A bill to provide for the transfer of certain Federal property to the United States Paralympics, Incorporated, a subsidiary of the United States Olympic Committee.

Mr. President, the Federal budget is more than a long list of numbers which, in this case, adds up to about $2.9 trillion. The Federal budget, similar to any family budget or any company budget, is a statement of values and priorities. In fact, the Federal budget, in many ways, is a statement of what our country is all about.

We would all find it irresponsible and strange if a family we knew spent all of its money on an expensive vacation but forgot to put aside money for the mortgage or the rent and suddenly the family and their kids found themselves out on the street. We would say: My goodness, that is irresponsible. The family was spending money where they shouldn't have been and not spending it where they should.

Preparing the Federal budget and analyzing the Federal budget is exactly the same process. It is about spending the money of the people of the United States of America. It is about deciding where we should spend it and where we should not spend it. It is looking at the American people as a family. It is about taking a hard look at the needs of our people and prioritizing the budget in an intelligent and a rational way.

Let me take a quick glance at the economic reality facing the middle class, the working families of our country, tens and tens of millions of Americans and their kids.

Since President Bush has been in office, more than 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty, including over 1 million children. Not only does the United States of America have the highest rate of poverty of any major country on Earth, we also shamefully have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, with almost 18 percent of our children living in poverty. Today, 37 million Americans live in poverty and 13 million are children.

Last year, in the richest Nation in the history of the world, 35 million of our fellow Americans struggled to put food on the table. The Agriculture Department recently reported that the number of the poorest, hungriest Americans keep rising. In America today, hunger is a growing problem.

We have a crisis in our Nation in terms of affordable housing. Millions of working families in my State of Vermont and all over this country are paying 50 to 60 percent of their limited incomes for housing. And there are, as we well know, other families who are either living in their cars or living out on the streets--in some cases, with their children--in America.

Last year, there were 1.2 million home foreclosures in this country, an increase of 42 percent since 2005.

The cost of energy has rapidly risen since President Bush has been in office. Oil prices have more than doubled and gasoline prices have gone up by 70 percent since January of 2001. This increase in energy prices, in gas prices, is putting a huge strain on people from all over this country, including workers from rural States such as Vermont, who have to travel long distances to get to their jobs.

As is well known, many middle-class families in our country today are finding it increasingly difficult to afford the escalating costs of a college education with average tuition and other costs increasing rapidly with the result that many families are now saying: We can't send our kids to college, while other young people are graduating college deeply in debt.

In America today, millions of our workers are working longer hours for lower wages, and median income for working-age families has declined for 5 years in a row. Today, incredible as it may sound, the personal savings rate is below zero, which has not happened since the Great Depression. In other words, all over this country working people and people in the middle class are purchasing groceries, they are purchasing gas at the pump, they are purchasing other basic necessities through their credit cards and, in the process, are going deeper and deeper into debt.

Over the last 6 years, we have lost in this country 3 million manufacturing jobs, often good-paying manufacturing jobs, including 10,000 in my small State of Vermont. Many of the new jobs that are available to those displaced workers, if they are lucky enough to find new jobs, will pay wages and benefits substantially lower than the jobs they have lost.

It is no secret that in America today our health care system is disintegrating. There is little dispute about that. Health care costs are soaring. Today, we have 46.6 million Americans with zero health insurance, an increase of 6.8 million since President Bush has been in office.

Today, 3 million fewer American workers have pension coverage than when President Bush took office and

half of private-sector American workers have no pension coverage whatsoever.

Throughout our country, American workers who now work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world--husbands working long hours, wives working long hours, people being stressed out by having to work so hard to earn the living they need to pay for their basic needs--are finding it harder and harder to come up with jobs, to get jobs which provide them a decent amount of vacation time. The 2-week vacation is something many workers no longer can have in this country.

While the middle class is shrinking and while poverty is increasing in our country, there is another reality taking place. That is that the wealthiest 1 percent, the people at the very top of the economic ladder, have not had it so good since the 1920s. The middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing, and the people on the top are doing phenomenally well.

According to Forbes magazine, the selective net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans increased by $120 billion last year to $1.25 trillion; 400 families, $1.25 trillion in worth. The 400 wealthiest Americans are worth an unbelievable amount of money and their wealth is soaring.

Sadly, however, the United States today has the most unfair distribution of wealth and income of any major country and the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else is growing wider. This was a country formed around egalitarian principles--we are all in it together. When one goes up, others go up. Yet what we are seeing today in an almost unprecedented way is the people on the top making out like bandits, earning huge increases in their incomes, in their wealth, while the middle class shrinks and poverty is increasing.

Today the wealthiest 13,000 families in our country own nearly as much income as do the bottom 20 million families. That is 13,000 compared to 20 million. And the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

I have given a brief sketch of the economy in terms of how it impacts the middle class and working families of our country. Let me, within that context of what is happening to tens of millions of Americans, take a look at the President's budget.

At a time of a major health care crisis, with more and more Americans uninsured or underinsured, the President's budget would cut Medicare and Medicaid by $280 billion over the next decade, lowering the quality of health care for approximately 43 million senior citizens and people with disabilities who depend on Medicare and more than 50 million Americans who rely on Medicaid.

At a time when our childcare and early childhood education system are totally inadequate to meet the needs of working parents, the Bush budget reduces the number of children receiving childcare assistance by 300,000. Childcare in crisis. The President's response: Deny childcare to 300,000 children.

In addition, the President's budget provides a $100 million cut for the Head Start program at a time when only about one-half of the children eligible for this important and excellent program actually participate in it due to a lack of funding. Huge numbers of kids cannot get into Head Start. The President's response: Cut Head Start funding.

While hunger in this country, as I mentioned earlier, is shamefully increasing, the President's budget denies food stamps to 280,000 families and eliminates nutrition assistance to over 400,000 senior citizens, mothers, and newborn children.

We are in a war in Iraq. We are in a war in Afghanistan. The number of our veterans is increasing. Twenty-two thousand have been wounded, many seriously. Many will come back to this country with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet the President has significantly cut funding for the VA over a period of years, and some years ago made hundreds of thousands of veterans ineligible to get VA health care.

In this great country, with so many people struggling desperately to keep their heads above water, we should not be cutting back on health care. We should not be cutting back on nutritional benefits. We should not be cutting back on Head Start, affordable housing, the needs of our veterans, and educational opportunities for middle-class families. That is what we should not be doing.

This is especially true when the President's budget provides $739 billion in tax breaks over the next decade to households with incomes exceeding $1 million per year. The average tax break for this group of millionaires will total $162,000 by the year 2012.

Let me be very blunt. In my view it is wrong, in my view it is immoral to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires--the people who need them the least--while cutting back on the needs of the middle-class and working families of our country. That is wrong.

Is this budget, the President's budget, a reflection of the values of the people of our country? I do not believe that. I do not believe ordinary Americans think it is right and appropriate to give tax breaks to billionaires and then provide inadequately for our veterans, for our children, and for our seniors. That is not, in my view, what America is about.

We are told over and over again we do not have the money to reduce childhood poverty in this country. We are told we do not have the funds to wipe out the disgrace of hunger in America. We are told we do not have enough money to make sure the young people who graduate from high school in this country, who are excited about going to college, will be able to do so without coming out deeply in debt.

