Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The racketeers will not like it, the antilabor extremists

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

the American people, and the overwhelmingly honest rank and

file union members, will benefit from this measure for many

years to come.

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

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

The bill which passed the Congress will not hurt honest

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

file members in the unions. Honest union leaders have nothing

to fear from this legislation. The corruption and

racketeering that have been revealed in the fields of both

labor and management made it imperative that some kind of

legislation be enacted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are lots more I can indicate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

Surely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amendment No. 3362

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

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

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

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

Amendment No. 3368

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield the floor at this time.

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

This is what the amendment says:

For purposes of this section, the term ``medically

inaccurate'' means information that is unsupported or

contradicted by peer-reviewed research by leading medical,

psychological, psychiatric, and public health publications,

organizations and agencies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam President, this was the amendment offered by Senator

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

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

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

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Madam President, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. I ask the Senator's attention to this request so we get it right.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set this pending amendment aside, then to turn to an amendment to be offered by the Senator from Louisiana, at which time we will have a time agreement of 10 minutes for Senator Vitter and 10 minutes for Senator Boxer on the Vitter amendment, at the end of which time the Senate will proceed to a vote on or in relation to, first, the Reid amendment; upon disposal of the Reid amendment, the Senate will then proceed to vote on or in relation to the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana; at the conclusion of that vote, that the Senate then proceed to a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions; and that no other amendments or intervening matter occur prior to these votes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through dramatic imagery, audio-visual technology and

immersive interactives, this exhibition tells the story of

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

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

impact of the Woodstock Festival today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The center's advertisement for the concert further states:

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

for a trip down memory lane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Madam President, I call up amendment No. 3356.

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

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

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

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

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

Amendment No. 3356 withdrawn

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

Mr. President, I intend to speak after Senator Schumer speaks as well.

Mr. President, we heard Senator Kyl talk about the problem. The Woodstock Museum is not the problem; it is a symbol of the problem. Alan Gerry has done great things for the State of New York. He should be praised for what he has done. This isn't an attack on him. This is an attack on the process--the process where we inappropriately send money back on the basis not of priority but on the basis of a low- priority need.

Now, there was a historian by the name of Alexander Tyler. These words are attributed to him. Nobody can say for sure he is the author of them, but they bear a very important lesson for us. He wrote about the Athenian Empire which had collapsed, and he was writing this about the time that our Founders were writing our institutional documents. Here is what he said: All democracies eventually fail. They fail because people learn that they can vote themselves money from the public Treasury. Consequently, they only vote for people in elected office who will return them money from the public Treasury. Consequently, all democracies fail over a fiscal collapse.

Now, is that where we are headed? Have we walked into the trap of history which talks about how every other democracy in the world has, in fact, failed over fiscal issues? They haven't failed over the principles of their democracy. They haven't failed over their freedom. They failed over the financial collapse of their system because the political class used public monies to pay off private citizens.

This is a symbolic vote. It is not about going after Senator Schumer or Senator Clinton and this earmark. I have been going after Republican and Democratic earmarks for 2\1/2\ years. But this is a great example. I am part of the hippie generation. I was a junior in college when Woodstock occurred. It may be great for upstate New York to empower and have this as an economic development tool. It is certainly a part of our history and ought to be remembered. There is no question about it. But the question is, should this be a priority for this body over the priority of women and children, of maternal-child health, which isn't funded adequately in this country? Should we fund $1 million to a worthwhile project but low priority? That is the question. It is not about whether great things have been done in this area or whether great things can continue to be done.

New York has a $1.6 billion surplus right now. If this is great, why shouldn't the State of New York fund it more, this $1 million? We have, according to the latest estimate if you use Enron accounting, a $160 million deficit. If you use real accounting, it is going to be about a $300 billion deficit. So why should we put the credit card in and charge another $1 million to our kids for something that is low priority? If we are going to charge another $1 million to our kids, why don't we do it for the kids, for maternal and child health? We will earn the 11 percent if we reject this amendment.

