A bill to provide a waiver from sanctions under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 for certain States, local educational agencies, and schools.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with Senators Brownback, Clinton, Durbin, and Casey, the Children and Media Research Advancement Act, or CAMRA Act. This bill is identical to S. 1902 that passed the Senate unanimously last year except that it houses our program at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Children today live and develop in a world of media. Electronic media, including DVD's, video games, digital music, the Internet, television, motion pictures, and cell phones, are now everywhere and under constant change. Research needs to keep up with the technology, from its positive impacts such as language development in children with delays, to possible adverse effects, from obesity to muscular-skeletal disorders. The CAMRA Act supports exploration and analysis on the impact of electronic media in children's and adolescents' development. Based on recommendations from a National Academy of Sciences panel, researchers will look at both the positive and negative impacts on children's cognitive, social, emotional, physical and behavioral development.

Electronic media, in all its forms, influences and affects young people. It has the potential to produce benefits and harms. Numerous studies show increased aggressive behavior in children following interaction with violent video games. We need to move research beyond these studies to learn, for example, how new interactive technologies can best support and enhance traditional learning while making certain that these new technologies, and marketing increasingly targeted at children through these technologies, do not damage children's long-term health.

Televisions have been common in households for half a century and television still dominates the total amount of time children devote to electronic

media. One report links television viewing at an early age with later symptoms that are common in children with attention deficit disorders. However, we don't know the direct relationship, if any. Does television viewing cause attention deficits, or do children who have attention deficits find television viewing experiences more engaging than children who don't have attention problems? Or do parents of children with attention disorders let them watch more television to encourage more sitting and less hyperactive behavior? How will Internet experiences, particularly those where children move rapidly across different windows, influence attention patterns and attention problems? Can interactive media positively influence those with attention deficits? Once again, we don't know the answers.

Does television cause autism? That's the title of a recent Cornell University study showing a correlation between the alarming rising incidence of autism and increases in television viewing. Again, we don't know the direct relationship, if it exists. If early television exposure does alter normal brain development, we need to understand this to protect children in the future.

Half of the Nation's children live in homes with three or more televisions with access, in many cases, to hundreds of channels ranging from Fashion TV to Spike TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages television watching for children under two, promoting instead other activities, for example reading together and playing, for proper brain development. Yet three in five children under one year of age watch TV, or other screen media such as DVD players, for an average of one and one-third hours a day. For four to six year olds, these numbers increase to 90 percent watching TV for an average of over two hours a day.

Young people over 8 years old use electronic media, on average, for over 6 hours each day. How does this investment of time affect children's physical development, their cognitive development, or their moral values? Unfortunately, we still have very limited information about how media, particularly the newer interactive media, affect children's development.

American advertisers spend $15 billion a year on marketing to children under 12, twice the amount from a decade ago. Most of the advertising to kids is for candy, soda, cereal and fast food; and most of the food brands advertising to children on TV use branded websites to market to children online. These sites most often include online games, access to the TV commercials, and encouragement for kids to contact their peers about the products. Is this affecting the health of America's children?

Consider our current national health crisis where about one in six children are overweight. The number of overweight children and teenagers in the U.S. has more than tripled over the last four decades. The public, through Medicare and Medicaid, pays about $39 billion per year for medical care relating to childhood and adult obesity. In 2000, the Surgeon General estimated the total economic cost of obesity in the United States to be $117 billion. And the number of overweight children continues to increase.

Beyond the enormous medical costs come later health problems and perhaps reduced life expectancies. We think that media exposure is partly the cause of this epidemic. Is it? A recent 2007 study from the Harvard Medical School found that more time for three year olds in front of a TV leads to more sugary drinks and calories. Is this true for younger and older children? Is time spent viewing screens and its accompanying sedentary lifestyles contributing to childhood and adolescent obesity? Or is the constant bombardment of advertisements for sugar-coated cereals, snack foods, and candy that pervade children's television advertisements the culprit? What will happen when junk food advertisements begin to pop-up on children's cell phones? How do the newer online forms of ``stealth marketing'', such as food products packaged with computer games, affect children's and adolescents' consumption patterns? We have more questions than answers.