We do not have the money to help those families. Yet--yet--while we turn our backs on the middle-class and working families of our country, it appears we have plenty of money for the millionaires and billionaires of this country. We have tens of billions, in fact, to shower on those who need it the least, yet we have nothing, and we are cutting back on the programs, for those who need it most.

Included in the President's budget, amazingly, is the complete repeal of the estate tax which would take effect at the end of 2010. As you know, the complete repeal of this tax would benefit only the top two- tenths of 1 percent of the American people. Let me repeat that. The complete repeal of the estate tax would benefit solely the upper two- tenths of 1 percent of the American population.

These are families, of course, who already are millionaires and billionaires, and these are families who in the current economy have been doing exceedingly well. In other words, 99.8 percent of Americans would not benefit by one nickel from the complete repeal of the estate tax, as proposed by the President.

According to the President's budget, this repeal of the estate tax would reduce receipts for the Treasury by more than $91 billion over the next 5 years and more than $442 billion over the next decade. But the long-term damage to our fiscal solvency is even worse.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, repealing the estate tax would cost over $1 trillion from 2012 to 2021--over $1 trillion. In other words, if the President's plan to permanently repeal the estate tax succeeds, the children and family members of the very few most privileged families in America will reap a massive tax break. Instead of closing the gap between the rich and the poor, instead of addressing the huge national debt and deficit problems we have, we make both situations worse by fully repealing the estate tax.

I have brought with me a few charts to demonstrate who are the winners and losers in the President's budget. Obviously, fortunes go up and down, and we do not know what anyone is going to be worth tomorrow, let alone in the coming years. And the estimates I am giving to you and the charts I am using are based on two reports.

The first is an April 2006 report by United for a Fair Economy and Public Citizen, entitled ``Spending Millions to Save Billions,'' reflecting the financial position of the wealthiest 400 Americans in this country as compiled by Forbes magazine from the year 2005.

The second is a May 30, 2006 report from the House Government Reform Committee, entitled ``Estimated Tax Savings of Oil Company CEOs.''

Of course, no one can predict what the numbers will be in the years to

come. But these are the best figures available to us at this time.

Let me go to the first chart. The granddaddy of all of the winners under the Bush budget is none other than the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. If the estate tax was completely repealed, the entire Walton family would receive an estimated tax break of $32.7 billion--that is with a ``B''--$32.7 billion in tax relief for one family which today happens to be one of the wealthiest families in this country already.

Meanwhile, in contrast, the President's budget proposes to cut Medicaid by $28 billion over the next decade, driving up the cost of health care for tens of millions of Americans. In other words, while one of the wealthiest families in this country gets a tax break of over $30 billion, tens of millions of Americans--children, seniors--will suffer. Now, that may make sense to someone, that may appear to be fair to someone, but it sure does not make sense to me. In other words, if the President's proposed budget passes, millions of Americans will lose, including some of the most vulnerable people in our country, while one very wealthy family wins.

A second major beneficiary of the President's tax cuts is the heirs of the Mars candy bar fortune. Now, I like Snickers as much as anybody. And I do not want to be seen here as attacking Snickers, one of the basic food groups of American society. But the family that owns Mars is slated to receive an estimated $11.7 billion tax break if the estate tax is fully repealed.

Mr. President, $11.7 billion for the Mars family. They are winners. Yet, who are the losers? As I mentioned earlier, all over this country there are waiting lines for veterans to get into VA hospitals. We are not keeping our promises to the veterans. Veterans lose while one family wins big time. I think that is wrong.

Another major winner in the President's budget is the Cox family. They are the heirs to the Cox cable fortune. They will gain $9.7 billion if the estate tax is repealed. Meanwhile, while the Cox family would receive almost $10 billion in tax breaks, the President wants to cut funding for education by $1.5 billion.

The President keeps talking about No Child Left Behind while his budget continues to leave, in fact, millions of children behind. In Vermont and all over this country, school districts are struggling with grossly inadequate funding for special education, which the President also wants to cut. We do not have the money to fund special education to improve public education in America. We do not have that money. But we do have $9.7 billion for one family, the Mars family.

Another major beneficiary of the President's budget is the Nordstrom family, owners of the upscale department store chain. By repealing the estate tax, the Nordstrom family stands to receive an estimated $826 million tax break, according to the April 2006 report from United for a Fair Economy. Tax breaks of over $800 million for an enormously wealthy family, and yet we see a $630 million cut in the President's budget for the Community Services Block Grant Program.

As you know, the Community Services Block Grant Program provides the infrastructure necessary to deliver services to 15 million of the lowest income people in our country. These are people who are hungry. When they are hungry, they go to the community action program. When they are homeless, they go to the community action program. When they do not have any money to buy food, they go to the community action program. We are going to cut back on that program, but we do have $826 million in tax breaks for the Nordstrom family.

Another major beneficiary of the Bush budget is the family of Ernest Gallo, who would receive a $468 million tax break--$468 million. Meanwhile, the President proposes to cut $420 million from the Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the LIHEAP program.

According to the latest available data, 5.4 million senior citizens on fixed incomes and low-income families with kids receive help paying their heating bills through this program each and every year. In the State of Vermont, trust me, it gets very cold, and we have a lot of people in Vermont and throughout this country who are dependent upon the LIHEAP program. But, as a nation, the President suggests: No, no, we have to cut $420 million from LIHEAP, which impacts the lives of low-income senior citizens. But--guess what--we do have $468 million available as a tax break for the Gallo family.

The former CEO of ExxonMobil does very well from the President's tax breaks. As some will remember, while the cost of gas at the pumps was soaring, while the profits of ExxonMobil were soaring, the company decided, in its wisdom and generosity, to provide a $400 million retirement package for their departing CEO, Mr. Lee Raymond. Now the President wants to reward Mr. Raymond by providing his estate with an estimated $164 million tax break. On the other hand, there is a program called the Commodities Supplemental Food Program which provides a package of high-quality, nutritious food to some 480,000 seniors, mothers, and children. The President wants to eliminate this program. He is saying to the 4,000 seniors in Vermont who benefit from this program, the almost half a million seniors, mothers, and kids who benefit from this package of food once a month: We in America don't have enough money to provide for you who are hungry, for you who are old. We can't do it. But if you are the former CEO of ExxonMobil, if you have a $400 million bonus at the end of your career, guess what. Your family will get a $164 million tax break.

As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, it appears to me that the choice we as a Congress are facing and that the American people are facing is pretty clear. Do we continue to shower huge tax breaks on millionaires and billionaires, people who are already doing phenomenally well, while we cut back on the needs of the middle-class working families and the most vulnerable people in this country? It all comes down to the phrase ``which side are we on.'' Are we on the side of those people who make huge campaign contributions to Congress and the White House, or are we on the side of tens of millions of working families, struggling hard to keep their heads above water?

That is the choice we face. As a member of the Budget Committee, I think the answer is pretty obvious. I will not be voting to provide a tax break to the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune. Rather, I will be fighting to substantially increase financial aid for low- and middle- class families so that every American, regardless of income, can receive a college education. I will not support another tax cut for the former CEO of ExxonMobil and his family. Instead, I will be voting to give support to working families all over this country who are desperately seeking quality and affordable childcare.