The problem is, this is a good thing to do. Senators have a right to do it. We know that. Even though, I disagree that, before we fix the major financial problems that face our country, we shouldn't be sending money home. I am in the minority on that issue. I understand that. You are not bad if you disagree with me. But according to the American public, you don't agree with them either because 85 percent of the American people in the latest poll think we ought to eliminate all earmarks until we get our house in order.

The question is, how will they ever trust us to fix Medicare or Social Security if they can't trust us on these small things? And they can't. We can't help ourselves. Surely, $1 million for a Woodstock museum and performance center is not a priority for this country at this time.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would ask to modify that time on the provision that we be finished this debate. In other words, that being the first order of business after we finish this debate rather than setting a fixed time because I am not sure we will be through at 12:30. If the Senator would care to modify, so that at 12:30, or the soonest thereafter we finish this debate, I would be more than happy to agree.

I guess we can do that. I would do that if that is what you want to do. I would love for us to finish this before the vote.

Is that OK with my colleague?

Then I think we should be finished. I have no objection to the original request.

Mr. President, so here we have a bill, the Labor-HHS bill, and it has over $400 million in earmarks--some good, some priority, some are high priority, probably should be there, but many are not high priority.

When are we going to do what the American family has to do every year? What they have to do is say: Here is how much money we have coming in. Here is what we have needs for, and here is what we have available. What they do is make choices based on priorities. This debate is about making choices. If we had different rules, this debate would have been eliminating the earmark plainly, and several others. But because of the Senate rules, the money is going to be spent, so we have to figure out a higher priority place to spend it, and maternal and child health is certainly the place to do it.

The real question the American people are asking us, the 89 percent of the American people who don't have confidence in this institution are asking us is, when are we going to get it? When are we going to start doing what they want us to do? When are we going to start playing for them and their future, rather than playing for us and our future? That is the real question.

There is no question that the desirability of what this earmark supports is probably great. I don't have any problems with it. What I have a problem with is that we have a $9 trillion debt.

This Senator has never voted to raise the debt limit. We just raised the debt limit $850 billion, to almost $10 trillion, because we can't control ourselves.

So the question before us isn't whether this is good or bad. The question is, when are we going to change our behavior? When are we going to start doing $1 million here and $1 million here, up to $398,584,000 worth of earmarks in a bill? That is the question. This isn't conservatives who are asking this question; it is liberal Democrats; it is Independents; it is conservatives, because they know, in fact, this Government can run better, more efficiently, with less money than what we are doing now, if, in fact, we will stand up and do the oversight work we ought to be doing. But we refuse to do that.

So the vote will come. We will have a vote. If we don't enhance this amendment and pass it, we will go from 11 percent to 10.95 percent because, in fact, the American people will see, again, that we don't get it. We don't have to live by the rules they live by.

The tragedy is, in this bill, the Labor-HHS bill to help those most dependent in America, we are going to take money in the future from those who we are saying we are giving to now, through a decreased standard of living or an increased tax rate. If you don't believe that, read David Walker, the Comptroller General's report about what is getting ready to happen to us as a nation in terms of our finances, or read Peter Peterson's book, ``Running On Empty,'' about what is going to happen to us. Why in the world is the Euro at $1.42 when it was 83 cents 3\1/2\ years ago? Why is that? Is there a beckoning call about our financial condition that the world financial markets recognize, and yet we refuse to pay attention to?

So I call on my colleagues. This isn't a partisan amendment. I have gone after just as many Republican amendments--as a matter of fact, one of the amendments I am going to be offering today goes after a Republican amendment. I also plan on offering an amendment to get rid of all earmarks in this bill before we finish this bill. So we will get to see whether this body gets it, whether the 80 percent to 85 percent of Americans who want us to change our behavior have any influence on us whatsoever. Will we listen?

There is a rumble. I said this a year and a half ago. There is a rumble in America, and the rumble is this: We don't have confidence in our Government anymore. Where is the legitimacy of our Government when our own people don't have confidence in us? It is a great question to ask about the

greatest Republic that there ever was. It is a problem we need to be about solving rather than ignoring.

With that, I yield for the moment.

Will the Senator yield?

