stay here, remain here and go through to dispose of these amendments. We have made important progress in the past. We have some important amendments which are pending. I think Senator Specter and I and the others who are interested in this--I see my good friend from Colorado, Senator Salazar, and others who are more than willing to have a good discussion about these amendments, and we would welcome the opportunity to have the Senate express itself with votes. That is certainly our desire. We wish to see continued progress on this extremely important legislation.

As one of those with others who has been a part of this process, we want to try. We know it is complicated and difficult. We know there are strong emotions. But I think all of us, after the period of this Memorial Day recess, understand full well the American people are expecting us to take action. They know that failure is not an alternative. They know it is complex. They know there are great emotions. There are a good many who know nothing out there--people who distort, misrepresent, misstate the legislation, and then differ with it, and that has certainly been done with regard to this legislation. We have, at least to date, had good debates and discussions on substantive matters, and the Senate has reached conclusions on a number of these matters. It is certainly our desire to continue that process to work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to continue.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I was in consultation. Could the Senator restate his request? I apologize to him.

The Senator chooses to call up his amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, what we were attempting to do is, as we have been moving from one side to the other, Republican and Democrat, to have the introduction of amendments on both sides. That is what we would like to do. We have had a flurry right now of amendments. I hope we get an opportunity--I think, quite frankly, there are more amendments on that side than on this side, as a factual matter.

What they have tried to do is match amendment for amendment on both sides. That has been what they have tried to do through the day today. Whether that will be the way it will be in the future, I don't know. As I mentioned, there are more amendments on that side. So, obviously, we are going to have to deal with more. At the present time, they are trying to match one side with the other side in terms of amendments. So I hope that if we have amendments on this side, the Democrats would notify us so we can match them up and propose them together.

I necessarily have to object at the present time. I hope we will not have to object when we get our final list. To try to maintain at least that balance, which was at least the way we were attempting to proceed, I have to do it at the present time. I will do everything in my power to make sure that, having done so, his amendment will certainly be considered in a timely way so it doesn't work to his disadvantage.

Mr. President, I oppose the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky. The McConnell amendment would limit the ability of many American citizens to exercise the fundamental right to vote. It is nothing more than a 21st century poll tax.

The 24th amendment states that ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote . . . shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.''

This amendment would force all citizens to obtain a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Many citizens who have voted for years don't own the government-issued photo identification needed to meet the requirement. They would have to pay for the ID or at least for the underlying documents needed to get one.

Among the persons who will be hardest hit are the elderly, minorities, and persons with disabilities. That is who this amendment is targeting.

Many seniors don't have photo ID because they don't need a driver's license. But they should still have the right to vote.

Many Americans who are blind or have other disabilities also don't have a photo ID because they don't have driver's licenses either. But they should still have the right to vote.

Some religious minorities, such as the Amish, want to vote, but their faith does not allow them to have their pictures taken. We should never require citizens to violate their religious beliefs or to pay to cast a vote.

Many African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans also lack photo ID. Under this amendment, these citizens would lose the right to vote if they don't get a government-issued photo ID.

Some citizens in this country were never issued a birth certificate, particularly African-American seniors born in the South or rural areas and Native Americans. If we pass this amendment, we turn our backs on them.

Many voters had their lives devastated by Hurricane Katrina. What about them? What about the elderly grandmother displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lost all of her possessions in the hurricane and now lives hundreds of miles from her birthplace and home? If she doesn't drive, how is she going to get the documents she needs to vote under this amendment? If she is retired or lost her job because of the storm, she may not be able to afford the documents. Separated from her family and neighbors, she may not have anyone to help her fill out the forms and get to the right government agencies to obtain the documents she needs.

This country failed the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Are we going to disenfranchise them as well?

Supporters of the amendment say, ``Don't worry. Under this amendment, States will give out free identification cards to those who can't afford them.'' That sounds good in theory, but what about in practice? Citizens will still have to deal with State and local bureaucracies to prove who they are.

Poll taxes have a dark and notorious history in this country. When we considered a poll tax ban in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, poll taxes were a tried-and-true tactic to prevent African Americans and poor whites from voting. I introduced an amendment to the 1965 act to ban poll taxes in all elections--Federal, State, and local. We had days and days of debate on the Senate floor about poll taxes. Not everyone agreed on how to fix the problem. The final amendment made clear that poll taxes infringe the right to vote and directed the Attorney General to challenge them in court.

A year later, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, the Supreme Court held that poll taxes are unconstitutional. The Court declared that ``the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned'' on the ability to pay.

We thought that poll taxes and other blatant barriers to the right to vote were vestiges of a bygone era. But today, Republican-controlled State legislatures around the country are attempting to enact photo identification laws.

Federal and State courts have already struck down State laws similar to the McConnell amendment. In Georgia, a Federal court has stopped two different attempts to impose a photo identification requirement. Judge Murphy ruled the first an unconstitutional poll tax because of the cost that hundreds of thousands of Georgians without photo identification would have to pay to obtain them.