If, as a nation, we are serious about addressing the long neglected needs of the middle-class and working people and creating a fairer and more egalitarian society, we have to invest in education, health care, housing, and our infrastructure. We have to deal with the crisis of global warming and sustainable energy, as well as many other areas. We also have to reduce our national debt. Given that reality, Congress must develop the courage to stand up to the big money interests, to the wealthiest families. We must roll back the tax breaks given to the wealthiest 1 percent, and we must demand that fortunate people rejoin American society and understand that like everybody else in this country, they are part of America and not a special breed. If we are to keep faith with our children, our seniors, our veterans, and with those people who have no health insurance, we can do no less. I look forward to working with my colleagues to make sure we do just that.

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

Mr. President, I believe under the unanimous consent agreement I am recognized until 4:15; is that correct?

I will try not to take that much time.

Mr. President, I want to turn to the bill in front of us and make a few remarks about how things change, but they never change. We had an election this last fall. The election was based on changing the control so we can control the spending, so we can secure the future, so we can eliminate wasteful Washington spending. I would put forth that the bill in front of us is more of the same--actually I want to guard the words I use--more of the same lack of clarity, lack of transparency and game playing that Congress has been known for the last 25 to 30 years.

The bill before us manipulates the numbers. The bill before us is untruthful about the costs. The bill before us is put on the floor of the Senate without any debate to bring forth transparency. No amendments are going to be offered to bring forth transparency. No amendments are going to be offered to offset the cost. This $3.1 billion expense is going to go directly to our grandchildren because what is not spent for military construction and BRAC costs will be added to the supplemental which we are going to be taking up in March. We are going to be taking up more of the same games, so what you got for what you thought was change is not a change at all. It is just a change in name only. It is important for the American people to understand it is not Republican or Democrat, it is short-term vision versus long-term vision for our country.

We have a bill before us on the floor of the Senate that does a lot of things--a lot we should have gotten done. There is no question. The majority is within its rights to do what it has done. The predicate that Senator Reid used, that it was used on the Democrats before--there was no complaint with that. It has been done. It is not a good process. But what we are seeing is not what was promised. We thought we bought a new car, and what we bought, what the American people bought, was a car that had been wrecked and repainted and sold as new.

I want to talk about several of the problems, things that are wrong with this bill. I want to raise the question why should we not fix it now. I will start first with the BRAC money--$3.1 billion to move tens of thousands of troops out of Germany, back here. It is not going to happen. The money may come with the omnibus but not in time to achieve the savings that we were hoping to achieve through the BRAC process. So there is a double cost. One is, if we took that money and we spent it to grow the Government--debatable. It is not debatable that some of the things that are funded with that are not good--but are they the priority? We are going to grow the Government, No. 1, and then we are going to take that money and put it on the supplemental bill.

A supplemental bill is a bill that comes forward outside the budget parameters, so therefore any of the money spent doesn't have to be within the budget limits. That money goes directly to the credit card of your grandkids. There is $3.1 billion. Then we are going to lose the benefits through delay of the BRAC closure process which is going to be another $3 to $5 billion. So by playing the same games Washington has been known for for years, we are going to add $7 or $8 billion more to the debt of our grandchildren.

If you thought things changed, they didn't. They changed in name only. This game with this maneuver in it is a sham for our grandkids and anybody else who thinks we are going to be fiscally responsible with your money.

The second thing it does is it destroys some of the help that was out there to help the most vulnerable. There was a provision in the new Ryan White AIDS bill that saves the life of newborn babies. We know it works. The two States that have done it have reduced HIV infection in newborn children by about 98 percent--for $85: $10 to test and $75 to treat newborn children.

In New York they used to have 500 babies a year born who were infected with HIV. Last year they had seven. Why? Because women who did not know their status were given an opportunity to opt out of being tested. If they didn't want to be tested, they

didn't have to be. But if they did, they were given an opportunity to get tested. And if they didn't want to be tested, their baby was tested, so if, in fact, they were carrying HIV, we could prevent, 99 percent of the time, those children from becoming infected with HIV.

The money was taken out in this bill. This is a chart for the infections, perinatal infections. Just in these States alone, for which we have a record, these are going to be the preventable cases of newborn baby AIDS that are going to not happen because of what this bill does. Thousands of babies are going to get infected with HIV because we are taking away the incentives. In terms of this bill, it is small numbers, $30 million--incentives to get States doing what New York and Connecticut have done.

Shame on us, shame on us, to claim we care and then to take this and eliminate it. They went so far as to talk to the administration about this, hoping that they would have a letter coming that would say we don't want the money. In fact, they want the money. It is in the President's budget. He wants the money. Why? Because it actually does something. Your dollars actually go to make a difference. How do they make a difference? Not only do they save the life, the cost to treat a baby over their life--their life expectancy is only 25 years if they get HIV. But that is a quarter of a million dollars versus $85, and the vast majority of that money is going to be paid by the American taxpayers. So shame on us. Shame on us for doing that. These are, just in these States alone, the number of children who are going to get infected with HIV without this program going forward.

Another amendment I wanted to offer so we could offer ways to try to change these things is to delay the CR for 2 weeks and let's have the debate about these issues, but we are not going to be allowed to even offer an amendment to continue it for 2 more weeks so we can actually debate it. That is the majority's right. I respect their right. It was probably done to them before I got here. It doesn't mean it is the correct process for our country to solve the big fiscal problems that are in front of us.

One of the items which Barack Obama and I got through the last Congress in coordination with several key Members in the House was the Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. What that act says is by January 1 of next year, you as the American taxpayer are going to start finding out how we are spending the money. The whole idea behind it is if you know, we are going to be held to a higher standard. We are going to be held more accountable. Also the idea behind it is if you know the American people are going to know, maybe you won't do some of the things for your buddies you are up here doing.

But in this bill there are 40 reports that are demanded of the administration that aren't available to you, that have nothing to do with national security. I can't even get them. The President pro tempore of the Senate right now can't get them unless he sits on the appropriations subcommittees of those reports coming back. That is not transparency. What that is is working in the dark so the American people don't know what is going on. I have an amendment that says those reports ought to be made public to the American people. It is their money. It is our money. But we have--here we go--an appropriations bill that has 40 reports from the Federal Government agencies to report back to Congress. Yet the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Oklahoma cannot see those reports, and neither can you. What is that all about? Why shouldn't you be able to see those reports? You should be able to. But that amendment is denied under this process. More of the same. More work done in darkness without the light of day for the American people to see what is going on in their Government with their money. They should reject that. We all should reject that. But change comes slowly.

The reason I am out here talking about it is I think the American people ought to know what is going on in this bill. Yes, the threat is if we don't pass this, the Government will shut down. The Government doesn't have to shut down. We could continue this for 2 weeks, but we are playing the game. Who will look worse if you vote against it. What the American people care about is whether we have an open and transparent government. That is what I am about: making sure we know the cost of what we are doing, making sure we know who is responsible, and holding those accountable when they are not doing what is in the best long-term interest of our country rather than what is in the best short-term political interest of either political party or any individual Member of Congress.

Another amendment I was going to offer but have been precluded from doing so is we have thousands of people waiting for assistance with their drugs for HIV. As a matter of fact, there are several hundred, 350-some in South Carolina alone who don't have any money, are not getting treated, their HIV is progressing, they are going to AIDS, and they are going to die. That number is in the thousands across the country right now, and although we have increased the AIDS drug assistance program, we haven't increased it enough to where we are taking care of those who do not have any other resource with which to get the medicines to save their lives. That amendment is foregone. We can't do that, not available.

