Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area Act

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, today I will introduce the End Racial Profiling Act of 2007.

Ending racial profiling in America has been a priority for me for many years. I worked with the senior Senator from New Jersey, Senator Lautenberg, back in 1999 on a bill to collect statistics on traffic stops, which is where the problem of racial profiling was first revealed. Many studies from around the country now confirm that racial profiling is indeed a real problem that wastes police resources and diminishes trust between police departments and the communities they protect.

In 2001, in his first State of the Union address, President Bush told the American people that ``racial profiling is wrong and we will end it in America.'' He asked the Attorney General to implement a policy to end racial profiling. The Department of Justice released a Fact Sheet and Policy Guidance addressing racial profiling in 2003, stating that racial profiling is wrong and ineffective and perpetuates negative racial stereotypes in our country. Though these guidelines are helpful, they do not end racial profiling and they do not have the force of law. Unfortunately, more than 6 years after the President's promise to the country, we have not yet ended racial profiling in this country.

The End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 will do what the President promised; it will help America achieve the goal of bringing an end to racial profiling. This bill bans racial profiling and requires Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers to take steps to end this practice.

Racial profiling is the practice by which some law enforcement agents treat differently African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and others simply because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, or perceived religion. I have the utmost respect for law enforcement agents, and I believe that most of them do not engage in this practice. Nonetheless, reports in States from New Jersey to Florida, and Maryland to Texas all show that African Americans, Hispanics, and members of other minority groups were stopped by some police far more often than their share of the population and the crime rates for those racial categories.

Passing this bill is even more urgent after 9/11, as we have seen racial profiling used against Arab and Muslim Americans or Americans perceived to be Arab or Muslim. The 9/11 attacks were horrific, and I share the determination of many Americans that finding those responsible and preventing future attacks should be this Nation's top priority. This is a challenge that our country can and must meet. But to do that we need improved intelligence and law enforcement. Making assumptions based on racial, ethnic, or religious stereotypes will not protect our nation from crime or from future terrorist attacks.

A report released in May by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, covering 2005 data, found that while an African American person is now almost equally likely to be stopped as a white person, he or she is more than two and a half times more likely to be searched, more than twice as likely to be arrested, and more than three and a half times more likely to experience the use of force. Yet, according to studies from multiple police jurisdictions, these encounters with law enforcement are less likely to reveal criminal activity on the part of African Americans than whites. The flagrancy of this flawed and irrational practice has led Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree to observe, ``If I'm dressed in a knit cap and hooded jacket, I'm probable cause.''

The disparities outlined above, which also apply to other ethnic groups, have led the International Association of Chiefs of Police to call for an end to racial profiling. In addition, police departments around the country have independently developed programs and policies to prevent racial profiling and comply with the Department of Justice's policy guidance. In my own State of Wisconsin, law enforcement officials have taken steps to train police officers, improve academy training, establish model policies prohibiting racial profiling, and improve relations with our State's diverse communities. I applaud the efforts of Wisconsin law enforcement. This is excellent progress and shows widespread recognition that racial profiling harms our society. But like the DOJ policy guidance, local programs don't have the force of law behind them. The Federal government must step up, as President Bush promised. It must play a vital role in protecting civil rights and acting as a model for State and local law enforcement.

Now, perhaps more than ever before, our Nation cannot afford to waste precious law enforcement resources or alienate Americans by tolerating discriminatory practices. The mass detention of hundreds of Middle Eastern and Arab men on minor violations after 9/11, for example, resulted in not a single terrorism charge. These detentions did, however, shatter the lives of many people with no connection to terrorism whatsoever through lengthy disappearances, detentions, and deportations.

Similarly, when the Federal Government required the registration of individuals from Arab or Muslim countries in 2002, between 500 and 1,000 registrants who voluntarily complied were detained in the Los Angeles/Orange County area alone. Such heavy-handed tactics do not help us in fighting terrorism--they shut off dialogue and make good people unwilling to risk interaction with their Government. Treating sympathetic communities as suspicious ones is counterproductive, and it is wrong.

It is past time for Congress and the President to enact comprehensive Federal legislation that will end racial profiling once and for all. In clear language, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 bans racial profiling. It defines racial profiling in terms that are consistent with the Department of Justice's Policy Guidance. But this bill does more than prohibit and define racial profiling--it gives law enforcement agencies and officers the tools necessary to end the harmful practice. For that reason, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 is a pro-law enforcement bill.

