A bill to authorize appropriations for the Department of Defense to address the equipment reset and other equipment needs of the National Guard, and for other purposes.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, under the previous order, I believe I have several amendments pending. I rise to discuss those with my colleagues. I will call up several of them as I go along.

It is important for the American public to know what is going on. If we go back to 2003, what we can see is a major growth in emergency spending. Why is that important? It is important because emergency spending is totally outside the budget parameters on which the Senate works. Emergency spending doesn't count against any total cap on what our spending will be. It doesn't count against the budget deficit, and it doesn't count against the budget rules. We merely spend the money outside of any rules of control, and we charge it. We take a credit card and we say: Kaching, grandchildren, you are up.

As my colleagues can see from this chart, from 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, to 2007, as the bill before us today, we see an average of over $100 billion a year, about $110 to $115 billion a year outside of a $3 trillion budget. So no taxpayer dollars presently are going to go to pay for any of this. What we are going to do is ask the Treasury to issue bonds and notes. Guess who will be redeeming those notes. Our grandchildren. Who is at fault in all this? Partly the administration because part of this funding has been for a war that should have been budgeted through the Defense appropriations bill. That will happen next year. But the fact is, we can take $80 billion out of this across the year and apply it to the war.

What about the other $30 billion every year on average that doesn't have anything to do with the war and doesn't have anything to do with an emergency? Remember, this is supposedly emergency spending. How long have we been in this war? Four years. There is nothing emergency about it. We know the spending. It should go through the regular process. Our budget rules define ``emergency'' as something unforeseen, unexpected. We have to question the intellectual honesty of our body when the $18.7 billion that is added on to the defense request in this bill is deemed an emergency.

The first amendment I will talk about is $100 million that is an emergency to fund increased security at the conventions, both in Minneapolis-St. Paul and in Denver. We have known we were going to have conventions every 4 years for a long time. Never before have we funded the security required for these conventions out of an emergency bill. So in essence, what we are going to do is we are going to have two big parties and we are going to send the bill for those parties to our grandkids.

The first amendment I have actually eliminates that $100 million. We have plenty of time under the regular appropriations process with which to supply the money within the budget guidelines. Every billion we spend outside of the budget guidelines means that is another billion which is going to be spent inside, which means we are actually doubling the spending. Something that should have been inside, now we are going to spend outside of the budget. We are going to charge it to our children, and then we are going to spend more money.

How did we get where we are? The important thing to look at as to how we got where we are is to look at what has happened to Defense appropriations every year. There is a requirement that is asked for from the Pentagon in the budget. It is within our budget numbers. What happens when it comes out of here? What happens is, it gets underfunded intentionally. Why does it get underfunded intentionally? So that we can create, in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, additional spending inside the budget, and then we come back and get the actual defense needs in an emergency. It is a shell game that is being played on the American public that says: We are going to underfund what we know we need in defense. Then we know there is going to be an emergency supplemental, and we will make up for that when the emergency supplemental comes. But because we underfunded defense, we can therefore spend the money somewhere else outside of the budget. It is a game that we continue to play that is unfair to the American public.

Amendment No. 648

I call up amendment 648.

Amendment No. 648 removes $100 million. This is not about

being against security for people who are going to attend the conventions. It is ironic that the decisions which are made at the conventions will have already been made probably in February or March. But we are going to charge the American taxpayers $100 million for security outside of the budget. Who are we really charging? We are charging our grandkids. This has never before happened. Always before, if we funded money for convention sites, we have done it within the budget. So it isn't an emergency, and it is markedly unethical to take money that should be inside our budget and place it outside and ask our grandchildren to pay for us to all have a party in August and September.

H.R. 4613, the fiscal year Department of Defense appropriations bill, provided $50 million for discretionary grants for this same purpose associated with the 2004 nominating conventions. We did that in the 2005 bill. We did it within the budget. We have done it before.

Let's talk about the criteria of what is an emergency: necessary, essential, and vital, plus sudden, quickly coming into being, not building up over time, an urgent, pressing, compelling need requiring immediate action, subject to unforeseen, totally unpredictable and unanticipated, not permanent and temporary nature. There is no question the funding for the conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties does not meet any of those criteria. Yet here it is in the bill. Why do we find it in this bill? So we don't have to spend the money inside the budget limitations that are placed on Congress. Here is $100 million outside of that budget limitation that we are then going to spend, another $100 million, because we have not paid for this one, and we should have paid for it within the budget.

This isn't sudden. It is not urgent. It is not pressing. It does not require immediate action, is not unforeseen, not unpredictable, and it was not unanticipated. There have been nominating conventions since 1832. The year 2008 will be the second Presidential election since the 9/11 terrorist attack. There is no question that increased security is required. But this is the first time we have said it is an emergency. It is like saying we don't know the census is coming in 2010. We will have an emergency supplemental for the census. As a matter of fact, we have done that before. The war on terror is an emergency. Having a party for politicians and their political parties doesn't qualify.

We are going to have a vote on this amendment. I expect to lose the vote. But I also expect the American people will ask: Why in the world would we be doing this? Why would we violate their good will by playing games for the political parties? Why would we do that? It comes back to the point of where we are in the Senate, why are we addressing this legislation? Why is there $18.7 billion worth of additional items added to this bill other than to fund the Defense Department?

We will hear all sorts of answers: We need it. We didn't do it. We have emergency agricultural appropriations in this bill.

Actually, I believe there is an emergency in farm country, and we ought to be doing something about it. But we ought to be paying for it. I haven't yet talked to a farmer from Oklahoma who thinks his grandchildren ought to be paying for us to do an emergency supplemental in terms of agriculture. They believe we ought to find it within.

The fact is, Senator Carper and I held 49 hearings in the last Congress and discovered over $200 billion of waste, fraud, abuse, or duplication within the discretionary budget. That is within $1 trillion, 20 percent. Most Americans probably believe that. The problem is, most politicians don't have the nerve to challenge where that spending is because there is an interest group that wants it spent. There is an interest group, and it is us. It is self-serving that we are going to spend $100 million on increased security for the conventions and not pay for it and spend that money inside the budget on something else. Probably the greatest moral question is, Are we going to have a party on our unborn next generation?

They are going to be the ones who pay back this $100 million. It is not going to be $100 million when they pay it back; it will probably be $500 million or $600 million by the time we get to paying it back with the compound interest.

What would this $100 million do if we were not spending it on security at party conventions? It would buy 31,797 sets of body armor. It would uparmor 658 humvees. It would uparmor 529 ambulances, medic carriers for the guys who are helping our guys in the field.

Instead, we are going to use a bill, intended to cover the cost of winning the war, to protect our national security, fight the war on terrorism, to add $100 million to our national debt that already exceeds $8.7 trillion. We added $1,000 to that debt last year for every man, woman, and child. We added $1,000. If you pass this bill-- ``emergency''--what we are going to do is add another $400 for every man, woman, and child in this country--the debt just for this bill. So it ought to be about real emergencies.

Federal funding also is already planned for the conventions. The Department of Justice did not request this $100 million. The administration budgeted $15 million for the Secret Service to provide the security at these conventions. Each convention has been designated as a national security, special security event, making security personnel eligible for other Federal tax dollars through grants to cover the expenses. Why are we doing it? There has not even been a security plan for which we are throwing $100 million at formalized for the conventions.

I believe if you are a young person in this country today, what we are doing on this bill, especially with this item, has to be heartbreaking. April 15 is coming up pretty soon. We all look at our pay stubs and see what we are paying in Federal taxes. What you do not see when you get that pay stub is how much additional you are going to owe at the end of the year because we were not responsible. We were not responsible with the taxpayers' money. Yet we play all these shell games of hiding money, underfunding defense so we can bring it back in a supplemental, so we can spend money elsewhere rather than making the tough choices.

Let's read about what was in the news after the last conventions. It is pretty interesting to know. One hundred million dollars of your money for the following: USA Today reported the convention featured more than 200 parties by corporations, lobbyists, trade groups, and other organizations. These were in addition to the high-dollar donor meals, golf tournaments, sporting events held during the convention week. Top sponsorship at these events can cost up to $250,000--golf tournaments, breakfast at Tiffany's, Yankee Stadium fundraisers, champagne and cigar celebration, baseball games.

We are going to spend $100 million of our grandkids' money to protect politicians while they have a party. To me, it is unconscionable. It is even more unconscionable to do it in this bill. There is nothing about this that is an emergency. There is nothing about this that was not foreseen. There is nothing about this that was not anticipated. This is a game.

The last election reminded us--my party--you cannot say one thing and do another, except that is what we are seeing with this bill.

Amendment No. 649

Mr. President, I wish also to spend some time on amendment No. 649. Over the last 5 years, the University of Vermont has received $400 million in earmarks for things for that university. In this bill is an earmark for $2 million. The first thing we said is we are not going to have earmarks that are not published: who put them in, who sponsored them, and what they are for. This is an emergency bill. There is no question we ought to honor former Senator Jeffords. There is no question we ought to do that. But in an emergency bill that is unpaid for, that does not have anything to do with fighting the war on terror, we are going to send another $2 million to a university that has gotten $400 million over the last 5 years? This is not a place for it. It is not the time for it. It is not the way to do it. Supposedly, we are free of earmarks, and yet here is an earmark for which we do not have the money. We are not going to be able to pay for it, even though the claim is this is offset. It is offset with student loan management money. That is how they have offset it to say it does not

cost any money. Which is more important? More students getting loans and effective management so more people get student loans or giving another $2 million to a university that has already gotten $400 million of the taxpayers' money? I do not think there is any question in the average American's mind in regard to that.

