Promoting Transparency in Financial Reporting Act of 2007

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Competitiveness Through Education, Technology, and Enterprise Act otherwise known as the COMPETE Act. The bill I introduce today is similar to legislation I have introduced in the 109th Congress. I am very pleased to be joined by my very good friend and colleague, Senator Mark Pryor, who shares my commitment to keeping the U. S. competitive not just for today but for tomorrow as well.

Earlier this week Microsoft's Bill Gates came before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to talk about keeping our country competitive. He said that ``the U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our workforce consists of people who have the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation.'' Moreover he said that ``we simply cannot sustain an economy based on innovation unless our citizens are educated in math, science and engineering.''

My bill is inspired by the same line of thinking. The COMPETE Act is based on three simple, fundamental ideas: 1. The U.S. needs to remain a leader when it comes to technology and innovation; 2. We must prepare our future workforce and ``up-skill'' our current workforce for our increasingly global and information technology driven economy; and 3. We must better utilize existing private-public partnerships to achieve these goals.

The challenges we face are stark especially when it comes to the future competitiveness of our workforce. Today, China graduates four times as many engineers as the U.S. while the small nation of South Korea graduates just as many as we do. In three short years, Asia will be home to more than 90 percent of the world's scientists and engineers.

According to a recent poll, 84 percent of middle school students preferred to eat their vegetables than do their math homework. As Tom Friedman wrote in his book the World is Flat when he was growing up as a kid his mother used to tell him to eat all his vegetables because kids in China were starving. Today, his mother would say do your homework because the kids in China are starving for our jobs.

As if this were not enough, we also need to concern ourselves with the coming retirement wave of high-skilled workers in the fields of engineering, science, technology and math. According to the National Science Foundation, about a third of American scientists and engineers are over 50 years old.

To encourage and promote our students to seek out these types of careers we need to improve the performance of students in science and math. Several reports have indicated that U.S. students do not perform at the level of their international counterparts in math and science. Our fourth graders compare fairly well internationally, but by high school American students slip to 24th place out of 29 developing nations in math literacy and problem solving.

We must make sure that our educational system is up to the task in preparing our future workforce. To reward elementary and secondary schools for a job well done, COMPETE provides bonus grants to high performing elementary and secondary schools that show the greatest improvement in their State assessments in math and science. COMPETE also increases the alternative percentage limitation for corporate charitable contributions to the mathematics and science partnership program in order to encourage greater support from the corporate world.

To help ensure that more students receive a higher education and have the skills necessary to compete in today's global economy COMPETE puts the Senate on record in support of raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,400.

In addition to undergraduate education, COMPETE also establishes a matching grant program where Federal and private resources will be used to help graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics meet the cost of getting a graduate degree. This grant program will also support outreach and mentoring activities to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in these fields at every level of education.

To keep today's workforce competitive and prepare our future workforce, COMPETE creates a tax credit to help ``up-skill'' America's workers so that

they can compete in today's increasingly information and technology- driven global economy. COMPETE also creates a workforce development grant pilot program to encourage leading innovative small businesses to provide short-term workforce training opportunities for college students who major in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Our employers need more than just raw materials. They need a highly skilled workforce that provides extra value to their products and services.

Finally in order to ensure our leadership in innovation, COMPETE makes the research and development credit permanent. We must look at ways to ensure the ability of American companies to stay at the forefront of the technological revolution. Temporarily extending the R&D tax credit makes it difficult for our businesses to undertake research and development activities necessary for our continued long- term competitiveness in the global economy.

Earlier this week, bipartisan comprehensive competitiveness legislation known as the America Competes Act was introduced. I am a proud original cosponsor of this bill which seeks to respond to the recommendations made by the National Academies' ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' report and the Council on Competitiveness'' ``Innovate America'' report.

In an effort to contribute to this important discussion I am introducing COMPETE, which complements the America Competes Act through its emphasis on innovation and workforce development and public-private education partnership in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.

We must realize the fact that our competitiveness relative to the global economy is in real danger. This situation is smoldering--it's not a five-alarm fire yet--I just hope we don't act too late. If you throw a frog into boiling water, it jumps out. If you throw a frog into warm water, it will sit there comfortably until its internal organs overheat and it dies. Let's not let ourselves wake up in a few years to see that our global competitiveness has slipped away.

