A concurrent resolution expressing the bipartisan resolution on Iraq.

Of course.

Mr. President, sometimes we like to say something so often and so vigorously that we believe it actually does what we say it will do, and I am afraid that is the case of the minimum wage arguments that have gone on since 1939. Perhaps it did in 1939, but I would suggest today that it doesn't do what we say it will do. I expect to vote for the minimum wage proposal the Senate produces if it includes the tax incentives and other measures that will help small business men and women pay the bill so they don't have to cut jobs as they compete with companies around the world, in China and in India and other places.

I will talk for a few minutes this morning about whether the raising minimum wage does what we say it does. We are doing a fairly extraordinary thing here. The Government is intervening in the marketplace. We don't ordinarily do that. We are fixing prices. We are fixing the cost of labor. Let's say we were in a class at the University of Massachusetts, University of Wyoming, or University of Tennessee in economics 101, and the professor walked in and said, Good morning, students. We have an interesting problem here. Let's pose this: The Government wants to intervene in the marketplace to fix the price of labor--something it doesn't ordinarily do. So the problem for the students to solve would be this: The reason for the intervention is to help, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, those who are on the lowest rungs of poverty. Working people on the lowest rungs of poverty will be our target. We want to help them have more money in their pockets.

Second, obviously we would like to do this in a way that most efficiently gets whatever money we have for this to them and doesn't miss the mark. Next, we want to do it at the lowest possible cost. We have lots of needs in the Government and in this country. Finally, we want to find the fairest way to pay the bill. If we are going to come up with this grand social objective that is presumably an objective for

the whole country, then who pays the bill? All of us? Some of us? A few of us? The richest of us? Who pays the bill?

So the challenge to the students is this: The Government is going to intervene. We are going to help, according to the Senator from Massachusetts, the lowest on the rungs of the economic ladder--people who are poor--people who are working. We want to do it in an efficient way. We want to make sure the money gets to the people we want to help, and we want to send the bill for all of this--hopefully as low as possible--to the fairest group of people who ought to pay for it.

I think if the answer came back to that question that what we ought to do was raise the minimum wage, the professor would give it a D or an F, or he might even send it back to the students who sent him that answer and say, Maybe you didn't hear my question. My question was: How do we intervene in the marketplace to help the people who are on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder? How do we do that in the least expensive, most efficient way, and with the fairest way to pay the bill?

Let's begin to critique the answer I posed that a student might have given to the professor in economics class 101. First, I think the professor might say, If you come back with a minimum wage idea, it is a very expensive way to go about it. A new study released by the Congressional Budget Office, which I ask unanimous consent to be included in the Record following my remarks--

A new study by CBO estimated that raising the minimum wage to $7.25, which is the proposal here, would cost $11 billion. A study done by the Employment Policies Institute put the cost at $18 billion. I ask unanimous consent that this study by Professors Burkhauser of Cornell and Sabia of the University of Georgia be included in the Record following my remarks.

So the student who suggested the minimum wage came up with a pretty expensive idea, an $11 billion price tag, or $18 billion, according to another study. But those estimates are about raising the cost of everyone's wages to $7.25 an hour. That is not how it works, because many workers are already paid a certain amount above the minimum wage and they will continue to earn more than the new minimum wage. So in effect, we are also legislating that a number of workers will receive a wage higher than $7.25, which means the cost is much higher than $11 billion or $18 billion. That is a lot of money. That is the first critique of the student's answer.

The second one: How well does this money hit the mark? We heard Senator Kennedy say repeatedly: Those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. We have visions of women and children who are poor, particularly single mothers. Senator Kennedy has great passion for this issue. I have heard him many times over the last 4 years talking about how this is a women's issue; this is a children's issue; this is an issue for Americans on the lowest rung of the ladder who are in poverty. Well, let's see if that is true.

The studies show it is not true. Raising the minimum wage doesn't efficiently target the poor. Only one in five minimum wage workers live in households at or below the poverty line. So most of that $11 billion or $18 billion won't be going to the people who need it the most. It is more likely to be going, for example, to raise the salary of a teenager from a well-off family who has a part-time job at the mall. The Employment Policies Institute, the study I mentioned a little earlier by the professors from Cornell and the University of Georgia, said in their calculations that even less of the money would go to the workers in poor families--13 percent. Even if you look at households earning twice the rate of poverty, which was just under $40,000 in 2005, the Employment Policy Institute study found that less than half--43 percent of the minimum wage increase--would go to those families.

Let me go directly to the professors' study of the minimum wage. They say:

While the minimum wage is often promoted as a policy

designed to help the poor, minorities, and single mothers,

this analysis reveals that only 3.7 percent of the benefits

from a $7.25 hour Federal minimum wage would go to poor

African-American families.

So 3.7 percent of the benefit of this $18 billion-plus cost will go to poor African-American families. Only 3.8 percent would go to poor single mother families. What we are about to do, if we do it, is spend $11 billion, $18 billion--more than that, probably--with the stated objective of helping the poor, especially single women, especially mothers with children, especially minorities, and what the professors' study shows is that only 3.8 percent goes to poor single mother households.

Even more troubling, they go on:

The majority of working poor families, families who are

working but remain in poverty, receive no benefit from an

increase to $7.25 an hour.

The majority of families who are working but in poverty get no benefit from what we are about to do. These families don't benefit because they already earn more than the new Federal minimum wage and remain in poverty either because of a low number of hours worked or a large family size. Many of these individuals would benefit far more from an increase from the generous Federal and State earned-income tax programs.

A couple more statements from the professor from Cornell and the professor from Georgia:

Only 3.8 percent of the benefits from an increase to $7.25

an hour accrue to poor single mothers. One of the factors

causing this low percentage of benefits is the fact that the

majority of poor single mothers have hourly wages above this

level. In addition, only 18.5 percent of the benefits going

to single mothers will go to those in poverty, the majority

of benefits going to single mothers will go to those earning

more than twice the poverty line.

So the authors conclude that only 12.7 percent, or 2.3 billion of their estimated $18 billion cost of this increase will go to poor families, and only 3.7 percent goes to poor African-American families.

The authors say that the ability of the minimum wage to target poor families is weaker and decreasing over time. Contrary to the statements of its advocates, fewer and fewer low-wage employees are supporting a family on minimum wage, with only 9 percent of low-wage employees actually supporting a poor family.

I think the professor so far, in grading the paper of the student who suggested an increase in the minimum wage, would say, well, you came up with something that is hugely expensive, $18 billion-plus. And second, you came up with something that almost entirely that misses its target, only 3 or 4 percent to poor African-American families out of this huge amount of money? So far that paper is not doing very well at the University of Massachusetts, Wyoming, or Tennessee.

Then there would be another question that ought to be answered. Who pays the bill? The people who are to pay the bill under the proposal of the Senator from Massachusetts are the small businesspeople of America. They were described by the Senator from Wyoming because he used to own a shoe store. We stand in the Senate almost every day and talk about small business men and women and how they have health care costs, how they have taxes to pay, they have OSHA requirements to meet, they have Federal regulations added every year, and we say if we do not do something about this, more of these jobs are going to India and China, and we have a big outsourcing of jobs around the world.

Even if we, as a Senate, were to decide that we wanted to take the most expensive and perhaps the most inefficient way to help the people lowest on the economic ladder, why would we send the bill to the small businesspeople of America? Why wouldn't we send it to Wall Street? Why wouldn't we send it to the big corporations? Why wouldn't we send it to the taxpayers at large? Why couldn't all of us pay the bill?

We are very good in Washington, DC--I used to notice this as Governor of a State--some Senator or Congressman would come up with a good- sounding idea, pass it, hold a press conference, take credit for it, and come back down and make a statement at the Lincoln Day or Jefferson Day dinner about local control. What we do here all the time is come up with good ideas, take credit for them, and send

the bill to someone else. That is what we are doing here: we are not paying for this. We are not saying: That is going to cost $18 billion so let's raise taxes on Americans to pay for it. We are saying it will cost $18 billion-plus, but, no worries, we will just send that on to the small businesspeople of America, not the big businesspeople.