Another amendment I had, which is certainly necessary--and we have had the Senators from North Dakota and South Dakota talking about it-- is the fact that we have had a disaster in the Central Plains of this country, in western Oklahoma and many other agricultural areas, where we have a tremendous need--an agricultural disaster by any means that we have addressed before. We tried to address it before we went home, but we didn't want to pay for it. So that didn't go anywhere. That is going to go somewhere when the supplemental comes. It will be a part of the supplemental package that comes out of the Appropriations Committee and we will pay $4 billion or $5 billion or $6 billion. It won't be paid for, we will charge it to our kids, and we will help these farmers. There is $1 billion in my amendment that is paid for--paid for; we don't have to charge it to our grandchildren--that will help immediately those farmers who have suffered through this tremendous drought in the Central Plains. We can not offer that amendment. We can not help the people who need us to help right now because we are playing games. We are playing the same old political games that were played when the Republicans were in charge. This isn't a new day; this is just a new manager under the same scams. It is a scam, and the American people need to know it is a scam in terms of their money.

Finally, the money we are stealing from the BRAC, a portion of that we are giving to the Global AIDS Fund. We are the largest contributor to the Global AIDS Fund--$300 million. We are going to bump that to $750 million, except there is no accountability in the Global AIDS Fund. The Boston Globe recently released a report on some inside auditor work inside the Global AIDS Fund showing the slush funds, showing the money that has been wasted. Yet we can't have access to those reports. We are the largest contributor, but we are denied access. I have an amendment that says if they want the money, then they have to show us the internal transparent workings of that organization, since we are the largest contributor. That is denied. That is common sense. If you were giving money to a charity and they were wasting it, you would want to know how they were spending your money.

As a matter of fact, we make charities in this country show how they are spending their money. We actually audit them. We are precluded from knowing how $750 million of your money is going to be spent. And the waste we have found out about in that program is denying the very people we are hoping to help, those innocent young African children who are infected with HIV, with their medicines every day.

So the way to have great government is to have transparency. The way to get rid of wasteful Washington spending is to have transparency. The way to lower the taxes on everybody in this country is to get rid of the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication that is present within our Government. This bill does none of that. What this bill does is spend more of your money and with sleight of hand and under the cover of darkness transfer billions to

our grandkids that they have shut out now but will ask for again when we have a supplemental and, consequently, our children will be directly impacted.

If you are born in this country today--if you go talk to David Walker, the Comptroller General, who is a nonpolitical person; he is a straight shooter; he knows what we are facing is an impending crisis in this country and that we are on a crash course toward fiscal bankruptcy. But here is what we know. If you are born today in this country, you have a birth tax of $453,000. That is what your share is of the unfunded liabilities we refuse to fix that we are adding to with this bill--we are going to add $10 billion to $12 billion actually with this bill when the new supplemental comes out--that is my prediction-- at a minimum, $3 billion, probably $10 billion to $12 billion. What we are doing is going to add to that birth tax.

What is the great thing about our country? The great thing about our country is it was built on the sacrifice of one generation creating opportunity for the next. This bill does the opposite of that. This bill steals from the next generation to take care of us now. There is no long-term thinking in this bill; there is only short-term thinking. Is it partially my fault we are here? Sure. I will take that. But the process and the false claims that we are under a new day, that we are under a new fiscal paradigm, is hogwash. There is no fiscal responsibility in this bill. This bill actually claims that it eliminates all the earmarks. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, hopefully today, I understand, the President is going to say they are not going to honor the unwritten earmarks. There is $17 billion worth of unwritten earmarks that will continue in this bill the way this bill is written.

Now, they get to claim in the press that they have a little section in the bill that says none of the earmarks in this bill carry the force of law. Well, that doesn't do anything. None of those earmarks carried the force of law last year. None of those earmarks next year will carry the force of law. It does nothing to eliminate those earmarks from continuing to be spent. We know what earmarks are. We know how they create conflicts of interest within this body and within the lobbying community and individuals throughout this country. They ought to be gone. None of them should be honored, unless they are in the bill and people are willing to stand up and defend those and they have been vetted by the committees of this Congress.

So bear in mind as I vote against this bill, it is not because I want to shut the Government down; it is because it is a vote saying it is more of the same, American people. You didn't get what you bargained for, again. Hold us accountable, come ask the questions, and don't take the spin. The fact is there is a $453,000 birth tax for every child who is born this year in this country, and it is going to grow by over $1,000 with this bill. So it is going to go to $454,000. Now, imagine what you have to earn a year to pay the interest on that.

The fastest growing portion of our Government budget--what is it? It is not health care. It is interest. It is interest on the debt, and we have perpetuated that with this bill.

I know none of my amendments will be made in order, but I am inclined to show the ridiculousness of this process. So with notice to the Presiding Officer, who I expect to object, as is his right as a Senator from Vermont, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 234 be called up.

Mr. President, I have another unanimous consent request, which is that the pending amendments be set aside and that amendment No. 235, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 236 be called up and the pending amendments be set aside. This is an amendment that will allow us to continue to discuss this for 2 weeks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 250, which allows all report requests by the Appropriations Committee--40 of them--be made public, that the pending amendments be set aside and that it be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 251 that will apply $1 billion for the farmers who are in dire need in this country today be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 252, which asks for the transparency of our contributions into the Global AIDS Fund be called up.

Mr. President, I went through that exercise, and I know the Senator from Vermont does not disagree with all those amendments, but he is doing what he has been instructed by the majority to do. The fact is we could have a debate, we could delay this for 2 weeks, and we could make this bill far better. We could decide not to spend an additional $3.1 billion of our grandkids' money if we allowed a true debate.

In the last Congress I took a lot of criticism for going after my party on fiscal issues. I am not going to quit going after my party on fiscal issues, but I will tell my colleagues, I am certainly not going to quit when the majority party claims--falsely claims--to be doing something in the best interests of this country in terms of fiscal responsibility when, in fact, they are not.

There is no question what I have laid out here today is factual. There is no question that what we are seeing is more of the same in Washington. It is time for it to stop. It is time for the American public to hold everybody accountable, and we ought to be about America, not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We ought to be nonpartisan for the long-term future of this country. We ought to be nonpartisan in order to restore the idea of sacrifice and service for the next generation, rather than taking it for us today.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I think it was 48 hours ago I opened a discussion with my fellow Senators on the alternative minimum tax. As I pointed out at that time, it is generally recognized that the alternative minimum tax is a policy failure.

Created in 1969, in response to the discovery that 155 wealthy taxpayers--and let me emphasize that I am talking about 155 wealthy taxpayers--were able to eliminate their entire tax liabilities through legal means, the AMT has now evolved into a place where, because it wasn't indexed, it has captured more than 3 million middle-class Americans as of 2004. The AMT was never supposed to affect anyone except the very wealthy people.

I am using 2004 numbers because 2004 is the most recent year we have completed data. Three million people in that year were hit by AMT, even though since 2001 we have had in place a tax policy that no additional people should be hit by the alternative minimum tax.