I am committed to working on this issue now. While the challenges to our leadership in the global economy are indeed significant, I am confident and optimistic that we will successfully address challenges to our leadership in the global economy.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation that would correct a property trespass question involving a 25-acre parcel of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in Garfield County, UT. The parcel is part of the Turnabout Ranch, which hosts a successful and popular program to rehabilitate troubled youth.

The trespass conflict is the result of an erroneous survey in January 1999, at the time the Congress approved a major land exchange, P.L. 105-335, between the State of Utah and the BLM and erroneously included a part of the Turnabout Ranch. The land is located along the border of the Grand Staircase Escalante (GSE) Monument. My bill makes a slight boundary change to resolve the trespass question. This would grant the owners of the ranch the opportunity to purchase the erroneously surveyed land at fair market value so that this very important program for at-risk youth can continue unhindered.

Since 1995, Turn-About Ranch has graduated some 500 troubled and at- risk teenagers through an intense program of training and rehabilitation. The ranch employs about 35 Garfield County residents. The Turn-About Ranch program has strong support from the local community and the Garfield Country Commission.

Historically used for agriculture and grazing purposes, the ranch was purchased by the Townsend Family who leased the land to Turn-About Ranch, Inc., for the exclusive purpose of restoring dignity and self- esteem to wayward teenagers. Because government-owned land administered by the BLM surrounds the private land, the only way to resolve the trespass is for the Congress to pass legislation.

This legislation offers a simple and fair solution to a fairly technical problem on our public lands. I hope Congress can use this legislation to resolve this problem in the very near future.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that would take a small but significant step toward identifying and repairing some of the regulatory problems currently found in our country's financial markets.

In 2002, our financial markets were in serious trouble. In the wake of Enron and other prominent accounting scandals, the public's confidence in the markets was low. Investors expressed their lack of confidence by taking their money out of the stock market, and the market indices plummeted. In response to this crisis--and that is exactly what it was, a crisis--Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

The law did what it was designed to do--re-establish faith in our financial markets--but it came at a cost. Complying with several of the bill's provisions has increased significantly the costs of doing business as a public corporation. Many large corporations continue to spend millions of dollars every year in order to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley law. This, they can afford. However, many smaller firms have found the costs of compliance with the Act to be crushing, burdensome, and negatively affecting their ability to compete in a global marketplace.

The result of this problem is twofold. First, a good number of smaller, publicly traded firms have been taken private by investors, with others expected to meet this same fate. Second, we have seen fewer companies going public, at least in the United States. During the year 2000, 50 percent of all new Initial Public Offerings, IPOs, were done in the United States. By 2006 that number had fallen below 10 percent. In 2006, Hong Kong supplanted New York as the number one market for stock offerings world-wide.

A number of my colleagues have pointed out that the dearth of IPOs threatens our standing as the premier financial market in the world. In the short term, we worry about this costing us prestige and jobs, but the real costs are much, much greater. Businesses that want to keep growing eventually need to become publicly-traded corporations in order to raise sufficient capital. With the costs of crossing that threshold greatly higher than they were a few years ago, many companies either delay or forego becoming a publicly traded corporation. Companies that become or remain privately-held firms eventually run into capital constraints of some sort that limit their growth.

The resulting cost to our economy is a financial market where it is more difficult for corporations to raise sufficient capital to expand capacity or increase productivity, ultimately resulting in slower economic growth. Given the truly awesome problems we face in the upcoming years with regard to our unfunded entitlement obligations, we are going to need every bit of economic growth we can muster to satisfy them. Even those who are ambivalent about the benefits of economic growth on the standard of living of all Americans should appreciate its importance in meeting our future obligations.

The bill I am introducing today would help us to identify and, I hope, ultimately address, many of the regulatory problems facing our financial markets. Specifically, it requires the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to annually testify to the relevant Senate and House committees on their efforts to reduce complexity in financial reporting and to provide more accurate and clear financial information to investors. I expect that this requirement would result in more awareness of these problems by policymakers in the Legislative and Executive Branches, as well as in the private sector, along with suggested solutions to these challenges.