On another subject, many of us believe that our children are becoming increasingly materialistic. Does exposure to commercial advertising and the ``good life'' experienced by media characters partly explain materialistic attitudes? We're not sure. Recent research using brain- mapping techniques finds that an adult who sees images of desired products demonstrates patterns of brain activation that are typically associated with reaching out with a hand. How does repeatedly seeing attractive products affect our children and their developing brains? As Internet access expands from the desktop computer to other devices, including televisions, what will happen when our children will be able to click on their television screen and go directly to sites that advertise the products that they see in their favorite programs or use their cell phones to pay immediately for products marketed directly at them? Exactly what kind of values are we cultivating in our children, and what role does exposure to media content play in the development of those values?

We want no child left behind in the 21st century. Many of us believe that time spent with computers is good for our children, teaching them the skills that they will need for success in the 21st century. Are we right? How is time spent with computers different from time spent with television? What are the underlying mechanisms that facilitate or disrupt children's learning from these varying media? Can academic development be fostered by the use of interactive online programs designed to teach as they entertain?

In the first six years of life, Caucasian more so than African American or Latino children have Internet access from their homes. Can our newer interactive media help ensure that no child is left behind, or will disparities in access result in leaving some behind and not others?

Interactive computer programs may be of enormous benefits to English language learners. In addition, electronic media can allow children with disabilities to learn, discover, and interact with others in ways not before possible. What are the best ways to help English language learners and children with various disabilities learn?

The questions about how media affect the development of our children are clearly important, abundant, and complex. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are in short supply. Such gaps in our knowledge limit our ability to make informed decisions about media policy.

We know that media are important. Over the years, we have held numerous hearings in these chambers about how exposure to media violence affects childhood aggression. We passed legislation such as the Children's Television Act, which requires broadcasters to provide educational and informational television programs for children. Can we cultivate children's moral values through prosocial programs resulting from the Children's Television Act, that promote helping, sharing, and cooperating?

We acted to protect our children from unfair commercial practices by passing the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which provides safeguards from exploitation for our youth as they explore the Internet. Yet the Internet is providing new and evolving ways to reach children with marketing, making our ability to protect our children all the more difficult.

We worry about our children's inadvertent exposure to online pornography and about how that kind of exposure may undermine their moral values and standards of decency. In these halls of Congress, we acted to protect our children by passing the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, and the Children's Internet Protection Act to shield children from exposure to sexually explicit online content that is deemed harmful to minors. While we all agree that we need to protect our children from online pornography, we know very little about how to address even the most practical of questions such as how to prevent children from falling prey to adult strangers who approach them online.

To ensure that we are doing our very best for our children, the behavioral and health recommendations and public policy decisions we make should be based on objective scientific research. Yet no Federal research agency has responsibility for overseeing and setting a coherent media research agenda that can guide these policy decisions. Instead, Federal agencies fund electronic media research in a piecemeal fashion,

resulting in a patch work of findings that often do not span disciplines and address complex questions. We must do better than that.

The bill we are introducing today remedies this problem. The CAMRA Act will provide an overarching view of media effects by establishing a program devoted to Children and Media within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This program of research, to be vetted by the National Academy of Sciences, will fund and energize a coherent program of research that illuminates the role of media in children's cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and behavioral development. The research will cover all forms of electronic media and will encourage research involving children of all ages--even babies and toddlers. The bill also calls for a report to Congress about the effectiveness of this research program in filling this void in our knowledge. To accomplish these goals, we are authorizing $90 million dollars to be phased in gradually across the next five years. The cost to our budget is minimal and can well result in significant savings in other budget areas.

Our Nation values the positive, healthy development of our children. Our children live in the information age, and our country has one of the most powerful and sophisticated technology systems in the world. While this system entertains them, it is not always harmless entertainment. Media have the potential to facilitate the healthy growth of our children. They also have the potential to harm. We have a stake in finding out exactly what that role is. We have a responsibility to take action. Access to the knowledge that we need for informed decision-making requires us to make an investment: an investment in research, an investment in and for our children, and an investment in our collective futures. The benefits to our youth and our Nation's families are immeasurable.

By passing the Children and Media Research Advancement Act, we can advance knowledge and enhance the constructive effects of media while minimizing the negative ones. We can make future media policies that are grounded in solid, scientific knowledge. We can be proactive, rather than reactive. In so doing, we build a better nation for our youth, fostering the kinds of values that are the backbone of this great nation of ours, and we create a better foundation to guide future media policies about the digital experiences that pervade our children's daily lives.