The State's second attempt made the IDs free, just as this amendment supposedly does, but it was still struck down as unconstitutional. The court held that Georgia's interest in combating nonexistent vote fraud didn't justify the ``severe burden'' on voters without photo identification who would have to get through several layers of bureaucracy to obtain the documents required. A State court also ruled that the Georgia law violated the State constitution because it disenfranchised citizens who were otherwise qualified to vote.

A similar proposal recently was struck down in Missouri. The judge spelled out the problem loud and clear. For some, he said, the burden of a photo ID requirement may not seem great. But ``for the elderly, the poor, the undereducated, or otherwise disadvantaged, the burden can be great if not insurmountable, and it is those very people . . . who are the least equipped to bear the costs or navigate the many bureaucracies necessary to obtain the required documentation.''

Supporters of this modern-day poll tax claim it is just common sense. ``What's the big deal?'' they ask. After all, if you need a photo ID to get on a plane or rent a movie or drive a car, it is only reasonable to require such an ID to vote.

But voting is a right in this country and not simply a privilege. We need to restrict who can get on a plane or drive a car, but we should never restrict the precious right to vote. As Judge Callahan put it in the Missouri case, ``While a license to drive may be just that--a license and not a right, the right to vote is also just that--a right and not a license.''

When proponents of this amendment stand up to explain why America needs this legislation, listen carefully. During the floor debate on a similar proposal in the House, the amendment's Republican supporters strained to convince us that we have a major problem because noncitizens and others are posing as eligible voters. But they couldn't give us any evidence.

The fact is, voter fraud simply isn't a major problem. It certainly isn't a serious enough problem to justify disenfranchising Americans on a massive scale--which is exactly what this proposal would do.

Proponents of this 21st century poll tax have no evidence that it is needed because all the facts show it is not needed. Here is what the hard evidence tells us about voter impersonation in this country:

A recent article in the New York Times found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. It found that, over a 5-year-period, the Justice Department, despite focusing its effort on prosecuting individuals for voter fraud, a top priority of Karl Rove, ``turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections'' through fraudulent voting. There have been only 86 convictions nationwide. That is less than 90 instances of anyone voting who wasn't supposed to vote in the entire country in 5 years. In addition, according to the article, many of these people, voted or registered to vote by mistake, without knowing they were not eligible.

Statewide surveys in Ohio after the 2002 and 2004 elections found only four instances of ineligible persons voting or attempting to vote--four out of over 9 million votes cast during those elections. That is a rate of 0.00004 percent.

In Georgia, where state legislators cited voting fraud as the need for a photo ID law, secretary of state Cathy Cox could recall only one case of voter fraud involving the impersonation of a

registered voter during her 10 years of service.

Out of nearly 200 million votes cast since 2002, only 86 individuals nationwide have been convicted of election fraud. And many of those offenses involved conduct that would not be remedied by a photo identification requirement.

The evidence also makes very clear that this proposal would disenfranchise millions of citizens who are eligible to vote.

A University of Wisconsin study found that in Milwaukee nearly 50 percent of African-American and Latino men did not have government- issued photo identification.

According to AARP, 36 percent of voters in Georgia over the age of 75 don't have government-issued photo identification.

Georgia Secretary of State Cox found that nearly 700,000, or 1 in 7, registered voters in Georgia do not have a driver's license or State- issued non-driver's license, which this amendment would require in order to vote.

According to the Department of Transportation, 6 to 12 percent of eligible voters do not currently have the identification the amendment would require.

The American Association of People with Disabilities estimates that nearly 4 million Americans with disabilities would be disenfranchised if this proposal takes effect.

Native Americans living on tribal lands, often without street addresses and with traditions that don't permit the taking of their picture, would also be disenfranchised by this law.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million U.S.-born citizens do not have a birth certificate or passport readily available to them and therefore could be disenfranchised under this amendment. The burden falls unequally on some geographic regions as well as on our most vulnerable populations:

It hurts the elderly--some 2.3 million elderly Americans lack the required documents.

It hurts rural residents, since approximately 4.5 million rural Americans lack the documents necessary to establish their citizenship.

It hurts citizens living in the South and Midwest--8.4 million residents of Southern and Midwestern States don't have the documents this amendment would require to vote.

It hurts the poor--nearly 3 million citizens making less than $25,000 a year lack a passport and birth certificate.

It hurts African Americans--2 million African Americans lack a passport and birth certificate. Many elderly African Americans have no birth certificate because they were born at home at a time when hospitals were closed to African Americans because of racial discrimination. One study estimates that a fifth of all African Americans born in 1939 and 1940 were never issued birth certificates.

Under the Bush administration we are running historic deficits and our debt is mounting. We can't afford the cost of a program designed to fight a nonexistent problem.

