Interoperable Emergency Communications Act

Mr. President, with the authority of the Homeland Security and the Governmental Affairs Committee--that is, the consent of a majority of the Members--I now withdraw the committee-reported substitute amendment.

Mr. President, while the two leaders are here, I want to thank Senator Reid for designating this urgent legislation which would implement the previously unimplemented or inadequately implemented recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. I also thank Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, for his cooperation and consent to moving this forward quickly on the Senate floor.

This bipartisan cooperation, obviously, is justified by the subject matter, homeland security, and in that regard I want to thank, again, Senator Collins. We switched titles in this session of Congress, but as I said to her when that happened, nothing else will change but our titles. She has been a wonderful partner and coworker on this measure once again, and it is in that spirit that we invite amendments, as Senator Reid said, from our colleagues who may think that, as good as the bill is, it could be better, and we urge them to come forward quickly.

In our committee, only one amendment was divided on a party-line vote. The rest were totally nonpartisan, and I hope that is generally the way things will go on the Senate floor as we consider the amendments brought forth.

Yesterday, to expedite matters, Senator Collins and I both made our opening statements, so we do not have those opening statements now. Therefore, we look forward to the Senator from California coming to the floor as soon as she can to offer an amendment, which I note will concern visa waiver sections of the measure. Senator Collins has another amendment which we will go to if Senator Feinstein does not come soon.

I thank the Chair and, for the moment, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, I call up amendment No. 271.

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

Mr. President, there are discussions going on between the Senator from California and others to answer a question or two about the amendment, so for the moment we are going to leave it pending, and I yield for my colleague from Maine.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Parliamentary inquiry: Am I correct that the Feinstein amendment, No. 271, is the pending business?

I have been informed the questions one Member was raising about the amendment of Senator Feinstein have been resolved. I now urge we adopt the amendment.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

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

Madam President, I thank Senator Inouye for his extraordinary leadership in these matters. The committees have differing jurisdictions, all aimed at supporting homeland security. The Commerce Committee sections we are proud to have put together with the parts that came out of the Homeland Security Committee, as well as parts that came out of the Banking Committee.

It is always an honor and pleasure to work with Senator Inouye. I thank him for the contributions he and Senator Stevens and their committee have made to the overall movement in the Senate to improve our homeland security. I thank the Senator very much.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I yield to the Senator from South Carolina, who has come to the floor to offer an amendment.

Mr. President, I thank our friend from South Carolina for the amendment he has offered. We worked together when last this subject came before the Senate to bring about a result that I believe was a good one and in the public interest, which was that the Secretary of Homeland Security issued regulations to create an identity card. The card has a marvelous acronym, which doesn't sound as serious as it is. The acronym is TWIC, transportation worker identification card. This is one of the necessities of the post-9/11 age, that we need to move toward some filter for people working in areas that now have become higher vulnerability areas and are more likely targets for terrorism. Unfortunately, that includes our ports and, obviously, includes our airports as well, which have a separate ID program on which they are working.

I know there is some hope within the Department of Homeland Security that we are moving toward a more common program for a similar background check and card for postal workers at a host of different transportation-related locations to protect them and us from potential terrorist attacks.

Senator DeMint, I gather from his statement--and I appreciate his intentions here--intends by this amendment to codify in law the regulations the Department of Homeland Security has established for these identification cards for workers at our ports. I want to take a look at it. I know Senator Collins does as well. We want to work with Senator DeMint.

Clearly, the intention here is one we all share, which is to do everything we can, within reason and respectful of common sense and constitutional rights, to secure our critical transportation facilities, including our ports. I rise now to simply thank the Senator for offering his amendment, to tell him we will consider it with some thoughtfulness and look forward to working with him as we move toward a vote on this amendment.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about two parts of the bill that is before us, the Improving America's Security Act, which is really the attempt by our committee and the Senate to finish the job the 9/11 Commission gave us to protect the security of the American people from terrorist attack and also to adopt for the first time a national all-hazards defense strategy that would set up a system that would not only be aimed at preventing and, if, God forbid, necessary, responding to a terrorist attack but

also being ready and preparing every level of government to be ready to respond to a natural disaster.

The amendment offered by the Senator from South Carolina is pending. I wanted, in the interim, hoping others will come to the floor to offer other amendments or speak on that pending amendment, to speak about these two parts of the bill.

The first is about what is one of the most significant changes the bill would make; that is, to establish for the first time a dedicated grant program to assist States and localities in creating interoperable communications systems to be used to protect the American people in time of emergency. The ability of first responders to communicate with one another is fundamental at a time of disaster. Yet time and time again over the years, disasters have occurred, and police, firefighters, and emergency medical workers are unable to exchange critical information with one another, even indications of their location. Sometimes, as we saw in Katrina, certainly, not only is this a problem of their not being able to communicate with one another, it is a problem of their not being able to communicate at all. There is a painful and tragic cost to this failure to communicate or to interoperate with others in law enforcement, and that is that lives are lost.

This is a problem which was intensely made clear to all of us on September 11, 2001 and again during Katrina, but it is not new. In 1982, the record shows, communications difficulties frustrated the recovery efforts in response to the crash of the Air Florida plane right here in Washington, DC. In 1995, again the record shows communications difficulties complicated the response to the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK. In 1999, communications difficulties again slowed the response to the shootings at Columbine High School near Littleton, CO.

Then came 9/11. The story of the communication breakdown among New York City's first responders is well known. It is well known because it cost the lives of some of the bravest Americans, some on duty and some off duty, who rushed to the aid of their fellow citizens and fellow first responders. But there were other communications breakdowns on September 11, 2001, as well--less well known but also breakdowns that hampered the response at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA.

After an in-depth look at the three incidents I have described--the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and the plane that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11--the 9/11 Commission wrote:

The occurrence of this problem at three very different

sites is strong evidence that compatible and adequate

communications among public safety organizations at the

local, State, and Federal level remains an important problem.

That was the 9/11 Report which came out in 2004. We are now at the end of February 2007, and that problem remains as real and intense as ever.

The Commission recommended expediting and increasing the assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes. In 2005, as part of the Deficit Reduction Act, Congress set February 2009 as the deadline for broadcasters to transition to digital signals, which will free up much- needed spectrum for first responders. A lot of us, including myself, believed that delay to February 2009 was too long. The occupant of the chair remembers that well; we stood together on that. But so be it, that is what it is.

Since that time, Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast, particularly the great city of New Orleans, and reminded us again how much more needs to be done to improve communications operability, to sustain the very operation of an emergency communications system, and interoperability, the ability of different first responders to communicate with one another.

The communications infrastructure in Louisiana and Mississippi at the time of Hurricane Katrina was decimated. Once again, difficulties in communicating among officials and first responders significantly impeded rescue and relief efforts. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour drove the point home when he said the chief of the National Guard in Mississippi ``might as well have been a Civil War general for the first 2 or 3 days'' because in order to get information, he had to use runners. His runners had helicopters instead of horses, but the point was clear. The lack of operable or interoperable communications equipment put first responders in that disaster back about a century and a half.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is proud to claim the Presiding Officer as a member, investigated the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina, a 9-month investigation that produced a 700-page report and almost 90 recommendations. We enacted some of those recommendations last fall as part of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act. That legislation, which I am proud has largely become law, included ways to improve planning and coordination, establish a much needed national emergency communications plan, and strengthen technical guidance and assistance to local first responders. The newly created Office of Emergency Communications, which was created therein, will be responsible for carrying out many of those responsibilities. Like many of the homeland security challenges we face, achieving nationwide operability and interoperability of communications will require significant resources, a lot of money. One estimate from our Government several years ago put the figure at $15 billion. Testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee this past month estimated that the cost may be as high as $50 billion to create a genuinely interoperable, disaster-resistant communications system for our country. We don't know the exact price tag, but we do know the costs will be significant. We do know they are beyond the ability of State and local government themselves to provide. That is why title III of the legislation before the Senate, the Improving America's Security Act, establishes a dedicated interoperability grant program for first responders which will put us on the path to nationwide operability and interoperability, capable of surviving and helping America survive a potential terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

This is an important investment, a kind of leverage for the Federal Government to create in partnership with the States and local governments. Of course, part of the reason there is not only financial need but programmatic policy justification for this. The kinds of attacks, the kinds of natural disasters we are talking about, as we saw most painfully in Katrina, have national consequences. The Federal Government needs to be there to make some additional investments on which the State and local governments will build.

The legislation, S. 4, before the Senate today authorizes $3.5 billion over 5 years, beginning in the coming fiscal year. That is on top of the $1 billion interoperability grant program to be administered by the Department of Commerce during this fiscal year, the result of previous legislation. This is the beginning of moving toward a genuine national system, if we can adopt this and fund it, a call to the States and localities to match that money, each in their own way, so we can build this survivable network of communications.

Individual States will be able to apply for grants under this new program, which will be administered by FEMA, with assistance from the Office of Emergency Communications. The committee was very anxious, as the Presiding Officer knows, to not only create a fund of money and throw it out there for every local official who had some idea about how to create interoperable communications--all applications will have to be consistent with each State's communications plan and the national emergency communication plan which is being developed and expanded by the new Office of Emergency Communications. In other words, to get money, you have to prove you are going to fit into a statewide and national plan for interoperability of communications.

Incidentally, the national element of this is pretty obvious. In Katrina, you had a lot of first responders streaming into the gulf coast, and New Orleans particularly, when local first responders were overwhelmed. They were all bringing their own communications systems with them. A similar response occurred--a really moving patriotic response--after 9/11 to New York City, with first responders from all over the country coming in.

What do we want at that point? A Tower of Babel, where people cannot communicate with one another, or the ability, easily, as part of a national communications plan, to do so? Obviously, the latter is what we want.

States, incidentally, which would be the recipients of this money, would be required to pass at least 80 percent of the grant funding to local and tribal governments. The money could then be used for a range of activities: planning, system design, engineering, training, exercises, procurement, and installation.

We also include a minimum amount of funding for each State because interoperability is an all-hazards concern. In other words, we are having a well-intentioned, good-faith debate about homeland security grants and to what extent--as some would say--should they all be distributed based on risk or be distributed with a minimum amount going to each State?