According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, small businesses employ 61 percent of all minimum wage workers. That is a lot of mom-and-pop shops, family-owned businesses. Why should they pay the bill for this idea? One reason it might have been better to take this legislation through the committee that the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Wyoming so ably lead is, we could have discussed this and there might have been a better way to reach this goal of taking whatever money we have--maybe a generous amount, maybe $18 billion--and sending it directly to people on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

We might have talked about the earned-income tax credit. The earned- income tax credit isn't always popular on this side of the aisle because it has had some fraud in it, but the idea is a good idea. I first heard about it when Pat Moynihan was in the Nixon White House in the early 1970s. He suggested instead of welfare programs we ought to have a negative income tax. He said rather than set up a lot of Government programs that tend to break down the family and spend money in bureaucracies, if people are working in America, and they are not making much money, let's give them some money. We are a rich country. We have 25 percent of all the money in the world every year for just 5 percent of the people in the world. And some people are really well off. They have more than one house. They have big incomes. We all know that. And so it tugs at us to think we are so wealthy and we still have people who are not just sitting on a bench, but we have people who are working every day, sometimes two jobs, and they are not making enough to help their families. That is what this debate is about. Pat Moynihan said in the early 1970s, and this Congress has said before: Let's try the earned-income tax credit. In other words, if you are working, and you are poor and you qualify, we will send you a check. The check comes from all of us. It doesn't come from this segment of society or that segment or just the small businesspeople. We all step up to the plate. The taxpayer pays the bill for earned-income tax credit.

Why didn't we have a hearing to talk about that? The tax credit is targeted to help low-income workers. It is only available for families making up to between 175 to 200 percent of poverty. For example, in 2006, a single parent with two or more children could not receive the earned-income tax credit if he or she earned more than $36,000. That is not a lot of money when you are trying to raise two children.

In comparison, according to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly 60 percent of a minimum wage increase would go to individuals living in families earning more than $36,000. So 60 percent of what we propose to do here goes to families earning more than $36,000, but an earned- income tax credit recipient could not receive money if they made more than $36,000.

The CBO study released this month also looked at the potential impact of increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 as well as possible increases to the earned-income tax credit. I put that in the Record a few minutes ago.

If we increase the minimum wage as has been proposed, CBO says it would cost $11 billion, the smaller number, but only $1.6 billion of that $11 billion would go to working families living below the poverty line. CBO is bipartisan, and works for all of us. They went on to say that to send nearly the same amount of money to working poor families, $1.4 billion in assistance, we would only need to increase the earned- income tax credit by $2.4 billion. So instead of a $11 billion or $18 billion pricetag for the minimum wage, we could have done the same thing through the earned-income tax credit by spending $2.4 billion.

Increasing the earned-income tax credit would target the same amount of money to poor families as raising the minimum wage at one-fifth the cost.

I have used my example of asking a professor at the University of Massachusetts or Wyoming or Tennessee, saying to his class: We have a large goal. We want to help people who are working and who are at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, as Senator Kennedy describes. What would be the best way to do it? Tell me, the professor would say, tell me how to get the largest amount of money to that group of people, how to do it at a reasonable cost, and tell me who should pay the bill.

I think if the answer came back that we should spend $18 billion or more, and it costs five times as much to do it through the minimum wage as it would through the earned-income tax credit, and in addition to that, doing it through the minimum wage sends the bill to a struggling group of people disproportionately, the small businesspeople of America, and lets off all the rest of us, I think that person would get an F. And I think we ought to, as well.

I am sure what is going to happen in this Congress is we are going to pass a minimum wage bill because we are a wealthy country and we want people who are working and who do not have as much to have more. That is our impulse. And I don't believe that bill will get out of this Senate without substantial assistance for the small businesspeople who are paying the bill, or disproportionately the bill.

My hope is that Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi, some time before we bring up this minimum wage idea again, will say: Let's give ourselves the same kind of examination that I just suggested for those college students. Let's ask ourselves how to do this in an efficient, fair way that gets the money to the right people, instead of going around the country saying ``minimum wage, minimum wage, minimum wage,'' only to find out some time later that we have a lot of disappointed, poor, working families around America who aren't helped by what we convinced ourselves was the right thing to do.

Exhibit 1

Congressional Budget Office,

U.S.Congress,

Washington, DC, January 9, 2007.

Hon. Charles E. Grassley,

Chairman, Committee on Finance,

U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: In response to your request, the

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed some of the

potential consequences of a hypothetical increase in the

federal minimum wage rate from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per

hour and of several hypothetical expansions in the earned

income tax credit (EITC). To provide the information, as

requested, about the potential impacts on workers whose

family income was below the federal poverty threshold, the

analysis used data from the March 2005 Current Population

Survey (CPS).

The analysis is subject to a number of limitations and

should not be interpreted as a cost estimate of the effects

of implementing changes in the federal minimum wage or the

EITC in future years. CBO simulated the impacts of those

policy options as if they were in effect in 2004 and did not

incorporate any effect on employment levels or the number of

hours worked. Since that time, the number of workers with

wage rates in the $5.15 to $7.25 range has fallen by almost

30 percent and is expected to continue to decline as

increases in state minimum wage rates and other changes in

the labor market occur. For simplicity, CBO assumed that an

increase in the minimum wage rate would have affected only

the wage rates of workers earning between the old and the new

minimum rates. Some workers with wage rates outside that

range might also be affected by an increase in the minimum

wage. For example, employers are permitted to pay certain

tipped workers as little as $2.13 per hour if their tips

bring their total hourly earnings up to the federal minimum

wage; thus, an increase in the federal minimum wage could

cause some of those employers to raise their wage rates.

Also, some employers of workers already paid at or just above

the new minimum wage rate might increase those workers' wage

rates as well.

In addition, the CPS does not contain all of the

information needed to compute the EITC, limiting the accuracy

of those estimates. Based on the CPS, the estimated amount of

EITC payments in 2004 was about 25 percent below the actual

amount that year. CBO does not have a basis to infer whether

that discrepancy would lead to an underestimate or an

overestimate of the share of additional payments resulting

from the hypothetical expansions of the EITC that would go to

poor families. Moreover, the Joint Committee on Taxation

produces the official estimates for any change in the EITC;

its estimates may be different.

As discussed more fully in the attachment to this letter,

the major findings of the analysis are these:

On the basis of data from the March 2005 CPS, about 18

percent of the 12 million workers who were paid an hourly

wage rate between the federal minimum wage of $5.l5 and $7.24

were in families that had a total cash income below the

federal poverty threshold in 2004. Had all of the workers in

that wage range, instead, received $7.25 per hour, they would

have gotten about $11 billion in additional wages in that

year. About 15 percent of those additional wages ($1.6

billion) would have been received by workers in poor

families.

As requested, CBO examined the potential effects of

hypothetical expansions in the EITC that would have provided

additional payments to workers in poor families similar to

the amount of additional earnings poor workers would have

received by increasing the minimum wage rate to $7.25 per

hour. One option was to increase the subsidy rate for

childless workers by 50 percent. Another option was to

increase the subsidy rate for workers with three or more

children by 25 percent. On the basis of data from the CPS,

combining those options would have increased total EITC

payments by roughly $2.4 billion in 2004, with workers in

poor families receiving $1.4 billion of that total.

The analysis was prepared by Molly Dahl, Tom DeLeire, and

Ralph Smith of CBO's Health and Human Resources Division and

Ed Harris of CBO's Tax Analysis Division. If you or your

staff have any questions or would like further details,

please feel free to call me at (202) 226-2700 or Ralph Smith

at (202) 226-2659.

Sincerely,

Donald B. Marron,

Acting Director.

Attachment.

Response to a Request by Senator Grassley About the Effects of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Versus Expanding the Earned Income

Tax Credit

In response to a request from Senator Grassley, the

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) used data from the Current

Population Survey (CPS) to analyze the distributional effects

of a hypothetical increase in the federal minimum wage rate

and of several hypothetical expansions in the earned income

tax credit (EITC). Although use of the CPS allows the

production of results consistent with official poverty

measures, the CPS is known to be inaccurate for measuring the

EITC. CBO's estimates for a particular policy change could

either understate or overstate the true cost of an expansion

of the EITC, depending on how information available in the

CPS differs from what taxpayers reported on their tax forms.

CBO simulated the impacts of the hypothetical policy options

as if they were in effect in 2004 and did not incorporate any

effect on employment levels or the number of hours worked.

The results are not estimates of the effects of implementing

those options in future years.