At a time when Americans have serious concerns about the proper functioning and integrity of voting machines, the Republican Party responds with a solution in search of a problem. They want to pass a law that threatens to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. To those who were disenfranchised in the 2000 and 2004 elections by wrongful purges, erroneous registration lists, poll worker errors, uncounted provisional ballots, of long lines, this is our answer?

If the Senator from Kentucky is serious about election reform, we stand ready to work together. But it is cynical to take such a serious and important issue, so fundamental to democracy, and use it for partisan politics.

Last July, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with broad bipartisan support. The reauthorization passed overwhelmingly in the House and by a unanimous vote in the Senate. Republicans and Democrats came together to tear down barriers to the ballot box.

Now some on the other side of the aisle want to erect new barriers to voting by telling Americans they need a passport to vote. If we adopt this amendment, we undermine the Voting Rights Act's important protections. This amendment would disenfranchise many of the same voters we tried to protect with that historic legislation last year.

Mr. President, that is unfair, undemocratic, and unconstitutional. I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

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

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 would like to enter a unanimous consent request, but I will wait until Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, arrives.

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

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

Mr. President, I have spoken to a number of my colleagues today--in fact, within the past hour or so. There has been a concern by the minority that there have not been enough votes on this bill.

Keeping that in mind, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request that would allow 20 votes. I will outline it as follows: I ask unanimous consent that at 5:45 today, the Senate vote in relation to Senator Kennedy's alternative to Senator Cornyn's amendment No. 1184; that immediately upon the conclusion of that vote, the Senate vote in relation to Senator Cornyn's amendment No. 1184.

Mr. President, I am going to propound another request. Based upon my distinguished colleague's statement, that we have spent a lot of time on this immigration bill--and every minute of it has been deserved. As Senators will recall, the vehicle that was brought to the floor was the bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. It was believed that by spending more time on a bipartisan basis a substitute could be reached, and that was done. We now have before the Senate a substitute amendment that has been bipartisan in nature, with 10 Senators, Democrats and Republicans, having worked this out. Mr. President, we have had a number of votes. Keep in mind the substitute amendment that is now before the Senate is a result of a number of things, not the least of which is all the work that went into the bill that did not go forward last year.

We had numerous votes, and the Democrats and Republicans who put together the substitute took all that into consideration when they came up with the substitute. So we don't need the same number of amendments we had last year.

I think we should have amendments, and I am going to propound a request. This does not limit amendments or limit amendments in the future. As we all know, once cloture is invoked, all germane amendments are subject to votes following that cloture vote during the 30 hours. So we have today, Tuesday, Wednesday, and you will see that we would also have Thursday under one of the proposals I am going to offer. But my concern is, when is enough enough? We have a number of considerations here that are so important to our country. I recognize the importance of immigration, and I am going to do everything I can to make sure people feel they have had an alternative to the substitute that was offered. But there has to be a limit as to the amendments Senators offer.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that tomorrow the Senate vote in relation to Senator Sessions' amendment No. 1235; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Feinstein amendment No. 1176; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Inhofe amendment No. 1151; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Cornyn amendment No. 1250; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Menendez amendment No. 1194; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Clinton amendment No. 1183; further, the Senate vote in relation to the Sessions amendment No. 1234; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Dodd amendment No. 1199; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the McConnell amendment No. 1170; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the Lieberman amendment No. 1191; further, that alternative Democratic and Republican amendments be in order in relation to each of the above amendments, and that the time for each vote be set with the concurrence of both leaders and both floor managers.

Mr. President, the reason here is a little unusual. We have 12 amendments pending. After these are voted on, other amendments will be offered and should be offered. There is no reason to cut off what we have talked about here as being the only amendments.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if cloture is filed today on the substitute amendment, it not ripen until 6 p.m. Thursday, June 7.

I am happy to do that. I ask unanimous consent that if cloture is filed today on the substitute amendment, it not ripen--there not be a vote on it--until 6 p.m. Thursday, June 7, rather than Thursday morning. That would give us another day.

Mr. President, we have tried to set up 20 votes in relation to amendments, including Democratic and Republican alternatives. We also tried to vitiate the need for a needless second cloture vote on the bill itself, if the substitute amendment is ever adopted. Lastly, we tried to delay the cloture vote until Thursday evening so Members would have more time to debate and dispose of amendments.

Each effort, I am sad to report, was objected to by our Republican colleagues. So as far as I am concerned, they are in no position to complain that they did not get votes on amendments prior to cloture. We offered them votes.

First of all, in this part of my presentation, I want to express my appreciation to those who have worked so hard on this bill, and I hope they will continue to work on this bill. I made a suggestion, and here it is. If they can come up with something better, more power to them.