Let me read what the University of Vermont has gotten: year 2000, $54 million for 201 different programs; year 2001, $60 million; year 2002, $69 million; year 2003, $76 million for 249 different programs; year 2004, $70 million; year 2005, $68 million. There is a lot of money that has already gone up there, a lot of it borrowed.

At the present time, the University of Vermont has an endowment of $282,594,000. Now, the interest on that, at 6 percent, gives you about, oh, close to $15 million a year--just the interest off that endowment. I believe they have plenty of money to fund this chair to honor Senator Jeffords.

The endowment grew 16 percent last year. Its growth last year was 20 times the amount of this earmark. Again, it is not unanticipated, certainly not an emergency, certainly it is not something we have to do now.

Again, is it necessary? Essential? Is it not merely useful or beneficial? It is useful. It will be beneficial. Did the demand for this quickly come into being? No. It was part of an earmark in the Labor-HHS bill that was not included in last year's appropriations. Is it urgent, pressing, and compelling, requiring immediate action? No. Was it unforeseen or unpredictable or unanticipated? Is it temporary in nature? No. It is not temporary. It is the start of many years of giving $2 million a year on the same thing.

This project violates the Appropriations Committee's own earmark moratorium. On December 11, Chairman Byrd and Congressman Obey announced there would be no more congressional earmarks until the new rules were put in place to make the process more transparent and more accountable. Those rules are not in place. The transparency and accountability is not there. Yet we see an earmark.

Here is what the joint statement said:

We will place a moratorium on all earmarks until a reform

process is put in place. Earmarks included in this year's

House and Senate bills will be eligible for consideration in

the 2008 process subject to new standards for transparency

and accountability. We will work to restore an accountable,

above-board, transparent process for funding decisions and

put an end to the abuses that have harmed the credibility of

Congress.

More of the same. There is no end in sight. This earmark was previously included in the report language--not the law, in the report language--for the fiscal year 2007 Labor-HHS appropriations bill. That was on page 251 of that report. It is the first of the earmarks to be resurrected from last year.

I might say as an aside, the Congressional Research Service has refused to honor a request from myself and Senator DeMint to give us a list of the earmarks in the 2007 appropriations bills--a flat-out refusal. There is a lot of speculation as to why they do not want the American people to know what the earmarks were last year. Come 2008, we are going to get to find out them all under the Transparency and Accountability Act that myself and Senator Obama and several others cosponsored, which became law last year.

When we questioned the University of Vermont about this earmark, we asked: What were the estimated costs of the project long term? They could not give us an answer. Who was going to finance it after the program was established? They could not give us an answer. How will the Federal funding be expended? They could not tell us that. Did the university request the funding? We do not know the answer to that either. None of these questions have been answered by the University of Vermont.

This $2 million could be spent for our troops. It would buy 2,857 carbine rifles the National Guard presently does not have so they could conduct training. It would buy 4 mine-protected vehicles or 13 uparmored humvees.

Mr. President, I wish at this time, without giving up my right to the floor, to yield time to the Senator from Virginia.

Madam President, reclaiming my time, as the floor is under my control.

I would like to continue, since my time is going to be limited by what I will be allowed to discuss on my amendments in terms of total time, I wish to spend a minute talking about amendment 657. There is no question we have some critical needs among many of our agricultural suppliers in this country--needs that were unforeseen, needs that were unanticipated, needs that we should have addressed last year but didn't; needs that we should have addressed in the CR, but we were precluded from offering an amendment to offer a way to supply those needs. What this amendment does is it provides farm relief to both our production agriculture individuals, as well as our cattle, in a fiscally responsible manner.

I wish to give some quotes, before I go into the details, from last year's debate with Senator Conrad and Senator Dorgan. Here are the following quotes:

I am very much in sympathy with Senator Coburn on the

notion of paying for this. I appreciate very much--as the

Senator knows, I wish to pay for this all as well. We have a

way to do a pay-for, but I am precluded from doing so by the

rules. On the question of paying for it, I have complete

agreement with the Senator from Oklahoma. I wish the rules

permitted us to offer an amendment for pay-for. I don't have

disagreements about the issues of paying for it. I suggest we

do a unanimous consent. I would do a unanimous consent to pay

for it. These things ought to be paid for. We have hundreds

of billions of dollars come through here with hardly a blink,

none of it paid for. That ought to change. I am with the

Senator from Oklahoma. Let's try to change that.

The fact is this does not have a pay-for, not because Senator Conrad doesn't want it there or I don't want it there; it ought to be there.

Well, here is the chance to put those words into action. What this amendment does is strike all nonessential items in the farm title so the scarce resources we have can be maximized for crop and livestock disaster assistance. The language in this amendment leaves verbatim that language in the underlying bill. It requires, though, the underlying funding for the emergency in this bill to be paid for within existing funds at the Department of Agriculture. You are going to hear all this screaming: They can't do it. You know what. They have $8 billion in the bank right now unspent, unobligated; money that is sitting there from this last year and this year that they haven't spent. This total will come to $4.15 billion, $4.15 billion to take care of the real needs of the consumer, the production agriculture in this country that has had 3 years of drought, has had 3 years of floods, has had 3 years where they didn't produce a crop. Those who actually bought crop insurance are going under anyway. What it would not do is add the other $1 billion to the outside of that for special interests that aren't the heart of agriculture in this country and when we do that, we are going to pay for it.

How dare you take money from the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture is, if you compared it on size and budget, the sixth biggest business in the United States. There isn't a big business out there that if they had to scrimp, couldn't save 4 or 5 percent on their business. As a matter of fact, they do it every day. As soon as their stocks start getting low, they start trimming, becoming more efficient, better ideas, better efficiency, and they cut their costs. We can do that at the Department of Agriculture.

This body isn't about to vote for this amendment because they don't want to have that fight. They don't want to have the hard work of making the Department of Agriculture efficient and not allowing the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication that goes on in the Department of Agriculture. The $1.6 billion of food stamp payments that are paid out to people who are ineligible every year, who are ineligible, who have plenty of money, yet they are getting food stamps. All the other programs that have waste, fraud, and abuse in them, we are not going to take the step and say: Department of Agriculture, take the money that you have now--you have almost $8 billion in the bank--work real hard, trim yourself about 2 or 3 percent, save the money and go out and do what is going to make a difference to the production of agriculture in this country. No, we are going to do what is easy when this amendment goes down.

What we are going to do is we are going to say: Grandkids, we didn't have the courage to do what was right in 2007. We didn't have the courage to look at the programs that weren't efficient. We didn't have the courage to challenge somebody when they were being wasteful. We didn't have the courage to find it within ourselves to not lessen your standard of living because we wanted our standard of living taken care of.

So what they are going to see is an extra $5 billion or $6 billion coming out of their pockets 20 and 30 years from now when we attempt to try to pay back this money, and they are going to wonder: What did we do? What were the standards under which we operated?

What was the character trait in us, as a body, that allowed us to not demand efficiency from an agency of the Federal Government and yet go the easy way and demand it out of the livelihood and opportunity of our grandchildren? That is what they are going to ask. What is the character flaw in that? Is it laziness? The Members of this body obviously care about this country. What is it? What is it that would not make them do the hard work of challenging the inefficiency that we all know is out there in the Federal Government and we all know is within the Department of Agriculture? Not that the Department of Agriculture employees aren't great. They are. They work hard. They are dedicated. But there is still enough money in the sixth largest corporation in America, the Department of Agriculture, to find $4.15 billion and bail out the guys and gals who need to be bailed out right now, just like we have tried to bail out Louisiana.

What is the character flaw? Is it self-centeredness? Is it laziness? Is it not willing to fight to make things better? Or is it so easy to put the credit card into the machine and say: I am not going to worry about tomorrow. I am going to think about the short run right now. Long term doesn't have any consequence to it. I am not going to consider that.

Now, what does this amendment get rid of? What it keeps is $2.09 billion in crop assistance and $1.64 billion in livestock assistance. What does it get rid of? It gets rid of individual earmarks for individual Senators. It gets rid of $40 million for the tree assistance program which includes Christmas trees, shrubs, nursery bushes. It gets rid of $30 million in administration for hiring additional Farm Service Agency personnel and computer upgrades. You tell me we can't find $30 million in the sixth largest corporation in this country to finally fix the computers? Sure we can. It will be hard, but we can do it. But it will never happen unless Congress asks for it to happen--demands that it happen. Once you start asking one agency to do that, it will be easy to ask the next agency to do that. Pretty soon, before you know it, Americans are starting to get good value for their money.

If, in fact--it is not ``if, in fact,'' it is actually a fact. Eighteen to twenty percent of all the discretionary funds spent by the U.S. Government are either waste, fraud, abuse or duplicative. Think about that. That means 20 cents out of every taxpayer dollar you pay in the discretionary side of the budget, one-third of the budget--the rest of it is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--is not efficiently managed, spent or directed for the purposes it was intended. So why would we not force this? We are going to hear it is impossible. You can't ask them to find it. I will guarantee, if they were a public company and their stock was tanking and they weren't doing well, they would hire a new CEO and, before you knew it, that would happen. The $4 billion would be made up through efficiency, innovation, and programmatic changes that directed the programs to the most needy at the best time, at the best efficiency, with the least cost and the greatest skill.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, the amendment we are considering says the agriculture supplemental we put forward is going to be paid for. The Agriculture Department is the sixth largest corporation in the United States, when you look at it. What it says is we ought to be able to use some of the $8 billion they have sitting in the pot now and we ought to be able to find a way to make them 3 percent more efficient so we can actually pay $4.1 billion to help in the agricultural emergency we have in this country.