This bill would allow the Justice Department or individuals to enforce the prohibition by filing a suit for injunctive relief. The bill would also require Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to adopt policies prohibiting racial profiling, implement effective complaint procedures or create independent auditor programs, implement disciplinary procedures for officers who engage in the practice, and collect data on routine and spontaneous investigatory activities. In addition, it requires the Attorney General to report to Congress so Congress and the American people can monitor whether the steps outlined in the bill to prevent and end racial profiling have been effective.

This bill also authorizes the Attorney General to provide incentive grants to help law enforcement comply with the ban on racial profiling, including funds to conduct training of police officers or purchase in- car video cameras.

Like the bill I introduced in 2005, this year's bill contains a significant improvement over previous versions. In some early proposals, DOJ grants for State and local law enforcement agencies were tied to the agency having some kind of procedure for handling complaints of racial profiling. At the suggestion of experts in the field, the bill now requires law enforcement agencies to adopt either an administrative complaint procedure or an independent auditor program to be eligible for DOJ grants. The Attorney General must promulgate regulations that set out the types of procedures and audit programs that will be sufficient. We believe that the independent auditor option will be preferable for many local law enforcement agencies, and such programs have proven to be an effective way to discourage racial profiling. Also, the Attorney General is required to conduct a 2-year demonstration project to help law enforcement agencies with data collection.

Let me emphasize that local, State, and Federal law enforcement agents play a vital role in protecting the public from crime and protecting the Nation from terrorism. The vast majority of law enforcement agents nationwide discharge their duties professionally and without bias and we are all indebted to them for their courage and dedication. This bill should not be misinterpreted as a criticism of those who

put their lives on the line for the rest of us each and every day. Rather, it is a statement that the use of race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin in deciding which persons should be subject to traffic stops, stops and frisks, questioning, searches, and seizures is wrong and ineffective, except where there is specific information linking persons of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin to a crime.

The provisions in this bill will help restore the trust and confidence of the communities that our law enforcement have pledged to serve and protect. That confidence is crucial to our success in stopping crime and in stopping terrorism. The End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 is good for law enforcement and good for America.

I urge the President to make good on his pledge to end racial profiling, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the End Racial Profiling Act of 2007.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today with my colleague Senator Gordon Smith to introduce the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act. Millions across the world recently observed the 20th World AIDS Day on December 1, a day of mourning, solidarity, and hope: mourning for the more than 25 million killed already in the AIDS pandemic; solidarity with the 33.2 million living with HIV today; and hope that this plague will be conquered in our time--with an achievable goal of realizing the birth of an HIV-free generation.

In the U.S., we have reached a point where a child living with HIV/ AIDS no longer faces certain death. Thanks to anti-retroviral, ARV, therapy, many children born infected with HIV/AIDS now have the opportunity to grow up healthy. However, long-term survival is a dream that eludes most of the 2.5 million HIV-infected children around the world.

Of the more than 2.5 million new HIV infections in 2007, more than 420,000 were in children. But while children account for almost 16 percent of all new HIV infections, they make up only 9 percent of those on treatment under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. Without proper care and treatment, half of these newly-infected children will die before their second birthday and 75 percent will die before their fifth.

Every day, approximately 1,100 children across the globe are infected with HIV, the vast majority through mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, labor or delivery or soon after through breastfeeding. Approximately 90 percent of these infections occur in Africa. With no medical intervention, HIV-positive mothers have a 25 to 30 percent chance of passing the virus to their babies during pregnancy and childbirth. Yet, a single dose of an ARV drug given once to the mother at the onset of labor and once to the baby during the first three days of life reduces transmission of HIV by approximately 50 percent. Providing the full range of interventions, as is the standard of care in the U.S., can further reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to as little as 2 percent. However, according to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, less than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in resource-poor countries have access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission, PMTCT, services.

Significant barriers to PMTCT and the equal care and treatment of HIV-infected children continue to exist. Among the barriers to PMTCT services is their poor integration into the healthcare system, the lack of infrastructure and poor quality health facilities, low utilization of pre-natal services, and a high percentage of unattended at-home births. Because children are not just small adults, providing care and treatment presents special challenges such as limited access to reliable HIV testing for the youngest children, a shortage of providers trained in delivering pediatric care, weak linkages between services to prevent mother-to-child transmission and care and treatment programs, and the need for additional, low-cost formulations of HIV/AIDS medications.