Furthermore, this analysis is not a cost estimate. For

proposals that would amend the Internal Revenue Code,

including changes in the EITC, official cost estimates are

provided by the Joint Committee on Taxation; its estimates

may differ from those presented here.

Methodology

CBO identified workers who would have been affected by a

hypothetical increase in the federal minimum wage rate from

$5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour in 2004 as those who

reported in the March 2005 CPS that they were paid on an

hourly basis and whose wage rate was between $5.15 and $7.24

at the time of the survey. Also included were workers who

reported that they were paid $5.00 per hour, under the

assumption that most of them were actually paid $5.15 but had

rounded their survey response.

To estimate the impact of the hypothetical wage rate

increase on the family income of workers, CBO assumed that

all hourly workers whose wage rate was between $5.15 and

$7.24 per hour would have been paid exactly $7.25 per hour

had the hypothetical minimum wage rate been in effect. CBO

further assumed that workers whose wage rate was $7.25 or

higher would have been unaffected by the hypothetical

increase in the minimum wage. For this tabulation, CBO

assumed that no changes in employment or hours would have

resulted from the higher minimum wage rate. The earnings gain

attributed to the hypothetical increase in the minimum wage

was calculated simply by multiplying the increase in the wage

rate by the total number of hours that CBO estimated the

affected people worked in 2004.

A limitation of this analysis is that the estimates are

based on wage rates reported for March 2005 and income

reported for 2004 and, therefore, do not reflect changes that

have occurred since then or that will occur before future

changes in the federal minimum wage, if enacted, would be

implemented. For example, increases in state minimum wage

rates and other changes in the labor market have already

lessened the potential impact of raising the federal minimum

wage rate.

CBO used information on family size and both before-tax

cash family income and after-tax income, including certain

noncash sources of income, in 2004 to place the affected

workers into income categories relative to the poverty

thresholds.

As requested, CBO also examined different ways of expanding

the EITC to achieve similar income gains for workers in

otherwise-poor families. Note that the CPS does not contain

all of the information necessary to compute the EITC,

limiting the accuracy of CBO's estimates. For example, using

the CPS, CBO estimates that taxpayers received about $29

billion in EITC in 2004, when they actually received about

$40 billion.

Estimates of the Effects of a Hypothetical Increase in the Minimum Wage

in 2004

Table 1 provides CBO's estimates of the number of workers

paid on an hourly basis in March 2005 who received a wage

rate below $5.00, between that rate and $7.24, and at or

above $7.25. It shows that 11.6 million workers reported that

they received a wage rate in the affected range. Table 1 also

provides a cross-tabulation by income-to-poverty ratio, based

on the family cash income of those workers in 2004, as

reported by the Census Bureau. It shows that 18.5 percent

(2.1 million) of the workers who received a wage rate in

the relevant range in March 2005 were living in families

that were poor in 2004.

Table 2 repeats the information from Table 1 but uses an

after-tax measure of income that also includes the value of

certain noncash sources of income. In the placement of people

into income-to-poverty categories, the poverty thresholds

themselves remain unchanged. On the basis of this alternative

measure of income, a smaller portion of the workers in the

relevant wage range were counted as poor (14.4 percent,

rather than 18.5 percent).

Tables 3 provides CBO's estimates of the income gains that

would have resulted from raising the wage rates of everyone

who reported that they were paid between $5.00 and $7.24 per

hour up to an hourly rate of $7.25. For those figures, CBO

simply added its estimates of the gains in earnings from the

wage rate increase to estimates of families' cash income. CBO

estimates that $1.6 billion (15 percent) of the $11 billion

in increased earnings that resulted from the higher wage rate

would have been received by workers who were in families with

money income below the official poverty threshold in 2004.

Estimates of the Effects of Hypothetical Increases in the EITC in 2004

Table 4 provides CBO's estimates of the distributional

income effects of the changes in the EITC specified in the

request. Again, the estimates are based on the CPS, not tax

statistics, and do not take into account the many intricacies

of actual tax provisions or the ways that people might alter

their behavior in response to changes in the EITC. The Joint

Committee on Taxation provides the official estimates of the

potential effects of changes in the EITC.

In 2004, eligible taxpayers with one qualifying child could

claim a credit of 34 percent of their earnings up to $7,660,

resulting in a maximum credit of $2,604; the credit phased

down at a rate of 15.98 percent of earnings above $14,040 for

nonjoint filers and $15,040 for joint filers. For eligible

taxpayers with two or more qualifying children, the credit

was 40 percent of their earnings up to $10,750, with a

maximum credit of $4,300; the phase-out rate was 21.06

percent, beginning at earnings above $14,040 for nonjoint

filers and $15,040 for joint filers. Taxpayers between the

ages of 25 and 64 with no qualifying children could claim a

credit of 7.65 percent of their earnings up to $5,100,

resulting in a maximum credit of $390; beginning at earnings

above $6,390 for nonjoint filers and $7,390 for joint filers,

the credit phased out at a rate of 7.65 percent. All

thresholds are higher now. Not only are they indexed for

inflation, but the plateau for joint filers was increased by

$1,000 in 2005 and is scheduled to increase again in 2008.

The first column of Table 4 shows that, of the estimated

$29 billion in EITC received in 2004, about 40 percent ($11

billion) was received by workers in poor families. (As

explained, that CPS-based estimate of the total amount of

EITC received is much lower than the actual amount that year,

$40 billion.)

The second column reports CBO's estimates of the effects of

a hypothetical expansion in the EITC in which workers in

families with three or more children would be eligible for an

additional credit. The subsidy rate for that group was

increased from 40 percent to 50 percent, the maximum credit

available was increased from $4,300 to $5,375, and the phase-

out rate was increased from 21.06 to 26.325 percent,

representing a 25 percent increase over the credit available

in 2004 to those in families with two or more children. (The

difference between the maximum credit available to those in

families with three children and those in families with two

children is $1,075, as compared with the $1,696 difference in

the maximum credit available to those in families with two

children and those in families with one child.) Using CPS

data, CBO estimates that this expansion would have increased

EITC payments to poor families by $1.1 billion.

The third column examines what the results of a

hypothetical expansion of the EITC to childless individuals

might have been. As requested, the subsidy rate, the maximum

credit, and the phase-out rate to workers without children

were increased by 50 percent. Under the hypothetical

expansion, the maximum credit available to those workers

would have been $585, and the subsidy and phase-out rates

would have been 11.475 percent. This expansion would have

increased EITC payments to poor families by an estimated $0.3

billion.

The fourth column examines the effects of a hypothetical

expansion of the EITC in which both the expansion for those

in families with three or more children and the ex-

pansion for childless individuals discussed above were

implemented. Using CPS data, CBO estimates that the

combination of the two would have resulted in increasing EITC

payments to the poor by $1.4 billion, about 60 percent of the

overall increase of $2.4 billion that CBO estimates would

have occurred in 2004 if those expansions had been in place

at the time.

Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from Alabama and ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor to his legislation.

I was hoping to be able to speak on the bill at some point sometime, too.

I would allow the others to go first. I was trying to keep a longer queue from happening.

Mr. President, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on the minimum wage bill that is before the Senate. I have spoken a little bit during the last week, but I have held in reserve a lot of time because we had amendments offered that other Senators wanted to explain. Normally when a bill is on the floor we have to stand down here and say: Please, if you have amendments, bring them to the floor so we can debate them. However, in about the first hour that this bill was on the floor, we had a dozen amendments that were suggested, and people were clamoring for time to debate them. We had amendments from both sides of the aisle. I think there were over 115 amendments that were suggested to this bill. Everybody realizes that 115 amendments are never going to be voted on with any bill. I don't think we have even come close to that on any of the bills that I have seen in the 10 years I have been here.

Later today, the majority leader is going to file cloture. He has given notice that he will do that. That is asking the Senate to garner 60 votes in favor of bringing the debate to a close on the Baucus substitute which contains the minimum wage increase and the small business tax incentive package. I congratulate Senators Grassley and Baucus for the tremendous effort they put into coming up with a package for small business that would help offset the impact of the minimum wage increase. It is something that was considered the last time there was a minimum wage increase, and I suspect that in the future it will always be a part of a package in some way to make sure that we don't harm these small businesspeople who provide a training ground for those with minimum skills so that they can get better skills and get better jobs.