It does not add it. We do not charge it to our grandchildren. We say we are going to be responsible, and we are going to take it out of the money that is in there now that is easily findable. We will actually pay for helping our farmers who need our help today.

It is the exact same language the appropriations bill has for both cattle producers and grain producers. It just says: Find it within the agency, pay for it, and we will do it.

This is simple. It is not an emergency. Eighteen months from now we are going to have the Presidential nominating conventions. In Atlanta, during the Olympics, for a month the entire security was $10 million. If we triple that amount for a month, you have $30 million. This bill allows $100 million for conventions and for decisions that are already going to be made prior to that so that the political parties can have a good time. Yet we are going to ask our children to pay for it. You are going to vote to ask your grandchildren to pay for a party you aren't having now, when the President already has $15 million in his budget for Secret Service for both of these conventions, which they feel is adequate at this time.

The question is not whether we should do it. If we are going to do it, we should do it inside the confines of the budget. Two, it is not an emergency. We have 18 months. We have plenty of appropriations bills to pay for this.

Mr. President, families across America are facing serious challenges in today's global economy. The value of their wages is declining, the cost of living is going up, and many of their jobs are being shipped overseas.

We must respond to this challenge to ensure that our citizens can still achieve the American dream. We have the best workers in the world, and we must prepare them to compete and succeed in the global economy.

America has long been at the forefront in innovation, invention, and education. But other countries are catching up and surpassing us.

America's 15 year olds scored below average in math and science literacy compared to the youth of other developed nations on the most recent international assessment by the Programme for International Student Assessment.

We are losing ground in overall high school and college graduation rates. The U.S. has dropped below the average graduation rate for OECD countries. Out of 24 nations, the U.S. ranks 14th, just ahead of Portugal.

Since 1975, the U.S. has dropped from 3rd to 15th place in the production of scientists and engineers.

Federal investment in research and development is essential to keep us competitive, but federal dollars have been shrinking as a share of the economy. Funding for government research programs has fallen in real terms and is less than in 2004.

At the same time, fast-growing economies such as China, Ireland, and South Korea are realizing the potential for economic growth that comes with investing in innovation. China's investment in research and development rose from $12.4 billion in 1991 to $84.6 billion in 2003, an average increase of 17 percent a year. Over the same period, the increase in U.S. investment averaged only 4 to 5 percent annually.

Study after study tells us that we need major new investments in education and in research and development to stay ahead. We cannot just tinker at the margins and expect to retain our leadership in the global economy. We have a responsibility to make the investments that are necessary to our progress--a responsibility to our people, our economy, our nation, and our national security.

Last year, the Council on Competitiveness urged a focus on lifelong skill development--through elementary, secondary and higher education, and workforce training and support, as essential to keeping America on the cutting edge of innovation.

The recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' emphasized these recommendations. Two of the report's four major recommendations involved education as the solution to meeting the global challenge. The report set out a broad roadmap for keeping America competitive, but it prioritized investment in education over all other recommendations.

The National Association of Manufacturers has also issued a report urging renewed focus on education and training to keep American businesses competitive.

Last week, the National Governors Association released its ``Innovation America'' plan, which outlines opportunities for Federal investment to help spur innovation in the states. Here again, improving education and access to high quality job training take center stage.

It is clear that we must act, and today we are taking a step toward putting America back on the right track.

I am pleased to join a number of my colleagues today in reintroducing the ``America COMPETES Act,'' or the ``America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act.'' The bill is identical to legislation we introduced last year, but the need for action is even more important today to keep America competitive in the years to come.

The legislation responds to many of the recommendations in the ``Gathering Storm'' and other recent reports; it takes important steps to encourage innovation in America as a way to create jobs and move our economy forward. Often, as we know, it is federally funded research that primes the pump for technological, medical and scientific breakthroughs. The bill will double basic research funding by the National Science Foundation by 2011. It also puts us on a strong course to doubling basic research funding by the Department of Energy.

In addition, the legislation creates a President's Council on Innovation and Competitiveness, based on successful models being used in established and emerging economies in Europe and Asia. The Council will bring together the heads of federal agencies with leaders in business and academia to develop a comprehensive agenda to promote innovation. Japan for some time has had a similar council, and Ireland--the Celtic Tiger--has already had extraordinary success in expanding its R&D strength since it established its council two years ago.

The bill also strengthens programs at college and universities to encourage renewed interest in nuclear science. Massachusetts has long been a leader in nuclear research. There are fewer than three dozen licensed research reactors in the United States, and three of them are located at Massachusetts universities--University of Massachusetts Lowell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and MIT. These colleges will have a vital role as nuclear science expands, and this bill will help expand their programs and establish new ones to meet the growing demand.

We must also make the research and development tax credit permanent. The incentive provided by the credit has led to quality jobs, better and safer products, greater productivity and a stronger and more robust national economy. A growing number of countries recognize the importance of research and development spending to future economic growth, and they now offer more generous R&D tax incentives than the United States. The top 6 pharmaceutical companies, and American high tech companies like Microsoft, Intel and GE have all opened advanced R&D facilities in India. We must give American companies the certainty that our tax incentives will continue year after year and will not expire, so that they can choose to maintain these high-skilled jobs here at home, to keep America at the cutting edge as a leader in innovation in the global economy.

R&D investments also depend on a talented pool of well-trained individuals who can make discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. Jobs in science and engineering are expected to increase 70 percent faster than those in other fields over the next 6 years.

To ensure that Americans are well-trained for these jobs, we must improve education at all levels--from the very early years in a child's life all the way through doctoral study and beyond--especially in math, science, engineering and technology.

International comparisons of student achievement show that the United States is slipping behind other countries, but detailed analysis shows that the picture is more complex. The real problem lies in the serious and pervasive achievement gap in this country between higher income students and lower income students and between white students and students of color.

On the most recent test comparing student achievement in industrial nations, white students in the United States performed better than the average for all countries in both math literacy and problem-solving, while their Hispanic and African American peers did worse. Low-income students in the U.S. performed worse than their high-income peers, and also performed worse than other low-income students in over half of the developed countries surveyed.

If we can close this achievement gap, and guarantee all children in this country a world-class education, we can put America back at the top of the list. To do so, we need to renew and improve upon the important reforms in the No Child Left Behind Act this year. As we

do so, we must make a strong commitment to adequately fund those reforms.

We must also invest in teachers. Research shows that having a high quality teacher for five years in a row can overcome the average 7th grade mathematics achievement gap between lower income and higher income children.

But almost half of math classes taught in high poverty and high minority schools are taught by teachers without a college major or minor in math or a related field. The problem is even more serious in middle schools--70 percent of math classes in these schools are taught by a teacher who doesn't even have a minor in math.

Our bill recognizes and responds to the critical need to recruit and train high quality math, science, technology and engineering teachers to teach in schools with the greatest need, so that we can begin to close the achievement gap and ensure that all American students can compete on a level playing field with their peers in other nations.

The bill provides a 10-fold increase in the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at the National Science Foundation to recruit math, science, engineering and technology students and professionals to become teachers in high-need school districts.

It provides grants to institutions of higher education to create undergraduate programs that integrate the study of math, science, engineering, or critical need foreign language with teacher education, modeled on the successful U-Teach program at the University of Texas. It also helps institutions create part-time master's degree programs to improve the content knowledge and teaching skills of current teachers. In both of these programs, universities would partner with high-need school districts to ensure that these resources go where they are needed most.

The bill expands the Teacher Institutes for the 21st Century Program at the National Science Foundation to provide cutting-edge summer professional development programs for teachers who teach in high-need schools. It also creates a summer institute program in the Department of Energy to strengthen the math and science teaching skills of elementary and secondary school teachers.

Recruitment and training of good teachers are important, but so is retention of good teachers. Each year, over 200,000 teachers leave the profession--6 percent of the teaching workforce. High attrition rates mean that one of every two teachers hired will completely drop out of teaching within 5 years-just when they have gained the experience needed to consistently improve student achievement.

To be successful in closing the achievement gap, we must also do more to see that teachers have an incentive to stay in their classrooms once they are there.

We should provide financial incentives--through fellowships or salary increases--to teachers who commit to teach in the highest need schools, where the unique challenges make the schools the hardest to staff. I look forward to working with my colleagues as the bill moves forward to add this critical component to the effort.

In addition to providing a high quality teacher in every classroom, we must also ensure that children in low-income school districts have access to the same college preparatory classes that more affluent school districts are able to provide--and, importantly, that they have the preparation they need to succeed in those classes. To do so, the bill expands access to Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes as well as pre-AP and pre-IB courses, especially in high need schools, and creates a program to improve instruction in math for elementary and middle school students and provide targeted help to students struggling with the subject.

The bill also addresses the critical need to ensure our education system is preparing students for the challenges they will face after graduation from high school.

According to recent research, the nation loses over $3.7 billion a year in the cost of remedial education and lost earning potential because students are not adequately prepared to enter college when they leave high school.

For students directly entering the workforce, 60 percent of employers in a survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers said that a high school diploma did not adequately prepare a typical student with even basic skills to qualify for an entry level job.