The unfortunate reality of current HIV/AIDS treatment programs is that they will become unsustainable in the long-term unless the number of new HIV infections is reduced globally. The importance of PMTCT for the prevention of the spread of HIV cannot be overstated. According to UNAIDS, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission requires a comprehensive package of services that includes preventing primary HIV infection in

women, preventing unintended pregnancies in women with HIV infection, preventing transmission from HIV-infected pregnant women to their infants, and providing care, treatment and support for HIV-infected women and their families. A 2003 study found that by adding family planning through PMTCT services in 14 high prevalence countries, more than 150,000 unintended pregnancies were averted, child infections averted nearly doubled, and child deaths averted nearly quadrupled. Studies also show that current levels of contraceptive use in sub- Saharan Africa are already preventing an estimated 22 percent of HIV- positive births.

For many pregnant mothers, PMTCT services may be the only entry point for health care services for themselves and their families. That is why it is essential that PMTCT services be integrated with prevention, care and treatment services. With adequate integration of those services and strategies to ensure successful follow-up and continuity of care, we can significantly improve the outcomes for HIV-affected women and families.

The legislation I am introducing today, the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act, will help prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections in the years to come and improve the treatment of children living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world. The legislation will bring our international HIV/AIDS efforts in line with the infection rate of children, by establishing a target that, within 5 years, 15 percent of those receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR should be children.

The legislation establishes another 5-year target to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. In those countries most affected, 80 percent of pregnant women should receive HIV counseling and testing, with all those testing positive receiving anti-retroviral medication for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Under the legislation, the U.S. comprehensive, 5-year global strategy to combat global HIV/AIDS must also integrate prevention, care and treatment with prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs, as soon as feasible and consistent with the national government policies of the foreign countries of PEPFAR countries in order to improve outcomes for HIV-affected women and families and to promote follow-up and continuity of care.

Lastly, the legislation authorizes the creation of a Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Expert Panel to provide an objective review of PMTCT activities funded under PEPFAR and to provide recommendations to the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator for scale- up of mother-to-child transmission prevention services under PEPFAR in order to reach the newly-established target for PTMCT. The Panel consists of no more than 15 members, to be appointed by the coordinator, and will terminate once it submits its report containing recommendations, findings and conclusions to the coordinator, Congress, and is made public.

To be clear, this legislation does not establish any earmarks within PEPFAR. It does not dictate how much money should be spent on specific activities. I, for one, oppose the current policy under PEPFAR which dictates that one-third of all prevention funds be reserved for abstinence-until-marriage programs, to the detriment of other more effective programs that are producing better results. Certainly abstinence programs have a role to play in PEPFAR, but they should not draw funding away from other, more effective programs. Therefore, it is my hope that Congress does away with that earmark when it reauthorizes PEPFAR, and instead allows for flexibility within PEPFAR.

Instead, the legislation sets 5-year targets that are focused on those receiving services without specifying how much money any given country should spend on specific services to reach the target. I believe this approach is consistent with the April 2007 Institute of Medicine report on PEPFAR which called on Congress to replace arbitrary budget directives with specific targets accounting for the unique epidemics in specific countries, as well as existing available resources. Removal of budget restrictions and the implementation of program targets, such as those authorized under this legislation, would allow local providers to invest in the services and activities most needed to achieve national goals for prevention, care, and treatment.

The struggle against this disease continues on all fronts. Just recently, a report showed that right here in Washington, D.C., the city is in the grip of a ``modern epidemic,'' with one in 20 residents HIV- infected, a rate ten times the national average. In my own State of Connecticut, the need for care and treatment services is at an all time high, while the funding to meet this increased need has declined.

As we take stock of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and our progress against it, we must bear in mind the special vulnerability of the world's children. With this legislation we can increase the number of children receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR and expand access to PMTCT services in order to prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections.

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, 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 am here today to introduce, along with Senator Kohl, the Defined Contribution Fee Disclosure Act. This legislation is designed to address what may seem at first glance like a small issue, but in fact has a dramatic impact on the retirement security of millions of Americans who have 401(k) plans. Not many people realize this, but the Employee Retirement Income Security act, ERISA, does not require plan sponsors to provide participants with information on the level of fees that participants are charged by the various plans they have to choose between.

The number of people participating in defined contribution plans grows every year, and unfortunately, these plans are a bigger part of their nest egg as employers freeze their defined benefit plans. One of the key challenges as we move away from guaranteed benefits is making sure people have all the relevant information to help them decide which plan will best serve their needs. Recently, AARP conducted a survey in which it asked individuals with 401(k) plans if they even knew what they paid each year in fees. Only 17 percent of people asked said that they know what their fee levels were.