In this case of interoperability of communications, it seems to me the argument is compelling there ought to be some element that gives a minimum to each State because what we are trying to establish is a national emergency communications system that will be ready to respond not just to a potential terrorist attack, but to natural disasters which, obviously, can occur anywhere in the country. In other words, the ability for first responders and other emergency responders to communicate with one another, either by voice or through data sharing, is necessary regardless of the nature of the emergency.

In short, we owe it to the memory of the firefighters and police officers who gave their lives on 9/11, some of whom lost their lives because of the absence of interoperable communications, and to the commitment of first responders who struggled under such adverse circumstances to do their jobs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and to first responders and emergency managers today all across our country who are ready to respond in the time of our need to pass this legislation, to provide the funding necessary for this critical effort, and to move the Nation's first responders toward real 21st century operable and interoperable communications in the face of disaster.

I have one more topic I want to discuss at this time. The one I have just talked about--a dedicated fund for interoperable communications--I think is one of the most significant parts of the bill. It is the beginning of a transformational partnership between the Federal, State, local, and tribal governments that I am convinced will have a measurable, significant effect on the security of the American people.

This next topic I want to talk about has to do with a provision in the committee bill which extends employee rights and protections to airport screeners who work for the Transportation Security Administration. Frankly, I do not consider this to be a major part of the bill. To me, it is correcting an inequity that exists in current law. I honestly do not know why anybody would oppose it. I will listen to the arguments, but I want to contrast it with the section I just described, because if the last 24 hours are any indication, this section may receive more attention than any other section of the bill. The White House has indicated it will veto the bill if this section is in it. I respectfully do not understand that.

Colleagues, I know, are preparing to come to the floor to try to strike this section from the bill. I think this section is an act of elemental fairness, granting quite limited employee rights to airport screeners who are now denied--I am using this term beyond its judicial meaning--equal protection that is enjoyed by most every other Federal employee, including most every other Federal employee involved in security.

So I hope, one, we do not spend a disproportionate amount of time on this section; and, two, we do not allow it to get in the way of us fulfilling our urgent responsibility to finish the job of enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which S. 4, the legislation before us, would do.

I wish to spend a few moments talking about this section of the bill. The fact is, since the Transportation Security Administration was created in 2001, TSA screeners have been denied the same employment rights and protections as almost all of their fellow workers in TSA. In fact, they have been denied the same rights and protections that are enjoyed by most of their fellow employees at the Department of Homeland Security, such as the Border Patrol and Customs and Immigration officers.

TSA screeners--often also known as TSOs, transportation security officers--are familiar to most Americans because we see them at every airport across our country. Thanks, in part, I believe to their hard work and diligence, we have been spared a repeat of September 11, and air travel generally is safer than it was before that day.

They deserve to be treated equally in their employment rights. It is long past time to provide the same protections to TSA screeners as are enjoyed by their colleagues.

I wish to take just a moment to review the history of how this inequality came to exist. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Congress federalized the work of passenger and baggage screeners at U.S. airports. TSA was created within the Department of Transportation. It was subject generally to the same personnel rules as the Federal Aviation Administration. Responding to the sense of emergency at the time, however--remember, this was right after 9/11--Congress gave the head of TSA broad authority to set personnel rules at his own discretion for airport screeners.

In 2002, when Congress established the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate and strengthen our defenses against manmade and natural disasters, TSA was removed from the Department of Transportation and put into the Department of Homeland Security.

At that time, Congress engaged in extensive debate with quite serious partisan and political overtones about how to apply civil service law to employees at the new Department. This was an amalgam of 22 different agencies, almost 180,000 employees, most of whom were coming already with their own employee rights--their own rights--most particularly, to join a union.

Ultimately, and contrary to my own position, Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to waive certain provisions of civil service law which Congress and the President believed were necessary for national security purposes.

Meanwhile, since 2001, TSA has declared itself exempt from laws enforcing the most basic employee protections, including the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Rehabilitation Act protecting Federal employees with disabilities, the Federal Sector Labor-Management Relations statute, appeal of adverse personnel actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and veterans preference laws.

In each case, the Transportation Security Agency has devised its own version of these fundamental employee protections substantially below the standard that Congress and the President decided were appropriate generally for DHS employees.

So now you have this anomaly because of this unusual statutory history where TSA screeners have a much lower level of employee protection than most of the other employees at the Department of Homeland Security.

It is now 5 years after the agency was established, and TSA screeners still lack those basic rights that are available to their colleagues at DHS and throughout the Federal Government. That is exactly the inequity this small provision in this bill, S. 4, aims to overcome.

For example, TSA screeners have no individual right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board when they believe they have been subject to unlawful retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity. OK, this is exactly what we want employees of the Federal Government to do. They are our representatives. We are paying them. If they see something wrong going on, we want them to blow the whistle, and we do not want them to be punished as a result.

But under the current state of the law, TSA screeners do not have any right to an outside appeal when they believe they have been subject to unlawful retaliation because they blew the whistle on something or someone else they saw doing something they thought was wrong.

Second, TSA is not bound and the screeners are not protected by the Rehabilitation Act. So TSA is not bound

to make reasonable accommodations for a disabled screener still able to perform his duties. This is the basic mindset we have overcome in recent decades, that somebody who may be disabled in one way is--if I can make up a word--abled in many other ways and perhaps, therefore, able to carry out the responsibilities of a screener at one of the security checkpoints we have all gone through. We have all gone through them, so we know there are a number of those functions that could be performed by somebody who may have a disability. But there is no right to appeal if an employee, a screener, thinks they have been discriminated against based on that.

TSOs--that is, screeners--are allowed to join a union, but they cannot collectively bargain as other security forces at DHS and throughout the Federal Government can do. Nor can TSOs claim an unfair labor practice with the independent Federal Labor Relations Authority.

I want to stress something. Screeners at TSA can join a union. They cannot strike. There is nothing in this small provision in S. 4 that will give them the right to strike. There is nothing in this provision that will give them the right to strike. I fear people hearing about this provision may think we want to extend some employee rights to TSA screeners and may think, oh, my God, at a time of crisis these people will just walk off their jobs and strike. It is illegal. They cannot do it. It is the same limitation that is on Federal employees who have collective bargaining rights generally. It is just that these screeners have much less, many fewer rights than others do. They cannot claim an unfair labor practice with the independent Federal Labor Relations Authority.

Finally, unlike the rest of the Federal Government, TSA limits the veterans preference in hiring and other personnel decisions to veterans who retired from the Armed Services, and denies the preference to those who were honorably discharged. Of course, it is the vast majority of men and women who have served our country in uniform who are honorably discharged as opposed to serving until the time of their retirement. But they do not get any veterans preference in hiring and other personnel decisions at the TSA. Is that a big deal? It is if you are a veteran. One of the things this provision in this bill would say is that, the full veterans preference should apply for TSA screeners.

So that is the amendment we adopted, the literal effect of which is to instruct the Secretary of Homeland Security to include TSA screeners, either under the departmentwide human resources management system or under the specialized system that now applies to TSA employees other than the screeners, in the most specific way, which leaves no ground--no gaps for misunderstanding. Although there are people, I fear, who are misunderstanding or misstating it, this amendment simply and directly says that TSA screeners have to be included under the departmentwide DHS human resources management system, or under the specialized system that applies to TSA employees other than the screeners.

I know critics of this provision are arguing right now that TSA needs flexibility to manage the screener workforce in a way that provides security when, where, and how it is needed, such as when the threat level is raised, or when a new threat becomes evident, or when unexpected problems arise at a particular location so the Administrator of TSA would want to move screeners from one airport to another. This argument is not based on fact. The concerns are misplaced. The committee bill, in this small section, retains flexibility for the TSA Administrator to promptly redeploy employees, change their assignments, or otherwise respond to problems as they arise. The bill recognizes this is a department which has to have the flexibility, the management flexibility, to respond to emergencies. In granting these TSA screeners the same employee rights most everybody else within the Department, including people involved in border patrol, for instance, and other security functions, we retain nonetheless the flexibility of the administrator to redeploy his forces at a time of crisis.

There is another reason to do this, I believe, apart from equity, and that goes to the effectiveness of the TSA screeners and the Department of Homeland Security employees generally. Personnel management at TSA, the record will show, has been troubled since its inception. The record will show the agency has experienced unusually high rates of attrition--people leaving, unusually high rates of workplace injury, high rates of absenteeism, and other indications of low employee morale. Anybody in the private sector will tell you if you have high attrition, high workplace injury, absenteeism, and low morale, you have a problem, and the problem is going to mean the service you are intending to provide is not going to be what you want it to be.

I would say those problems interfere with establishing and maintaining the core of experienced and professional screeners we need, that the American people need to ensure aviation security. From conversations I have had with screeners, simply taking a step to put them on an equal plane with everybody else in TSA or DHS in terms of their employee rights will go a long way toward creating the kind of morale, devotion to work, and avoidance of workplace injury that will better serve our Nation. I know the Administrator of TSA, Kip Holley, has recently made some efforts to improve personnel management, but I believe they haven't gone far enough, and this amendment will take them a large step forward.

I want to say finally that when the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee marked up the bill, there was apparently a Transportation Security Agency screener by the name of A.J. Castilla who was there in the public section of the room. Later he wrote a note of thanks in which he said:

We TSOs aren't asking for special treatment, merely to be

made whole and equal again in the eyes of the law.

A.J. Castilla is committed to his job, is as committed as any other employee of the Department of Homeland Security or the Transportation Security Administration, and it is time to give him and every other TSA screener parity with those other Federal employees so that they may better do the critical work we ask and need them to do.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak at some length about these two provisions. Both are, I think, important. One is a dedicated grant program for interoperable communications that, as I said, I think will have a critical effect and I hope we will discuss the positive effect. The second, I am afraid, will be discussed more than it deserves. That provision is fair. It is simple equity. It treats working people with the fairness they deserve, and in fact will improve our security, not hamper it, as its critics say. I urge my colleagues to look at both carefully, and particularly when an amendment is offered, as I fear it will be, to strike the section that would correct the inequity now suffered by transportation screeners, when it comes to the floor, that my colleagues will come, will listen, and ultimately will vote to reject that amendment.

I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for the moment I am going to object on behalf of Senator Collins who is co-managing the bill with me because no one has looked at the amendment.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for his modification. We talked about this briefly. I think he is heading in the right direction. We are taking a look at the amendment as it is offered, and we look forward to working together. I think the purposes are very important.