Many states have recognized the need to better align elementary and secondary school standards, curricula, and assessments with the demands of college, the 21st century workforce and the Armed Forces. Our bill provides grants to assist states in those efforts. The grants would support state P-16 councils that bring together leaders in the early education, K-12, and higher education communities, in the business sector, and in the military to improve the rigor of elementary and secondary education and prepare students for the postsecondary challenges they will face.

These provisions will help spur the development of more rigorous standards, as well as innovative curricula that engage our children in learning and inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers. It will assist states in the work they are doing to create new disciplines in engineering and technology at the elementary school level to teach students the practical applications of math and science. The National Center for Technological Literacy at the Museum of Science in Boston is at the forefront of these efforts.

In addition to the education programs at the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, the legislation relies on the resources of the Department of Energy to assist in the effort to improve math and science education. The National Labs at the Department of Energy can have a critical role in these efforts, and so can the more than 300 colleges and universities across the country conducting research supported by the Department of Energy. I appreciate my colleagues' efforts to ensure that the resources of the Department of Energy are used to enhance educational opportunities for children not only in the states that host National Labs, but across the country.

It is also becoming increasingly important for students to become exposed to and immersed in critical foreign languages and cultures. In recent years, foreign language needs have significantly increased throughout the public and private sector due to the presence of a wider range of security threats, the emergence of new nation states, and the globalization of the U.S. economy.

Currently, the U.S. government uses tens of thousands of employees with foreign language skills in 100 languages and more than 80 Federal agencies. In addition, American businesses increasingly need employees experienced in foreign languages and international cultures to manage a culturally diverse workforce.

For students to become proficient in these critical foreign languages, they must have access to a sustained course of study, beginning in the early grades.

But currently, only one-third of students in grades 7-12 and a mere 5 percent of elementary school students study a foreign language.

Even fewer study critical need foreign languages. Only about 24,000 of approximately 54 million elementary and secondary school children in the United States are studying Chinese. In contrast, more than 200 million children in China study English--a compulsory subject for all Chinese primary school students.

The bill begins to address these needs by providing grants to institutions of higher education and local educational agencies to work in partnerships to create programs of study in critical foreign languages for students from elementary school through postsecondary education.

These programs and investments will help prepare our students to compete in the 21st century, but if we are serious about keeping America competitive, there is still more we can--and must--do.

A college degree is fast becoming the price of admission to participation in the global economy. Today, over 60 percent of jobs require some postsecondary training, and the number is rising rapidly. Such jobs bring higher pay as well. A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that in the United States, earnings of people with a post-secondary degree are 72

percent higher on average than those with only a high school diploma.

But with soaring costs and stagnant financial aid, college is increasingly out of reach for students and families. Research shows that 400,000 students a year do not go to a four-year college because they cannot afford it. 170,000 do not go to college at all.

When our troops returned home from World War II, we created the GI Bill and sent them to college to learn the skills they would need in the changing world. The pay off to the nation was immense. The economy reaped an estimated $7 in benefit for every dollar invested in that effort.

In recent decades however, federal grant aid has dwindled and the grants don't go as far as they used to. Thirty years ago, seventy-seven percent of the federal assistance provided to students was in the form of grants, but in recent years the number has dropped to twenty percent.

With college costs skyrocketing, the value of the Pell Grant has not kept pace. To ensure the prosperity of our families and the nation, we must open the doors of college to all by restoring the Pell Grant as the foundation of the student aid system.

Last year, Congress squandered an opportunity to significantly increase aid for low income students. The Senate passed a bill that would have immediately increased the Pell grant from $4,050 to $4,500. But this increase was rejected, and the funds were used instead to pay for tax giveaways for the wealthiest Americans.

Last month, under the new Democratic leadership, Congress made a strong down payment to help low-income families afford college by raising the maximum Pell grant for the first time since 2003 from $4,050 to $4,310.

I know many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree that higher education is the key to keeping America competitive, and I look forward to working with them to build on this down payment as we reauthorize the Higher Education Act this year to ensure that the cost of college is not a barrier to full participation in the new economy.

We need to reform the federal student aid system to redirect excessive lender subsidies into additional help and support for students and families, including increased need-based aid, making student loans more manageable, and providing loan forgiveness for individuals in public sector careers.

We must also do more to address the devastating impacts of the global economy on American workers and their families.

Our workers are facing global competition that is often fundamentally unfair, but this bill does nothing to level the playing field or to help ease the burden of their transition to the global economy. To truly improve our national competitiveness, we must address all aspects of this challenge. We cannot continue to ignore the plight of working Americans.

First, we need to level the playing field in the competition for good jobs. Americans have nothing to fear from competition that's fair. But it's not fair when Americans are competing with foreign workers who lack basic protections such as child labor laws, a minimum wage, or the right to organize. It's not fair when U.S. companies cut costs by exploiting and abusing foreign workers.

We need to exercise global leadership in promoting fair wages and safe working conditions for workers around the world, reward companies that treat their foreign workforces fairly, and be a strong voice in sanctioning those countries that will not play by the rules.

Beyond these basic steps to level the playing field, we owe a particular duty to American workers who are losing their jobs because of trade. We all benefit from the lower prices and variety of products that globalization provides, but many of our most vulnerable workers are paying the price. We've lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001, and service sector jobs are now moving overseas as well. These are good, middle-class jobs, with decent wages and benefits that form the core of the American middle class.

Our response to globalization must address the disappearance of good jobs. We must create the good jobs of the future. We must eliminate tax incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas. We must give fair warning to workers who are at risk of losing their jobs to overseas competition, so that they can plan for their futures. We must strengthen our commitment to help workers who lose their jobs to adjust to the new economy, with well-funded training and income assistance programs that ease the transition to new employment.

Fulfilling our commitment to American workers also demands that we give them their fair share of the economic growth that globalization brings. Both houses of Congress have now voted overwhelmingly to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, and that vital legislation should reach the President's desk soon. But that's only a first step. We need to do much more to promote good jobs and ensure that workers get their fair share of economic growth. We also must give workers a stronger voice in the new economy by protecting their right to organize and form a union.

If we truly want to be competitive in the global economy, we need to address these challenges facing the American workforce head on. Our employees deserve greater job security in the present, and better job opportunities in the future. I hope that the same bipartisan coalition that has worked together so effectively on this competitiveness bill can also work together to address these important issues for America's working families.

The legislation we are introducing today is not a complete package. What it does represent is the beginning of a strong commitment that we will need to sustain and build on if America is to remain competitive in the years ahead. It's gratifying that this bill has strong bipartisan support, because that support is critical to ensuring that these proposals become a reality.

Words alone will not keep America competitive. This legislation must be more than a promise. I look forward to working with my colleagues as the bill moves forward to ensure that Congress provides the new investments essential to fully support these important proposals.

Americans know how to rise to challenges and come out ahead. We've done it before and we can do it again. We rose to the challenge after World War II with the GI Bill. We rose to the Soviet Union's challenge of Sputnik in 1957 by passing the National Defense Education Act, and we went on to inspire the nation in the next decade by sending a man to the moon and by doubling the federal investment in education.

We need the same bold commitment now to help the current generation meet and master the global challenges we now face. The America COMPETES Act can be an effective first step. I look forward to working with my colleagues to improve upon the bill as it moves forward and to expand on these efforts in the months to come to make this essential initiative as effective as possible.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Hatch and Senator Rockefeller as cosponsors of our bipartisan amendment.

Mr. President, it is my intent to take a couple of minutes to lay out the reason it is so important to pass this county payments amendment this morning. Then I plan to yield 5 minutes to my good friend and teammate on this issue, Senator Craig, and then it is my intent to close for our side.

This issue of county payments funding is literally an issue of survival for rural counties across this country. It is going to determine whether the Federal Government will keep a more than 100-year obligation to rural communities or whether the Federal Government is going to turn its back on these communities and allow them to become national sacrifice zones.

Mr. President, 100 years ago, the Federal Government entered into an agreement with rural communities in exchange for creating national forests and restricting how local communities manage their forest lands. The Government would provide a partial payment so those local communities could pay for essential services, such as law enforcement and education. But the most recent law guaranteeing those payments--the law the distinguished Senator from Idaho and I wrote, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act--has expired. If the law is not extended--the safety net payments rural communities need in order to carry out essential services--without those dollars, there will be havoc in rural communities across our country.

The votes the Senate is going to soon take are going to decide the future of a lot of these rural communities, and there are two approaches. First, there is the approach Senator Craig and I and a bipartisan group of 17 Senators favor that is flexible, that ensures we don't make the decisions in Washington, DC, we don't micromanage these local communities but give them the flexibility at the local level to make choices that make sense for them.

This legislation is sponsored by both Republican Senators from Idaho, both Democratic Senators from Washington State, and many others. We have a broad coalition. The National Association of Counties, labor groups, education advocates--all have said that the approach that makes sense for them is our bipartisan amendment, and they have not been in favor of the amendment offered by the Senator from North Carolina.

I am now going to make 5 minutes from our time available to my friend and colleague, Senator Craig. I thank him again for his support.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague from Idaho for an excellent assessment of where we are now, both with respect to the need here and our bipartisan amendment.

Here is what it is going to come down to, colleagues. There are going to be two different approaches. One is offered by the Senator from North Carolina, the other is a bipartisan one offered by many Senators, and I and Senator Craig have outlined it. Ours is supported by the groups that have the most expertise in this area: the National Association of Counties, educators, labor organizations, and those who are on the ground.