The small businesses of this country are hiring people with no skills, teaching them how to operate a cash register, how to interact with customers, and often how to dress, how to cook--all kinds of services. I am reminded that in Cheyenne, WY, we have a McDonald's. They are always used as the example in minimum wage debates. They take a lot of grief, and they really don't deserve all that grief. They do a tremendous job of training young people in some very basic customer service skills.

The reason I am reminded of the Cheyenne McDonald's is that we like to point out that three former employees there who started at minimum wage now own 21 McDonald's. So it is an entry way to greater things. It is not for everybody, but for those with a desire to learn and succeed, there are possibilities. Any time we can hold out hope, we are helping people.

Yesterday there was a speech on the floor of the Senate and it was said that we had already spent 5 days on this bill and it was time to move on. Yesterday was actually the fourth day on the bill. Today is the fifth day. We will not be able to have any votes today. I don't know whether you count that or not because we were talking about how the Senate is supposed to work 40 hours a week just like other people do. I know a lot of my colleagues and I have our 40 hours in by about Wednesday, but at any rate, we have been talking about working a 5-day week. We are here, and we are talking, but we will not vote today. I don't know whether you can really count that as a day on the bill.

We talked on the bill on Monday, but we didn't have any votes Monday. So I don't know if you can count that as a day on the bill either. Next Monday we have the right to talk on it again, and then Tuesday morning there will be the cloture vote. That would be the next vote allowed on the bill. We really had 3 days on the bill.

How productive were we during those 3 days? We voted on 11 amendments. We have over 100 amendments. Many of the amendments deal with labor issues. There are some that don't deal directly with the minimum wage. But the minority side, as I have watched over the last several years, always has some unrelated amendments that they want to showcase and get passed.

Another thing I have noticed as I have been here is the unfortunate thing that we do to amendments that are suggested on a key bill. Once that amendment has been suggested, if the majority is the Democrats and the Republicans suggest the amendment, that is considered a poison pill, something just designed to take the bill down. I can say that because in the past on some Republican bills, when the Democrats would submit an amendment, it would be labeled a poison pill.

Unfortunately, the people of America don't get to see the debate that occurs off the Senate floor. They are not often invited into the committee meetings. They are not invited into the bipartisan task force groups that work across the aisle on solving problems before they even get to committee. There is a good reason for that. If the media were invited, they would take some of the dumb ideas that are thrown out-- and I have to admit when I am throwing out ideas, I throw out a lot of ideas; some of them stick and some you really recognize as being dumb-- and concentrate on those few dumb ideas because people get enjoyment out of that.

Some of these meetings where there is brainstorming and trying to find common ground have to be held separately. These are often very productive talks. There are a number of them going on right now on key issues. I think that this is the best way to handle a bill. But what America gets to watch is us debating on this floor, the attitudes we project, and the arguments that we project. I know most of the people out there watching are always rooting for one side or the other. I don't think it is the vast majority of independents who are spending their time addicted to the television. So our constituents kind of expect us to ram home the arguments from our side, and we do.

I contend that what we get to talk about on the floor of the Senate is the 20 percent of the issues we are never going to agree on.

We have to get past that point and get to the point where we look at all proposals in a very serious way and figure out a way that we can accept it or modify it in some way that makes it acceptable. What I usually do is try to find a third way. We have to do a bit more of that around here, and if we do I think we will find that the Senate will be a lot more successful.

Senator Kennedy and I have been practicing that for the last couple of years. We have been working prior to committee meetings, in committee meetings, and after committee meetings. We have been very successful at not having much floor debate on things that came through committee. We got 35 bills through committee, and the longest debate we had on the floor was over the pension bill. That bill was very important, one of the most important bills in the last 2 years. It was 980 pages long in the Senate, which is not a small bill. We already had agreement

before we came to the floor that there would be one hour of debate equally divided, with two amendments and a final vote. Check back through the years and see how often that has happened. That was an extremely difficult bill, and we had 1 hour of debate, two amendments, and a final vote. It can be done around here. In fact, we wound up with 27 bills signed by the President. We are checking to see how many committees have had that kind of production. Most of those didn't get debated here at all because there wasn't that 20 percent of disagreement. We had the 80-percent agreement and we went with it. That is not possible on all bills, and I understand that.

I am certainly encouraging my colleagues to get together, work on bills prior to them becoming what might be considered a poison pill, and see if something cannot be worked out. Hopefully, we can go back through some of these amendments that have been offered before and look at them with clear eyes and see if there isn't a way that what is being talked about in principle cannot be achieved somehow.

I want to let the people watching this debate that they are not seeing the real story on bills. There is a different and better way we could do it. I hope that is how we will do it more often.

Now, I will speak a little more on the bill before us. I am going to be disappointed if we don't have a few more votes on the bill prior to having the cloture vote. Again, it is a request from the minority to have an opportunity to vote on some of their amendments. So I urge my Democratic colleagues to allow a vote on a few very important amendments that my Republican colleagues have offered to the bill. I know the Democrats don't want to vote on the amendments because each of them is reasonable enough that it could pass. I know that may sound silly, but that is how things often work here. I have offered amendments--and the Democrats have sounded the trumpet that they will allow an open process on amendments offered, but they have chosen to filibuster by delay. When we only get 11 votes and only 3 days on which we are allowed to offer amendments, it is hard to claim it was a full week. Often bills that are very important here take 3 weeks. In fact, I think that is probably the normal range for a bill around here.

So they have the opportunity right now to let the clock run out. But we could have already voted on the minimum wage and small business incentive package if we could have received some votes on the important amendments that have been offered. We said we were going to cull down the number of amendments, and we obviously did.

I call for a vote on four amendments we still have outstanding-- although there are many others outstanding. I want to reiterate my conviction that as we move to raise the minimum wage, we must also provide a measure of relief to small businesses which will bear the cost of the increased wages.

Let me first turn to the four amendments I have noted. Over the course of this debate, we have heard many times that the minimum wage is an issue of fairness, an issue that affects working parents and working families. The minimum wage is not the only relevant matter before us that implicates issues of both fairness and family life. One of the most significant dilemmas that face working men and women is the struggle to maintain a balance between their work and family life.

Senator Gregg offered an amendment that reaches to the core of this issue by providing the opportunity for private sector employees to enter voluntary--I stress the word ``voluntary''--flexible work arrangements with their employers. Senator Gregg requested and deserves a vote on his employee option time amendment. However, more importantly, working families in this country deserve a vote on this amendment.

Twenty-eight years ago, this body gave Federal employees this highly valued benefit. Now the other side of the aisle wants to deny private employees the same right. Where this can be a big problem is where you have a private employee who is married to a public employee. The public employee can rework his or her schedule to be able to do what the family needs to have done, and the spouse cannot do that because it is illegal. They say, why can my husband or wife do it? Well, because it is legal in the public sector. Even unions recognize this benefit is coveted by employees. In a union-sponsored health care worker survey, scheduling options was the second most important factor in accepting a job.

Working families are striving to find the right balance of work and time with their children, spouses, and other loved ones. The Gregg amendment will remove a major obstacle to finding this balance. Nobody should properly invoke the importance of providing relief or help for working families, while simultaneously denying a vote on this amendment. This is not only fair, but this is giving the employee the right to choose, in cooperation with their employer, the best work schedule for their family in the workplace.

Senator Kennedy has talked about the children of low-wage workers in this country. Allowing employees more flexible work schedules will cut down on unscheduled leave, sick days, child care costs, and the loss of productivity that occurs when an employee is on the job but their heart is somewhere else tending to the needs of family.

Public sector employees have enjoyed flextime benefits for nearly three decades. We have not heard a lot of problems about it. At the same time, it has been denied workers in the private sector. Where is the fairness in that result? The amendment offered by Senator DeMint goes to the heart of this discriminatory result. It says if we are going to allow flextime benefits to some and not others, we ought to correct the system the other way; if it is not good in the public sector, maybe we ought to eliminate it under the Federal sector. Senator DeMint deserves a vote, provided the other one fails. Fundamental fairness demands it. By eliminating flexible work schedules for Government employees until private employees have the same rights, we hope to force our friends on the other side of the aisle to acknowledge and address this disparity. If flextime is such a terrible proposal and so dangerous to private employers and employees, one would think they would support this amendment to protect Government employees. But there is a reason they will not support this amendment. Employees who have flextime like it: 79 percent of the women who have it use it; 68 percent of the men who have it use it.