I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, may I ask the Senator through the Chair, how much time does the Senator from South Carolina need?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator be given 4 minutes to speak.

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

Mr. 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.

Amendment No. 279, as Modified

Mr. President, I am prepared to yield back the time on our side and go right to the vote.

The proponent of the amendment is the Senator from South Carolina, and he has 1 minute to describe it, if he so chooses.

Mr. President, let me begin my comments this morning by commending the Senator from New Hampshire for his hard work and vigorous advocacy on this issue. He has been a very early voice, pointing out the unfairness of this unfunded mandate on the States, unfunded mandates that the National Governors Association estimates may cost $11 billion over the next 5 years. He has also raised very important concerns about the privacy implications of some of the provisions of the REAL ID Act.

He was a strong supporter of the approach that we took in 2004 as part of the Intelligence Reform Act when we set up a negotiated rulemaking process which would bring all of the stakeholders to the table--State governments, Federal agencies, privacy advocates, technological experts--and clearly that would have been a far better way to proceed. The Senator from New Hampshire is one of the Senate's foremost advocates for privacy. He has brought that issue up, and his concerns about privacy and civil liberties, on other legislation such as the PATRIOT Act that has been before the Senate. I thank him for his leadership on this important issue.

I do have some good news to report to my colleagues about the pending regulations for the REAL ID Act. As many of my colleagues are aware, one of the problems that the States have had is the Department of Homeland Security had yet to issue the regulations giving States the detailed guidance on how to comply with the REAL ID Act. This is a major problem for the States because of the looming deadline of May of next year by which time they are supposed to be in full compliance with the law, despite the fact that the regulations had not been issued. It was that concern, the long delay by the Department, the cost and the complexity of the task, and the privacy and civil liberty implications that led several of us to come together and offer an amendment that would have a 2-year delay in compliance with the REAL ID Act.

I am pleased to inform my colleagues that as the result of some rather spirited negotiations with the Department of Homeland Security that the Department will announce later today regulations that would give any State that asks an automatic, virtually, 2 years--it could be more than 2 years in some cases--but a 2-year delay in the requirement to comply with the REAL ID Act. This is significant progress. The Department has finally recognized that it simply was unfair to impose this burden on the States, to set such an unrealistic compliance date when the Department had failed to issue the regulations. So the Department will be announcing today that any State that seeks an additional 2 years to comply with the regulations will be granted that extension. This is major progress.

In addition, the Department will announce that it will reconvene the members of the negotiated rulemaking committee that was established by the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act and subsequently repealed by the REAL ID Act to come together and to comment on the Department's regulations. Again, this reflects a major principle in the Collins amendment: that we should have a 2-year delay to allow for additional compliance time but that we should also reconvene the negotiated rulemaking committee, the committee that is comprised of State officials--in fact, Maine's own secretary of state was one of the officials on the committee--and privacy experts, technological experts, all the stakeholders would be reconvened to formally review the proposed regulations and provide the Department with the benefit of this committee's insight.

That is what should have happened in the first place but, certainly, given where we are now, this is another very positive step that the Department is taking. It reflects the principles in the amendment that I and others offered yesterday. It is obvious that the pending amendment provided a great deal of impetus for the Department to undertake these revisions in the proposed regulations.

These two major concessions by the Department--the extension for compliance and the reconvening of the negotiated rulemaking committee-- are major steps forward, but they do not solve all of the issues and all of the problems with the REAL ID Act, the biggest of which is the huge cost of compliance. Along with Senator Alexander and others-- Senator Sununu, Senator Carper, Senator Akaka, and others who had been active on this issue--I am pledging today to continue to work very closely with our State leaders and with the Department of Homeland Security to calculate what the actual costs of compliance are going to be--that is going to be easier to do now that the regulations are finally being issued--and to work to try to find some funding to assist States with the cost of compliance.

To date, Congress has only appropriated about $40 million to help the States comply with the REAL ID Act, and the Department, I am told, has only allocated about $6 million of that $40 million. So there is some additional money in the pipeline, but if in fact the cost is as high as the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures estimate, that $40 million is a drop in the bucket. The 5- year cost estimated by the NGA is $11 billion. Clearly, if the costs do prove to be in that neighborhood, if they are that high, we have an obligation to come forward and assist the States in the cost of compliance. It can be a shared responsibility, but surely, since we imposed the mandate, we should be providing some of the funding that is needed.

I am very happy the amendment that I and several of our colleagues have offered has prompted the Department to take a second look at its regulations, to realize that it was simply unreasonable to expect the States to comply by May of next year when the Department has been so tardy in issuing the regulations. And I am pleased that the Department has changed its mind. I thank Secretary Chertoff for working closely with me and for listening to all of us who were raising these concerns--that it was simply unreasonable to expect States to be in full compliance by May of next year when they did not have the detailed guidance from the Department.

I am also very pleased the Department is going to reconvene the negotiated rulemaking committee members. That will give the Department further input and insights and improve the quality of the final regulations.

There is still much work to be done, particularly in the funding area, but this is certainly great progress, a welcome development, and a major step forward by the Department. I again thank Secretary Chertoff for working so closely with me.

Mr. President, I want to let the Senator from New Hampshire know we are reviewing his two amendments. Based on what he told me, I, too, am inclined to agree to them, and I will be working with the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from Connecticut to try to get the two amendments cleared.

I certainly appreciate, coming from a border State, the concerns the Senator from New Hampshire has about U.S.-Canadian issues that might affect interoperability of communications equipment. That has been an issue for us in Maine as well.

I look forward to working with him.

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

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

Mr. President, shortly, I am going to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the Collins amendment No. 277, which is cosponsored by Senators Alexander, Cantwell, Carper, Chambliss, Mikulski, Murkowski, and Snowe. It also has received support from Senator Sununu this morning, who was very eloquent in his comments about the implementation of the REAL ID Act.

I ask to withdraw my amendment in light of the tremendous progress we have been able to make with the Department of Homeland Security over the last 24 hours in convincing the Department to modify the regulations which it is releasing today to allow about 2 years of additional time for compliance with the REAL ID mandates and also to reconvene the negotiated rulemaking committee to take a look at those regulations and provide their insights and input to the Department so the Department can take them into account in issuing the final regulations.

Now, I consider this to be tremendous progress. It is a very welcomed development. The Department's actions reflect the two primary objectives I outlined yesterday for my amendment: first, to give the Federal Government and States the time and flexibility needed to come up with an effective system to provide secure driver's licenses without unduly burdening the States and, second, to involve experts from the States, from the technology industry, as well as privacy and civil liberty advocates--to bring them back to the table and give them a chance to work on these regulations and to improve them.

I am very pleased to say over the course of the past week our amendment has received a great deal of support from a number of sources. The National Governors Association praised our amendment for providing States:

a more workable time frame to comply with federal standards,

ensure necessary systems are operational and enhance the

input states and other stakeholders have in the

implementation process.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a letter to all Senators that was sent on February 27, said:

We strongly urge you to support an amendment offered by

Senator Collins that would delay implementation of

requirements under the REAL ID Act. . . .

The letter goes on to outline the organization's concerns about the costs to States, the capacity for States to meet the REAL ID requirements, and privacy issues and concludes:

The Collins amendment provides the opportunity to address

these matters.

Similarly, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the NCSL, with which we have worked very closely, in a statement on February 20, said this legislation would help ``address state concerns over the Real ID Act. . . .''

To this support has been added the voices of Senator Alexander, Senator Chambliss, Senator Sununu, and cosponsors on both sides of the aisle. One of the very first cosponsors is a former Governor who understands very well the implications for States of complying with the REAL ID Act. That individual is Senator Carper of Delaware.

So we have been able to build a broad bipartisan coalition, and that gave us the strength to prompt the Department of Homeland Security to make the changes as a result of recent, extended discussions with the Department. As a result, we can now say the primary concerns we have addressed with our amendment have been addressed in the Department's proposed regulations.

In the regulations being announced this morning, the Secretary of Homeland Security will commit to granting a waiver to any State that asks for it through December 31 of 2009. States will not be required to make a complicated case for the waiver. The Secretary has recognized the delay in the Department's promulgation of the draft regulations is reason enough to give States an additional 2 years before they need to begin producing REAL ID-

compliant driver's licenses. I am pleased the Department has taken this step.

In addition, the Department has agreed, as I have mentioned, to invite the members of the negotiated rulemaking committee--which was created by the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act, and subsequently repealed by the REAL ID Act, just when they were making great progress--to come to the Department and discuss, in person, their specific concerns about the regulations. The provisions announced today are in line with the need for more time and the inclusion of all interested parties that were the two primary goals of our amendment. These provisions, of course, are part of a much larger regulation that will take us time to review, to consult with the States on, and to comment on. I am going to follow closely the whole notice and comment period. I am sure I will be suggesting changes to the regulations, and I will be working closely with the negotiated rulemaking committee to make sure the regulations are modified further down the line.

I am under no illusions that there are not further issues which need to be addressed about the REAL ID Act. We must look closely at the concerns that privacy advocates have raised about potentially having interlocking databases among the States so that information is shared. There are a lot of questions, such as who would have access to that information, how secure it would be, and how correct it would be. There is a lot of work to be done.

Most of all, we need to get an accurate estimate of how much this program is going to cost the States and how we can help them bear those costs. This does remain a huge unfunded Federal mandate on our States. The NGA, as I have said several times, has estimated the cost at $11 billion over the next 5 years. That is an enormous burden for States to bear.

We also have to determine if the technological demands that will be imposed on States by these regulations are, in fact, feasible. But I am very pleased to note that our efforts with the Department have achieved the goals that we set out in offering our amendment. There is further work to be done on the REAL ID Act, but we certainly have made tremendous progress over the past 24 hours.

I thank all of the cosponsors of the bill: Senators Alexander, Carper, Cantwell, Chambliss, Snowe, Mikulski, and Murkowski for their strong, bipartisan support, and I thank all of the outside organizations, including the Governors and the State legislatures, who have worked so closely with us. I hope we will continue our partnership as we make real progress in improving the REAL ID Act.