This is far from an academic matter. In fact, this could be disastrous for folks when they reach retirement. One person--who wishes to remain anonymous--recently shared with me a story that highlights what's at stake. She noticed one day that her 401(k) wasn't actually earning anything at all. After some examination, she found that the agent who set up the plan for the company received a fee of 2 percent annually for the first five years, reduced to .25 percent after that, paid by the employees and not the company. The investment firm charged a fee of 1.25 percent which they said was standard for companies with under $1 million in their 401ks. So, last year, she was paying 3.25 percent in fees and earning less than 4 percent from her money market fund. She didn't have a clue about the fees until she inquired after she realized she wasn't making any money on the fund.

So looking back at this AARP survey, of those 17 percent who said they knew what their fees were, 33 percent thought they weren't being charged any fees at all. Some companies will even tell people they are not being charged fees. While it is true that in some cases, employers pay fees, that is hardly the norm. And investment managers don't do their jobs for charity. These fees that people don't know about can have a big effect on what they end up with at retirement.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently estimated that a 45 year old with $20,000 in his 401(k) would have $70,555 at age 65 for his retirement, assuming he was getting a 6.5 percent return and only paying 0.5 percent in fees. But that figure decreases dramatically if the fees are increased by just a single percentage point, to 1.5 percent. At that figure the same individual, investing the same amount of money, would have only $58,400 for his retirement, or more than $12,000 less.

AARP took the GAO assumptions and created some additional examples. Consider this case: if a 35 year old invested $20,000 in a 401(k) plan over 30 years, paying 0.5 percent in fees, that individual would have $132,287 for retirement. But increase the fees to 1.5 percent, and the amount available for retirement is only $99,679--that is a 25 percent reduction in the account balance. Even if the fee only increased from 0.5 percent to 1 percent, the value of the retirement account would be reduced by $17,417, or a little over 13 percent over the 30-year period.

If you awoke one day to find that your bank account, or your retirement account, had declined in value by 25 percent, you would understandably be alarmed, and you would act quickly to fix the problem. But with high 401(k) fees, the reduction in benefits isn't immediately obvious. It happens slowly, over time, and often flies under people's radar screens because they are not told the level of fees they are paying, or they don't understand that some 401(k) plans charge far lower fees for providing the same amount of services. It is that problem--that information gap--that the Defined Contribution Fee Disclosure Act is designed to fix.

My bill would provide participants with easily understandable information about the fees that they are paying. This information will be provided to them before they pick which plans they want to invest in, and again, regularly, on their quarterly statements.

In addition, this bill does something even more important: it would require companies to disclose more information to plan sponsors. Right now, if you provide your workers with a 401(k) plan, you are required to act prudently and in their sole interest in your fiduciary duties. However, there are hidden fees that are sometimes not disclosed even to plan sponsors, and sometimes those sponsors also are not told about business arrangements between service providers to steer participants into investment options in which they have a stake, a classic conflict of interest.

To fix this, the bill would require 401(k) plan providers to disclose all fees and relationships between service providers to the people selecting the plan a company will ultimately offer. The bottom line is that we want to create a situation where companies are picking several good options for their employees that all have decent reliable returns and fair fees.

One thing my bill does not do is set a limit on fees that can be charged. As I have noted, high fees can make a real difference in account balances at retirement, but so can high returns, in a more positive direction, obviously. Sometimes, it is well worth paying higher fees if a small increase in fees will have a big effect on returns. In addition, some people want to purchase insurance products so that every month, they are buying a more secure piece of retirement. That is just fine, and my bill doesn't touch that. People who fully understand the real cost of a guaranteed return at retirement are the kind of people who appreciate, and will push for, more defined benefit plans. But they can't do that if they don't know what it costs.

The bottom line is that people need to be investing more, and more confidently, in the 401(k) plans they are being offered. This is especially critical in a world where defined benefit plans are increasingly being slashed and frozen. For a growing number of workers, their only source of retirement income is their 401(k).

Congress needs to focus more squarely on how we get workers to participate in the plans they have available, and what we can do to make sure the savings they grow in them are adequate. When people know they are being given all the facts in an easy-to-understand manner, they are more likely to contribute. And when the fiduciaries who are supposed to be looking out for them make sure all of their

options are good, they end up saving more money at the end of the day.

This bill is a win for companies who want to provide their workers with a secure retirement, it is a win for 401(k) providers who have been providing reasonable fees all along, and it is a win for every American who has one of these plans. My colleagues and I introducing this measure have worked with interested parties on every side of this issue to make sure we're taking into account everyone's views. We also intend to work closely with the Department of Labor on their proposed regulations on this issue. While we believe that Congress has an obligation to address this issue, if we can all work together to develop regulations that address this issue in a way that will truly help participants and beneficiaries get a good deal, I am certainly not opposed to getting this done administratively. I strongly encourage my colleagues to cosponsor this measure.