At the time I was visiting with my colleagues 2 days ago, I cited the widespread observation that the most significant structural flaw afflicting the AMT is the failure to index its rates and exemptions for inflation. This failure, then--and I alluded to this a minute ago--has resulted in the gradual encroachment of the alternative minimum tax to hit middle-class taxpayers who were never intended to pay this tax.

Despite the widespread agreement that something needs to be done with the alternative minimum tax, agreement on what exactly to do is not so widespread. A major factor in the disagreement relates to the massive amount of money the alternative minimum tax brings to the Federal Government. In 2004, from these 3 million taxpayers hit by this tax, more than $12.8 billion was paid into the Federal Treasury. If we don't extend the most recent alternative minimum tax hold-harmless that actually expired at the end of 2006, the amount paid by those 3 million taxpayers is expected to balloon to a much greater amount. And, of course, when you go beyond that, into the long-term budget forecast, it is going to continue to grow and grow, with middle-class taxpayers paying a tax that was meant to be for 155 wealthy people.

When forecasters put their projections together, they are working under the assumption that the hold-harmless that was extended in last year's tax bill will not be extended because they base their assumptions on current law. This means the hold-harmless provisions ended December 31, 2006, and money being earned right now is going to hit millions more people.

People who guesstimate how much money comes into the Federal Treasury--and we have people both in the executive branch and the legislative branch who have that as their responsibility, so we can make good tax policy--take into consideration what is current law, and they are planning on these millions of middle-class taxpayers paying this alternative minimum tax, even though they were never intended to pay it. Because of this, budget planners make the assumption that revenues will be much higher than everyone who is frustrated with the AMT thinks that amount of money ought to be, as well as the number of people who are going to be paying it.

The reason for that is the alternative minimum tax tremendously balloons the revenue base, as it is projected to increase revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product. There is a great deal of evidence to support this.

On a side note, a senior, well-respected tax lawyer on the other side of the aisle in the other body took exception to my use of the term ``ballooning.'' The staffer wrote an article and criticized me for that term. Well, I am not used to staff writing articles criticizing Members of Congress, so I happened to respond to that staffer's criticism through my own staff. The essence of the senior staffer's criticism was that the term ``ballooning'' ignored the accounting for the interaction of bipartisan tax relief with AMT costs. As we pointed out, ballooning revenue from the AMT occurs in the outyears, whether the bipartisan tax relief is extended or made permanent. I will talk more about that in a few minutes.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has consistently forecast this ballooning year after year. This chart which I have before me now for you to look at, reproduced from the Congressional Budget Office's long-term budget outlook, was published in December 2005 and shows how Federal revenues are expected to push through the 30-year historical average and then keep going up.

You can take that historical average back 30 or 40 years for sure, and maybe longer than that, but the historical average is here and current law is actually going to bring in this much revenue, and that includes the ballooning of the alternative minimum tax.

I want to note that although the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 was signed into law after this analysis was published, the 2006 tax bill extended the AMT hold-harmless through December 31 last year, and this chart shows Federal revenues all the way through to the year 2050. It is important to note the long-term effects then of the alternative minimum tax on the revenue base.

There may be some doubters who hesitate to attribute this ballooning of revenues to the alternative minimum tax, but this chart illustrates the drastic expansion of the AMT under current law over the next 43 years. Over the next 43 years. This is also from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. You can clearly see that the share of households subjected to the alternative minimum tax is alarmingly around 65 percent.

Let's go through that again. You can see from the new chart which I have put up here that the share of households subjected to the alternative minimum tax increases by the year 2050 to about 65 percent of taxpayers. The reason why this 65 percent--or even going back to here, or even back to here--is significant is because, as I told you 48 hours ago, and as I tell my colleagues now, this alternative minimum tax was put in the tax law to hit wealthy taxpayers, 155 at that year, who didn't pay any tax whatsoever.

It was felt that everybody, particularly wealthy people living in this country and who benefit from this country, ought to pay some sort of a tax. It was never intended to hit this percentage of taxpayers, or this percentage of taxpayers, and surely not this percentage of taxpayers. And if we do nothing, it is going to be 65 percent. I don't know what the population of this country is going to be in 43 years, but I know that 65 percent of the population in 2050 will be more, quite obviously more than the 155 taxpayers the AMT was intended to target.

This chart also shows how the AMT will consume a greater and greater share of the total individual income tax liability. The Congressional Budget Office report states:

By 2050, roughly 15 percent of the individual income tax

liability would be generated by the alternative minimum tax

compared with about 2 percent today.

This is what will happen if we don't do anything. This is going to happen. The analysis done by the Congressional Budget Office clearly shows an upcoming ballooning of Federal revenues, accompanied by a corresponding bloating of the share of households and the share of total liability attributed to a tax that was only intended to hit 155 people 39 years ago.

A particularly wrongheaded argument that has been advocated is that the Bush tax cuts are responsible for increases in the number of people hit by the alternative minimum tax. Some think the Bush tax cuts are increasing some people's income so much that they are subject to the alternative minimum tax and that making the tax cuts permanent will only make those problems worse. This sort of reasoning is deceptive and could not be more wrong. First, the analysis that I presented--done by the Congressional Budget Office--looks forward all the way to 2050, and the Bush tax cuts under current law sunset in 2010. As I previously said, the AMT's greatest flaw is that it is not indexed for inflation, and inflation is going to continue whether the Bush tax cuts are extended or not. Inflation is going to be there.

This next chart from the Congressional Budget Office illustrates how the alternative minimum tax will continue to be a money machine, regardless of any other factors. The bottom line illustrates individual income tax liabilities if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent and the AMT is modified, the middle line illustrates current law with the permanence of the Bush tax cuts, and the very top line--current law. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to sunset and the AMT is allowed to grow and consume our middle class, the AMT will still balloon revenues anyway. Any argument that making the Bush tax cuts permanent will worsen our AMT problem is completely false, and this chart proves that. The AMT is a problem all by itself.

As I said earlier, the problem with all of the projections showing the AMT ballooning revenues is that these projections are used to put together budgets. This means the central problem in dealing with the AMT is money. There are some people who say we can only solve the AMT problem if offsetting revenue can be found to replace the money that the AMT is currently forecast to collect. Anyone who says this sees the forecasts showing revenue being pushed up as a percentage of GDP--and they are high-tax people and yet higher tax people to satisfy them--and they want to keep it there. These arguments are especially ridiculous when one considers that the alternative minimum tax was never meant to collect so much revenue and collect it from the people who are going to end up paying it, the middle class people, if we don't do something about it.

As a policy instrument, the alternative minimum tax has been and continues to be a complete failure, as I discussed 48 hours ago. The alternative minimum tax was originally conceived as a means to ensure that extremely wealthy taxpayers were not able to game the system and to avoid their entire tax liability. In 1969, the alternative minimum tax was calculated to hit only one out of a half a million people. There is absolutely no way anyone can call the AMT anything close to a success. The alternative minimum tax has even failed in its objective: to ensure that no citizen, regardless of how wealthy, was able to completely avoid paying at least a little bit of Federal income tax because we have this anomaly.

In 2004, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Mark Everson, informed the Finance Committee that the same number of taxpayers, as a percentage of the tax-filing population at large, continues to pay no Federal income tax.

So even to hit the people who were supposed to be hit, there are people in a tax situation, legally, able to avoid not only the regular income tax but to avoid the alternative minimum tax. So it is a failure by its own reason for existence.