I have devoted a lot of the Senate's time to this measure, not only this year but last year when I was working with Senator Frist. It is an important piece of legislation. The immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. We have an obligation to the American people to do that. Do I think whatever we come up with will be perfect? No. But we have, with the help of the President, the opportunity to take this matter to the House, have them work on it, and then again with the President's assistance get to conference and come up with something that would be better than what we passed out of the Senate.

I hope my Republican colleagues are not going to use this as an excuse that they have not had enough amendments offered. That really is not fair, and it is wrong. I say again that I appreciate the work of the managers. Senator Kennedy has worked very hard to work his way through this bill, as have Senators Kyl, Sessions, Cornyn, and people who may not be in support of the bill but at least have tried to improve it.

Mr. President, there is one thing I didn't ask. My staff informed me that I did not ask this: I ask unanimous consent that if the substitute amendment is agreed to, the bill be read the third time, and the Senate vote, without intervening action or debate, on final passage of S. 1348, as amended.

I have a premonition that there may be an objection to that.

Mr. President, one person I did not compliment--and it is my negligence--is the Senator from Pennsylvania, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, former chair of the Judiciary Committee, who has worked very hard on this legislation.

Mr. President, what we have heard are buzz words for this bill is going nowhere. I think that is too bad. As the day progresses, I hope people have a change of heart and that we can work on amendments that can be voted on. Certainly, we don't need my approval for whatever amendments should be voted on.

We are going to file cloture on the bill today. There are a number of exigencies present in the Senate, and we have to move on. The Republican leader has been told by some Senators that more amendments would help. Most of the people who want more amendments have no intention of voting for this bill no matter what we do.

I have made my statement. The Republican leader has made his statement. I hope the managers can figure out a way to move on. Before the close of business today, I am filing cloture.

Mr. President, my counterpart, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, said this is a 2-week bill, and we are in the second week of this bill.

I will also state--and I am not as much of a poll watcher as my caucus would tell me I should be--that the polls also show the Republican Members of Congress are not as well thought of as Democratic Members of Congress.

As far as success, I think we have done pretty well this past 6 months. We now have a bill that has been signed by the President where, for the first time in 10 years, we give a raise to the people who need it worst, the people who rely on the minimum wage. Keep in mind that 60 percent of those who draw a minimum wage are women. For the vast majority of those women, that is the only money they have for themselves and their families.

We have tried for 3 years to get disaster assistance for farmers, and we were able to get that. That is now signed into law. The President has made many trips to the gulf, but in this supplemental bill, which we forced the President to sign, we now have monetary relief for people in the gulf affected by Katrina.

We were able to extend the SCHIP program for children's health care. That is a significant accomplishment. That will take care of things until October. We were also--in the legislation that the President signed, that we forced--able to get more than he gave us in the supplemental appropriations bill. We had more money for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--$4 billion more for medicine and veterans' benefits.

We have been trying for years to get money for homeland security. In this bill, we got it, a billion dollars for homeland security that has long been necessary.

Within the next week or two, we are going to have a conference report that will come forward, sending to the President legislation on stem cell research that will give hope to millions.

I worked, in fact, as late as yesterday with the distinguished Republican leader, and I think we are in a position where we can come up with a satisfactory conference report on ethics and lobbying reform.

So I think we should not be denigrating the work of this Congress and the things we have been able to accomplish, which has been done on a bipartisan basis. We have had to push and pull a little, getting motions to proceed on various pieces of legislation that were necessary, but we were able to do that. So I don't think it is time to denigrate or belittle the Congress based on the polls we have seen.

I repeat, let us not get into poll watching, because if you look at the polls, Democratic Congressmen, Democrats generally, are scored much higher than Republicans. But I repeat, I don't follow polls. I think we should be doing a lot more by what we feel is right to do than what polls show.

I hope the immigration matter can move along. I think the two leaders of the Senate have stated how we feel about this, and now we turn it over to the good hands of our experienced managers.

Mr. President, one of the things I think the managers should do is see if they can get a list of amendments, germane amendments, the minority wants. We have a few on our side. It is at least worth a try to see if we can come up with a list of germane amendments. I ask Senator Kennedy and Senator Specter to see if they can come up with a list of germane amendments that Members think they want to vote on. We already have, as I said, 12 or so pending, and we will take a look at that. I am not even sure the 12 pending are germane. We don't know that either.

Anyway, they can see if they can come up with a list of germane amendments, whether that is three, four, five, whatever it is, and we will take a look at that.

Mr. President, for the benefit of all Members, we are very close, we hope, to having two votes. It should be momentarily, in the next 10 minutes. It might be better.

We are trying to work out something on the McConnell amendment and the Feingold amendment. We have been very close to that for some time now. I am told we are very close to it now. We also have staff, both majority and minority staff, working on setting up about a dozen votes for tomorrow on amendments that are pending.

As everyone knows, I offered earlier today to have the staffs work to find out what votes the minority has that they feel would be germane postcloture, so maybe we can come up with a finite list of those. We are willing to be reasonable, but we do have to move this along.