There are many Senators in this Chamber who offer their employees flexible schedules. Why is it good enough policy for Senators and Government employees and not for the private sector? It is long past time for the Senate to give this popular benefit full and open consideration. Once again, if we are truly concerned about our working families and about being fair, we should not deny a vote on this amendment.

Another amendment I hope we will vote on is Senator Burr's health flex proposal. All of us know health insurance costs are a major issue for both working families and small employers. This amendment would give employers the option to provide a $2.10 increase in wages or spend the increase on health care benefits. We have to recognize the tough choices employees face every day and how the underlying bill will make those choices even tougher.

Most Americans get their health care through employment, but it is becoming more and more difficult for small employers to keep up with escalating health care costs. Everybody in the country recognizes the difficulty of keeping up with health care costs. The small businessman, like everybody else, wants to have insurance for his family and his employees. As most of us know, 46.6 million people in the United States, or one in seven Americans, lacked insurance during 2005. There is no pretending that a minimum wage increase is going to make that number any smaller. Senator Burr's amendment addresses this negative side effect.

The availability of affordable health insurance is clearly an issue for all families, and any time this body has an opportunity to address or examine ideas designed to achieve that end, I don't think we should refuse to do so. Senator Burr has asked for a vote and he, too, deserves a vote on this important issue.

Finally, Senator Vitter also offered an amendment that directly relates to the group of people I feel will be most harmed by this mandated increase in the minimum wage. His amendment is

one of fundamental fairness, also, to the small employers who create the jobs and try their best to play by the rules. Senator Vitter's amendment recognizes that small businesses often do not have the in- house resources or the outside experts they need to assist them in complying with the ever-growing amounts of paperwork they are required to provide to the federal government. They cannot afford to hire expensive consultants to do this for them. Paperwork in the Federal Government is voluminous, and learning how to do it correctly often takes very thick manuals. The information they are required to give to the Federal Government is very extensive. I used to file some of those forms and reports, and I was amazed at the textbooks you had to go through to be able to fill out the forms properly. Part of that is a problem we have with the Paperwork Reduction Act. We ought to take a look at the Paperwork Reduction Act again.

Our income tax forms could be much easier to fill out. I went to the IRS when I first got here, as the only accountant in the Senate, and told them that I have done a few of those forms. I could not understand them; I could not understand the logic behind them. There are a couple of places where a line could be added and you would not have to go to another form. I found out there is a huge penalty to Government agencies who add a line to a form. But there is no penalty for adding another chapter to the book that explains the form. Therefore, it is easier to add another whole chapter than to add a simple line. The Paperwork Reduction Act is creating some problems for small business that keep the paperwork from being plain and simple.

As a result, small businesses sometimes make inadvertent errors in complying with these obligations. His amendment would relieve small businesses from monetary fines for certain first-time violations that pose no threat to health or safety. This is a very important criteria. The Federal Government should not be playing a game of ``gotcha'' in these circumstances, particularly with small businesses. What they should be doing is playing fair. If we, too, are being fair, we would allow a vote on this important amendment.

Apart from these amendments, I believe we need to focus on the central question before this body. Everybody in this Chamber knows we will approve an increase in the minimum wage and that we will do it very soon. The debate, as I keep reminding people, has not been over whether to do the increase, it has been whether we can keep people in business at the same time we do the increase and the ways to do that. We have made some progress on that issue, I believe.

There is a long road ahead to do the tax package Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley so capably worked out in a very bipartisan way because those bills are supposed to start in the House and that will be part of the argument, too. There will be some argument. Some of the offsets are opposed by some people--and I think, if you look at the list of those who oppose them, it is big businesses, not small businesses. I believe they think they are being left out of this process. However, this is a small business issue, and I am trying to solve some of those small business problems. The approval of an increase to $7.25 is simply not an issue; and, further rhetoric on this point adds nothing to the important public debate that remains.

The debate is simple: How do we go about mandating this increase without harming the small businesses that have to pay for it? These small businesses have been the engine of our economy and employ the bulk of the minimum wage workers. We do great harm not only to these small businesses but to all those workers who rely on them for their livelihood if we don't provide the practical means for businesses to afford such mandated increases. We have failed in our responsibilities if we do not balance an increase in the minimum wage with the appropriate relief for small businesses. For a worker without a job, a higher minimum wage is meaningless.

As a former small business owner--my wife and I had three shoe stores--I know how difficult it can be to meet payroll every week and meet all the other obligations a small businessman has to face. Here are the realities: Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 imposes a 41- percent increase in labor costs for a small employer with minimum wage workers. Many of them will see this as a tax. That is why some on our side have problems voting for an increase in taxes. It goes to a very important segment of our population, but it is a 41-percent increase in labor costs. Every employer has to face the very real issue of how he or she will deal with this increased cost and still make the payroll week after week.

This cartoon appeared in one of the papers. It says:

The good news is the U.S. House voted to increase the

minimum wage. The bad news is I can't afford to pay any more.

Although this cartoon may, at first, appear humorous, these are very real and very difficult questions that impact our small business employers dramatically. It is not a laughing matter. These payroll increases have to be paid for by employers, and money doesn't grow on trees. A lot of the things we look at as options often are not available to them. The fact is that competition regulates prices-- unless we have price controls--and employers must make hard decisions as how to meet these increased payroll obligations.

When costs go up, businesses must first look to cut expenses. The choices they have can be very difficult. To meet higher mandated payroll costs, the smaller employer may be forced to consider cutting back on benefits, such as health insurance, retirement, and leave plans. It is simply too easy to forget that fringe benefits have a significant cost, and if a small employer must reduce expenses to meet payroll, these costs are often the first to go.

Beyond cutting fringe benefits, small businesses may need to consider cutting back work hours or eliminating overtime or eliminating some duplication on a shift. I mentioned a video store that has always had two people to close up because they think two is the minimum for safety. They are now talking about having to go to one person to close up. Cutting hours, eliminating overtime, laying off workers or not hiring more are traditional and often necessary responses to meeting increased costs. Unfortunately, these actions ultimately hurt the very workers the minimum wage increase is designed to help.

Another thing we need to do--and I have avoided putting it into the bill as an amendment--is to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act. The HELP Committee has passed it unanimously twice. The Senate has passed it unanimously twice. But we have not been able to get a conference committee. Part of the reason for not getting a conference committee is worrying about where the conference committee will go. There ought to be a lot more confidence in the conference committee on the side of the Democrats right now because they will control the conference committee.

I am hoping that the Workforce Investment Act can be a way that we can help get more job training. Small businesses also provide some job training for which they do not get paid. That does not come under that bill. As I mentioned, small businesses often hire people with minimum skills and teach them the skills they need to move up the wage ladder.

Incidentally, of the businesses I checked on, the average time that a person stayed at minimum wage was 3 weeks. If they had the capability to learn, they moved up quickly.

We must also remember that when confronted by higher labor costs, employers will naturally gravitate toward filling positions with the most highly skilled, experienced, and productive workers available.

Once again, this phenomenon of replacing low-skilled workers with high-skilled workers in the face of rising labor costs winds up harming the very workers the minimum wage seeks to help. Minimum wage positions are often the entryway into the world of work for those who lack skills and experience. Mandated increases in the minimum wage run the risk of closing that entryway to many.

Beyond these cost-cutting measures of eliminating benefits, reducing hours, downsizing, laying off employees, and reducing low-skill and entry-level employment, employers might have to face the prospect of increasing the price for goods and services. Such increases drive inflation and cause all

consumers to ultimately pay the price of these mandates. The irony is that as the cost of these labor increases is passed through to consumers, it affects everyone, including the minimum wage workers whose recently increased wages are suddenly devalued by the increased price of goods and services that impact them as well.

My colleagues and I feel strongly about the working families of this country and the businesses they work in and the businesses they run. I wish to emphasize that point. I consider the working families of this country to also include small businesses. A lot of us don't realize the ``wake up in the middle of the night wondering what is going to happen with the business'' concern and the real risks these people take. A lot of them are just mom-and-pop businesses that hire 3, 5, 15 people.

There is support for raising the minimum wage, but we recognize that by doing so, we put people out of business or make them cut their workforce. If we end up putting someone out of work, we are not doing them any favors. That is the reason we have offered a number of amendments to H.R. 2. This bill never went through the committee process, either in this body or in the other body. I think the committee process helps the chances of moving a bill along and takes care of a lot of the amendments we maybe ought not debate on the floor.