The Senator from North Carolina seeks to dictate from Washington, DC, how this program would operate. I will just say to the Senate, it seems to me what is best for Ashville, NC, may not be best for Amity, OR. Let's make sure these local communities have the freedom to make choices, make judgments with respect to essential services in the law enforcement area and in the roads area. I pointed out yesterday that if the approach offered by the Senator from North Carolina were to prevail, we couldn't, for example, do upkeep of rural roads, which get very snowy in the winter. If we don't make improvements in them, the kids aren't even going to get to the schools, which is the point my colleague from Idaho has mentioned as well.

As Senators think about this, I would like to also stress that this is not some kind of welfare program. I know many Senators are still not up on all the details. They do not live and breathe this subject on a daily basis as Senator Craig and I do, but these are not handout payments. This is not welfare. This is part of a 100-year deal which came about when the Federal forest system was created.

As we move on our side to the end of our presentation, I would like for folks to understand what the stakes are in rural communities and give some accounts from my State that are very similar to what Senators are hearing from officials in their States.

In my State, for example, the sheriff of Grants Pass--and I was recently there for a community meeting--told me that without county payments funding, he may have to call out the National Guard to protect public safety. The approach that is offered by the Senator from North Carolina wouldn't make it possible for those local law enforcement officials to be on the front lines in terms of fighting crime, in terms of fighting meth, which is a scourge in so many communities across our country.

The county commissioners of Curry County, a beautiful community on the Oregon coast, report that without county payments funding, they may have no choice but to dissolve their county altogether. They have already begun discussions with our State about dissolving the county. You can be sure if county payments funding is not available, those discussions will continue and, in my view, based on a recent community meeting there, I am of the view that their county may not survive.

Local officials in Coos County, just at the prospect of losing county payment funds, have already been releasing prisoners. So when people talk about what this issue can mean and what it really comes down to in local communities, this isn't an abstract issue in Coos County, OR. They have released prisoners--they have released prisoners--and they are going to lay off people who have had 25 years of service in that community. There are reports in the newspaper that they have already been terminated from their jobs, and I believe that we are going to see, in other communities across this country, similar problems.

I understand my friend from Idaho would like me to yield to him, and I am happy to do so.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I think the Senate has had a chance--and I thank particularly my friend from Idaho for coming to the floor today-- to get a sense of what this issue is all about. I close by saying that Senator Craig and I and all those who have been involved in this issue understand that as a result of this updated, modernized approach to the Secure Rural Schools Act, we are going to make sure the rural communities of this country can survive and help them make a transition into other areas.

Senator Craig and I held many hearings and have heard from rural communities about how they would like to have very strong thinning programs. This is something you don't know a whole lot about in Baltimore, Mr. President, but we have a lot of overstocked stands in our part of the country. If you don't thin them out, it makes for a big fire risk. If you thin them out, you bring the communities together-- labor folks, environmentalists, and others--and you deal with the fire risk and get the material to the mill. Plus you put people to work.

Senator Craig and I and others on our committee are prepared to have those kinds of programs. However, if these rural communities can't survive, and I am of the view that many of them won't without this amendment, then we are not in a position to look at the next steps, which are approaches like I have outlined for thinning and biomass, where we take the woody waste off the forest floor, which makes for clean energy. Senator Craig and I have heard a great deal of testimony about that.

I hope our colleagues will support the bipartisan amendment that Senator Craig and I have talked about this morning, along with 17 of our colleagues, and reject the Burr amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the debate time on the two amendments--the Wyden amendment, the bipartisan amendment and the Burr amendment--be extended until 11 a.m. and that the time be equally divided, which would mean, I think, we would have 10 minutes on our side so that I and Senator Craig would continue this discussion and then the distinguished Senator from North Carolina would have 10 minutes as well. I make that unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I wish to continue the discussion on the point made by our friend from North Carolina. He is going to be the ranking member on the forestry subcommittee. He and I are going to sit next to each other for a great many hours during the course of this session of the Senate. I know there are going to be many times when we agree because that has certainly been the case during our long years of service, both in the House and it is now an honor to serve with him in the Senate.

I wish to pick up on a couple of points. Senator Craig, in the very important discussion he had with the Senator from North Carolina, pointed out that North Carolina already spends every dollar of their county payments money. The distinguished Senator from North Carolina indicated his concern about the 40-percent graduation rate in one of his school districts. But the amendment offered by the Senator from North Carolina will not provide an additional dollar for that school district because under his State statute, every dollar of county payments his State gets already has to go to schools, and the amendment would not change that.

I think this has been a very instructive discussion. As Senators consider the next 15 or 20 minutes of this debate, I want to come back to where the organizations that are most intimately involved in this program, on a day-to-day basis, stand.

The Senator from North Carolina made mention of our support from labor. We are very proud to have a strong cross-section of labor groups that are aligned with our proposal. But in addition, the support from the National Association of Counties and the National Governors Association for our bipartisan effort is particularly important. I wish to read a little bit from the National Association of Counties' letter to myself and Senator Craig. It says, with respect to Senator Burr--and the National Association of Counties does not talk about anonymous Senators. They are very much aware of who is involved in this debate. The National Association of Counties wrote:

While well-intentioned, we fear the Burr amendment is ill-

conceived and would result in negative consequences.

They go on to say:

The Burr amendment requires ``new money'' to be spent on

education. This would deny communities and their elected

leaders to set their own priorities, superimposing a

Washington, DC, one-size-fits-all mandate on those rural

forest counties already severely restrained by the presence

of tax-exempt federal land.

This is a particularly important point and a very telling one about this debate. I think the Senator from North Carolina and I have been in scores of discussions over the years where the charge always was it was the Democrats who were coming up with this ``big Government, run from Washington, DC,'' kind of approach. Here we are with a bipartisan amendment that I, as a Democratic Senator, spent a lot of time talking about with local communities, and the counties say they

favor our approach because it does give them the flexibility on the ground--in Asheville, NC, and Amity, OR, across the country, to make the choices that are best for them rather than to have somebody inside the beltway take out a cookie cutter and stamp all these programs as if one size fits all. That point in the National Association of Counties' letter strikes me as extremely important as well.

The counties also go on to say:

. . . .it appears that the Burr amendment would shift the

hard-won increase to PILT funding [the payment in lieu of

taxes program offered by the Wyden Craig amendment] away from

the counties' general funds to schools, which was never the

purpose of the PILT Act.

I say to my colleague, we are going to hear a lot of testimony about this in our forestry subcommittee as well. The changes in the PILT Program, in particular, so that every county with Federal land can get a boost, are going to be especially helpful as we make this transition.

Of course.

My understanding is that the Senator's amendment does not affect it.

Does not.

My sense says the county folks had some difficulty following the Senator's amendment as it went through its evolution. But what we do know is our amendment clearly protects the PILT funding, and that is why it is preferable on all counts.

Now, continuing with what the counties have had to say: We are also concerned that the Burr amendment interferes with the authority States have had since 1908 to allocate forest reserves funds, authority explicitly and deliberately retained by Congress in title 1 of the Secure Rural Schools and Communities Self-Determination Act.

This point from the counties is especially critical because it goes to the 100-year obligation with respect to county payments. We can debate who has better ideas about PILT. We think we do. That is why so many Senators have been attracted to our proposal, because of the additional support for PILT. But what the counties go on to say here is they are concerned about the 100-year precedent with respect to Federal forest systems.

Mr. President, the Senator from North Carolina has been very gracious. We are dividing the time. How much time remains on our side?

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of our time to the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a cosponsor of the amendment, and I thank him for his many hours of support in putting this together.

Would the Senator from North Carolina yield?

We continue to look at the language. I think it goes back to the reason the counties and the Governors were so troubled by it. Where in my friend's amendment does it say it applies only to increases in funding? Because, as we read it, it would apply to all of the funding in section (2) of the amendment, subsection (d) payments received by a State under subsection (a) and distributed to eligible counties shall be only for public schools----

Mr. President, does our side have any additional time?

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Washington. When we go to the two amendments on the Secure Rural Schools Act under the order, I have a couple of minutes and the distinguished Senator from North Carolina, Senator Burr has a couple of minutes. But since there was this opportunity as a result of the graciousness of Senator Murray, I wish to mention a letter that came in from the sheriff of Douglas County, which is in southwestern Oregon. This is an area he is policing, the sheriff notes, that is slightly larger than Connecticut. In other words, his county is extraordinarily large.

If this money is not forthcoming, funds that would be made available under the county payments, this is what the sheriff says will take place:

There are no Troopers. We are running out of deputies. And,

if we lose access to this Federal funding, the people will

essentially be left to provide their own public safety. There

is no fallback position for the citizens.

The sheriff goes on to say:

This is not a matter crying wolf or exaggerating our

problems. This is quite simply the fork in the road where we

make a choice. Does local government in rural Oregon cease to

exist, or are we partially and temporarily spared in hopes of

securing some means of providing for ourselves?

I think the comments from Chris Brown, the Douglas County sheriff, which just came in, say it all. What the legislation we are going to be voting on in a few minutes is all about is ensuring the Federal Government keep its obligation to rural communities, where the Federal Government owns most of the land. This is not welfare. I have tried to go into how this came about several times in the course of the debate over the last couple of days. The reality is that when the Federal Forest System was created more than 100 years ago and these rural communities were in a position where they could not maximize their revenues from these lands, the Federal Government struck an agreement. The Federal Government said: We will be there to at least partially offer funding for the essential services such as those that Chris Brown, the Douglas County sheriff, has written to us about.