I have had a number of Members say to me: Well, let us take another week or two on this bill; it is worth it. I know how people feel about this bill. We are not spending another week or two on this bill. It is Tuesday. We still have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to finish this bill, could work into the weekend if necessary. This is an important bill, but we need to finish it. We need to finish this. That is why cloture will be filed tonight. I have offered a unanimous consent request so we would not even have to vote on it Thursday morning; we could vote on it Thursday night. I have also suggested if people are serious about moving this bill, we only need the one cloture vote on a substitute. That is the way it normally works, anyway; you don't have to turn around and vote on the bill itself. Rarely does that happen. That would only be if someone is trying to stall this matter.

I hope we can dispose of a lot of amendments. I hope tomorrow or the next day we could vitiate the request for cloture and have final passage on the bill. We want to be reasonable. That is why the staffs have been instructed to try to work on a way to get from here to there.

But this stage has been very difficult, because a lot of people who want to offer most of the amendments are people who have no intention of ever voting for this bill, no matter what happens. We are still going to process their amendments. They have a right to their amendments as does anyone else, even though their definition of improving the bill is, I guess, relative.

Mr. President, we still do not have anything here yet.

Mr. President, I say to my friend, the distinguished Senator from Alabama, he has two amendments that are pending now.

We have found in weeks past, months past, it is important to dispose of amendments that are pending; otherwise, you wind up that the person who offered the last amendment controls what goes on here on the floor. There have been a number of additional amendments that have been filed today. As I indicated, staff is now working on a procedure to dispose of all of the pending amendments, have votes on those tomorrow.

As I have said earlier today, in fact a few minutes ago again, often here in the Senate, when we come to situations such as this, we say: Okay, let's get a list of finite amendments. How many amendments do you want to offer? Then we try to work that out. It is a little difficult to do, because any one Senator can stop that. But we are trying to come up with a finite list of amendments. The two managers, Senators Kennedy and Specter, have worked on this, and their staffs are working on this, along with mine. Right now there is an effort to move this forward. I hope we can do that.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 7:20 this evening be for debate to run concurrently with respect to the McConnell amendment No. 1170 and the Feingold amendment No. 1176, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators McConnell, Feingold, or their designees; that no amendment be in order to either amendment prior to the vote; that each amendment must receive 60 affirmative votes to be agreed to; that if they do not receive 60 affirmative votes, then the amendment be withdrawn; that the amendments be voted in the order listed in this agreement; and that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to the second vote and that the second vote be 10 minutes in duration.

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of S. 1348 tomorrow, June 6, there be 2 hours of debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Kennedy and Cornyn or their designees, with the time to run concurrently on the Cornyn amendment No. 1184, as modified, and a Kennedy amendment relating to the same subject, with no amendments in order to either amendment prior to the vote; that upon the use or yielding back of the time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Kennedy amendment, to be followed by a vote in relation to the Cornyn amendment, with 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to the second vote, and with the above occurring without further intervening action or debate.

I would hope this would set the process in order that we can work through all these amendments. The staffs have been working, lining up other amendments, for votes on those. This is the third time now I have asked for a list of finite amendments. We hope they will be germane amendments but finite amendments. We will see if we can have a period of time that we ask for those. When that time arrives, those would be all the amendments that would be available on this bill. We have done that on many previous occasions. I hope it works.

Mr. President, is the time up?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we start the vote now.

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.

Mr. President, we are working in good faith to move this bill forward. We had seven rollcall votes before the recess and six additional amendments adopted by voice vote. That is 13. Yesterday, we adopted four more amendments by voice vote. Today, we had four rollcall votes. Tomorrow morning, we will vote on the Cornyn-Kennedy amendment, eligibility for legalization program, and then we are prepared to enter a unanimous consent agreement for the 10 remaining amendments that are pending. We have done quite well. We will have done 23 rollcall votes when we finish these 3 tomorrow, and we adopted 10 by voice vote. I know the staff has been working on this for some time now. I hope we can work out an arrangement to get rid of the pending amendments and move on to other amendments people talked about all day they want to offer. I think that is appropriate.

Tonight, we are going to, because we agreed to lay down a Domenici amendment and one I am going to offer dealing with earned-income tax credit--those will be the two amendments we are going to lay down tonight. Anyway, somebody else is going to do it. There are two amendments we are going to lay down tonight, so we will have two more that will be pending tomorrow,

and I hope we can arrange votes on those amendments. Once we finish those amendments, I hope other Senators will offer amendments. I hope they will consider some germane amendments.

In addition to the amendments that are pending, we have a number of amendments that are at the desk, I understand, and we have taken a look at those, and maybe we can work something out on those amendments.

This is a difficult bill, we understand that. I hope the offers I made today are considered serious. I repeat, I am not going to go through the litany of amendments, the unanimous consent requests. One is we would vote cloture--rather than Thursday morning, do it Thursday night. That is certainly something we could consider. Anyway, there are all kinds of alternatives we can do to move this bill forward if people want to do that.