Amendment No. 277 Withdrawn

Mr. President, at this time, recognizing the tremendous progress we have made, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 277 be withdrawn.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I ask that the Senator amend his unanimous consent request so we can go back and forth on his amendment. I suggest that after he speaks, I be recognized, then Senator Menendez, then Senator Coleman, and that we go back and forth on the amendment.

Madam President, if we could withhold the request for a quorum, I thank the Senator from New York for his cooperation in this matter. I know the Senator from Connecticut is on his way.

Mr. President, first, let me thank the Senator from Minnesota for his excellent statement. He has spent a great deal of time on this issue as the former chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He examined our ports very closely. He helped draft the port security bill we passed last year. I hope my colleagues will listen to his advice on this issue.

Mr. President, 100 percent screening, that sounds like a great slogan. After all, who could be against scanning 11 million containers?

Let's look at what that would involve. The fact is we need to concentrate our resources on containers that pose a real threat, on containers and cargo that are at highest risk. It doesn't make sense to try to inspect everything, and it has extraordinarily negative consequences for our system of international trade.

I rise to oppose Senator Schumer's amendment that would require scanning of all cargo containers entering the United States from large foreign ports within 3 years, and containers from all 700 foreign ports in 5 years. This approach patently ignores the technological limitations on integrated scanning systems that are necessary to scan 100-percent of containers. It irrationally assumes that integrated scanning systems will be practical and cost-effective and work well in only 3 years. I hope they will be, and I will talk about the pilot programs we have underway to see or to test the feasibility.

But the costs of being wrong on this assumption are too high for our economy, as so much of our international trade relies on cargo container traffic. Think of how many companies rely on just-in-time inventory. Think of how many businesses all across this country receive cargo. We need a system that makes sense.

The fact is there are substantial technological challenges to scanning 100 percent of cargo containers at foreign ports. I traveled to Seattle, Long Beach, and Los Angeles to look at the ports and see their operations. I think anyone who does that quickly reaches the conclusion Senator Murray and I have reached, which is this cannot work. If you look at how at-risk cargo is scanned, it takes time to unload the container, separate it from the rest of the cargo; it takes a few minutes to scan each container as this giant x-ray-like machine goes around the container. Then the analysis of the images can take several more minutes.

Think about this. We have 11 million containers headed to the United States; that is in a year's time. That is going up each year. When I first started working on port security legislation, it was only 8 million. Now it is 11 million containers. Well, think of the delays that would be caused by scanning each and every container. It would create a massive backlog of cargo at our ports and it would not make us safer.

There are other problems as well. Current radiation scanning technology produces alarm rates of about 1 percent--almost entirely from naturally occurring substances in containers. Actually, when I was in Seattle with Senator Murray, we were told that, for some reason, marble and kitty litter seemed to trigger false alarms. So obtaining enough foreign government and DHS personnel to conduct inspections of all those false alarms would be expensive. It is far better to concentrate on containers that, because of the cargo or because of other indicators through the sophisticated system used to identify at- risk cargo, warrant that kind of inspection. There would also be a requirement for extensive negotiations with foreign governments to agree on the deployment of scanning technologies, the protocol for inspecting containers that set off alarms, and stationing customs and border protection inspectors in their ports. Foreign governments would probably turn around and say: If you are going to scan all of the containers coming into America, we are going to scan all of your containers coming into our country. That would multiply the costs and the impact.

Requiring all containers to be scanned and the images reviewed without adequate technology in place would make our country less safe, not more safe. The approach in this amendment would unwisely waste scarce resources on inspecting completely safe cargo instead of targeting personnel and equipment on the cargo that presents a threat to our country and the greatest risk.

The Homeland Security Committee spent a great deal of time last year on port security legislation, and we drafted a bill, brought it unanimously to the Senate floor, had extensive debates in September, and we debated this very issue at that time. Why we are revisiting it just a few months later is beyond me, but here we are.

This amendment wholly ignores the pilot projects that were established by the SAFE Port Act which we passed last year. These pilot projects are intended to test the technology to see if there is a way to increase scanning. The technology is changing. It is getting better. This may be feasible at some point, but it is not today.

The SAFE Port Act requires the Department of Homeland Security to test scanning in three foreign ports, and the Department is proceeding very rapidly to follow the instructions. It is going to be implemented in ports in Pakistan, Honduras, and the United Kingdom. These pilot projects will involve radiation scanning and x-ray or a nonintrusive imaging scanning that will then be reviewed by American employees, American officials. If these pilots are successful, then we will begin to expand the equipment and the personnel. But the fact is that extensive research and development remains to be done on 100-percent scanning technologies and on infrastructure deployment at seaports.

Given the significant impact this requirement would have on our economy, it simply is not responsible to move to this requirement before we have the technology in place to make it feasible and before we have the results of these pilot projects. This isn't just my opinion. If one talks to port directors around the world and on both coasts of the United States, one will find that they believe we cannot do this in a practical way and that it would cause massive backlogs and delay the delivery of vital commodities. It would cause terrible problems for companies that rely on just-in-time inventory. That is why many shippers and importers oppose this amendment, as well as the Retail Industry Leaders Association, National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

So what do we do now? I think it is important for people to understand that we do have a good and improving system in place to secure our cargo. DHS has adopted a layered approach to cargo security that balances security interests against the need for efficient movement of millions of cargo containers each year.

One layer is the screening of all cargo manifests at least 24 hours before they are loaded onto ships. This screening is done through DHS's automated targeting system which identifies high-risk cargo and containers. This is a very important point. The SAFE Port Act, which is now in effect, requires 100 percent of all high-risk containers to be scanned or searched by Customs and Border Protection--100 percent. We found in our investigations that was not always the case, that high- risk containers that had been identified were, in some cases, loaded onto ships and reaching our shores. But the SAFE Port Act changes that. It ensures that 100 percent of high-risk containers will be scanned.

The scanning and inspection of certain high-risk containers is one of the first layers of this multilayered approach the Department uses to prevent

weapons of mass destruction or other dangerous cargo from entering the United States.

A second layer is the Container Security Initiative. This program stations Customs and Border Patrol officers--American Customs and Border Protection officers--at foreign ports. The concept here is to push back our shores. The more we can do these reviews overseas rather than waiting for dangerous cargo to come to our shores, the better the system. CSI will be operational in 58 foreign ports by the end of this year, covering approximately 85 percent of containerized cargo headed for the United States by sea. DHS is continuing to expand this program by working with foreign governments, but this is an excellent program because it ensures that our trained American personnel are stationed in foreign ports.

There is yet another layer, a third layer, and that is the Customs- Trade Partnership Against Terrorism Program. It is called C-TPAT. This is another layer that is designed to bolster security along the entire supply chain under a voluntary regime. The concept here is that a company can sign up to be part of C-TPAT by guaranteeing that its entire supply chain is secure from the factory floor to the showroom floor, and that is the best kind of security we can have. So when goods leave the factory floor, the supply chain, every step of the way--the transporting of the cargo in a truck to the truck going to the port--at every stage, the company has ensured that the supply chain is secure.

These layers--the automated targeting system, the work the Coast Guard does, which I haven't even touched on--also add to the security. The Container Security Initiative and the C-TPAT Program represent a risk-based approach to enhancing our homeland security. At the same time, they allow the maritime cargo industry in the United States, which moves more than 11 million containers each year, to continue to function efficiently.

The SAFE Port Act also requires that at the end of this year, the largest 22 U.S. ports must have radiation scanners, which will ensure that 98 percent of containers are scanned for radiation. That is practical with the current technology. Again, I have seen that in operation in Seattle, where the trucks roll through these radiation portal monitors and an alarm can sound if radiation is found. Sometimes, unfortunately, there are false alarms as well.

We are also working to install those kinds of radiation monitors overseas because, obviously, it is far better if we can do that scanning for radiation overseas in foreign ports on cargo before it reaches our shores. The Department of Energy, under the Megaports Initiative, is currently installing scanning equipment in foreign ports and scanning containers for radiological material. So we are making good progress.

Some who are advocating 100 percent screening are pointing to a project in Hong Kong, the Integrated Container Inspection System. This is a promising concept, but, as my colleague from Minnesota noted, the project in Hong Kong actually covers only 2 lanes of traffic of more than 40 at the port. In addition, what is happening is images are being taken, but no one is reading and analyzing the images. So this is not truly a project that tells us whether a true, 100-percent integrated scanning system is feasible. But we do have those projects underway, and we should wait until they are ready and finished before moving ahead.

Again, I hope my colleagues will once again reject this amendment. I think it is a big mistake. It would interrupt our system of container traffic, and it could have truly disastrous consequences for our economy. All of us want to make sure cargo coming into this country is safe. There were definitely vulnerabilities and holes in our system for cargo security, but the SAFE Port Act, which we passed at the end of last year, took major steps to plugging those gaps, closing those holes.

We should proceed with vigorous implementation of that bill, including the requirement that 100 percent of all high-risk cargo be scanned, and we should also continue our efforts to build the strongest possible layered system to secure the entire supply chain.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I have only had a brief time to look at the amendment offered by the Senator from California, but it would, in my judgment, enhance certain provisions in the underlying bill on the visa waiver program. There are discussions going on with key Senators on our side of the aisle, such as Senator Kyl of Arizona, who has also a great interest in this area.

We are not prepared on this side to proceed with a full discussion of the amendment at this time or to dispose of it at this time, but I would inform my colleagues that I am optimistic that the discussions will produce a fruitful result. At this time, we cannot proceed to disposing of the amendment, however.

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

Mr. President, to clarify for our colleagues, the objection or the clarification I mentioned earlier has been resolved on this side of the aisle. I know of no objection to adopting the amendment of Senator Feinstein. I believe it strengthens the provisions in the underlying bill and I urge its adoption.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce an amendment to address the growing concern among States regarding the implementation of the REAL ID Act of 2005. This law requires States to meet minimum security standards before citizens can use their driver's licenses for Federal purposes, such as boarding an airplane. I am very pleased to have several cosponsors of this amendment, including Senator Alexander, Senator Carper, Senator Cantwell, Senator Snowe, and Senator Mikulski. All of them have expressed concerns about the impact on their States. I particularly wish to single out Senator Alexander,

who has long been a leading voice in raising concerns about the costs imposed upon States by the REAL ID Act.