The reality is, the distinguished Senator from Washington knows--and we are very pleased that she is a cosponsor with 18 other Senators in the bipartisan ``county amendments'' legislation--we have huge problems in our part of the world, with serious drugs, particularly methamphetamine. What Chris Brown is saying, this Douglas County sheriff, with respect to his area--which is, as he notes, as large as the State of Connecticut--is that he is going to be essentially defenseless in terms of protecting public safety for his folks in southwestern Oregon without this funding. He is not alone. The sheriff of Grants Pass told me recently that without this funding he is looking at the prospect of calling out the National Guard.

We will have our debate for 2 minutes each when we go to this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I urge the Senate to support the bipartisan group of 19 Senators and vote for the Wyden amendment and reject the Burr amendment. In voting for the Wyden amendment and rejecting the Burr amendment, Senators will be standing with the National Association of Counties, the National Governors Association, the 1,500 member organizations of the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition and labor groups from across the land.

The Burr amendment purports to affect only the increase in funding but, as was pointed out in this morning's debate, the Burr amendment affects all funding, new and existing. As a result, the Burr amendment would stand in conflict with numerous State laws. The new formula in the bipartisan Wyden amendment is fair, fully paid for, and would ensure that America's rural communities can survive. I urge my colleagues to not walk away from the Federal Government's 100-year promise to rural America. Support the Wyden amendment and reject the Burr amendment.

I yield the remainder of my time to my friend and cosponsor, Senator Craig.

Mr. President, I urge the Senate to vote against the Burr amendment because it significantly undermines what the Senate just voted for. The Burr amendment purports to affect only the increase in funds, but, as was pointed out in this morning's debate, the Burr amendment would affect all funding, new and existing, and as a result, the Burr amendment would stand in direct conflict with numerous State laws.

What the Burr amendment would do is disrupt funding decisions and local government operations around the country. In many localities, county governments and school districts operate separate and distinct budgets. Under the Burr amendment, local government decisions would, in effect, be overturned and we would go to a one-size-fits-all Federal mandate instead of local communities deciding about their future and their kids' education. Their hands would be tied in Washington, DC.

I urge the Senate to reject this bureaucratic straightjacket and vote no on the Burr amendment.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I would ask that the Chair alert me when I have 3 minutes remaining on my 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I want to make two points right up front. The first point is that I support the Wyden bill. I think if you listen to the debate, you would think I am urging my colleagues not to extend this program. North Carolina is 25 percent national land. We benefit from it.

The second point is that I have tremendous respect for Senator Wyden and for Senator Craig, and the realities are that if you take everything that was said at face value, one of two things exists: either we are stretching the truth or we haven't read my amendment because there is no way for my amendment, which deals only with title I of Forest Service payments, to affect law enforcement. Title I of the Forest Service payments specifically says, since 1908, when it was created, that it can be used for schools or roads.

What does my amendment do? It is very simple. There are three payments the Wyden bill addresses: Forest Service payments, BLM land, and payments in lieu of taxes. Within the framework of the Forest Service payment there are three titles: title I, which is schools and roads; title II, which is forestry programs and others; and title III, which is sheriff's search and rescue, law enforcement.

What does my amendment do? My amendment says simply all the new money that goes to title I, schools and roads, which is an increase of approximately $177 million since it was reauthorized in 2000--title I had $300 million in 2000; fiscal year 2007 is projected to be $477 million--so $177 million of new money shall be devoted, 80 to 85 percent, to schools.

My good friend from Oregon said the issue is survival. I would say he is correct. I agree with him. More than 40 percent of America's schools are in rural areas, and approximately 30 percent of all students attend those rural schools. The Senator from Idaho said 8 million kids. To be sure, our rural schools face unique challenges. Often their geographic isolation makes it difficult for teachers to access professional development opportunities. It is often difficult for rural schools to recruit and retain high-quality, gifted teachers.

Additionally, it is also often difficult for high school students in rural areas to access the advanced placement programs that students in urban areas have access to, which sets them on a course ahead of other students for higher education. Nationally, one-third of our students who enter high school in the ninth grade drop out before they receive a high school diploma. If this were a disease in America, it would be called an epidemic. If there were a disease in America, we would take Federal funds, State funds, local funds, and we would focus them to try to solve the problem.

Here we have an opportunity. We are not stealing any money. We are not changing the 1908 agreement. But as we plus up the money, all I am saying to my colleagues is, shouldn't we take the $177 million of new money and shouldn't we devote it to education? Shouldn't we say to these 8 million kids and their families, in 40 percent of America's schools: You know what. We are going to give you extra funds to address the geographical challenges you are faced with because you happen to be located in rural America. It affects North Carolina just as it does Idaho and just as it does Oregon.

As I said, in 1908, Congress first passed this bill and required that 25 percent of the revenues derived from national forest lands be paid to States. I am not trying to change that. I want to make sure that all of these payments--BLM payments, payments in lieu of taxes, Forest Service payments--go. I don't want to get into title III, where law enforcement is affected. I don't want to get into title II, where forestry programs and forestry management are affected. I do believe, however, that we can look at the challenges that we are faced with and say: If we are going to put new money into it, why don't we put 80 percent of it in education, the No. 1 challenge we have in America today.

I don't have any statements in support of my amendment. As a matter of fact, yesterday, the National Education Association sent out an e- mail alert to Senators warning them of this amendment. It basically said that a potential amendment would be offered by an unnamed Senator--they knew exactly who I was--that would divert funds away from the Secure Rural Schools Community Self-Determination Act. We urge you to oppose any such amendment.

I am beginning to figure out what is wrong with education. We are letting other people influence what we do, people who do not care whether we get our kids educated. Here is the National Education Association, the labor union of teachers, the ones who are supposed to be most concerned about our kids. Here is an amendment that puts $177 million into rural schools in America, and they are telling everybody to vote against it. Aren't they the ones who are supposed to stand up for our kids?

The ones who need to stand up for our kids are Members of this institution. They need to listen to the parents or these kids back at home and not listen to the organization that says they represent teachers and children that, frankly, when offered more money--it doesn't disrupt anything--they say oppose it.

The information contained in the NEA's e-mail is blatantly false. I am not trying to do anything to ensure anything other than 80 percent of new money, $177 million, goes, 80 percent, to schools. As a matter of fact, if you do the math, it means there is more money in 2007-- where the other 20 percent is dedicated to roads--than there was under the 2000 reauthorization of this program. So, in fact, communities that are affected are going to have more money to put into roads. But, you know, an amazing thing is going to exist. They are also going to have more money to put into schools, exactly where I think we need to go.

One can look at the history of how this money has been spent. It might give you an indication as to why there is opposition and concern. Oregon, which will receive over $300 million, spends almost all of its money on roads. In 2004, Oregon spent $433 per student, compared to $7,388 per mile of road, out of title I, the Rural Schools Act. Let me say that again: $433 per student, compared to $7,388 per mile of roads.

Idaho spends almost 10 times the amount it spends on roads to what it spends on education, out of this program. Maine will see its share of funding increase from $40,000 per year to almost $1 million when this is reauthorized, and I support its reauthorization.

But in 2004, Maine spent only $4.12 out of this program, per student, compared to almost $700 per mile of road.

There are some successes, though. Alaska dedicates all its title I money to public schools, about $10 million in 2006. If this bill is reauthorized, Alaska will receive almost $20 million. That will double the amount that Alaska invests in its rural schools through the same program that the National Education Association says would be devastating to the education of our children in this country.

As a matter of fact, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia commit 100 percent of their money to education.

I am not here amending the legislation to say you have to spend the 100 percent. I am not here taking title I in total and saying let's change the formula for the entire thing. All I am saying is, if we are going to put new money in it--and we are putting new money in--why not take the bump-up of money and say, with what we are faced in this country, with only 70 percent of our kids graduating with a high school diploma, on time, maybe we ought to try to address that. It certainly is higher in rural America than it is in urban America.

I am happy to yield.

That is correct.

No, it has no effect.

The Senator is correct. The Senator's point is I am taking power away from the decisions of the local community. The Senator is right. I make no bones about it. I plead guilty. I wish they were as concerned about their children's education as I am.

I have a school system where the graduation rate this year was 46 percent. The amazing thing is nobody has been fired. As a matter of fact, nobody is outraged at it. Today's jobs that we create in the 21st century require a different level of education for our children. If you are not competitive--you will not be invited for an interview if, in fact, you do not have a high school diploma.

The reality is, here is one little way we can have an impact on it, a little way that doesn't cost anybody anything because, as I said, this is all new money, from 2000 when it was at its peak. That is because, I remind everybody, in 2000 this was a 7-year program that was set to sunset, to go away. It was going to be no more. This was the adjustment period for all the States, including North Carolina, that received Federal money.

It is not going away. We are going to reauthorize it until 2012, and in 2012 it will be reauthorized until 2020, and the likelihood is the money will go up every year.

Our responsibility is, is the taxpayer money being used in a way that has a positive effect on the communities with Federal money? All I am saying is, as we put new money in, maybe we ought to have some Federal hand in saying let's focus it where we have a cancer. That cancer is in education. If we can't raise the graduation rate from 70 percent to 100 percent, we have individuals who come into our system incapable of competing for a job.