As I said, there is no need to run through the unanimous consent requests I did previously. We will call it quits for the night. There is no more business on this bill.

Mr. President, I ask, so the managers don't have to stay around--I wonder if we can move to a period for morning business.

That way, the Senator from Alabama can speak, and I would certainly consent to, when we take up the bill tomorrow, his remarks appearing as though we are working on the pending legislation.

I asked unanimous consent that there be a period for morning business. I know the Senator from Alabama wishes to speak. I assume it is on matters dealing with immigration.

I withdraw my consent for morning business, Mr. President. I think we have a couple of amendments that are part of the 10 we are going to try to get rid of tomorrow.

I say to my friend from Alabama, I think we have made a suggestion, and it is appropriate to move forward, that with regard to the 10 or 12 amendments now pending, we will set up times to vote on these, either by motions to table or if we can work out side-by-sides, whatever it takes, and then move to other amendments.

Certainly, the Senator from Alabama has been patient. We understand he has other amendments he wants to offer. But I object at this time until we get some plan for tomorrow to dispose of these amendments we have.

I have indicated a number of different alternatives, and others may come up with better suggestions. One is, let's get a list of finite amendments from the minority. We will add ours in with those, and we have done that on a number of occasions here. It will have to be done by unanimous consent, but it is worth a try. We can have a list of how many amendments people think are appropriate on this bill. Let's see if we can get that done by tomorrow morning.

We know the Senator from Alabama has a number he wishes to make part of that list, and other Senators have amendments they want to make part of that list. I have seen Senator Thune, Senator DeMint, and Senator Coburn here. There are other people who want to offer amendments, I understand, but let's get a finite list of who wants to offer amendments and what the amendments are.

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, it is my understanding that I have been allocated 18 minutes to speak on behalf of amendment No. 1231.

I would like the Chair to notify me when I have spoken for 8

minutes, and I will reserve time for Senator Grassley who will also come to the floor.

Amendment No. 1231

This immigration bill is long overdue. Our immigration laws in America have failed us. Since 1986, when President Reagan issued amnesty, we thought for a long time we had laws on the books that would stop the inflow of workers from overseas. We were wrong. Up to 800,000 come into our country each year. Three-fourths of them stay. When you do the math over a 20-year period of time, you realize how we ended up with 12 million undocumented workers in America.

Our immigration system has failed. Let me salute Senators Kennedy, Specter, and all those who worked on trying to rewrite these laws.

You can turn on the television any afternoon or evening and hear the screamers on the cable channels telling you how terrible it is that we are considering this law. Think for a moment. Those people screaming about this effort are endorsing what we currently have--a broken down, failed system that is unfair to the workers of America, unfair to our Nation, and unfair to those who were here working as part of our economy.

What Senators Kennedy and Specter are trying to do is fashion a way through this madness to a law that will work. Are we sure it is going to succeed? Of course not. We cannot be sure. This is just the best of a human effort. But what they have tried to do is build into this concept basic principles. One of those principles that I think should be the bedrock of our discussion is this: Under this bill, we will have hundreds of thousands of new people coming into the United States each year to work. The arguments are made that we need them to pick crops that Americans don't want to pick. I think that is a fact. Also, we need them to fill jobs that many Americans don't want to take. Go to any packinghouse, whether it is a meat or poultry house in America--I know a little bit about that; that is the way I worked my way through college. Those are tough, dirty, hot jobs--and you will find many undocumented workers there because, frankly, people don't absolutely want to work in these places. We need to bring in these workers to fill jobs that Americans are not going to take.

Then there is another level of workers, those who have skills that we need in this country. When Bill Gates of Microsoft says: I need the opportunity to bring in software engineers so Microsoft can expand its production operations in America, and if you don't give me that chance to bring in foreign engineers, I am going to have to put a production facility overseas where I can find the same engineering talents, well, I want those jobs in America. I want those production facilities in America. I am willing to listen to his request for H-1B visas.

Whether we are talking about AgJOBS, jobs in these packing houses or jobs in Silicon Valley, we should have one guiding principle, and the guiding principle is this: Hire Americans first. Hire Americans first.

Under this bill we are considering, the guest workers who come in are subject to that requirement. Someone cannot ask for a guest worker to take a job if there is an American that will take that job first. But there is a glaring loophole. The loophole says: If the Secretary of the Department of Labor announces there is a labor shortage in an area, then they waive the requirement to look for American workers first. But we, in this bill, fail to define what a labor shortage is. What does it mean? It means a lot of employers will be off the hook. They will be able to bring in guest workers and never ask an American to take the job. I don't think that is right.

Senator Grassley and I have introduced this amendment. It eliminates this loophole, eliminates this labor shortage exception, and makes it the hard-and-fast rule when it comes to guest workers that we must hire Americans first. I hope my colleagues will take a look at this and consider it.