Can the Senator recall a time that I voted for a tax cut?

As a matter of fact, my public statements are that there should be no tax cuts unless you do spending cuts to pay for them.

I appreciate that.

Mr. President, I have a couple points as to Senator Schumer's statement. First, with an unemployment rate six-tenths percent lower than the national average and lower than New York's average, by the way--lower than New York's average--it is hardly in the dire consequences of what we see around the rest of the country.

The second point is, we have 60-some million dollars out there for competitive grant competition on museums for which the museum administration does a great job. In other words, everybody in the country who wants to have a museum has to compete against everybody else, and the ones who are most meritorious--by the way, they are also audited to see that the money is actually spent in a proper way; this will never be audited--they have to compete.

The major problem with Senator Schumer's argument is that Sullivan County can never be healthy if the country as a whole is not healthy. That is the problem with the argument. We can say we want to make XYZ healthy. It is akin to saying your finger is healthy when you are having a heart attack.

The fact is, the country as a whole is at the precipice--D day comes January 1, 2008. That is the demographic day on which all the baby boomers, the ``Woodstockers'' start taking Social Security, and 3 years later they start taking Medicare, $79 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. How in the world can the American people ever trust us to fix those big problems if we don't even get it on the small problems?

If this is a great idea, put it into the competition on competitive grants for museums. To say they are in hardship with an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent compared to the rest of New York and the rest of the country, that is hard to believe.

Again, we have to start listening to the rumble in America that says start being good stewards with our money, quit doing things that help you as politicians that hurt us as a country.

The fact is, although this may be very worthy, why shouldn't it have to compete against everybody else in the country who wants a museum? Why shouldn't it have to compete? Why is it that I can pick out and place--and I guess I am one of the derelict Senators because I don't believe Oklahoma can be healthy if our country isn't healthy. I believe Oklahoma will ultimately fail if our country fails. I believe that future generations will live a less standard of living with less opportunity and ultimately less freedom if we don't solve the financial problems in front of us as a nation.

This is a symptom of our sickness, and until we reject and get rid of this disease of parochialism and start fulfilling our oath--do you realize the oath we take when we come to the Senate never mentions our State? It says you will uphold the Constitution of these United States--these United States, all of us. So the will and the best well- being of all of us as a country has to be our most important goal.

Alexander Tyler will be right about us if we don't wake up and change what we are doing. We will collapse under our own fiscal insanity if we continue to do these things.

Senator Schumer is a great Senator for the State of New York, there is no question about it. He is going to fight and defend this old way of parochialism. He is going to fight and defend it until we as a country collapse. That is why we have an 11-percent confidence rating. We are collapsing already in terms of our real duty to build confidence, that we are looking out for the country as a whole, not for our own political careers or not for local parochial interests. That is why the Senate was created. It wasn't for parochial interests. If you read the Founders' writings, they never thought about the Senate being considered anything other than a body that looked at the long term, ensure the future, create opportunities, and protect the liberty, and we fall away from that as we go through this process.

Mr. President, I know we have a unanimous consent agreement. I ask that all the Members of this body read Comptroller General David Walker's report about what is getting ready to happen to us and read former Secretary Peter Peterson's book ``Running on Empty'' and what they will see is not a pretty picture.

The time to diagnose the disease is now, not when we are in ICU and we could have prevented it.

I yield the floor. I thank my colleagues for their debate.

Mr. President, does my colleague from Oklahoma intend to speak on this amendment? Then I would like to speak after both my colleagues have spoken and respond to what they have to say.

I only intend to speak for 5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to make a few comments. First, I would like to say this: I have tremendous respect for my colleague, and I would say friend, from Oklahoma. I don't think he does this out of any personal animus or even a direct, crass political advantage. I think he believes, and I respect that. So I would like to say that at the outset, and I say the same for my friend from Arizona. They have both been consistent in this, and they don't put in--even though their States do get earmarks, even earmarks for museums, it is not the wish of the Senator from Oklahoma or the Senator from Arizona to do that. That is point 1.