As the deadline for compliance for the REAL ID Act rapidly approaches, States are beginning to send a very clear message that they are deeply concerned they simply will not be able to meet these standards. The amendment I introduce today recognizes those concerns by allowing more time to devise a way to make driver's licenses more secure without unduly burdening State governments and without threatening privacy and civil liberties.

To begin with, perhaps some background information would be useful. The 9/11 Commission's investigation found that all but one of the 9/11 terrorists had acquired some form of U.S. identification--in most cases a State driver's licenses. The Commission recommended that the Federal Government should set standards for the issuance of driver's licenses to make them more secure, to ensure the person was, in fact, entitled to a driver's license, and to make certain the driver's license has certain security features to ensure the individual is who he or she claims to be.

To implement that recommendation, which was indeed in response to a very real concern identified by the 9/11 Commission, I worked with a bipartisan group of Senators, most notably my colleague, Senator Lieberman, to craft a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act that would accomplish the goal of the Commission. It called for the creation of a committee of experts from the Federal Government, from State governments, from privacy groups, from technology information organizations, to come together in a negotiated rulemaking process and to develop a means of providing secure identification, while protecting privacy and civil liberty rights, and also respecting the role of the States, which have always had the primary responsibility in this area.

The language we came up with also provided for some grants that would help the States bear this cost--not the whole cost but to help them out.

This committee was indeed appointed--indeed, at my recommendation, Maine's secretary of state was one of the members--and they began diligently working on this task. Unfortunately, before the committee could complete its work, the House of Representatives attached the REAL ID Act of 2005 to an emergency war supplemental, a bill that was truly urgent. There was not a lot of consideration in the Senate nor debate over this provision. It was inserted into the emergency war appropriations bill.

The effect of that was to repeal the negotiated rulemaking provisions that we had worked so hard to craft and to put into the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. The further effect, therefore, was to halt the very productive and worthwhile progress this committee was making in devising standards to improve security without imposing unnecessary burdens and costs on State governments.

Unlike our Intelligence Reform Act, the REAL ID Act of 2005 did not include States and other interested parties, whether privacy advocates or technological experts, in the rulemaking process. Instead, the REAL ID Act simply instructed the Department of Homeland Security to write its own regulations. It has been almost 2 years since the REAL ID Act was passed, and the Department has yet to issue the detailed guidance the States need to comply with the law. We expect these regulations are just about to be published, that they are about to be issued under the formal notice and comment period later this week.

The problem is, the States are facing this looming May of 2008 deadline for being in full compliance with the REAL ID Act. That is an enormously constricted period for the States to comply, when the regulations have not yet been issued.

As States begin work this year on their 2008 budgets, they still have no idea what the final regulations will require of them, but they do know that the costs are likely to be substantial based on a study released in 2006 by the National Governors Association. The NGA estimated that the costs to States to implement the REAL ID Act could total more than $11 billion over the next 5 years. This is a substantial amount. Perhaps the cost will be less than that, but the point is, we don't know because the regulations with the detailed guidance have still not been issued, even as we speak.

The State of Maine reports that the costs of implementation of the REAL ID Act could total $158 million. The Secretary of State tells me that is more than six times the normal operating budget of the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

The result has been an increasing rebellion by States over this unfunded, very difficult mandate. Some States, including my home State of Maine, have passed resolutions that have sent the message to Washington that they cannot and will not implement the REAL ID Act by the May 2008 deadline. So what do we do?

Here is what my amendment proposes. I have had extensive consultations with the National Governors Association, the National Council of State Legislatures, and other experts on this issue.

My amendment has two primary objectives. The first is to give the Federal Government and States the time and flexibility they need to come up with an effective but practical system to provide secure driver's licenses.

Second, my amendment would ensure the involvement of experts from the States, from the technology industry, and privacy and civil liberties advocates, by bringing them back to the table and giving them a chance to review these regulations and make them work.

There are three major provisions in the amendment we are offering. First, the amendment provides that States would not have to be in full compliance with the REAL ID Act until 2 years after the final regulations are promulgated. That is reasonable. This is a difficult task, and it is important that we get it right. It is important for our security, but it is also important for the States that have been burdened with the task. That means no matter how long it takes for the Department of Homeland Security to finish these regulations, States will have a full 2 years to implement them. Most likely, the impact of that is to delay from May of next year to May of 2010 the compliance date. That is the likely timeframe about which we are talking.

Second, the amendment would give the Secretary of Homeland Security more flexibility to waive certain requirements of REAL ID, if an aspect of the program proves to be technically difficult to implement. I have talked with some technology experts. Some of them say it can be done. Some of them say this is an enormous task because we are talking about having interlocking databases so that States can check with other States on whether an individual is licensed there. That is a very complex project because, not surprisingly, each State has its own system. So there are questions about the technology and the feasibility of all of the requirements of the REAL ID Act. We want to give the Secretary some flexibility in that area.

It is possible that some of the technological links necessary for REAL ID may not be fully in place at the time that compliance is required. On the other hand, if the technology is there and the systems are up and running, it will be easier for the States to proceed. That is another advantage of the extension in time. The technology is only going to get better and become more effective.

This also gives us more time to address privacy concerns because there are a lot of questions, if you have people throughout the country working in motor vehicle bureaus who are now going to have access to databases and are going to need training in evaluating the underlying documents, whether they are birth certificates or visas, in determining their validity. So this is a complicated task.

Third, the amendment reconstitutes the committee that we created in 2004, and that was making such good progress in its deliberations before these provisions were repealed by the REAL ID Act. This committee would be required to look at the regulations published by the Department of Homeland Security and to make suggestions for modifications to meet the concerns of States, privacy advocates, and other interested parties. Within 120 days of convening, the committee would report its recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security and to Congress. So we are not throwing out

the work that has already been done by the Department of Homeland Security. It doesn't make sense to go back to square one, to go back to scratch, as the 2004 bill had proposed. Instead, we create this committee, bringing all the stakeholders to the table. They would take a rigorous look at the regulations that are issued, and they would make recommendations to the Department and to us so that we could exercise our oversight.

The Department of Homeland Security would then either have to make the recommendations recommended by this committee or explain why it chose not to. So we would have much more transparency and accountability in the process.

In addition, the committee could recommend to Congress, if they believed that statutory changes are needed to mitigate concerns that could not be addressed by modifications to the regulations. That is an important safeguard as well.

The amendment we are offering would give us time, the information that Congress and the Department of Homeland Security need to better implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in order to make our driver's licenses secure so that they cannot again be used to facilitate a plot to attack our country.

There is a real problem. The 9/11 Commission was correct in identifying the ease with which the hijackers were able to secure driver's licenses. But let's come up with not only an effective solution to the problem identified but also a practical one. We don't have to choose one versus the other. We can come up with a cost- effective, efficient, effective way to achieve this goal. This bill does so in a way that does not rewind the clock 3 years but instead keeps us moving to a more secure America.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address REAL ID and to put us back on the right track to protect our country, to protect our privacy, to protect our liberty, and to do so in a practical way.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, what is the pending business?

Madam President, it is actually a Collins-Alexander amendment, along with several of our colleagues. I am very pleased to note the Senator from Tennessee, who has been such a leader and such an early voice raising concerns about the implications of the REAL ID Act for State governments, is here on the floor. As a former Governor, he has a better appreciation than many of us of the burden this act imposes on the States. So I am very pleased the Senator is here and I yield to him such time as he may need.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his excellent statement. He outlined the issue very well.

I emphasize two points the Senator made. First is the cost. The National Governors Association has estimated that compliance with the requirements of the REAL ID card will impose $11 billion of costs on State governments over the next 5 years. Yet we have appropriated only $40 million to be used toward that cost, and of that amount the Department of Homeland Security has only allocated $6 million, so only a tiny fraction of the expected cost.

The second point I emphasize is the Department of Homeland Security has yet to issue the regulations detailing how States are to comply with the law.

So to expect the States to comply by May of next year with regulations that have yet to be issued is simply unfair and will add another layer of costs because of the short time for compliance. This 2 years will allow a more careful review. It will allow more input by the States when DHS does issue the regulations, and it will allow us to devise a cost-effective way of achieving a goal all of us have, and that is to make driver's licenses more secure.

I am very grateful for the insights of the Senator from Tennessee, for his support, and for his very early leadership on this issue.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for his support and his excellent comments. This is a carefully drafted amendment. It doesn't rewind the clock in terms of throwing out the work that the Department has done, but it recognizes that it is simply unreasonable to expect States to comply by May of next year with complex and costly regulations that the Department has yet to issue. The Department has yet to issue the detailed guidance that the States need.

It also recognizes that the quality of the final regulations will be improved by the formation of a committee with State officials, privacy advocates, technological experts, and Federal officials sitting down, looking at the regulations, and providing input to the Department on their proposed regulations and also providing that input to us.

The third provision of the amendment would increase the waiver authority that the Secretary can have if it proves that there are technological barriers to complying with certain provisions of the law. I think this is a reasonable approach to a real problem.

Finally, let me say to my colleagues, the estimates for the cost of compliance with this law are as high as $11 billion over the next 5 years. This is a huge unfunded mandate on the States. My hope is through our approach we can come up with more practical, cost-effective means of achieving a goal that all of us share and that is improving the security of driver's licenses that are used for Federal identification purposes, such as boarding an airplane. There is a real need to have a secure driver's license, but let's do it in a practical, collaborative way, and let's make sure there is adequate time to comply.

I thank the Senator from Georgia for his support and for his excellent comments.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, be added as a cosponsor of the Collins amendment, No. 277.

Mr. President, knowing the Senator from California as I do, I am certain a lot of the issues she has raised are serious ones, deserving of

scrutiny. They are, however, under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee and not the Homeland Security Committee. As such, I don't feel that I, at this time, have the expertise or the knowledge to evaluate the amendment that has been filed by the Senator from California. That is why I am objecting to the amendment. It is not because of its merits but because it is not relevant to this debate. I have not had a chance to look at it, and it is not in the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee.

I will say to my colleagues that the Senator from Connecticut and I have been working very hard in a bipartisan way to try to keep the focus of this bill on issues to improve our homeland security. We were very pleased that, despite the overwhelming importance of the debate on Iraq, there had been an agreement by our leaders to try to keep that debate for the next issue to come before the Senate, rather than having it tied in with this bill. Similarly, the families of the victims of 9/ 11 have made a plea to all of us to focus on this bill and to keep extraneous issues off this bill and rather focus on issues the 9/11 Commission raised. That is what we are attempting to do. I have no doubt this is an important issue, an issue that is worthy of debate, an issue that is worthy of scrutiny by the Judiciary Committee, based on the explanation of the Senator from California, for whom I have a great deal of respect. But it is an issue that is completely outside the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee.