Let me say a few words about the H-1B visa. Senator Grassley and I took a look at these H-1B visas. These are special visas with specialty talents to come in because there are not enough Americans with those talents. We took a look at those H-1B visas and, unfortunately, there are some companies that are gaming the system. There have been exposes across America where these so-called H-1B brokerage houses have been created. These are not high-tech companies looking for people with H-1B visas. These are companies, by and large in India, that try to bring in Indian engineers to fill jobs in the United States.

The H-1B visa job lasts for 3 years and can be renewed for 3 years. What happens to those workers after that? Well, they could stay. It is possible. But these new companies out of India have a much better idea for making money. They send the engineers from India to America to fill spots--and get money to do it--and then after the 3 to 6 years, they bring them back to India to work for the companies that are competing with American companies. They call it their outsourcing visa. They are sending their talented engineers to learn how Americans do business and then bring them back and compete with those American companies. Is that what we have in mind here? Is that our goal, to create more opportunities for people to create businesses around the world to compete with us? I think not.

Senator Grassley and I are trying to tighten up the H-1B visa. We wish to make sure that only those who are absolutely necessary are brought in, and, first and foremost, that we fill job vacancies with Americans who are out of work and Americans who are graduating from schools and developing the skills that are needed. Our first responsibility, whether it is in guest workers or H-1B visas, is to hire Americans first.

The amendment the Senate will consider in a short period of time, No. 1231, which Senator Grassley and I have offered, applies to the guest worker program. But it comes down to this basic concept, and I hope my colleagues will support me: Shouldn't this new guest worker program include the same protections for American workers? I think they should. Otherwise, in the future, we are going to see companies advertising that no Americans need apply for these jobs. We don't want that to occur. We wish to make it perfectly clear that companies doing business in the United States must first give priority to American workers; that they are bound by law to do that.

Plain and simple, that is what the Durbin-Grassley amendment will do. This amendment is supported by the labor community, including the AFL- CIO, the Laborers' Union, the Teamsters, and the Building Trades.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the AFL-CIO supporting the amendment be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve any time remaining for Senator Grassley, who will be coming to the floor shortly.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the quorum time be equally divided between opposing sides.

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

Mr. President, this immigration bill will offer an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people to come to the United States and go to work. But I believe there should be one guiding principle behind this bill: First offer the jobs to Americans. Those who are unemployed, those who are developing the skills should have the first chance to fill these jobs.

Senator Grassley and I have a bipartisan amendment which eliminates the loophole and makes it a requirement, when it comes to guest workers, that the jobs first be offered to Americans to fill. I think that is a reasonable starting point for any debate on immigration.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today in honor of National Hunger Awareness Day and to give voice to the difficult reality that exists for more than 35 million people in the United States--the experience of hunger.

In a society as civilized as ours, basic sustenance should be a guarantee. If children--or adults--are hungry in America, that is a problem for all of us.

Yet hunger continues to affect the lives of millions of families, including over 14 million children who live below the poverty line.

In the past few years, there have been multiple efforts to make ``hunger'' disappear--not as a troubling reality for millions, but as a term in surveys and press releases.

Every year, the USDA issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word ``hunger'' to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table.

But starting in 2006, hunger facts and figures began to disappear and were replaced by measures of ``food security,'' a more scientifically palatable term.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on the proposed administration budget cuts to the Survey on Income and Program Participation--the only large-scale measure of the impact of Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, unemployment and other safety net programs for the poor.

All these efforts put forth the false notion that nobody's hungry in America.

But despite the fact that we don't use words and we don't use numbers, the presence of hunger is ever so clear.

We can see it in the faces of children at school who have not had a decent meal since yesterday's school lunch. We can see it in the families at food pantries showing up a day earlier than normal because their monthly pay is not stretching as far it once did. We can see it in the loving parent giving up their own meal to make sure their child has something to eat at night.

In a land that prides itself as the land of plenty, we cannot hide the fact that we need to do a better job at making sure everybody has at least enough to eat.

Each hungry child that we allow suffer chips away at the moral strength of our country. This land of opportunity--and the American dream--should not allow for 37 million of its people to live in poverty, to live hungry.

Our moral strength, our commitment to our community is a foundation of our country. The well-known American journalist, Bill Moyer, just last week put it best when he said:

It's right there in the Constitution--in the Preamble:

``We, the People''--that radical, magnificent, democratic,

inspired and exhilarating idea that we are in this together,

one for all and all for one.

And he was right, this is the ``heart of democracy'' and more importantly, it is the heart of humanity. As Bill says, the prayers we say are prayers for all of us: ``Give us this day our daily bread.'' And his is the most important message that should inspire us today: ``We're all in this together; one person's hunger is another's duty''.