We have not had a chance to offer any amendments at all to this legislation until this week. When a bill goes directly to the floor and circumvents the committee process, Members have no choice but to go through the committee amendments process on the floor of the Senate. We only got to vote on 11 amendments, and have only gotten 3 days to vote on amendments.

Once again, I urge the Democratic leaders to allow us to vote on the amendments we have offered, and I strongly urge them not to forget the working families of this country who employ low-skilled workers. They will need real relief in order to keep their businesses growing and their employees working under this mandate. This body must commit in a bipartisan way now to the real issue at hand; that is, providing a responsible increase in the minimum wage that allows small businesses to continue employing and providing job opportunities to the very people the minimum wage is designed to help. The simple answer is before us.

Amendments Nos. 135 and 138, En Bloc, to Amendment No. 100

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Cornyn, I ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside and I call up amendments Nos. 135 and 138.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse.) Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would make a brief comment, if the Senator will allow that, prior to his speech.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his comments. He makes some very persuasive arguments in a very short period of time on the four amendments I talked about, and I am sure we could reach an agreement and have a very short debate, probably 10 minutes equally divided, on those four and then a vote, and that would simplify things a lot. I understand his comments about how we have over--I don't remember how many amendments--but I need to mention, there are amendments on the Democratic side. It is a little easier for them to forgo their amendments, because they are in control. The other side doesn't have a way to bring up issues. What I am saying right now is what the Democrats said for the last 2 years and what Senator Kennedy said a minute ago is what our leadership had to say on issues as we filed cloture. This is a very common procedure, and we all know how it works. So we will be dusting off arguments from the other side, they will be dusting off arguments from us, but hopefully we can progress through these issues in a very substantial way and get them done.

I appreciate those comments, and I will learn from them. I did notice the dates we talked about for quick resolution on the minimum wage happened before this Chamber had television. I suspect a lot of the debates we have here have more to do with television than they do with the substance of the amendment we are working on. I hope Senators can forgo that possibility, although I am not sure in this culture we can. I would hope the pundits out there, radio talk shows and television talk shows, could forgo on some of the issues trying to foment each of their sides so they argue and fight.

It would be a lot easier if we had some civility that went with it. I appreciate the other side's civility through these debates and I would ask that they allow these four more amendments.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, as I have said during the course of the last 9 days, on this side of the aisle we are prepared to go ahead and vote. We have been prepared to vote since the first day we were on this legislation. It only took 4 hours for the House of Representatives to debate this issue and then to proceed to a vote. We have been on this for 9 days. We have debated an increase to the minimum wage 16 other days since the last increase. Twenty-five days of debate about the increase in the minimum wage. Imagine that, 25 days taking up the time of the United States Senate.

With all the challenges we face in education, in energy, in health, and jobs, all the challenges we are facing in terms of environmental issues and foreign policy issues, we have spent 25 days on whether we are going to increase the minimum wage. Twenty-five days during this period of time. On this side, we are prepared to move ahead. We are prepared to move ahead.

The President of the United States made this talk yesterday on Wall Street, and it was well received and cheered on Wall Street, as he talked about how well the economy has been proceeding. Well, I took a few moments earlier in the day to talk about the increase in the number of families who are living in poverty. We have close to 2 million more children living in poverty today than we had 5 years ago. Two million more families living in poverty than we had 5 years ago. That is according to the census. That is not some speech writer's concept, those are hard facts.

President John Adams, one of our great Founders, said facts are stubborn things. Those numbers are stubborn things. Facts speak. Increased numbers of Americans have gone into poverty over the last 5 years, with an increase in the number of children who have gone into poverty.

Other countries have addressed the problems of poverty and have lifted children out of poverty, lifted families out of poverty, and most of them have used an increase in the minimum wage to do it. You have to understand the problem in order to address it, and this President, evidently, doesn't understand the kinds of pressures that are on working families and middle-income families.

Members of some of our great churches in this country have strongly supported the increase in the minimum wage. We have over 1,000 different organizations that have supported the increase in the minimum wage. I have included most of their letters of support in the Record.

Here is one from the Urban League:

Passing this wage hike represents a small but necessary

step to help lift America's working poor out of the ditches

of poverty and onto the road toward economic prosperity and

will narrow the financial gap between Americans of color and

whites.

That is the National Urban League president, President Morial.

Here we have an extraordinary group of business owners and executives for a higher minimum wage. They are some of the large companies in the country and some of the small companies. It is six pages long in terms of the companies themselves, ranging from Mr. Alex Von Bidder, president of the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, a very high-cost restaurant, to some of the small mom-and-pop stores, but all of them expressing the view that:

We expect an increased minimum wage to provide a boost to

local economies. Businesses and communities will benefit as

low-wage workers spend their much-needed pay raises at

businesses in the neighborhoods where they live and work.

Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer

purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising

productivity, improving product quality, customer

satisfaction, and company reputation.

In a recent National Consumers' League survey, 76 percent of American consumers said how well a company treats and pays its employees influences what they buy.

I also have a letter from the president of Catholic Charities, Father Larry Snyder, and included in his letter are these words:

Over the last several years, our agencies have been coping

with steady increases of 20 percent each year in requests for

emergency assistance because low-wage workers simply cannot

earn enough to cover rent, child care, food, utilities, and

clothing for their families. Many people served by Catholic

Charities agencies are poor despite full-time employment at

the bottom of the labor market: cleaning houses and office

buildings, harvesting and preparing food, watching over

children of working parents. They contribute to our Nation's

economic prosperity. Yet the current minimum wage leaves them

nearly $6,000 below the poverty line. People who work full

time should not live in poverty.

Then he continues:

Our Catholic tradition teaches that society, acting through

government, has a special obligation to consider first the

needs of the poor. Catholic social teaching tells us that a

just wage is not just an economic issue--it is a moral issue.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stated in

its pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, ``all economic

institutions must support the bonds of community and

solidarity that are essential to the dignity of persons.''

The dignity of persons, that is what the increase in the minimum wage is about. It will help those 6 million children get a chance to maybe buy a book and read a little more, maybe even participate in a birthday party, maybe have a chance to spend a little more time with their parent because their parent will not have to have two or three jobs. Here they are talking about the importance of dignity, ``essential to the dignity of persons.'' That is what this debate is about, the dignity of persons.

And the list goes on. Virtually all of the churches of faith have all recognized the importance of this issue, and interestingly, they have all pointed out what this letter says from Catholic Charities; that over the past several years their agencies have been coping with steady increases of 20 percent each year in requests for emergency assistance because low-income workers simply cannot afford the necessities.

That is true about my food bank in Boston. I was there just a few weeks ago talking to those who run it. It is an extraordinary institution. They have the same kinds of demands. We hear it all over the country. Yet we have the President talking on Wall Street about everything is fine.

So what are some of the facts? We are finding out what is happening. First of all, the Bush economy fails American families' wallets. This is the median household income: $47,599 in 2000 and $46,326 in 2005. These numbers are from the Bureau of the Census. Imagine people opening up their newspapers and seeing the pictures of the President being cheered on Wall Street talking about how well the economy is going.

No one is doubting that the economy is working well for Wall Street. We are not talking about that. If you are asking the Census Bureau, not a speech writer but the Census Bureau, these are their figures, and this is what has been happening to the median household income. It has declined $1,273. That is from the Bureau of the Census. That is what has happened to the median household income across this country.

We have those members of our various faiths talking about the increase in demand, the 20-percent increase in demand. Yet we are seeing these kinds of figures. We see this kind of drop in real income. Yet let's look at the cost of the things these individuals have to buy. We have the decline in the family income, but look at what has happened. Gas has gone up 36 percent; health insurance, 33 percent, which is a very modest estimate; nationwide college tuition, 35 percent; housing, 38 percent. And I would say, for the most part, these are rather modest. They come from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the College Board's Annual Survey of Colleges.

In my district, certainly in New England, those numbers are a great deal higher. But, nonetheless, it makes the point that real income has gone down and the cost of everything that a family has to buy, in terms of gasoline, health insurance for their family, college tuition, and housing has gone up. Look at the end of this chart. Wages stagnant across the way; up 1 percent. These are the figures. We haven't put the food in there, but these are strong indicators, and certainly food has gone up, although perhaps not as high as these indicators.