For that reason, my hope is the Senator from California will look at this as an opportunity to educate us on the issue but will not proceed with this amendment because it is not at all relevant to the bill before us.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add Ms. Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, as a cosponsor to the Collins amendment No. 277.

Madam President, speaking of the Collins amendment on REAL ID, cosponsored by Senators Alexander, Mikulski, Carper, Cantwell, Snowe, Chambliss, and Murkowski, I bring to my colleagues' attention the several groups representing Governors, State legislatures, and others who are now speaking in favor of passage of this amendment. In addition, as the Presiding Officer so ably represents the State of New York, there was a Newsday editorial today also endorsing the amendment with its 2-year delay.

The National Governors Association has also issued a statement that says:

Senator Collins' bipartisan amendment recognizes the need

to give state officials and other interested parties the

right to review regulations and suggest modifications.

It goes on to say:

This proposal would provide states a more workable time

frame to comply with federal standards, ensure necessary

systems are operational and enhance the input states and

other stakeholders have in the implementation process.

We have also heard from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, which has written a letter as well. It says:

It is clear that the states do not have the capacity to

comply with the REAL ID Act by the 2008 deadline and that a

number of serious concerns related to privacy must be

addressed. The Collins amendment provides the opportunity to

address these matters.

Similarly, another group with whom we have worked closely is the National Conference of State Legislatures. In fact, it was a high- ranking official of the NCSL who sat next to me on a plane going to Maine some time ago and suggested that what States needed most was a delay in the compliance time. I worked very closely with the NCSL in drafting our amendment. I am very grateful for their advice.

I ask unanimous consent that the letters and editorials I have mentioned be printed in the Record so we may share them with our colleagues.

I thank the Chair.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:20 today, the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Inouye amendment No. 285, to be followed by a vote in relation to the DeMint amendment No. 279, as modified; with the time until then for debate to run concurrently on both amendments, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators Inouye and DeMint or their designees; that no amendments be in order to either amendment prior to the vote and that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between the votes.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, to clarify the unanimous consent request, I believe there were 2 minutes between the votes, am I correct, for debate?

Mr. President, if the Senator from West Virginia is seeking an explanation of the amendment, I believe I can provide that.

The amendment offered by the Senator from South Carolina would give authority to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to add certain advances to the list of disqualifying crimes that would prevent someone from working at our seaports.

Mr. President, I yield back the remaining time on this side.

Mr. President, I rise today to voice my concern about the efforts to expand the Visa Waiver Program in the 9/11 commission report bill and to offer an amendment that will cap the unlimited expansion of this program.

I believe the bill as offered on the floor will make us less safe, not more safe with respect to this huge program called Visa Waiver.

The bill would allow the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to expand the Visa Waiver Program without limits. My amendment would limit this discretion based on a 10 percent visa refusal rate or on the actual visa overstay rate.

The Visa Waiver Program provides an extraordinary exception to our immigration laws. It allows the citizens of 27 nations to visit this country by merely showing up on the day of departure with a passport from their home country. In 2004, the State Department reported that 15.6 million people came to this country as part of this program. I am told that in 2005, unofficially, the number was at least 15.5 million and in 2006, the number was at least 15.6 million.

We have no way of knowing how many left because we do not have an exit system.

The bill on the floor today changes the Visa Waiver Program in a number of key ways.

First, it adds some good security measures, such as the expedited reporting of lost and stolen travel documents; and the exchange of information on terrorist watchlist. It also authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to develop an electronic travel authorization program so that all persons entering the U.S. will have to apply for clearance to enter the U.S. in advance of their trip. And it requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop a system to track all the foreign visitors who leave the U.S. via our airports--but not our seaports or land ports. This has been an unmet goal, however, year after year.

I welcome and support the enhanced security measures included in the bill. They are long overdue.

Second--and here is the problem--the bill allows the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to fundamentally change the way countries are admitted into the visa waiver program, and thus, who can come into the U.S. without getting a visa.

Under current law, a country is eligible for this program so long as the vast majority--at least 97 percent--of its nationals can get a visa when they apply for one. The percentage of people who are rejected when they apply for a visa is called the ``visa refusal rate'' and that percentage must be under 3 percent for a country to participate in the program.

The rationale is that if the overwhelming majority of visitors satisfy requirements for a U.S. visa when they apply, we should not waste our resources and the time of U.S. consular officers to evaluate every single visa application. The 3 percent rate means that 97 percent of these applicants will return to their home country for one reason or another. They have family and earn a satisfactory living.

But even with a 3 percent rejection rate, the Visa Waiver Program is a security problem.

Convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui from France and ``shoe- bomber'' Richard Reid from Great Britain both boarded flights to the United States with passports issued by Visa Waiver Program countries.

On August 10 of this past year, British police charged 17 suspects with a terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board several airliners traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States. The key suspects were reported to be British-born Muslims, eligible to travel to the U.S. with just a passport in hand.

For that reason, I believe that the current Visa Waiver Program is the soft underbelly of our national security.

But this bill undermines even the scant protection afforded by our current laws in that it allows the administration to admit new countries into the program with complete disregard for how many people were previously rejected when they applied for a U.S. visa. My amendment would provide a meaningful limit to that discretion.

This bill does not affect just a handful of countries. It would affect any

and every country whose nationals travel to the United States.

As a matter of fact, the ``roadmap'' countries--or countries that the administration is currently talking to about inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program--total 19. So the Departments of State and Homeland Security are actively talking with 19 countries for acceptance into this Program.

A significant number of these 19 countries have visa rejection rates that are well above 3 percent. They are marked with an asterisk, and total 13 of the 19. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a chart showing by country the rejection rates.

Mr. President, today, 544 million people are eligible to travel into the U.S. without a visa as part of the Visa Waiver Program. If we add these ``roadmap'' countries to the program, we will add 162 million more people who can travel into the United States without a visa--a 30 percent increase.

And if these 19 additional ``roadmap'' countries can come into the program, what is to preclude any other country from coming into the program? How do we say ``no'' to India, also a good ally, when its refusal rate--19.5 percent--is lower than 4 of the roadmap--countries? The rejection rate for China--24.5 percent--is lower than those coming from Romania. Indonesia, at 35.1 percent just exceeds Romania. So this bill will likely set up some real conflicts and create additional problems.

The administration has argued that the expansion of the visa waiver countries should be limited to our allies. But what does it mean to be an ally? According to this administration, when we invaded Iraq we counted Colombia with a 33.3 percent visa rejection rate, and Nicaragua, with a 48 percent rejection rate among our allies because they had provided some assistance in war.

Do we, in Congress, really want to give the administration unfettered flexibility to allow nationals from any country to travel to the U.S. without a visa, simply because their governments have cooperated with ours?

Does that mean that those nationals should be allowed to come to the United States with no advance screening?

We can only assume that we will also significantly increase the number of people who will not leave the United States after their visa expires. In this manner, this bill, if enacted into law, will likely add many thousands, if not millions, to the undocumented or illegal population.

Remember, today, 30 to 40 percent of the illegal population are, in fact, visa overstays--people who come with temporary or visitor visas and do not return to their countries.

I believe we should not expand this program without a good hard look at how it will compromise our national security, law enforcement, and immigration goals and without ensuring that safety measures are in place to make the program strong.

First, whenever the United States adds new countries to the program, it increases the demand for, and the availability of, fraudulent travel documents.

The value of lost, stolen or fraudulent Visa Waiver Program documents is enormous. A person carrying a visa waiver country passport has virtually unlimited access into and out of the United States.

No doubt, the expansion of the program will increase the use of fraudulent border documents which are sold on the black market in the tens of thousands: passports, international driver's licenses, and other forms of identification from new visa waiver countries will flood the market.

According to the July 2006 GAO report on improving the security of the Visa Waiver Program, visa waiver travel documents have been used by criminals and terrorists seeking to disguise their true identity.

In 2004, more than 15 million people from 27 countries traveled in and out of the United States with no visa.

And from January through June 2005--a 6-month period--the Department of Homeland Security reported that it confiscated 298 fraudulent or altered passports issued by Visa Waiver Program countries that travelers were attempting to use to enter the United States. And these are just the ones who got caught.

In fact, Interpol reports that they have records of more than 12 million stolen and lost travel documents in their database, but that there are 30 to 40 million travel documents have been stolen worldwide.

We can extrapolate that tens of thousands of those documents are from visa waiver countries.

As the 9/11 Commission report demonstrates, individuals with fraudulent documents pose a far greater threat to our national security than those traveling with no documents at all.

For that reason, Senator Sessions and I have introduced a bill this Congress to crack down on people who traffic in lost and stolen travel documents.

The second problem is that some countries have very weak policies on who can become a citizen--and therefore legally obtain travel documents. Not every country has the same strict controls on who can become a citizen as the U.S. does.

For example, Romania, one of the ``road map'' countries, extends citizenship to many citizens of Ukraine or Moldova as a matter of course without prior residency requirements. Ukraine and Moldova are not slated to participate in the visa waiver program, and in fact, have visa rejection rates of 38.7 percent and 34.2 percent, respectively. Adding Romania is like adding Ukraine and Moldova. How would their inclusion impact national security?

Finally, this bill does not go far enough to protect U.S. borders.

The bill requires the development of an air exit system, but it does nothing to track who comes and goes by way of our land and sea ports.

It also requires the Department of Homeland Security to track how many people overstay their visas, but it does not require them to use this information to determine who can participate in the program.

For example, even if we learn that one out of four Lithuanian visitors never returns to Lithuania when their visa expires, Lithuania could still participate in the Visa Waiver Program.

Again, experts estimate that between 30 percent and 40 percent of those undocumented people living in the U.S. today are here because they ignored the time limits on their visa and just never went back home.

At a time when this country is torn about how to handle the 12 million undocumented people currently living here, we must consider who plays by the rules when we talk about who participates in the program.