Point 2, generally, about fiscal responsibility, I would say both of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, like so many others, have voted pretty strongly against spending programs. But they don't vote the same way against tax cuts. They don't do pay-go on tax cuts. They vote to cut taxes much more than all of the earmarks in this entire bill, even though it makes the deficit worse, even though it is a fact that our children will suffer because of the debt.

So there is no high moral ground here. There is a view as to how big Government ought to be, but the idea of keeping the budget balanced for our children and for our grandchildren, I daresay, this new Congress, under Democratic leadership, is toeing the mark far more carefully than previous Congresses did. We have instituted pay-go--pay-go for tax cuts, but pay-go for spending programs as well.

Any economist will tell you, if you have a large deficit, it doesn't matter whether the deficit was caused by either reducing taxes or by raising spending. So, frankly, I think the arguments of my colleagues would have a great deal more suasion in this body if they were to say they will not vote for any tax cut that is not paid for either because what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

If you wish to say I am for shrinking Government and I don't care what the deficit is, that is just fine. But if you are making the argument that we should not pass debt on to our children, debt from tax cuts and debt from spending programs is exactly the same debt.

Yes.

I don't know offhand.

I respect my colleague for that. But the Senator from Arizona--I know of his record longer, and he does not have that record.

I appreciate that, and I look forward, when tax-cutting amendments come to the floor, to working with my colleague to say they ought to be paid for if we are going to do it, like we did, for instance, in the recent SCHIP bill.

I will make a second general point, and I will get to the specifics of this program. There are many needs in this country, and this country has always been one of federalism. Most of our time, effort, and energy goes into broad programs that basically do the same thing in Oklahoma, Arizona, and New York--whether it is helping pregnant women, whether it is education, or whether it is road building. Those are large national needs that this body has determined are real. But we have always had a view that States and localities are important.

Frankly, since the 1930s, there has been a view that the Federal Government has every right or reason to help those States and localities specifically, and that is what good earmarks are. Earmarks are not all good. Spending programs are not all good. Tax cuts are not all good. Each of them can be aimed at a specific place. Each of them can be aimed for the wrong reason. But I am proud of the earmarks I have put in the bills that we have had this year and in previous years. I am proud to defend them and I am glad we are having this debate. I do believe there is a balance, and I don't believe saying every program the Federal Government does ought to be just aimed across the country because Sullivan County in upstate New York, in the Catskill Mountains, is quite different from the county that surrounds Tulsa, OK, or the Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona.

Yes, there should be a balance. To me, the balance in this bill--and the overwhelming majority are for broad Federal programs, but a certain amount are designated for earmarks--makes sense. Now, obviously, if you are putting an earmark in for something out of your State, or for the wrong reason, that is wrong. But let me tell you, if you go to Sullivan County, NY--and I appreciate that my colleague from Oklahoma has conceded this is a good program; he just doesn't think the Federal Government ought to spend for it. But I appreciate that because if you go to Sullivan County, NY, it is the place where the Catskills are. Until about 1950, the area boomed. Then the airplane boom hit and all the people from New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston who vacationed there started getting on airplanes and going to Florida, the Bahamas, California, and now Arizona to vacation. So Sullivan County became one of the poorest areas in our State. You drive up there, and you will see, from the Old Glory days, the great hotels that are boarded up. You will see the little bungalow colonies that people used to go to, which are now decrepid. I have been there many a time. I was there as a kid. I went to summer camp in the Catskills across the river in Pennsylvania. I would go there, of course, as a Senator frequently. It is an area that needs help.

When you ask the people what is the No. 1 thing they need, it is jobs. In this bill, we talk about jobs, no question. But I daresay the people of Sullivan County--the economic development experts, the town and local officials--have a better idea of what would create jobs in Sullivan County than the Senator from Oklahoma or the Senator from Arizona and, quite frankly, the Senator from New York. They are there, they know it. They live on the ground. They are the ones who see their children unable to get work. They are the ones who have seen and remember the older once great days, and now the decline, and they are desperate to try to restore some of the jobs so their children won't have to go away.