Let's look at the other side and see what has been happening down there on Wall Street. My goodness, look at

this chart. Look what has happened to corporate profits during this same time. While real family income has been going down, these corporate profits have grown by 80 percent, 80 percent they have gone up. Eighty percent. Real income for the family has gone down over the last 5 years, but corporate profits have gone up 80 percent.

No wonder the President was cheered on Wall Street. No wonder. And look on the bottom line. That is the minimum wage. It slows, the extraordinary explosion in corporate profits. Yet the minimum wage has not gone up because our Republican friends refuse to let it go up. This is not any mystery. The Democrats are ready to vote. We are ready to vote this afternoon. We were ready to vote when it first came up, or at any time, but we can't get an agreement to vote. We are going to have to get it because the time is going to run out sometime tonight.

So these are the corporate profits that have gone up. Here is the minimum wage worker that has to work more than a day just to fill up his tank with gasoline. These are the kinds of things that they are faced with. And as we have pointed out earlier, more than a thousand Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders say that minimum wage workers deserve a prompt, clean, minimum wage increase, with no strings attached. This is Let Justice Roll, January of this year.

I have given the statistics, the flow lines, the charts, and so, Madam President, let me wind up this part of my presentation by mentioning what it means in real people's terms.

An increase in the minimum wage helps Constance Martin of Pittsburgh, PA. Constance used to have a good job that paid a decent wage. Then her son got cancer. She was forced to choose between that job and taking care of her child. So now she works for $5.50 an hour at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her job has no health care or other health benefits. She can barely afford to pay the rent and utilities, much less to give her son the care he needs. When Pennsylvania raised its minimum wage at the State level last year, it was a help but still not enough to keep pace with the cost of living. A Federal raise would allow her to pay off her bills and provide for her son's future instead of living day to day and hand to mouth just to get by.

A raise in the minimum wage would help Tonya Schmidt. Tonya is a single mother with two children, ages 8 and 11. She works at Little Caesar's pizza. It is hard work, but she likes her job and is good at it. Tonya talked about how hard it is for her to get by each month. Her family lives in a converted motel room, but she has trouble making rent. She doesn't have a car but relies on friends and family to take her to the grocery store to buy food for her children.

Tonya can't afford the basic necessities for her children. She often cannot afford to buy her children the clothes they need to go to school. Tonya says a higher minimum wage would help her provide her kids with these basic necessities, and it might help her get a few steps ahead to buy a used car or pay for car insurance so that she could go to the grocery store on her own.

A raise in the minimum wage would help Gina Walter from Ohio. Gina, a 44-year-old single mother, works in a retail job at a thrift store. Gina earns $6.25 an hour, just over $12,000 per year. She has no car or health insurance and hasn't taken a vacation in 6 years. It takes Gina 2 full days of work just to pay her gas bill every month. She cuts her own hair because she can't afford to get a haircut. But Gina goes to work every day. She works hard and tries to build a better life for her family.

That is the typical statement: working hard, trying to provide for their family.

This bill will help Gina provide better opportunities for her 18- year-old daughter. It will help pay her gas bill and be able to go get a haircut. It might even help her finally take that vacation she so richly deserves.

Madam President, this is what we are talking about on the floor of the Senate. I will speak later about what I really think about this increase in the minimum wage in terms of it being the defining aspect of our country's humanity and a reflection of our sense of decency and our sense of fairness. But it is a scandal that we have not increased our minimum wage over a 10-year period. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to do it before the day is out.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, in just a few moments the Senate will vote on the issue of increasing the minimum wage. We have been debating this issue for some time. At the final moments here, I, first of all, thank my friend and colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, for his willingness to work together. We do not always agree, but we agree more often than one might expect, and we have gotten good things done in our committee.

I always enjoy working with him. We have had some differences on this issue, but we always know we have a good deal of respect for each other; I certainly for him. I know it is not appropriate to make personal comments on the floor of the Senate, but I am, in any event. It is Senator Enzi's birthday today, and we wish him the very best on this particular occasion.

Just finally, I think those of us who are in this Chamber understand we want to be one country with one history and one destiny. We want to make sure that for all people, in all parts of our Nation, they are going to have a part of the American dream. We, as a nation, do not want to have a subclass, a subclass of workers who cannot emerge out of a minimum wage for themselves or for their families. We recognize that work has to pay.

What we are trying to do with the increase in the minimum wage is to say to men and women of dignity--primarily to women because women are the greatest recipients of the minimum wage, to their families and their children, to men and women of color--that we understand if you work hard in the country that has the strongest economy in the world, you should not have to live in poverty. You should not have to live in poverty. And raising the minimum wage is going to help to make sure that particularly those children--those 6 million children--are going to have a more hopeful future.

Additionally, we want to send a very important message to all of those children. This is really just the beginning. We have a change in direction in this country, as we have seen in the House of Representatives and here in the Senate. And we want to give assurances to those families that hopefully are going to get some boost in the minimum wage that we are going to work on the education for those children. We are going to work to make sure they are going to get the kind of help and assistance so that education is going to be available to them. We are going to work to make sure we get a reauthorization of the SCHIP program, an expansion of the Medicaid Programs, because we want to make sure they are going to be healthy, they are going to have the opportunities for education. We are going to make sure as well, to the extent we can, they are going to be able to live in safe and secure neighborhoods.

We have a responsibility in this country of ours to make sure-- particularly for children in this Nation, but for workers in this country--that their work is going to be recognized, respected, and they are going to be treated justly and fairly. That is what the minimum wage is all about. It is a moral issue, as the members of the church have all told us about. And we, hopefully, will get a resounding vote of support for a long-awaited increase in the minimum wage.

Madam President, we have now spent 8 long days debating whether to raise the minimum wage by $2.10 per hour. During this time, we have had quite a bit to say about quite a variety of issues. We have talked about education. We have talked about heath care. We have talked about tax policy and immigration policy. We have actually talked very little about raising the minimum wage.

We have not had nearly enough debate about what this bill would actually do, so I can honestly say that I am pleased when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come down the floor with the intent of actually talking about the Fair Minimum Wage Act.

Unfortunately, while I applaud them for addressing the issue at hand, their criticisms of the Fair Minimum Wage Act are woefully misplaced. My Republican colleagues are perpetuating some of the most common misconceptions about raising the minimum wage, and it is important to set the record straight.

My colleague from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, raised concerns about the private sector costs of raising the minimum wage. He argued that an increase will prove detrimental to the economy in general, or to the business community in specific. He is correct that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill will cost the private sector more than $10 billion over 5 years. However, this is a mere drop in the bucket of the national payroll. All Americans combined earn $5.4 trillion a year. A minimum wage increase to $7.25 would be less than one-fifth of 1 percent of this national payroll--far too trivial to cause inflation or other economic harm.

The simple fact is that employers can afford to increase wages in the current economy. Workers are producing more, but earning less. Productivity has increased by 31 percent since 1997, yet minimum-wage workers have not received a raise. This increase ensures that minimum- wage workers, not just employers, benefit from the fruits of their labor.

Now Senator Alexander also suggests that we shouldn't interfere with the market forces that set wages for low-wage workers. But we need to intervene when there's a market failure that needs correcting, and that's clearly the case with our stagnant minimum wage. Low-skilled workers, unlike high-skilled workers, do not generally have the bargaining power to demand wage increases. Even if they work harder, all their extra efforts are going into profits. Corporate profits have grown by 80 percent since Bush took office, while wages are stagnant. We need to act to make sure minimum wage workers don't get left behind.

My colleague also expresses concern about the effect of a minimum wage on small business. He claims that the majority of minimum wage workers are employed by small businesses, and that small businesses will suffer if the minimum wage is raised.

But the small business community doesn't agree. A recent Gallup poll found that 80 percent of small business owners do not think that the minimum wage affects their business, and three out of four small businesses said that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would have no effect on their company. Additionally, nearly half of small business owners think that the minimum wage should be increased, and only 16 percent of owners think the minimum wage should be reduced or eliminated entirely.

In fact, historical evidence suggests that a minimum wage increase can actually be beneficial to small business. A 2005 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute found States with minimum wages above the Federal level are generating more small businesses than states with a minimum wage at the Federal level. Between 1998 and 2003, the number of small businesses rose 5.4 percent in the ten States, including at had a minimum wage higher than the Federal level, compared to 4.2 percent in the other 40 States. The number of small retail businesses also grew faster in these States.