If a high number of travelers from countries overstay their visas, then those countries should not be allowed the benefit of permitting their nationals to enter the U.S. without a background check and a consular interview.

The amendment I am proposing today offers a way to limit the expansion of the Visa Waiver Program in light of our immigration and national security concerns.

The amendment I am offering would increase the visa rejection rate under the current law from 3 percent to 10 percent for countries that agree to these enhanced security measures.

The result is that countries such as South Korea, 3.6 percent, Taiwan, 3.1 percent, Estonia, 7.1 percent, and the Czech Republic, 9.4 percent could be eligible to participate in the program provided they pass the security requirements this bill imposes.

Then, once the U.S. has statistics on which foreign nationals regularly overstay their visa, the government should use those statistics to decide who can participate in the program.

My amendment would require the Departments of Homeland Security and State, in consultation and with the approval of Congress, to set a meaningful

overstay rate once they have that data. Then countries with a proven track record--those with nationals who go home when they are supposed to go home--could be eligible for the program.

The answer is not to entirely remove the visa rejection rate, 3 percent, as this bill does with no suitable replacement, but to enact a fair system across the board that recognizes that the screening of those who wish to come to our country is important, both for the security of the country, as well as to ensure that visitors do what their ``visa waiver'' provides--and that is to return to their country of origin at the end of the 90-day period.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 269.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. The amendment I am seeking to bring up is a bill that has been reported out of the Judiciary Committee, and essentially what it would do is ensure the confirmation of all U.S. attorneys by the Senate.

What happened was that in 2006, an amendment went into the PATRIOT

Act that allowed the administration to appoint an interim U.S. attorney indefinitely without confirmation. In the early part of this year, I believe it was on January 6, I learned that six U.S. attorneys had been called and summarily told they were to resign effective a specific date in January. I was told by the person who gave me the information that there was something suspicious about that. I didn't know, so I began to look into it.

Well, I received a new story today about one of those U.S. attorneys, and if I might, I will read it to this body. It is an article by Marisa Taylor of the McClatchy Newspapers:

The U.S. Attorney from New Mexico who was recently fired by

the Bush administration said Wednesday that he believes he

was forced out because he refused to rush an indictment in an

ongoing probe of local Democrats a month before November's

congressional elections.

David Iglesias said two Members of Congress separately

called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an

ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an

indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order

to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the Members of

Congress because he said he feared retaliation.

Two months later, on December 7, Iglesias became one of six

U.S. Attorneys ordered to step down for what administration

officials have termed ``performance-related issues.'' Two

other U.S. Attorneys also have been asked to resign.

Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before

he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of

his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment on the

ongoing probe:

I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I

was asked to resign, said Iglesias, who officially stepped

down on Wednesday.

Iglesias acknowledged that he had no proof that the

pressure from the congressional members prompted his forced

resignation, but he said the contact in and of itself

violated one of the most important tenets of a U.S.

Attorney's Office: Don't mix politics with prosecutions. The

article goes on.

Now this is only one element of this story. The matter has been the subject of a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. Legislation is ready to come before the floor. I have introduced it as an amendment. We approved it in the Judiciary Committee with a bipartisan vote. I think the time has come to do two things. One would be for the Judiciary Committee--and I hope it will, and I believe the chairman of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and The Courts, Senator Schumer, is interested in doing this--to issue subpoenas to have these U.S. attorneys come before the Committee to answer questions about how their demanded resignations took place.

Generally, a U.S. attorney is appointed for a term of four years, but serves at the pleasure of the President. If he wants to fire them he can. However, U.S. attorneys have very complicated and very difficult cases and I believe they must have some level of independence. The FBI, as we have heard in our oversight hearings, has raised the level of public corruption in their investigations.

So if the FBI investigates a case and comes up with the evidence, a U.S. attorney is obviously bound to prosecute that case. How this affects David Iglesias, I don't know. But the fact that these people all had very good performance reviews causes me a great concern. I wish to read from those performance reviews.

The performance review for John McKay of the Western District of Washington says:

``McKay is an effective, well-regarded and capable leader

of the [U.S. attorney's office] and the District's law

enforcement community,'' according to the team of 27 Justice

Department officials.

David Iglesias, about whom I read the news story, of the District of New Mexico, got this performance review:

The [U.S. Attorney] had a highly effective firearms

violence initiative and active and effective program to

address drug trafficking.

Daniel Bogden, District of Nevada:

United States Attorney Bogden was highly regarded by the

federal judiciary, the law enforcement and civil client

agencies, and the staff of the United States Attorney's

Office. He was a capable leader of the [office].

Bud Cummins, who many of us know, in the Eastern District of Arkansas:

The U.S. Attorney had an active, well managed anti-

terrorism program . . . The Project Safe Neighborhoods

initiatives were being effectively implemented and

successfully managed.

Carol Lam, Southern District of California, including San Diego, whom I am very familiar with:

Carol Lam was an effective manager and respected leader in

the District . . . Appropriate management procedures and

practices were in place to ensure a quality written work

product.

These are some of the snippets from the reviews. But clearly, the performance of these U.S. attorneys was not a reason to fire them.

I truly believe what the Department of Justice intended to do was what they did in the Eastern District of Arkansas--bring in bright, young Republican political operatives to assume these roles to give them a leg up and fire or require the resignation of these U.S. attorneys.

When I began to inquire into it, I asked whether interviews for replacements were taking place within these offices, particularly in San Diego. At that time, no one in the office was being interviewed as a replacement. Since these hearings have begun, individuals within the office have been interviewed. In fact, one has been appointed to fill in for former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam.

I truly believe there was an effort to use this section of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization to bring political operatives into these offices, and I think it is a matter of urgency for us to pass the legislation that was marked up by the Judiciary Committee. Absent that, there is no recourse, other than to issue subpoenas, to have these former U.S. attorneys come before the committee and be able to ask them some hard questions.

I think when a U.S. attorney who has served, and served well, is summarily dismissed for no real reason, it is a problem. We all know the U.S. attorney in San Diego brought the prosecution of a Member of the House of Representatives who is serving consequential time for major felonies and had subpoenas outstanding for other Members of the House and was summarily told in December that she should resign--in this case--by the end of January. That is not right.

So the only way I know to right the wrong is to restore the law to where it was before the PATRIOT Act reauthorization. That law is this amendment and the amendment is very simple. It simply says that the Attorney General may appoint an interim U.S. attorney to a vacancy for 120 days. After 120 days, if a nominee has not been confirmed by the Senate, the district court in the district where the vacancy exists can make an appointment. This provides the incentive for the administration to move a nominee. I should say there are 13 vacancies, of which only 3 nominees have presently been sent to the Senate. If you combine those 13 vacancies with the seven new vacancies, then over 20 percent of the U.S. attorney positions could be filled without Senate confirmation if we assume the intent was not to send a nominee to the Senate. Of course, the administration will decry this and say that is not the case. Nonetheless, there were 13 vacancies and now seven new vacancies with only 3 nominees before the Judiciary Committee for review and for approval by the full Senate.

If the law is left as it is, any Attorney General or President could essentially appoint every single U.S. attorney as an interim U.S. attorney, not subject to confirmation. If you consider the work of the U.S. attorneys--the public corruption, the major narcotics cases, the immigration cases, the complicated Federal law they carry out--I think every Member of this body would believe that confirmation by the Senate for every U.S. attorney should be assured. This amendment will carry that forward.

I was shocked to read about David Iglesias. I don't know whether it is accurate. I know it appeared in the news. Based on that, he has said he believes he was forced out for a political reason. There is only one way to find out, and that is for the Judiciary Committee to issue subpoenas, have these U.S. attorneys come before us, and ask a number of hard questions.

I am hopeful this body will see fit to pass this amendment. It is simple, short, direct, and it solves the problem.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 20 minutes. I don't think I will use all that time. If I need more time, I will ask for it.

Mr. President, as everybody who follows Congress on a regular basis knows, when you get close to the month of March, we are in budget season. The President sent his budget to the Hill, which he does regularly, the first week of February, about a month ago. So now it is up to the Congress. In the next few days the Senate Budget Committee will be marking up our budget resolution.

For the public at large, don't confuse a budget resolution, which is a discipline for Congress on budgeting, with appropriations bills that actually give the President the authority to spend money. They come along a little bit later in the year.

At a minimum, the budget resolution will lay out the fiscal priorities of the next 5 years. As everyone knows, the American people spoke last November and sent a Democratic majority to both Houses of Congress. For the first time in 12 years, Democrats will take the initiative on the Senate budget. As ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, which deals with taxes, trade, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and also as the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, which is the committee that sends the budget to the Senate, I am eager to see the direction the new Democratic majority wants to take on fiscal policy for this year, but the budget also has long-term implications of 5 years.

There are a lot of questions I am waiting to get answered. What will be their plan on pay-go, which means pay as you go? With spending at higher-than-average levels of our economy, what kind of spending discipline will the Democratic majority show? On the revenue side of the ledger, will Democrats look to prevent a tax increase on virtually every American taxpayer a few years down the road, when the present tax policy sunsets, or will the Democratic majority, without a vote, set in motion, then, the largest Federal tax increase of all time? This is a fact. It will happen. When we have a sunsetting of tax law, it is possible to have a tax increase without Congress voting it. In this particular instance, this would put in place the biggest Federal tax increase ever.

Over the next few days, I want to talk about the tax issues--I want to do it topic by topic--that are going to come up during debate on the process of the budget. There are probably many ways to do it, but this is how I split the general subject into topics: One, the importance of preventing a tax hike on virtually all American taxpaying families and individuals. That is what I want to visit about today. Next is the negative economic consequences of sunsetting the bipartisan tax relief plan that will be the biggest tax increase in the history of the country without a vote of the people, if we don't do something about it. Then another time, I am going to review Democratic tax increase offset proposals with a specific focus on the limits and problems associated with those tax increases.

Next I will focus on one particular ill-defined but often mentioned offset; that is, reducing the tax gap. Everybody is for reducing the tax gap, and I am working with Senator Baucus to do that. He is chairman of our committee. But there has to be realism brought into that debate, and I hope to provide that realism. Then fifth and last, tax reform and simplification, its necessity and bipartisan opportunities to do so.