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

Mr. President, it is my pleasure today to join with my colleagues Senators Craig, Dorgan, Vitter, Klobuchar, Tester, Landrieu, Crapo, Baucus, and Cantwell to introduce the Railroad Competition and Service Improvement Act of 2007. This legislation stands for the very basic premise that businesses should serve their customers, and do so at reasonable rates.

This essential concept of capitalism is what our economy is based upon. Those ideas, plus promoting competition and protecting consumers, were prime motivating factors when Congress in 1980 passed the Staggers Act. The Staggers Act provided a government agency--now the Surface Transportation Board (STB)--with the ability to prevent monopoly abuses of those shippers left ``captive'' to just one railroad, and to make sure that the railroads in competitive situations were able to operate in such a way that they could be profitable. Somewhere along the way the part of the STB mandate calling on the agency to protect shippers, and by extension consumers, has been ignored, or at least subsumed into the STB's fervor to see the railroads profitable.

And profitable they are. What is important for my colleagues to recognize is that neither I nor any of my cosponsors want the railroads to fail. We want, and this country needs, a healthy freight rail industry. From coal to chemicals to plastics to forest products to grain and potatoes, America's shippers depend on the railroad industry to carry their products to customers across the country to keep our economy moving.

What no member of Congress should want to see is a freight rail system dominated by four regional carriers whose business plans are based on bleeding their captive customers dry. Meanwhile, these companies invest none of their profits in infrastructure expansion to handle current traffic, much less the expected need in the decades to come.

This is by no means the first time my colleagues have seen me introduce legislation in this vein. In fact, this is at least the eighth time that I have asked my colleagues to look into the problems in our freight rail network and to work with me to fix it. Businesses in my home State of West Virginia have been describing problems with the railroads to since before I came to the Senate in 1985. Like businesses anywhere, West Virginia industries depend on efficient and dependable rail service at fair prices to move their products to market.

Well, what was a troubling situation 22 years ago for about 20 percent of rail shippers captive to the more than 40 Class I railroads then is a nightmare now for hundreds of companies in almost every industry and in virtually every part of the United States that are being underserved and overcharged by the five remaining Class I railroads. I have worked for years in a bipartisan and regionally diverse coalition of members of Congress to change a system that just is not working. Our goal is to improve the economic situation for rail shippers and retail shoppers. And, I hasten to add, we seek to strengthen and improve the economic vitality of the Class I railroads, as well.

I am sure that my colleagues will hear from railroads that we are ``re-regulating.'' My colleagues should carefully review our bill and find where we would regulate anything that is not already regulated. This is, of course, the point. The railroads have touted the success of the deregulation, but what they fail to mention is that the Staggers Act never deregulated the railroads where shippers had no competitive transportation options. The railroads can have all the opinions about our legislation that they want, but they are not entitled to their own set of facts.

What has happened while the railroads have consolidated and mischaracterized this effort on behalf of shippers? Shippers and end- use consumers have paid increasingly high prices for electricity, food, medicine, paper products; the chemicals to protect our water supply and crops, and the basic ingredients of the plastics in many of the goods we purchase. It was not supposed to be this way.

In 1980, when Congress passed the Staggers Act, it was seeking to rescue the railroads from a burdensome and counterproductive regulatory scheme overseen by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). In the decades leading up to passage of the Staggers Act the freight rail situation was bloated with unprofitable railroads forced to make un- economic choices regarding track, routes, and countless other business decisions. The Staggers Act was an attempt to let the marketplace create a more workable system. Where rail shippers were already captive to one railroad, the ICC was supposed to continue to protect shippers' rights and to require railroads to meet their responsibilities.

As the marketplace evolved, the ICC, and its successor agency the STB, were supposed to make sure that railroad consolidation and industry policy did not harm rail customers. The only reason the railroads in 2007 can say that my colleagues and I are attempting to ``re-regulate'' them is that the regulatory agencies charged with regulating them all along largely have abdicated their responsibilities, and have been sadly ineffective on the rare occasion when they purport to be carrying out the part of their mission that includes maintaining the advantages of competition.

To the extent that the Staggers Act has been successful in fulfilling its promise, that success has been completely one-sided. Railroads are no longer struggling to be profitable. Neither are they struggling to serve their customers. The STB, which should be working to make the system work, is more of a problem than it is a solution. The only parties still struggling are the shippers, and our bill is designed to make it a fair fight.

The title of our bill, the Railroad Competition and Service Improvement Act, really says it all. Cosponsors of this legislation seek a freight rail system envisioned in the drafting of the Staggers Act. We hope to remind the STB of its responsibilities, and give its enforcement the teeth successive Chairmen have told Congress the Board needs.