According to an IRS analysis of the tax year 2003 data, we had 2,366 taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 or more who did not use the medical or dental expense deduction and had no income tax.

The AMT has failed in every way except for the ability to raise very large sums of money, and it was never intended to be a tax-producing machine. It was only intended to hit people who were not going to pay any income tax and ought to pay a little bit for the privilege of living in America. While it may be hard for some to turn down taxpayers' money, whether we are supposed to collect it or not, no one seems to have trouble spending it. This means that some want the taxpayer to pay the price for a tax that was designed poorly and through the comedy of errors was allowed to flourish.

It is simply unfair to expect taxpayers to pay a tax they were never intended to pay--and that means middle class America. And it is even more unfair to expect them to continue paying for that tax once we get rid of it. The reform or repeal of the AMT should not be offset because it is money we were never supposed to collect in the first place.

The way to solve this problem is to look on the other side of the ledger, the spending side. Budget planners need to take off their rose- colored glasses when looking at long-term revenue projections that include a tax by middle class people who were never intended to pay that tax, the alternative minimum tax, and to read the fine print. In general, it is a good idea to spend money within your means. That is true in this case as well. If we start trying to spend revenues we expect to collect in the future because of the AMT, from people who were never expected to pay it, it was never supposed to come in the first place, we will be living beyond our means. We need to stop assuming that record levels of revenue are available to be spent and to recognize that the AMT is a phony revenue source.

As we consider how to deal with the AMT, we must first remember that we do not have the option of not dealing with it unless we want to kill the middle class. The problems will only get worse every year and make any solutions more difficult. We must also be clear that the revenue the AMT would not collect as a result of repeal or reform should not be offset as a condition for repeal or reform. We should not call

it lost revenue because it is revenue that the middle class was never expected to pay. Making the offsetting of the AMT's ill-gotten gains a condition of the AMT fix is to punish the American taxpayers for an ill-conceived and poorly executed policy that has been a total failure.

Aside from not increasing the proportion of wealthy taxpayers who pay income taxes, the AMT is projected to balloon Federal revenues over historical averages and to become a greater source of revenue than even the regular income tax. Budget forecasters need to recognize that the AMT is not a legitimate source of revenue, and Congress needs to be disciplined enough to show restraint on spending so that an AMT solution doesn't boil down to the replacement of one misguided policy by another misguided policy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise with Senator Leahy, Senator Sanders, and Senator Mikulski to introduce legislation to address the continuing threat posed by cluster bombs to innocent civilians around the world.

Our legislation places common sense restrictions on the use of cluster bombs. It prevents any funds from being spent to use, sell or transfer cluster munitions: that have a failure rate of more than one percent; unless the rules of engagement or the agreement applicable to the sale or transfer of such cluster munitions specify that: the cluster munitions will only be used against clearly defined military targets and; will not be used where civilians are known to be present or in areas normally inhabited by civilians.

The bill also requires the President to submit a report to the appropriate Congressional committees on the plan, including estimated costs, by either the United States Government or the government to which U.S. cluster bombs are sold or transferred to clean up unexploded cluster bombs.

Finally, the bill includes a national security waiver that allows the President to waive the prohibition on the use, sale, or transfer of cluster bombs with a failure rate of more than one percent, if he determines it is vital to protect the security of the United States.

The human death toll and injury from these weapons are felt everyday. Innocent children think they are picking up a play toy in the field and suddenly their arm is blown off.

Last November, the International Committee for the Red Cross called for a ban on the use of cluster bombs in highly populated areas. They joined other leading organizations who have also decried the indiscriminate use of these weapons: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Friends Committee on National Legislation,

Handicap International, and Landmine Action.

Several countries, including Belgium, Germany, and Norway have either instituted a ban or a moratorium on the use and procurement of cluster bombs. More than 30 countries are actively calling for increased international controls on the weapon.

And next week, Norway will host an international conference to explore the possibility of a international treaty to ban certain types of cluster munitions and provide support for the victims of the weapons.

We need to adjust our policies for their use and can do so easily.

Every year, hundreds of civilians are killed and many more are injured due to unexploded cluster bombs.

From the fields of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, through the streets of Kosovo and Iraq, to the arid hills of Afghanistan and the playgrounds of Lebanon, these lethal relics of war continue to cripple life, hope, and peace.

Cluster munitions are large bombs, rockets, or artillery shells that contain up to hundreds of small submunitions, or individual ``bomblets.''

They are intended for attacking enemy troop formations and armor covering over a half mile radius.

Yet, in practice, they pose a real threat to the safety of civilians when used in populated areas because they leave hundreds of unexploded bombs over a very large area and they are often inaccurate.

The non-profit group Handicap International studied the effects of cluster bombs in 24 countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Chechnya, Laos, and Lebanon.

Its report found that civilians make up 98 percent of those killed or injured by cluster bombs. 27 percent of the casualties are children.

As the report shows, cluster bombs end up in streets and cities where men and women go to work and do their shopping.

They end up in groves of trees and fields where children play.

They end up in homes where families live.

In some cases, up to 40 percent of cluster bombs fail to explode, posing a particular danger to civilians long after the conflict has ended.

This is particularly and sadly true of children because bomblets are no bigger than a D battery and in some cases resemble a tennis ball.

Children, outside with their friends and relatives, come across these cluster bombs, pick them up because they look a ball, and start playing with them.

A terrible result often follows as these stories demonstrate.

On March 25, 2003 Abdallah Yaqoob was sleeping in his bed in his family's home in Basra, Iraq when he was hit by shrapnel from a cluster munition strike that hit his neighborhood.

He lost his arm, and his abdomen was severely injured. Abdallah was hit by British L20A1/M85 munition.

Falah Hassan, 13, was injured by an unexploded ground-launched submunition in Iraq on March 26, 2003.

The explosion severed his right hand and spread shrapnel through his body. He lost his left index finger and soft tissue in his lower limbs. Source: Bonnie Docherty/Human Rights Watch.

Hassan Hammade, a 13 year old Lebanese boy, lost four fingers and sustained injuries to his stomach and shoulder after he picked up an unexploded cluster bomb in front of an orange tree.

He said, ``I started playing with it and it blew up. I didn't know it was a cluster bomb--it just looked like a burned out piece of metal.'' Source: Christian Science Monitor.

All the children are too scared to go out now, we just play on the main roads or in our homes.

These unexploded cluster bombs become, in essence, de facto landmines.

Instead of targeting troop formations and enemy armor, unexploded bomblets target innocent civilians, seriously maiming or killing their victims.

This runs counter to our values and counter to the laws of war.

Make no mistake, the impact of unexploded cluster bombs on civilian populations has been devastating.

In Laos alone there are between 9 and 27 million unexploded cluster bombs, leftovers from U.S. bombing campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s. Approximately 11,000 people, 30 percent of them children, have been killed or injured since the war ended. Source: International Committee for the Red Cross.

In the first Gulf War, 61,000 cluster bombs were used containing 20 million bomblets. Since 1991, unexploded bomblets have killed 1,600 innocent men, women, and children and injured more than 2,500.

In Afghanistan in 2001, 1,228 cluster bombs with 248,056 bomblets were used. Between October 2001 and November 2002, 127 civilians were killed by them, 70 percent of them under the age of 18.