These discussions are meant to be about the revenue side of the budget. But before we get into the revenue side of the budget, I want to issue a challenge to my friends on the other side of the aisle. It is a challenge I have made over the last few years. It is in the context of intellectually honest budgeting. It is also in the context of the bipartisan record of the Finance Committee on tax policy over the last few years. That tax policy has been led by this Senator, when I was chairman, and by Senator Baucus working with me during that period of time, or Senator Baucus, now leading the committee and, hopefully, my always working with him as he worked with me.

That bipartisan record of the Senate Finance Committee shows about $200 billion of revenue raisers from antitax shelter measures and corporate loophole closures, basically doing something about abuse of the Tax Code, unintended by Congress, by people who can hire very sophisticated lawyers to find ways around paying taxes. We have closed $200 billion of those, and it has been bipartisan. So when I hear from self-styled deficit hawks, or from the media, who are sympathetic to those points of view that we need higher taxes to reduce the deficit, I believe the Finance Committee has anted up in terms of producing revenue raisers without raising general levels of taxation on the American people.

Here is my challenge, and I will ask my friends to listen up. Anyone on the other side who considers themselves a deficit hawk needs to prove it, then, on the spending side. Compared to our committee already raising revenue by $200 billion by closing tax loopholes and tax abuse, show me, then, a spending restraint proposal for deficit reduction. I issued that challenge several years ago and have issued it repeatedly. No one from the other side has stepped up. We can look and look and look and we won't find such a proposal. All of those liberal think tanks that oppose tooth and nail any kind of tax relief are usually advocates of spending increases, all of this under the guise of fiscal responsibility. We won't find any proposals to restrain spending from these liberal think tanks.

If we look at the media sources that are sympathetic to the views of the Democratic leadership or the liberal think tanks, we will find hard-line opposition to tax relief and a lot of tax increase proposals but, likewise, no proposal reining in spending. They will claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility but won't show anything on the spending side other than spending increases. For these folks, when it comes to deficit reduction, there is only one side of the Federal ledger. That is raising taxes.

We have a Federal Government that is projected to spend $2.7 trillion for this fiscal year alone and is projected to spend $33.7 trillion over the next 10 years. Yet leadership on the other side of the aisle, the liberal think tanks that back them up, and the media that helps them get their message out so easily and is sympathetic to their views, can't find a dollar of savings on the spending side. To these folks, with all due respect, I want to call them out. They won in November. The Congress is in their hands. Let's see some credibility on the spending side of the ledger. Show the taxpayers the money. Show me a proposal to restrain spending and put it to deficit reduction. That is a preliminary point.

Now I will move to talk about preventing tax hikes. The same group's position on current law tax relief is radically different than its position on spending restraint. Back in 2001 and 2003, Congress approved, and the President signed, legislation that provided across- the-board tax relief to nearly every American taxpayer. The Democratic leadership, liberal think tanks, and sympathetic east coast media criticized tax relief on a couple of grounds. One charge was that the tax relief was a tax cut for the rich. The other charge was that the bipartisan tax relief was fiscally irresponsible.

Nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation distribution tables actually put a lie to that first charge. The record levels of revenue show that the growing economy, the expanding U.S. economy, and economic stimulus from tax relief better the Nation's fiscal situation, bringing in more tax dollars,

not depriving the Federal Treasury of dollars.

This debate on preventing tax increases is often couched only in macroeconomic terms. We will hear what it ``costs'' to extend bipartisan tax relief. We will hear very big numbers. For instance, the Joint Committee on Taxation projects that the revenue loss from making the bipartisan tax relief permanent is $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years. That is the way the Democratic leadership, liberal think tanks, and sympathetic east coast media will define proposals to prevent a tax hike. We won't see them talk about the number of families who benefit from the extension of the $1,000 child tax credit. You won't see them talk about the number of married couples who benefit or the average family benefit from marriage penalty relief.

Today I am going to take a few minutes and shed some light on the side of the debate about extending bipartisan tax relief. Lord only knows, there is not much light shed on these important facts, because everybody is talking about tax relief for the rich. I will acknowledge the critics' point on the macro cost of extending tax relief. But keep in mind, a liberal's tax relief cost is a conservative's tax hike, when we are talking about extending current law. They are the two sides of the same taxpayer's coin. I will agree to that number, but call it a $1.9 trillion tax increase.

So I am going to follow the Democratic leadership plan and dismantle the bipartisan tax relief package bit by bit. I am also going to challenge the Democratic leadership to show us the money by indicating whether they want to scrap each piece as I move through the package. Which pieces would they scuttle? I will work through the bipartisan tax legislation piece by piece.

Let's start, then, with the basis for the 2001 bipartisan tax relief measure. That is the new 10-percent bracket. The revenue loss for this part of the package is $299 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The 10-percent bracket is a huge piece of tax relief for low-income people. The 10-percent bracket does that. No wonder 100 million families and individual taxpayers benefit from the 10-percent bracket. I do not think anybody wants to dismantle that piece. But I want to hear that from the Democratic leadership because that is a compromise of their position of whether the 2001 tax increases ought to sunset.

Where do we go next, then? The marginal tax rate cuts, which include the 10-percent bracket, lose $852 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. That proposal reduces the taxes of approximately 100 million families and individuals across America. It appears some folks think 35 percent is too low of a top rate. Well, guess what. Repealing the marginal rate cuts hits small business--the biggest source of new jobs in this great country of ours--and it hits small business the hardest.

The Treasury Department estimates 33 million small business owners who are taxed on their business income at individual rates benefit from the marginal rate cuts. Repealing these cuts would cause 33 million small business owners to pay a 13-percent penalty. Do the Democratic leaders want to raise taxes on these small business taxpayers, restricting the ability of small business to create jobs?

Treasury also projects that small business gets over 80 percent of the benefits of the cuts in the top two rates. Do we want to raise the tax rates on these people--small businesses for the most part--by 13 percent? Does that make any sense? So to the Democratic leadership, what do you say?

How about the death tax relief package? The Joint Committee on Taxation scores that package at $499 billion over 10 years. Most of the revenue loss is attributable to increasing the exemption amount and dropping the rate to 45 percent on already taxed property. Is it unreasonable to provide relief from the death tax or should we raise the death tax on small businesses and family farms? That is what will happen if the bipartisan tax relief package is not extended. So to the Democratic leadership, what is your take on that provision?

Do the opponents want to repeal the proposal to double the child tax credit, which the 2001 bill does? Mr. President, 31.6 million families benefit from the child tax credit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Or how about the refundable piece that helps 16 million kids and their families? That proposal loses $135 billion over 10 years. I do not think we would have a lot of takers on that one. They are going to want to extend that. Democratic leadership, do you agree?

How about the lower rates on capital gains and dividends? Thirty- three million Americans--a good number of them low-income seniors-- benefit from the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Does the Democratic leadership think we should raise taxes on these 33 million Americans benefiting from these lower tax rates? That would be families and individuals.

On a side note, in another speech, I will be talking about the worrisome Goldman Sachs economic report on the adverse economic effects of failing to extend lower rates on capital gains--this line right here, as shown on the chart--when it expires.

There are consequences to what Congress does. When you have a booming economy, there could be very detrimental consequences to the country when you take away the incentives that have had this economy exploding like not any time since the early 1990s.

Let's take a look at the marriage penalty piece. It is the first marriage penalty relief we delivered in over 30 years. The Joint Committee on Taxation scores this proposal at $52 billion over 10 years, and Treasury estimates that in 2004, nearly 33 million married couples benefited from this tax relief. Again, I do not think many folks would want to raise taxes on people because they decided to be married. I hope the Democratic leadership would agree with that statement.

Another proposal is expensing for small businesses; in other words, writing everything off in 1 year instead of stretching it out over 10 years. This is a commonsense, bipartisan proposal and directed specifically to small business--the engine that creates new jobs. According to IRS Statistics of Income, 6.7 million small businesses across the country benefited from this expensing provision in 2004. If we do not make it permanent, small businesses face a tax increase of $19 billion over 10 years and probably sputtering the engine that creates so many jobs in America. Does the Democratic leadership think small business expensing is an unwise tax policy?

Continuing on through the bipartisan tax relief package, let's take a look at education tax relief. This package, which will help Americans deal with college education costs, scores at $12 billion over 10 years by the Joint Committee on Taxation. IRS Statistics of Income show nearly 16 million families and students benefited from this tax relief in 2004.

In this era of rising higher education costs, should we gut tax benefits for families to send their kids off to college? Does the Democratic leadership think that is the way to go, which would be the way we would go if Congress does nothing and you let this tax law sunset?

Finally, families where both parents work have to deal with childcare expenses. The tax relief package includes enhanced incentives for childcare expenses. Mr. President, 5.9 million families across America benefit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Does the Democratic leadership think we ought to take away these childcare benefits? That is what would happen if the tax cuts of 2001 were sunset. It would happen without a vote of the Congress either.

Now, I have taken you through about $1.9 trillion of tax relief. It sounds like a lot in abstraction, but it provides relief to every American who pays income tax. I would ask any of those who want to adjust or restructure--and those are words that are used around here about this tax relief package passed in 2001--do you want to adjust it or restructure it? Where would you cut in this package?

Would you hit the 10-percent bracket, driving up the taxes of low- income people? Would you hit small business tax relief and sputter the growth machine, the job machine of America; or the now refundable child tax credit, and hurt low-income people; or the death tax relief; or the marriage penalty relief;

dividends and capital gains relief; education tax relief; or childcare tax relief? I hope not. Because in a recovering economy, with above- average levels of individual income tax, as a percentage of GDP, even with the tax relief package in place, which areas would you adjust, which areas would you restructure?

Why, then, undo bipartisan--with emphasis upon ``bipartisan''--tax cuts that make the Tax Code actually more progressive? Now get that, not regressive; it is more progressive now than before the tax bill of 2001.

As folks on both sides of the aisle say, budgets are about priorities. As the Democratic leadership draws up its budget, we will hear a lot of talk about a big number for extending tax relief. It is a big number. It is the biggest tax increase ever. It is going to affect nearly every American taxpayer.

If leadership now in the majority of this body, because of the results of the last election, decides to propose the biggest tax increase in history in the name of deficit reduction, I will be looking for that one, single dollar of spending restraint I never see. Now, maybe we will see it, but I will bet we would not. Only time will tell, and it will be within the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I do not think I see any colleagues who wish to speak, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.