As I have said, this legislation is about making capitalism work for all parties in the freight rail marketplace, not just for the monopoly railroads. Shippers need Congress to remind the STB that good service at reasonable rates is not an outrageous demand. Congress must demand that shippers that ask for a rate quote are given one. Unbelievably, the STB's reading of the Staggers Act allows shippers no such right.

In addition to that most basic right of business negotiations, our legislation would do the following: clarify and restate the STB's responsibility to shall promote competition among rail carriers, as well as requiring reasonable rates and dependable service in keeping with the railroads' common carrier obligation; remove so-called ``paper barriers,'' contractual restraints on short-line and regional railroads that prevent them from providing improved service to shippers; modify the rate challenge process, and implement real-world evidentiary standards and burden of proof requirements; authorize STB to require ``reciprocal switching,'' the transfer of traffic between railroads, where it is in the public interest; affirm the railroads' obligation to serve; cap filing fees for STB rate cases at the level of federal district courts; allow Governors to petition the STB for declarations of ``areas of inadequate rail competition,'' with appropriate remedies; create position of Rail Customer Advocate in the Department of Transportation; and establish a system of ``final offer'' arbitration for disputes over agriculture, forest product, and fertilizer shipments.

Solutions to these problems are long overdue. I commend to my colleagues the Railroad Competition and Service Improvement Act as a set of common-sense solutions to unresolved problems that are putting American competitiveness at risk.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation with my Virginia Senate colleague, Senator Webb, related to the No Child Left Behind Act. This legislation simply tries to hold certain schools harmless, for one year, from the sanction provisions under NCLB when such sanctions result solely because of bureaucratic problems with the implementation of the law.

I am pleased to note that Congressman Tom Davis, Congressman Jim Moran, Congressman Bob Goodlatte, Congresswoman Davis, and Congressman Rick Boucher have joined Senator Webb and me in introducing the same bill in the House of Representatives.

While I firmly believe that the goals behind NCLB are solid, there have been some challenges with the regulatory implementation of this new law, particularly in Virginia. Most recently, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the U.S. Department of Education have reached an impasse with respect to how best to test students with limited English proficiency. While, at this moment, I do not cast blame for how we came to this impasse, the simple fact is that it could result in a number of schools in Virginia being sanctioned under the Federal law--not because our schools are underperforming, but rather as a consequence of bureaucracy. This is clearly not the intent of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind was intended to put in place a strong accountability system by which the Federal Government would receive favorable results for the billions of Federal dollars it spends on education. The law was structured to ensure that all students are included in States' accountability systems, and was designed to reward those systems that achieve goals under the accountability system, and to sanction those that do not.

Regrettably, in my view, if legislation is not passed and signed into law that recognizes the unique situation faced in Virginia, and perhaps other States, then public schools in Virginia, and perhaps around the country, will be punished through no fault of their own.

Let me be more specific about what has occurred in my State. On June 28, 2006, the Virginia Department of Education received notice from the U.S. Department of Education that the assessment that Virginia had used for years to test certain limited English proficiency students would no longer meet Federal requirements. The 2006-2007 academic school year started shortly thereafter, and, at that time, no alternative assessment had been approved.

On December 11, 2006, representatives from the Virginia Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction met with the U.S. Department of Education officials to discuss a one-year extension, by which Virginia would be permitted to use the same assessment it had used in prior years for testing LEP students. On January 4, 2007, the entire Virginia Congressional delegation sent a letter to Secretary Spellings supporting Virginia's request for a one- year extension for using an alternative assessment for testing LEP students.

On January 29, 2007, Secretary Spellings wrote back to me denying Virginia's request. On February 8, 2007, Deputy Secretary Ray Simon wrote to Virginia clarifying that, while the previous test may not be used, another assessment is expected to obtain approval.

Well, today is March 21, 2007. To date, Virginia still does not have an approved alternative assessment, and our State assessments are scheduled to be given in less than a month. With no appropriate test approved for students to take this April, how can Virginia schools be expected to meet federal standards? How can our State and schools develop, prepare for, and administer a new test when we are well past the middle of the school year? Common sense begs for a reasonable solution.

In the interim, several school divisions in Virginia have voted not to test the LEP students at all. In turn, the U.S. Department of Education has threatened to withhold from Virginia millions of Federal education dollars.