In Iraq in 2003, 13,000 cluster bombs with nearly 2 million bomblets were used. Combining the first and second Gulf Wars, the total number of unexploded bomblets in the region is approximately 1.2 million.

An estimated 1,220 Kuwaitis and 400 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 1991. Source: Human Rights Watch.

What gives rise, in part, to my bill are recent developments in Lebanon over alleged use of cluster bombs by Israel.

It is estimated that Israel dropped 4 million bomblets in southern Lebanon and 1 million of these bomblets failed to explode.

As Lebanese children and families have returned to their homes and begin to rebuild, they have been exposed to the danger of these unexploded bomblets lying in the rubble.

22 people, including six children have been killed and 133, including 47 children, injured.

One United Nations official estimates that 40 percent of the cluster bombs launched by Israel in Southern Lebanon failed to explode.

So far, more than 58,000 unexploded bomblets in Lebanon have been destroyed but it will take 12 to 15 months to complete the effort. Source: United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon.

Looking at these figures it is clear that several countries are awash with unexploded bomblets.

The number is indeed staggering and the consequences are real.

Each death that results from an unexploded American bomblet weakens American diplomacy and American values.

How are we supposed to win the hearts and minds of civilians in these countries when we leave behind such deadly weapons that indiscriminately kill boys and girls?

How are we supposed to speed up reconstruction efforts--building homes, schools, hospitals, clinics, and ensuring electricity and water supplies--when populated areas are littered with these bombs?

Simply put, unexploded cluster bombs fuel anger and resentment and make security, stabilization, and reconstruction efforts that much harder.

And it is not just a humanitarian problem, it is a military problem.

By showering targets with cluster bombs, we ensure that our troops will face thousands of unexploded bomblets as they move forward.

This will force them to change course and slow the mission.

During the Iraq war, U.S. troops would fire six rockets containing 4,000 bomblets to eliminate one artillery piece in a civilian neighborhood. With a 16 percent dud rate, approximately 640 duds were left behind. Source: Human Rights Watch.

As an August 2003 Wall Street Journal article noted: ``Unexploded bomblets render significant swaths of battlefield off-limits to advancing U.S. troops.''

In fact, during the first Gulf War, unexploded cluster munitions killed 22 U.S. troops--6 percent of total U.S. fatalities--and injured 58.

Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen recognized the threat cluster bombs posed to civilians and U.S. troops alike and issued a memorandum which became known as the Cohen Policy.

It stated that beginning in fiscal year 2005, all new cluster bomb would have a failure rate of less than one percent.

This was an important step forward but we must remember that we still have 5.5 million cluster bombs in our arsenals containing 728.5 million bomblets. That is, we are still prepared to use an enormous amount of cluster bombs that have significant failure rates. That is unacceptable.

Let me be clear. While this legislation prohibits the sale, use, or transfer of cluster bombs with a failure rate of more than one percent, it does include a national security waiver to allow the President to waive the restriction.

Instead of exercising the waiver, I would hope that administration would work with Congress to extend the Cohen Policy to the entire U.S. cluster bomb arsenal.

During the 1990s, a comprehensive pact was forged to protect civilians from land mines worldwide. The United States and the international community have since spent millions to remove mines in post-conflict regions.

There is no question there should be a similar program for cluster bombs.

Simply put, this legislation will save lives--civilians and soldiers alike--and will help save the reputation of the United States.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Mr. President. I rise today with Senator Hutchison to introduce legislation to reauthorize the extraordinarily successful Breast Cancer Research Stamp for two additional years.

Without Congressional action, this important stamp will expire on December 31 of this year.

This stamp deserves to be extended as it has proven to be highly effective.

Since 1998, over 747 million breast cancer research stamps have been sold--raising $53.76 million for breast cancer research.

California continues to be one of the leading contributors, purchasing over 47 million stamps with $3.6 million going to research-- almost 15 percent of the nationwide contribution.

Furthermore, in September 2005, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report showing that the Breast Cancer Research Stamp has been a success and an effective fund-raiser in the effort to increase funds to fight the disease.

The report also indicated that ``grants funded by NIH and DOD using Breast Cancer Research Stamp proceeds have produced significant findings in breast cancer research.''

The National Institutes for Health and the Department of Defense have received approximately $36.7 million and $15.7 million, respectively, putting these research dollars to good use by funding innovative advances in breast cancer research.

For example, a 2002 Department of Defense Concept Award enabled researchers to develop Medical Hyperspectral Imaging (MHSI) technology. This method of imaging helps surgeons determine if they have removed all cancerous tissue during breast cancer surgery.

Thanks to breakthroughs in cancer research, more and more people are becoming cancer survivors rather than cancer victims. Every dollar we continue to raise will help save lives.

One cannot calculate in dollars and cents how the stamp has focused public awareness on this terrible disease and the need for additional research funding.

There is still so much more to do because this disease has far reaching effects on our nation: breast cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among women after skin cancer. More than three million women are living with breast cancer in the U.S. today, one million of who have yet to be diagnosed. Though much less common, over 1,700 men were diagnosed with breast cancer last year.

This legislations would: extend the authorization of the Breast Cancer Research stamp for two additional years--until December 31, 2009; allow the stamp to continue to have a surcharge of up to 25 percent above the value of a first-class stamp with the surplus revenues going to breast cancer research; not affect any other semi- postal proposals under consideration by the U.S. Postal Service.

I urge my colleagues to join me and Senator Hutchison in passing this important legislation to extend the Breast Cancer Research Stamp for another two years.

Until a cure is found, the money from the sale of this unique postal stamp will continue to focus public awareness on this devastating disease and provide hope to breast cancer survivors.

We ask for unanimous consent that the text of the legislation directly follow this statement in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak of an issue of great concern in my State of Alaska but also a concern we are seeing across the Nation, and this is access to health

care and, more specifically, access to the professionals who provide for our very important health care needs.

In just 20 years, 20 percent of the U.S. population will be 65 years or older, a percentage larger than any other time in our Nation's history. And just as this aging population places the highest demand on our health care system, the Council on Graduate Medical Education states that there will be a national shortage of over 100,000 physicians in this country. Other experts look at it from a bit more dire perspective and predict a shortage closer to 200,000 physicians. If that becomes a reality, 84 million patients will be left without a doctor's care.

A dozen States already report physician shortages. Across the country, patients are experiencing, or soon will face, shortages in many physician specialties, including cardiology, radiology, and several pediatric and surgical subspecialties. Demand for doctors is accelerating more rapidly than the supply, and yet the number of our medical school graduates has remained virtually flat for over a quarter of a century.

During that same time period, the median tuition and fees at medical schools have increased by 750 percent in private schools and by nearly 900 percent in public schools.

To add to that, much of the Nation's physician workforce also is graying. They are simply getting older. They are heading for retirement. A third of the Nation's 750,000 active post residency physicians are older than 55 and likely to retire just as this boomer population generation moves into its time of greatest medical need. By the year 2020, physicians are expected to hang up their stethoscopes at a rate nearly 2\1/2\ times the retirement rate of today.

A looming doctor shortage threatens to create a national health care crisis by further limiting access to physicians, jeopardizing quality and accelerating cost increases. People are waiting for weeks to get appointments, and emergency departments have lines that fall out the door, literally. Many will go without care entirely, and we know the consequence then in terms of the pressures on the health care system when they go without care. In rural America, patients have long gone without care. In fact, the shortage of physicians, especially primary care physicians, in rural areas of the United States represents one of the most intractable health policy problems of the past century. As a result, rural patients are often denied both access to care and quality of care. One-fifth of the U.S. population lives in rural America.