While this bill would be a relatively small step, I believe it can help us understand exactly what must be done to address what ails our financial markets and help us achieve a consensus on how to fix these problems.

Mr. President, a nearly identical bill was passed by the House of Representatives recently with no opposition. I urge the leadership of the Senate on both sides of the aisle, along with the members of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to support this bill, and join the House in making this important step toward increasing the efficiency of our financial markets.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that would take a small but significant step toward identifying and repairing some of the regulatory problems currently found in our country's financial markets.

In 2002, our financial markets were in serious trouble. In the wake of Enron and other prominent accounting scandals, the public's confidence in the markets was low. Investors expressed their lack of confidence by taking their money out of the stock market, and the market indices plummeted. In response to this crisis--and that is exactly what it was, a crisis--Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

The law did what it was designed to do--re-establish faith in our financial markets--but it came at a cost. Complying with several of the bill's provisions has increased significantly the costs of doing business as a public corporation. Many large corporations continue to spend millions of dollars every year in order to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley law. This, they can afford. However, many smaller firms have found the costs of compliance with the Act to be crushing, burdensome, and negatively affecting their ability to compete in a global marketplace.

The result of this problem is twofold. First, a good number of smaller, publicly traded firms have been taken private by investors, with others expected to meet this same fate. Second, we have seen fewer companies going public, at least in the United States. During the year 2000, 50 percent of all new Initial Public Offerings, IPOs, were done in the United States. By 2006 that number had fallen below 10 percent. In 2006, Hong Kong supplanted New York as the number one market for stock offerings world-wide.

A number of my colleagues have pointed out that the dearth of IPOs threatens our standing as the premier financial market in the world. In the short term, we worry about this costing us prestige and jobs, but the real costs are much, much greater. Businesses that want to keep growing eventually need to become publicly-traded corporations in order to raise sufficient capital. With the costs of crossing that threshold greatly higher than they were a few years ago, many companies either delay or forego becoming a publicly traded corporation. Companies that become or remain privately-held firms eventually run into capital constraints of some sort that limit their growth.

The resulting cost to our economy is a financial market where it is more difficult for corporations to raise sufficient capital to expand capacity or increase productivity, ultimately resulting in slower economic growth. Given the truly awesome problems we face in the upcoming years with regard to our unfunded entitlement obligations, we are going to need every bit of economic growth we can muster to satisfy them. Even those who are ambivalent about the benefits of economic growth on the standard of living of all Americans should appreciate its importance in meeting our future obligations.

The bill I am introducing today would help us to identify and, I hope, ultimately address, many of the regulatory problems facing our financial markets. Specifically, it requires the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to annually testify to the relevant Senate and House committees on their efforts to reduce complexity in financial reporting and to provide more accurate and clear financial information to investors. I expect that this requirement would result in more awareness of these problems by policymakers in the Legislative and Executive Branches, as well as in the private sector, along with suggested solutions to these challenges.

While this bill would be a relatively small step, I believe it can help us understand exactly what must be done to address what ails our financial markets and help us achieve a consensus on how to fix these problems.

Mr. President, a nearly identical bill was passed by the House of Representatives recently with no opposition. I urge the leadership of the Senate on both sides of the aisle, along with the members of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to support this bill, and join the House in making this important step toward increasing the efficiency of our financial markets.

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

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a bill to rename the Federal building in Memphis as the Clifford Davis and Odell Horton Federal Building. My colleague Senator Corker is a cosponsor. It is the same legislation that was introduced in the House of Representatives by our new Representative Steve Cohen, and it is cosponsored by the rest of the House delegation, both Republicans and Democrats.

Representative Cohen's bill, H.R. 753, was approved by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on March 1 and awaits further action by the full House.

Judge Horton has a remarkable legacy. He was the first African- American federal district court judge appointed in Tennessee since Reconstruction. He was recommended by former Senator Jim Sasser and appointed by President Carter on May 12, 1980.

I remember those days of transition very well. It was in that same year that I was Governor of Tennessee. I appointed the first African- American supreme court justice in Tennessee, Judge George Brown, who served with distinction.

At that time, there had not been an African-American chancellor, which is one of our lower court's State judges. I appointed Irwin Kilcrease to that position, and he served with a distinguished record and retired only within the last couple of years.