This is a very simple decision for Members of the Senate. I am sad today to tell you I do not expect to win on my amendment. Some will say I have tried to undo 100 years of public policy. I have changed the next 100 years, possibly.

They say I have trampled on States' rights by choosing how they pay for it. I am guilty. I admit it. Why? Because of our children. Our children's future is important. If it were not, we wouldn't be good parents. I am convinced this can have a small but a positive impact on rural schools and the education of our kids in rural communities. I urge my colleagues to consider supporting my amendment, which will, in fact, alter in a very small way the impact of the total Wyden amendment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Does the Senator agree with the letter from the commissioners that I affect the PILT payments in my amendment?

Does or does not?

So the letter and the accusation the Senator received from, I think, the counties, is, in fact, inaccurate?

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for a spirited debate, and before my colleague from New Mexico leaves, I want to make sure I have the opportunity to share with him, because he did not hear the first part, that there are three funding pieces to this bill. I am supportive of all three of them. It is the Forest Service payment, the BLM lands payment, and the payment in lieu of taxes.

My amendment affects one piece of one section, the Forest Service payment that is broken down into three titles: title 1, which is designated schools and roads; title 2, which goes to forestry programs and other management programs; and title 3, which goes to law enforcement search and rescue.

I do not affect title 2; I do not affect title 3. I only affect the new funding in title 1. There is no county that will be affected on what they have received up until that point. But of the $177 million of new money in title 1 of the Forest Service payment section only, he is exactly right. I would say 80 to no more than 85 percent has to go to the schools. And if, in fact, New Mexico is structured in a way that when a county ups its investment the State decreases its investment in education, he is exactly right, he would end up with no net gain.

That is where our problem is across the country, our students have no net gain. We have been stuck in this rut and we will not do what it takes to get out of it. Five years ago we passed No Child Left Behind. Nationally we are making progress. We actually see the trend going up. We see K-8 performing at math and science levels that, quite frankly, 5 years ago we did not know if we could reach. It is not a plateau they have gotten to; they are on the climb. We have challenged our elementary school students and they have responded, because we have made a commitment we are going to put highly qualified teachers in classrooms. We have made a commitment to them that we are going to provide the flexibility of Federal money so they can decide how best to use that so kids can learn.

In return, we are going to measure their progress. For the first time, America now knows the progress our students make. Parents are no longer reliant on the arbitrary A, B, C, D or, in some cases, pass- fail. Why is that important? It is important because we have got a 21st century economy. We are creating jobs that, quite frankly, without a high school diploma you are not competitive for.

My kids are still in college. I am fortunate in the fact that at least the tools are available to them. But it is their choice now as to whether they absorb it and use it. What about those kids who are still in K-8? Could this have an impact? Yes, it could have a real impact. It is not a whole lot of money. But when you move from, in Oregon I think, $433 per student, compared to $7,388 per mile, if you were to increase that investment locally, I think it would affect the outcome.

What you would be looking at is the outcome. That is the whole spirit behind No Child Left Behind. What is the result of K-8 not working? It is a 70-percent graduation rate, on time, of our high school students 9-12 today.

As I said earlier, if this were a disease, we would call it an epidemic. We would send every Federal, State, and local resource to try to cure the problem. Well, here is one of those ways: We can say, with the increased money, the $177 million worth of new money these counties have never had, let's use 80 to 85 percent for schools.

I yield.

Reclaiming my time. I will say to the Senator, if for some reason it is not perfectly clear--and we have had the best legislative folks in the Senate who wrote the amendment; I do not think they got it wrong, but if they did, it will change.

But the reality is, it is not going to pass and the Senator from Oregon knows it is not going to pass, not because there are questions on whether it is all title 1; it is not going to pass because they are not willing to let the $177 million worth of new money be devoted to education. It is not because of some technical problem we have with

my amendment. The Senator's bill was awfully large, and there were still changes being made to the bill yesterday. It was a moving target to try to figure out exactly how to do an amendment. The Senator may remember, yesterday it was a second-degree amendment, but to accommodate the majority leader, we decided to do it as a side-by-side, which meant I had to incorporate now my amendment into the Wyden bill. So we have got a Wyden bill by itself, and a Wyden bill with this change. What my colleagues are going to be asked to do is not to vote against Wyden; either way they vote, they get the Wyden bill. But if they vote for the Wyden bill with the Burr amendment, they have now made a commitment to education. They have now made a commitment to the children. They have now made a commitment to 40 percent of America's schools that are located in rural areas, 8 million kids. That is the decision. It is very simple.

So it is not do we understand where it fits. Clearly since the Senator thought it applied to more, since the county letters he got thought it applied to payments in lieu of taxes, since Senator Bingaman, when he came to the floor, was concerned about payments in lieu of taxes, we do not affect those. All we affect is title 1 of the Forest Service payments that are already designated in roads or schools, and we do not affect what we have spent in the past, up to that level. We only affect new dollars.

Of those new dollars, 80 to 85 percent has to go to education. So it means for your State, where it predominately goes for roads, they are not disadvantaged. They are actually going to get 20 percent more for roads. They are just going to have to take 80 percent of the new money and make more of an investment than $433 per student.

It is simple for our colleagues. We are going to vote on this, I think now the order calls for about 11:45 or 12 o'clock. I am not sure if it is going to be a series of three votes. I would encourage my colleagues to vote for the Wyden amendment, but vote for the Wyden amendment that has the Burr language in it, so that, in fact, we have a commitment to our kids, their future, and their education.

I yield the floor.

Since the other side does not get any additional time, I will yield back the remainder of my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, let me ask my colleagues to listen because I think there are some misconceptions about what I am trying to do.

In 1908, we created this program. We reauthorized it in 2000. It was supposed to sunset a year ago. We have decided to continue the program. I supported the Wyden amendment.

There are three areas that receive funds from this amendment: Forest Service payments, BLM land, and the third fund is payments in lieu of taxes. I am only affecting one title of the first item, which is Forest Service payments. It is not doing anything to payments in lieu of taxes or BLM land.

Title 1, since 1908, has said the money could be used for schools or roads. That one title has 177 million new dollars in it. My amendment says 80 percent of the new dollars will go to education, to educate our children. It does not affect title 2, which is forest programs; it does not affect title 3, which is law enforcement, search and rescue. It is basically saying: At this time, our investment is going to go to our children.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. President, I have offered an amendment to the underlying bill, the supplemental appropriations bill. I wish to describe it for a moment, and then I wish to respond to some comments that were made earlier by my colleague from Oklahoma who is offering an amendment dealing with the agriculture disaster piece I included in this bill as well.

First, an issue I am very familiar with and concerned about. It is an issue called country-of-origin labeling. For those who don't know what that means, it means in 2002, 5 full years ago, the Congress mandated we would have country-of-origin labeling for beef, lamb, pork, fish, fruits, vegetables. Essentially, what you eat shall be labeled. If people walking around this Chamber would take their shoes off, they would find their shoes are labeled. If they took off their T-shirts, they would find they are labeled. Almost everything is labeled these days--made in Taiwan, made in China, made in wherever--so you can get a sense of where things are made. Go to the grocery store and pick up a package of pasta, linguini, spaghetti, take a look on the side and you will see what is in it. You will see where it was made. Labeling.

The only problem is we don't require labeling, for example, on a piece of steak. One day some while ago I brought to the floor of the Senate a piece of steak. I held it up and I said, I challenge anybody in the Congress to tell me where this piece of meat came from. Of course, no one tried and no one could. No one knows where that meat came from. As I asked about where this meat might have come from, I read from an inspector's report who went to a processing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, the first time any inspector had ever been there to inspect the conditions of the processing of meat in that plant that was being shipped to American consumers. I read from the report. It said:

Carcasses of meat were hanging in rooms that were not refrigerated, layered with feces and flies, and some from diseased animals ready to be put back into the same vat where they were going to grind it for beef and so on. I read the description of what the inspector found.

They shut down that plant. They shut down that plant in Mexico. Then it was reopened because it had new ownership. They made a few changes, reopened the plant, and still ship meat from Mexico to the United States from that plant, and there has never been an inspector back to take a look.

I asked the question: Can anybody tell me this piece of meat didn't come from that plant? Well, of course, nobody could. So you might ask why, if 5 years ago we mandated that there be country-of-origin labeling for meat in this country, why is there no labeling on meat? Well, the majority party in recent years apparently cared a lot about what the big packers thought and all the folks who were opposed to labeling these meat products. I was in a conference committee over in the middle of this Capitol in a small room. We were all packed into this little conference, an Appropriations Committee conference, and it was November of 2005. Country-of-origin labeling, remember, was supposed to have gone into effect on September 30, 2004. But then the majority party got involved and they extended it once.

In November of 2005 I was part of a conference on the Agriculture appropriations bill and I was prepared to debate this issue on country- of-origin labeling. The chairman of that conference banged the gavel, recessed the conference, and we never met again. The next time we saw the results of what those folks had done in a smoky back room some place, they had further extended country-of-origin labeling to September of 2008. They keep extending it and extending it. The law says meat must be labeled by September 30, 2004. It is not now labeled. Why? Because it has been extended and extended again, always done in the dead of night, always done in an amendment that is brought up not in the House or the Senate, but stuck in a conference some place--an unbelievable practice.