Yet only 9 percent of the Nation's physicians are practicing in these areas. Over 50 million of these rural Americans live in areas that have a shortage of physicians to meet their basic needs.

Additionally, physician recruitment to rural America has also been a problem. The high cost of medical school is in large part to blame. Most students, very severely in debt after medical school, are forced away from primary care and forced into more lucrative speciality medicine. Rural areas and their community health centers across the Nation report a declining ability to recruit primary care physicians.

Alaska, as my colleagues have heard me say on the floor of the Senate many times, geographically is huge. It is a State larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. In Alaska, ``rural'' really takes on a new meaning. The physician shortage crisis in Alaska has long been magnified. Health care delivery in the State is extremely difficult because, in part, there are fewer roads than in any other State. Even Rhode Island has more roads than Alaska. This means that for the vast majority of communities in Alaska, our medical supplies, our patients, and our providers all must travel by air, which adds to the cost.

Alaska's population is growing, especially its elderly population, which is the second fastest growing in the Nation.

People don't typically think of Alaska as having a fair number of seniors, but our senior population is growing at a very rapid rate. However, Alaska's physician workforce, as others across the Nation, is aging. The number of new residents is not keeping up with attrition. Mr. President, 118 physicians in Anchorage alone are expected to retire in the next 10 years.

Currently, Alaska has the sixth lowest ratio of physicians to population in the United States. Outside of Anchorage, the ratio is the worst in the Nation. To put it into perspective, if Alaska were to reach its national average of physicians to population, if we were to reach it by the year 2025, we would need a net increase of 980 physicians statewide or 49 more physicians per year.

For some in States where their population base is significant, they might say 980 physicians between now and 2025 isn't that bad. We only have about 650,000 people in the State of Alaska. For us to find 980 physicians, or 49 more physicians per year, is a tall order.

In Anchorage, many specialties are in serious or in critical shortage, including general internal medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, rheumatology, and infectious diseases. Patients wait for months to be accepted as new patients for general internal medicine. Others have to be flown to Seattle for some critical specialties.

I need to repeat this because we are not just talking about ``I don't like this particular doctor, and I want to find somebody else.'' We don't have the physicians to see the patients, so a patient will wait for months for an appointment or the other alternative is to fly outside to Seattle.

There is a bright spot, though, on the horizon. Even though Alaska has only one residency training program--and I should also mention we don't have any medical schools in the State of Alaska--our one residency training program trains 12 family medicine residents each year--clearly a number that is far fewer than our population needs. Seventy-seven percent of the residents choose to stay in Alaska--the highest rate of return in the Nation. We know why it is. We figure we have an awful lot to offer those who come to the State, but the problem is drawing them to the State in the first place.

In the last Congress, with great fanfare, we provided a Medicare prescription drug benefit. But the question I was asking at that time is, What good is a prescription drug benefit if there is no physician to write prescriptions? In the 21st century, we cannot, as a Government, permit such dire access to care to continue. I do believe the situation is intolerable. We cannot sit by while potentially millions of patients go without care. That is why I am proposing a three-pronged plan to alleviate the Nation's rural health care access crisis.

Earlier in the year, I introduced the Rural Physician Relief Act. This is legislation which would provide tax incentives for physicians to practice in our most rural and frontier locations in the country. Today, I am announcing a second step on improving access to health care. Soon, I will introduce the Physician Shortage Elimination Act. This is a strong step in improving access to our health system. Later, as the third prong of my plan, I will introduce comprehensive legislation for improving the plight of the uninsured.

To get to the Physician Shortage Elimination Act, it essentially does four things:

First and foremost, it doubles the funding for the National Health Service Corps. This program has operated with 37 years of excellence, providing primary care services to our most vulnerable populations. It is a solution to the many students who find the exorbitant cost of medical school prohibitively expensive. However, the program is just too small to meet the great need in underserved America. Right now, over 4,000 National Health Service Corps clinicians provide primary care to nearly 6 million people nationwide who otherwise would likely have gone without care. Tragically, this still leaves some 50 million people with extremely diminished access to health care. In fact, the American Association of Medical Colleges said the current program only meets 12 percent of the needs of the underserved. Yet this program is so popular with medical students that 80 percent of its applicants in a typical year must be turned away.

This National Health Service Corps has a proven track record. Let us build on its success. Doubling our investment in the National Health Service Corps is the most prudent, most cost-effective and expeditious way to meet the current needs and future needs of

America's underserved. In fact, the former president of the AAMC stated that the National Health Service Corps:

. . . is ideally positioned to alleviate the shortage of

physicians in many medically underserved areas but has only

had sufficient funding to accommodate only a fraction of

those young physicians who are prepared to practice in those

areas.

The second part of the bill will improve and expand current medical residency programs. Half of all physicians practice medicine within 100 miles of their residency. This means the residents who train in rural or underserved areas are likely to remain in those areas. The small Alaska Family Residency Program, which is a program designed to help meet the needs in rural Alaska, is a great example of this. Of the 55 graduates, 75 percent have stayed in Alaska upon completing their residency--the highest return rate of any graduate medical program in the country. Unfortunately, it is too small to meet the large needs of rural Alaska.

Rural and underserved residency programs must be allowed to flourish. We have arcane barriers, and we have artificial caps on residency programs that need to be removed. Students must be allowed to learn their craft in the most rural and underserved areas of the Nation. My legislation will prevent residency programs from being penalized for training in locations where the need is greatest, such as the Indian Health Service locations. Additionally, it will remove barriers that prevent programs from developing rural training rotations and rural experiences in their curriculum. All the experts agree that this is likely one of the most effective ways to prepare students for a rural practice.

Further, the legislation will reauthorize the Centers of Excellence Program and the Health Careers Opportunity Program. This did not receive funding for 2006, but these are important programs, and they target disadvantaged and minority students from as young as kindergarten on through high school. They target these young people to develop an interest in the health professions. The programs nurture the youth in rural and underserved areas, and they create a pipeline to careers in the health professions. This concept of ``growing your own,'' if you will, is the most effective way of achieving long-term retention in most rural locations.

Finally, my legislation will bolster the cornerstone of health care in rural America, which is the community health center. Community health centers provide quality community-based health care for millions of America's medically underserved and uninsured. This bill will help them do their job. It will expand residency programs and primary care services offered by community health service centers and offer grants to health centers to assist them in recruitment, technical assistance, and physician mentoring programs.

Mr. President, as a person coming from a rural area, you know a strong commitment to our community health centers is a smart, cost- effective way of maximizing our health care dollars for our neediest populations.

The prognosis for quality of health care in America right now does not look good. The prognosis is poor. Fifty million Americans in underserved areas across the Nation today already must do without care. Soon, we will have greater problems. We will have even greater physician shortages, which will mean another 84 million patients will be left without a physician's care.

We must act here in Congress. I ask my colleagues to take a look at the legislation we are introducing, the Physician Shortage Elimination Act, and see if this isn't something we can join together to work on so we can continue to provide the level of care Americans across the country, in both rural and urban areas, deserve and expect.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Order of Procedure