This Bethel Center for the Performing Arts was one of the two economic development projects that Sullivan County put at the top of its list, the other one being a racetrack, remaking the old Monticello Raceway to help with gambling, which is still pending in the Department of the Interior, where the Secretary, from Idaho, who doesn't seem to have a real understanding of the need, says it is an out-of-State tribe and we don't want to do it.

A job training program will be very nice, but it would not help Sullivan County to a large extent. All of the other large Federal programs we fund in this bill will not help Sullivan County. The people of Sullivan County, as well as the people in the rest of New York, who elected myself and Senator Clinton to try to help them with their specific needs, as well as make the country a better place--we don't tell them what is good for them. We make sure the money will be spent where it is supposed to be spent. But we defer to their decision. This was their decision. A lot of other things in Sullivan County might have needed specific help, but this was their decision. It is a good decision.

I believe--and this is where, I suppose, my colleague and I have a difference--that the Federal Government should play a role. Being a U.S. Senator means making the big, broad national policies for this country, and it means helping the Sullivan Counties of each of our States. I argue that a Senator who doesn't do that is derelict in his or her responsibilities to their State. So I am proud of this earmark. It is the right type of earmark.

My colleague mentioned the State government and why doesn't the State do it. The State has put $15 million into this. The local county officials have clamored for this for years. There was a previous earmark put in by Congressman Hinchey in the House of Representatives to help build a road. It is

a whole performing arts center at Bethel, not just a museum, but it is about $100 million. We hear about State and private partnerships, and this is one of them. The locality and the State are putting far more money into it than Washington. So both the State and the county and the town of Bethel have stepped up to the plate. They are not just asking the Federal Government for something they would not spend money for.

Every one of our counties has a need like this. If we are going to let a broad-brushed argument that there should be no earmarks stand-- none--we are not going to be able to help these specific needs. I am proud to do it. I spend some time doing it, and I am going to continue to do it. I think it is part of my job. I think the people of Sullivan County and the people of New York State and the people of the United States would agree with that when told the facts of this particular situation and a little history of Sullivan County, which I have just outlined.

So I hope my colleagues will vote against this amendment because this is, as my colleague from Oklahoma says, a worthy project, and most of them are--not all. I have great respect for my two colleagues on the Senate floor. I don't think they are motivated by anything other than the best of intentions. Most of my colleagues believe they want to help out the Sullivan Counties, and we should be getting at the deficit. But the right way to do it is to put in pay-go across the board, not tie our hands and eliminate one specific type of program.

I want to review a little about the Bethel Museum in Sullivan County. It is a museum that not just covers Woodstock in the late 1960s, but it covers a whole post-World War II period, focusing on the sixties. It was a tumultuous decade, and it is a good idea to study it. Museums and libraries are a very important part of our history and education, as well as a job magnet. I don't think there is a debate that they are important. They have broad-brushed Federal programs that help libraries and museums. So that is not the argument.

Most important, it is an economic engine, as important as an economic engine might be in southeast Oklahoma, in the Indian country of Arizona, or the mountains of Montana, and it is what the two Senators-- Senator Clinton and I--in listening to the needs of Sullivan County and the people of Sullivan County, the elected officials there and the Chamber of Commerce have said they need most of all.

I hope my colleagues will support us and vote down this amendment because when they vote down this amendment, they are standing up for the other role we have in the Senate: to help our communities in the way they believe is best, not the way Washington dictates is best.

Madam President, this is the largest economic development program in one of our poorest counties. It is the Bethel Performing Arts Center. It is a large complex. It is a $100 million program. Madam President, $85 million has been donated by a major philanthropist. The State has put in close to $14 million. This is our $1 million.

Every one of you has a poor county. They have gotten together, and this is their economic development project. It is not just a museum; it is a whole complex devoted to history in America from 1945 through to the present.

If you believe in helping counties, if you believe every one of us wants the Federal Government not to just pass broad-brushed programs but to help individual needs in our States--this one coming from the leaders who have spent years and years in the Catskills to try to bring that area back--this is the project.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Madam President, I move to table amendment No. 3321 and ask for the yeas and nays.