The legislation that we introduce today is designed to allow the parties involved to take a step back, develop an acceptable assessment, appropriately train and educate students on it, and allow the Virginia educational system to move forward without being sanctioned in a way that is inconsistent with the NCLB Act.

This legislation accomplishes these goals by holding schools, local education agencies, and States harmless for one year from the sanctions provisions of NCLB if they meet certain criteria. Specifically a state must: (1) have had one or more approved academic assessment plans for the 2005-2006 school year; (2) have had one or more of such plans subsequently held invalid by the Department of Education for the 2006- 2007 school year; and (3) have the Governor of the State certify, in writing, to the Secretary of Education that the State cannot effectively train its educators on a new or alternative assessment prior to the date the assessment is to be administered, and that the administration of a new or alternative assessment is not in the best interest of the public school system and the children the system serves.

This ``hold-harmless'' provision would only apply to those schools and school divisions that fail to meet the Federal standards solely because of these logistical problems.

Unlike other proposals that have recently been introduced with respect to No Child Left Behind, this measure would not exempt states from accountability, nor exempt States, school districts and schools from the requirements of NCLB. Our bill simply calls for the suspension of penalties for one year for those schools and districts that, through no fault of their own, are being set up for potential failure because of bureaucratic logistical problems. This will give the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Government ample time to address the testing situation effectively for the 2007-2008 school year.

I would like to submit for the Record several letters expressing support for this legislation. The first letter is from Governor Kaine. The second letter is from Dr. Billy Cannady, the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Virginia; the third letter is from Dr. Mark Emblidge, President of the Virginia Board of Education; and the fourth letter is from the Virginia School Boards Association.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act of 2007. This bill will enhance our Nation's existing ocean observation infrastructure and drastically improve our understanding of the marine environment.

Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface, and have great influence over our lives. They shape our weather and climate systems, provide highways for international and domestic commerce, sustain rich living and non-living resources on which many of our livelihoods are based, and provide our Nation over 95,000 miles of shoreline which is the backbone of tourist and recreational activities in many of our coastal States. Despite the constant, intricate interaction between our lives on land and the natural systems of the ocean, we know woefully little about the physical properties of the overwhelming majority of our planet. What lies over the horizon remains, by most accounts, a mystery.

And yet, the effects of those mysterious systems can be devastating. In recent years, we have experienced first-hand the destruction the ocean can

bring through disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita here in the United States, and the Indian Ocean tsunami felt in Indonesia and parts of Asia. We have the technology to monitor a wide range of ocean-based threats, from destructive storms to quieter dangers such as harmful algal blooms and manmade pollution. The purpose of this legislation is to put that technology to work predicting these threats more accurately and, when possible, mitigate their impacts.

This bipartisan, science-based bill would authorize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to coordinate an interagency network of ocean observing and communication systems around our nation's coastlines. This system would collect instantaneous data and information on ocean conditions--such as temperature, wave height, wind speed, currents, dissolved oxygen, salinity, contaminants, and other variables--that are essential to marine science and resource management and can be used to improve maritime transportation, safety, and commerce. Such data would improve both short-term forecasting that can mitigate impacts of major disasters, and prediction and scientific analysis of long-term ocean and climate trends.

My home State of Maine currently participates in an innovative partnership known as the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System, or GoMOOS. Launched in 2001, GoMOOS takes ocean and surface condition measurements on an hourly basis through a network of linked buoys. These data are subsequently made available via the GoMOOS website to scientists, students, vessel captains, fishermen, and anyone else with an interest in our oceans. The system continues to expand, with the 11th buoy in the system launched in December of 2006. The vast geographical range and frequency of measurements has led to unprecedented developments in scientific analysis of ocean conditions in the Gulf of Maine. It has also contributed invaluable information to our region's assessments of fisheries, weather conditions, and predictions of other ocean phenomena.

Of course, the need to access this type of information is not limited to the Gulf of Maine. Similar observing systems have been developed in other coastal regions as well. Data from these various systems, however, are often incompatible with one another, making it difficult to compile, manage, process, and communicate data across networks. As a result, these disparate systems may be unable to link their data and develop a comprehensive national picture of coastal and ocean conditions.

The Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act of 2007 would rectify this situation by establishing, in cooperation with NOAA, an integrated system of ocean observing efforts. The bill would encourage creation of systems in areas that do not currently have one in place or in development, enable the data from all systems to be integrated and accessible through a national network, and facilitate timely public warnings of hazardous ocean conditions or events. Oversight of the program would be the responsibility of the National Ocean Research Leadership Council, a group comprised of the heads of fifteen Federal agencies that play roles in formulation of ocean policy. The Council would establish an interagency partnership to plan and coordinate activities, with NOAA serving as the lead Federal agency ensuring that the national network effectively integrates, utilizes, and publicizes ocean data to the benefit of the American public.

In June 2006, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, made up of members from the Pew Ocean Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, presented to Congress a list of the ``top ten'' actions Congress should take to strengthen our ocean policy regime. One of those priorities was ``enact legislation to authorize and fund the Integrated Ocean Observing System.'' Ocean and coastal observations are a cornerstone of sound marine science, management, and commerce. This bill will save lives by allowing seafarers to better monitor ocean conditions and providing timelier and more accurate predictions of potentially catastrophic weather and seismic phenomena. It will save taxpayers' dollars by reducing the emergency spending that comes in the wake of unanticipated storms, and it will enhance the appreciation and understanding of our oceans and coastal regions to benefit all Americans.

I am very proud to introduce this bill, and I would like to thank my co-sponsors, Senators Cantwell, Inouye, Stevens, Boxer, Cardin, Kerry, Menendez, Collins, Lautenberg, Lott, Feinstein, Nelson, and Murkowski for contributing to this legislation and supporting this national initiative. Of course, our current and expanding ocean observation and communication system would not be possible without the work of dedicated professionals in the ocean and coastal science, management, and research communities--they have taken the initiative to develop the grassroots regional observation systems as well as contribute to this legislation. Thanks to their ongoing efforts, ocean observations will continue to provide a tremendous service to the American public.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to reauthorize the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. I would like to thank Senator Dole for leading this effort in the Senate with me.

This is a critical piece of legislation. The McGovern-Dole Program provides healthy, nutritious meals to children living in some of the most impoverished countries in the world. By combining food aid and education, this program has a dramatic effect on the health and development of millions of young children each year.

I first became interested in this program in 2000 when I read an editorial written by former Senator George McGovern titled Lunch for All Schoolchildren Is a Big Thing We Can Do. In that editorial, Senator McGovern laid out his reasoning for an international school feeding program and left us all with a challenge by asking, ``is there any higher purpose under the heaven than feeding all God's children the world around?''

It was his work alongside Senator Bob Dole that inspired President Clinton in 2000 to create the Global Food for Education Initiative (GFEI) pilot program and fund it at $300 million. Since then, funding for the program has fluctuated but it has never again reached the level at which it started. Still, in a relatively short period of time, the McGovern-Dole Program, as it appropriately came to be called after the expiration of the GFEI pilot program, has benefited more than 26 million boys and girls in 41 countries around the world. Last year alone, the program served more than 2.5 million children living in a total of 15 countries, including Afghanistan, Senegal, Laos, Guinea- Bissau, and Bolivia.

The program is a tremendous investment in the lives of the world's children. For just 19 cents per day, or 34 dollars per year, we are able to provide a healthy meal to a hungry child. This relatively modest investment does more than provide a meal--it also creates an incentive for children to come to school and learn and for families to continue to send their child to school rather than to work in a field or a factory. This is especially important for young girls in developing countries who are often not given the same educational opportunities as their male peers and therefore fall behind them in terms of literacy rates and educational attainment.

In its effect on girls, the McGovern-Dole Program has performed exceedingly well. Young girls who participate in the program have a 17 percent higher school attendance rate than similar girls who do not participate in school feeding programs. We know that educating young girls is one of the most cost-effective methods of achieving development goals. Compared to similarly situated girls who haven't gone to school, young girls who have been given the opportunity to go to school tend to get married later in life, have fewer children, earn more, and educate their children longer. It has a multiplier effect on a range of development goals.

A healthy, nutritious meal gives all students a greater opportunity to take advantage of their learning environment. A stomach full of nutritious food has a significant effect on a child's academic performance, enjoyment of learning, and overall health.

The United Nations estimates that there are 300 million chronically hungry school-age children around the world. We are falling far short of the need. When the American people provide our bountiful harvests to the most vulnerable among us, the poorest school-age children around the world, it represents the best of the American spirit.

For these reasons, I am happy to be introducing legislation to reauthorize the McGovern-Dole Program and increase the authorized level of funding in an incremental fashion up to the $300 million level at which it was first funded.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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

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