The result is we come now to this piece of legislation, an emergency supplemental appropriations bill, and I say: You know what. Let's decide that country-of-origin labeling for meat takes effect this September, several months ahead. Let's decide it does that.

One of the culprits here has been the U.S. Department of Agriculture too, because they almost wore out their shoes by dragging their feet. They have no interest in doing anything this aggressive, even though the Congress said: You must do it. They drug their

feet, got their heels stuck in the ground. That gave their friends here in Congress enough time to do these extensions. The result is in this country today there is no labeling of meat products.

It is interesting. The other day I was listening to news reports, tragic news reports about pet food in this country--millions, tens of millions, I guess, of people who have fed pet food to their pets, apparently containing ingredients they had no notion of, filler wheat from China, apparently rat poisoning, and pets have died. A tragedy for those pet owners. But how would they have known? There is no label. They don't know what is in it. They don't know where it comes from. I assume even if it had a label, it wouldn't say rat poison. I don't know how rat poison would get into pet food. But in any event, as I was listening to the news and watching some owners of pets who had described the terrible, agonizing death of their pets from eating contaminated pet food, it reminded me again of this issue of labeling and of my description of the investigator who went to the one processing plant in Mexico, processing meat for this country.

Why in these circumstances and in this day and age, do we not have labeling on meat that is sold to the American consumer?

Up north in Canada--my heart goes out to those livestock producers in Canada. They are trying hard. They are trying to make a living like everybody else is, but the plain fact is they have had 10 cases of mad cow disease in Canada. Nine of them in Canada, one recently, and one Canadian cow discovered in the State of Washington. That is 10 cases of mad cow disease, including the most recent case a couple of months ago. Yet, even at that point, it seems as if the Secretary of Agriculture wants to do a mad cow cattle drive from Canada to the United States. He is all anxious about opening this market right now; got to do it right now. I am wondering why his inclination isn't first to protect our domestic industry. We have other countries that say, we want to trade with you. We want to buy some beef from you, but we are not interested in buying beef that is intermixed with other kinds of beef. We want beef that is certified as American beef. Why? It is the safest in the world. But if you open this border wide open to the Canadian cattle at this point, especially at this point, given what we have known about BSE in Canada, how can we tell other countries without country-of- origin labeling that we have segregated and we know exactly where this meat comes from?

I think the USDA is making a business mistake. I say to the USDA Secretary this: If you are going to do this, at least be consistent and say you cannot do it without implementing country-of-origin labeling immediately; you must argue for both. Yet he has not been willing to do that.

I don't want, by talking about this, to suggest in any way that people in this country should be concerned about their supply of meat. They should not. We have a lot of ranchers and folks in this country who do a lot of work to keep our beef, lamb, pork, and poultry supply safe. But the American consumer wishes to purchase that which comes from American ranchers. That is why country-of-origin labeling is important, to give the American consumer the choice and the opportunity. I am telling you something. It is long past time when this should have been done. Those who serve in this Congress who want to continue to prevent the consumer from knowing where this meat comes from do no favor to the American consumer, and they certainly do no favor to the producer who is producing the best quality of supply that exists in the world but are told it doesn't need to be labeled because the consumer doesn't need to know. Boy, I think that is dead wrong.

So I have introduced a piece of legislation that will move country- of-origin labeling up to September of this year. It is long past time for this Congress to take action to undo what others have done in the appropriations process in the dead of night to extend this country-of- origin labeling.

Let me also talk for a moment about amendments that will likely be offered to strike from the emergency legislation some assistance to family farmers who suffered weather-related disasters. Almost all of us were here when we debated what to do about Hurricane Katrina, which came roaring onto the shore in this country and devastated a significant part of this country. It flattened it, killed people, ravaged houses, destroyed a city, and then another city. It rendered the gulf coast in shambles. Included in that is the crop that the farmers planted, the crop they put in the fields, hoping it would grow--the destruction of all that crop that was put in for that year by those farmers.

What do we do about that? What we decided to do was to provide emergency help, billions and billions of dollars of help, to those people who were injured by Hurricane Katrina. At least one part of that was to help family farmers who lost everything in the gulf. We said: You are not alone, you didn't cause this hurricane, you are the victims of it. Just like the other victims of this weather-related disaster, we want you to know we are with you and we want to help you.

And we did. Family farmers in that region got disaster assistance and got it with my help. I insisted on supporting that, and I know my colleagues did as well. We had a responsibility to say to those farmers: You lost everything. You are the victims of this weather- related disaster. We want to help you get back on your feet and recover. We want you to be able to continue living and working on a family farm.

So we did that. But that was not the only weather-related disaster. In the last 2\1/2\ years, we have had torrential flooding in my State, for example. At one point, we had 2 million acres of land that was planted and completely washed away, or not planted at all. If you are a farmer who owns land in that 2 million acres, you didn't have a crop, or didn't plant one, and you don't have any hope.

Last year, we were the epicenter of a devastating drought. The pasture down near Zeeland, ND, when I drove there to go to a meeting with ranchers and farmers, looked exactly like a moonscape. Nothing was growing at all. Under the best of circumstances--I come from a semiarid area, where 17 inches of rain fall a year. Put that in the epicenter of a drought and you have real trouble. We had farmers who lost everything and not just us, but in other parts of the country the same was true.

We name hurricanes but not droughts or floods. The drought didn't have a name. It wasn't ``Drought Kenneth'' or ``Drought Irma.'' Because these farmers lost everything to disasters that didn't have a name, are they any less deserving? Do we think any less of the interest in keeping them on the land and giving them help to continue farming? The answer ought to be, no, of course not. That is why I added a disaster piece for family farmers in this appropriations bill.

My colleague, Senator Conrad, and I, and so many others, on a bipartisan basis--Senators Bond, Feinstein, Boxer, and others--have all worked together to try to reach out to family farmers and say: When trouble visits your farm and you have lost everything, you are not alone. This Congress wants to help. This is not a recent urge of ours. We have always done this. We have always done it. So I was proud to be a part of putting this in the appropriations bill. It is on the floor. It should not be controversial. I spoke to President Bush last night and said: Mr. President, do not call this pork; it is not pork. You don't legislate pork, you eat pork. We understand about meat and pork and so on. This is not pork, but some want to call it that. Say that to a farmer and the farmer's family living under that yard light 10, 15 miles from town who lost everything; say to him: By the way, when the Congress wants to help you, somebody believes it is pork. It is not pork; it is in this country's interest to help those family farmers. It is simply in our interest. That is why we have added this, and I know we will have amendments to strip it out or make changes.

The fact is this is a worthy and a noble thing for the Congress to do. I hope that when the amendments are offered, we will be able to defeat them.

Yes.

Mr. President, the Senator from California is absolutely correct. It has always been the case that there are certain things you cannot predict in the coming year. You can budget for expected expenditures and programs you want to fund, but there are some things you probably cannot predict; for example, Hurricane Katrina is probably the prime example or a devastating drought or torrential rains or ice storms in California this spring. So what we have always done is we have always done emergency supplemental bills to try to respond to those. Only in this Presidency have those emergency bills overwhelmingly been defense bills because the President decided to move our armies overseas. We got involved with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq, and we asked for no expenditures, except he would later ask for emergency funding for it. We have passed roughly $450 billion in emergency funding for defense. That is not the basis, generally, of what emergency supplemental bills have been about. They have been to respond to the unanticipated events in this country, such as agricultural disasters and other things.

I said yesterday, when I spoke on the floor, I thought it curious that in the Senate, when we did an $18 billion emergency funding for reconstruction of Iraq, nobody stood up, that I am aware--and Senator Wyden and I cut it by about $1.8 billion--and said: OK. You are going to invest in health clinics. If you do that in Iraq, it is national security; if you do it in America, it is pork. You are going to invest in road programs. In Iraq, it is for national security; in America, it is called pork. You are going to invest in any number of dozens of other things, and as long as it is in Iraq with the reconstruction programs, that is OK, that is part of our national security issue. But if it is doing it in this country, they say, no, no, no, no, you cannot do that.

I observe one thing. Some of what we do is flatout spending. I understand that. We need to tighten our belts. But some of what we do is investing in this country's future. I think investing in this country's future includes saying to family farmers that this country values having you on the farm. You are the seedbed of family values that nourishes our country from the small towns to the big cities. Culturally and economically, you matter to this country.

When we pass a disaster bill that includes disaster help for family farmers, I think it represents the best instincts of this country and, frankly, it is what we must do if we are going to maintain a network of family farms producing America's food. Finally, we understand, all of us, that big corporations could probably farm from California to Maine--buy up the whole country and farm it. We know what would happen to food prices. Our country is much better served by having a network of family farmers out there, with their families living under yard lights, producing America's food supply. That is why I think the best instincts of this Congress is to do what we did in this legislation, to provide disaster help for those who need it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I hope the Senate will oppose this measure. The agricultural disaster program that was put in the supplemental bill is a bipartisan piece of legislation. Senator Conrad, myself, Senator Kit Bond, Senator Dianne Feinstein--many of us worked together to put this in the legislation.

It is very simple. It reaches out a helping hand to those farmers, in many cases who lost everything, to say: You are not alone. This country wants to help you during tough times.

We have always--we have always--provided disaster relief on an emergency basis, except for the last several years; it has been blocked. This is the opportunity, on a bipartisan basis, for us to say to family farmers: You matter to this country. We want to help you. When you have had a weather-related disaster, we are here to help.

I hope we will turn down the amendment offered by my colleague from Oklahoma.