Judge Horton was a real pioneer who came at a time of transition in Memphis, where he lived, and in our State's history. He served as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee from January 1, 1987, until December 31, 1993.

Odell Horton was born in Bolivar, TN, just outside of Memphis, on May 13, 1929. He said he grew up in a ``typically rural Southern and typically segregated [environment], with all of the attendant consequences of that''.

At about the same time, growing up maybe 40 miles away was a young man named Alex Haley who would sit on the front porch of his grandparents' home and listen to his great-aunt tell stories of Kunta Kinte, which ultimately became the story of ``Roots.''

Odell Horton's father was a laborer. His mother took in laundry. His first job at the age of 6 was delivering laundry for his mom. He and his three siblings also picked cotton, stacked lumber, and took other odd jobs.

After high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He enrolled in Morehouse College using the GI bill. He served with the Marines during the Korean war. He graduated from the U.S. Navy School of Journalism.

After the Marines, he earned a law degree from Howard University, and after graduating from Howard Law School in 1956, he moved to Memphis and rented a one-room office on Beale Street--the music street of Memphis--and opened his own law practice.

He did that for 5 years. He served as an assistant U.S. attorney after that.

In 1968, he was director of the city's hospitals, making him the only Black division director at city hall at that time.

He served as judge on the Shelby County Criminal Court. He was a commentator on a local television station. He ran for district attorney general in 1974, narrowly losing the primary, at that time considered a very strong showing by an African-American candidate in a county that today has an African-American mayor of Memphis and an African-American mayor of Shelby County.

He was a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge before being appointed as a U.S. district judge by President Carter.

He was married to his wife Evie for 50 years, with two sons, Odell, Jr., and Christopher. He died on February 22, 2006.

I commend Representative Cohen for his bill to rename the Clifford Davis Federal Building to the Clifford Davis and Odell Horton Federal Building. Representative Davis was a Congressman who served in the House of Representatives from 1940 to 1965. He was one of those five Congressmen in the U.S. Capitol when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the visitors' balcony in the Chamber. He was shot in the leg at the time.

Keeping both names on the Federal building is symbolic of the transition that took place in Memphis and across the South during Odell's lifetime and my lifetime and reminds us that our country is committed to equal opportunity, but it has been and is and will be for a long time a work in progress.

Odell Horton is one of the finest examples of that work in progress. Having his name on a Federal building will remind all of us of that.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to help

ensure that State and local educational agencies implement an effective certification process for school leaders. My legislation will address the need to effectively train and retain school leaders to prepare our children to compete in the global economy.

The Fordham Foundation conducted a study on the effectiveness of current state licensing procedures and noted that they have ``little relevance to the task at hand [and] discourage the leaders we need from entering our public schools.'' As a result, school leaders, particularly those in under-performing schools, are often unprepared to foster student success. That is why I am sponsoring the Improving the Leadership and Effectiveness of Administrators for Districts (I LEAD) Act.

As the number of openings for school leaders is expected to increase by 20 percent in the next five years, districts will find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain effective principals. We need to ensure outgoing school leaders are replaced with effective, well-trained school leaders who are prepared to raise student achievement.

The I LEAD Act would allow State and local educational agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of their current school leadership licensure requirements by examining the impact on student achievement, graduation rates, parental involvement, and safety within their schools. It also provides grants to implement a plan to recruit and effectively train school leaders by providing on-the-job experience during the licensure process, financial incentives, ongoing professional development, and mentors during their first two years on the job.

Under this bill, the Department of Education would conduct a study on the effectiveness of these grants on student achievement. Upon successful implementation of new procedures, state education agencies may apply for additional grant money through the Department for assistance in replicating the success of this ``model leadership zone'' throughout the state. Grants would also be used to reform the state certification process.

School leaders have a significant impact on student achievement. An effective and capable school leader can make the difference in providing the tools and instructional support staff needed to foster the type of school environment conducive to student academic success. This legislation would ensure that our principals are given the training and support they need to foster student success.

The I LEAD Act addresses the need to effectively train and retain school leaders to prepare our children to compete in the global economy. I am hopeful that my Senate colleagues from both sides of the aisle will join me today to move this legislation to the floor without delay.