Hunger is a problem for all of us. I hope that we all work together to fulfill our duty to end hunger in our Nation and the world.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, there is an amendment that has been filed and may be considered this evening, which I think is extremely important. I wish to speak to it. It is the McConnell amendment, offered by the Republican leader, amendment 1170, to the immigration bill.

This amendment has very little to do with this immigration bill, but it is one of the most important issues any Congress could ever consider. It is about Americans' right to vote.

The right to vote is the most fundamental right in a free and Democratic society. In fact, in Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court called it ``preservative of other basic civil and political rights.''

I think that is fair warning to all of us that when we consider the McConnell amendment, we should understand this is not just another amendment. This amendment goes to the heart of our franchise as Americans. It goes to the heart of our democracy. We have come a long way in our country on the issue of voting rights. Last year, we reauthorized the historic Voting Rights Act, the landmark act passed in 1965 safeguarding the right to vote for millions of Americans who had been denied that fundamental right for generations. The amendment offered by Senator McConnell to this immigration bill will undermine the Voting Rights Act. It will restrict voting rights in America. It will diminish the voting rights of our American citizens, particularly minorities, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. That is a historic decision. This is not another commonplace amendment; it is an amendment of great moment.

I might add, the McConnell amendment is opposed by nearly every major civil rights group in America today. The McConnell amendment, simply stated, would require that all Americans bring a government-issued, current, valid photo ID with them when they vote. The idea may sound reasonable on its face until you look closely.

The fact is, many Americans don't have a photo ID. Twelve percent of Americans don't have a driver's license. Who are those 12 percent? By and large, they are minorities, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. A 2005 University of Wisconsin study showed that over 50 percent of African-American and Hispanic adults in Milwaukee don't have a valid driver's license. The McConnell amendment will have a disproportionately negative impact on these groups. It will diminish their right to vote.

Second, the McConnell amendment may be on its face unconstitutional. The State of Georgia passed a photo ID law in 2005, and it was struck down by the courts. A Federal district court judge said it constituted a modern-day

``poll tax'' and was presumptively unconstitutional. An appellate panel of three judges, including two Republican appointees, agreed. What gave rise to the Georgia photo ID law? Was there a history of election fraud in that State? No. The Georgia secretary of state said she was unaware of a single documented case in recent years of fraud through impersonation of a voter at the polls.

Cries of voter fraud are heard over and over again. It is one of Karl Rove's inspired strategies to keep raising this issue. But these are phantom cries. Look at the numbers. Since 2002, 196 million votes have been cast in Federal elections. Do you know how many voter fraud convictions there have been from those 196 million votes? Fifty-two out of 196 million. Most of these were for vote-buying and voter registration fraud, neither of which would be stopped by a photo ID.

Sadly, and cynically, photo ID laws are being pushed by some for partisan reasons.

Seventh Circuit Judge Terrence Evans wrote, while dissenting in a recent Federal case that upheld a photo ID law in Indiana:

Let's not beat around the bush. The Indiana voter photo ID

is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day

turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic. We

should subject this law to strict scrutiny . . . and strike

it down as an undue burden on the fundamental right to vote.

We have recently learned about the troubling role played by partisan political appointees at Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department in clearing the Georgia photo ID law. According to press reports, the career staff at the Justice Department made a recommendation to object to the Georgia photo ID law because they believed it would have a discriminatory impact on minority voters. But the career employees at the Department of Justice were overruled by the political appointees of the President and Alberto Gonzales.

One of these political appointees, Bradley Schlozman, was rewarded by receiving a U.S. attorney appointment in Kansas City, MO--job well done for Mr. Schlozman. He went to Kansas City and decided he would continue to pursue the Karl Rove strategy of voter fraud. By any objective measure, Mr. Schlozman was unqualified to be a U.S. attorney. As he testified earlier today at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Schlozman had never worked as a prosecutor and never even tried a case. But by embracing this phantom voter strategy of Karl Rove in Georgia, Mr. Schlozman earned his stripes and was promoted. In the eyes of Karl Rove, Kyle Sampson, and Monica Goodling, he was a ``loyal Bushie.''

I was proud to cosponsor a resolution in 2005 by my colleague, Senator Obama. The resolution condemned the Justice Department's approval of the Georgia photo ID law and expressed the sense of Congress that requiring a photo ID in order to vote places a discriminatory burden on voting rights. The McConnell amendment is an attempt to impose the Georgia photo ID law on America. This measure was debated and defeated in 2002 when we enacted the Help America Vote Act. It should be defeated again now.

I realize the photo ID requirement was proposed a few years ago by a bipartisan commission. But since that commission report was issued, new research conducted for the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission has shown that photo ID requirements reduced turnout in the 2004 election by 3 percent. It showed that with voter ID requirements, Hispanics were 10 percent less likely to vote and African Americans 6 percent less likely. Is that what we should do in Congress--create barriers for minorities to vote?

The McConnell amendment is unfair and unconstitutional. I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

I yield the floor.

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