I appreciate Senator Alexander's concerns about the economic impacts of a minimum wage raise, those concerns are misguided. The economic

doomsday scenario that Senator Alexander predicts simply will not materialize from this long-overdue increase in the minimum wage. The Senator doesn't have to take my word for it--over 650 prominent economists, including 5 Nobel Prize winners, agree that a modest increase in the minimum wage--like the one proposed in the Fair Minimum Wage Act--``can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.''

In addition to arguing about the economic impacts this bill, several of my colleagues have argued that raising the minimum wage is not an effective anti-poverty program, but instead will benefit primarily secondary earners and families well above the poverty line. This counterintuitive assertion is not borne out by the facts. The vast majority of minimum wage workers are hard-working Americans struggling to get by on what the minimum wage pays them for their contribution to our economy. And that is not easy.

A minimum wage increase benefits poor American families. According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 70 percent of those who would benefit are adult workers, not teenagers seeking pocket change. Nearly half of these adults are sole breadwinners for their families. Nearly 40 percent of the benefits from a minimum wage increase would go to households with an average annual income of less than $17,000.

It is important to remember that those earning the minimum wage are not just starting out in the workforce. Many hardworking people become trapped in low-paying jobs and have trouble getting ahead. A report from the Center for Economic Policy Research shows a third of minimum wage earners from ages 25 and 54 will still be earning the minimum wage three years later. Only 40 percent of them will have moved out of the low-wage workforce 3 years later.

Certainly raising the minimum wage is only one of many steps that we should take to address the problem of poverty in this nation. Several of my Republican colleagues have suggested that we should examine ways to improve the Earned Income Tax Credit, and I look forward to working with them on this issue.

But none of this changes the fundamental fact that the Federal minimum wage is at its lowest real value in 50 years and continues to fall further and further behind each day. Minimum wage workers have been waiting longer than ever before in history for an increase, and a raise is long-overdue.

Now, my colleague from South Carolina, Senator DeMint, went so far as to suggest that raising the minimum wage will actually harm poor workers, because it will cause them to lose other government benefits. That's just not the case.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act will bring working families out of poverty. The minimum wage increase--plus food stamps and the earned income tax credit--brings a family of four with one minimum wage earner from 11 percent below the poverty line to 5 percent above the poverty line.

Now it's true that some minimum wage workers may lose a portion of their food stamp benefits, but their increased earnings and the increased benefits they receive through the earned income tax credit will more than offset any loss of benefits and provide them with additional flexibility to meet their family's needs. They will also remain eligible for housing assistance and other essential government programs.

Minimum wage workers will also benefit from a raise in the long run. They will be earning higher wages, paying more into Social Security, and ultimately receiving more in retirement and disability benefits.

Finally, I'd like to address some comments made just this morning by my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley. Now as Senator Grassley knows, I have always taken the position that we should do this minimum wage bill ``clean''--without any add-ons or tax giveaways. Because it's just a myth that minimum wage increases hurt the business community, there is certainly no need to pay off the business community when we give minimum wage workers a raise. We've raised the minimum wage nine times since the Fair Minimum Wage act was enacted in 1938, and only once have we included a tax package for business. That was during the Clinton administration--an era when we had substantial government surpluses, not the dramatic deficits we're facing now. It's just not responsible to pass unnecessary tax giveaways in the current fiscal environment. Democrats are united in this position. While Senator Grassley suggested this morning that Democrats wanted taxes added to this bill, I remind him that every Democrat in the Senate voted for cloture on the underlying bill--a clean increase in the minimum wage with no tax giveaways.

I admit that the tax package contained in the Baucus substitute is not particularly large or offensive, and I understand that it's something we'll likely have to take to get this bill done. But I don't support it, and I certainly don't support any additional tax giveaways being added to this bill.

Senator Grassley suggested this morning that tax breaks are a necessary part of any increase in the minimum wage. I would remind the Senator that an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both Houses of the Iowa State Legislature just voted to increase the Iowa state minimum wage to $7.25--the same level provided in this bill--with no tax breaks included. The Senator's State leaders hold the same views as a majority of the U.S. Congress--that minimum wage workers deserve an immediate raise, with no strings attached.

I hope that these comments lay to rest the fears of my Republican colleagues. I hope that they can join me in supporting a fair increase in the minimum wage for hardworking Americans across the country.

Madam President, I understand the time has expired. Is it necessary to ask for the yeas and nays?

It is necessary.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of final passage of H.R. 2, as amended. I think it is a very exciting time. I appreciate the wise direction this body has decided upon with regard to the minimum wage. Yesterday, 88 Members of the Senate correctly concluded that raising the minimum wage, without providing relief for small business that must pay for that increase, is simply not an option. Rather the option we did strongly decide on included tax benefits to help offset the impact on small business.

I wish to reiterate my hope that our colleagues in the House will not derail this bipartisan approach to offering real support and relief to the middle class and to the minimum wage earner. The minimum wage increase will shortly be in their hands. I hope they will be judicious and perhaps even forgo some of their jurisdictional concerns in order to see that this is done for the people of America.

The Senate's reasonable approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and that they have been a source of new job creation, and a source of job training. People with no skills often go to work at minimum wage and get the training they need to advance to higher levels of pay and to other more skilled jobs. That is all training which is done for free by small business.

The Senate's approach also recognizes that small businesses are middle-class families, too. I am proud that this body has chosen a path which attempts to preserve this segment of the economy, which employs so many working men and women. The Senate has acknowledged the simple fact that a raise in the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker who doesn't have a job or a job seeker who doesn't have a prospect.

As this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families: the rising cost of health insurance and the availability of such insurance, the necessity and costs of education and job training, and the desire to achieve an appropriate balance between work and family life. The lessons we have learned in this debate should not be forgotten as we approach new and equally complex issues.

In addressing minimum wage, we have rejected the notion that it will be a clean bill. Ultimately, we did so because it is not a clean issue, it is a very complicated issue, and around here, clean more often than not means ``do it my way'' and doesn't respect the democratic process of the Senate and allow the Senate to work its will.

There were claims that no Democrats offered amendments to the bill. That is false. The chairman of the Committee on Small Business, Senator John Kerry, offered two amendments, and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, offered an amendment on ``Buy American'' standards. In fact, it is my understanding that part of the delay we are experiencing on final passage is that a Democrat was trying to figure out a way to get a vote for a third cloture and a Republican is also trying to do something very similar. While I believe these have now been resolved, that is kind of what has been holding us up here in waiting for a final vote. Throughout this debate, Members on both sides of the aisle were not aiming to delay passage but were offering amendments to improve the bill.

I remember when I first went into the Wyoming Legislature and presented my first bill, I thought it was a pretty simple bill. It only had three sentences in it. It dealt with unemployment insurance for business owners. Well, this little, simple, three-sentence bill, when it went to committee, got

two amendments, and when it went to the floor, it got three more amendments. When it went to the Senate, it made it out of committee without any additional amendments but had two more added on the floor. However, what I realized through the process was we had all of these different people from different backgrounds looking at the same problem from different perspectives, and every one of those amendments improved the bill. They looked at the bill and saw things that I hadn't seen.

Afterwards I hoped that in the future, as I went through the process of legislating, I would see those things and see bills from other people's perspective. But that is the beauty of the system we have here--100 Senators take a look at a bill and 435 people in the House take a look at a bill and that should result in some changes. No bill I have ever seen winds up the same as it started.

Of course, sometimes the biggest animosity around here is between the House and the Senate, and that is true in State legislatures, too. I finally figured out the reason for that is we here in the Senate work on a bill, we make it perfect, we send it over there, and they decide something else has to be done to it. That creates animosity. And they do bills and send them here, and we decide there ought to be changes to them, and that creates animosity here. Fortunately, we have a conference committee process that is supposed to get the two sides together to work out the differences. That also works, although it takes more time. So we are not the fastest in governing, but I think we are the most inclusive in governing. I think this bill has gone through a very similar process.

I am pleased we have proven to the American people that we can indeed work together and provide solutions to complex and difficult problems. The Senate chose the right course of coupling an increased minimum wage with provisions that will assist small business employers who will face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. I hope we do not forget the wisdom of this approach as we address other workplace, economic, and social issues.

It has been mentioned that 10 years ago when the last minimum wage raise was done, that was the first time there were things put on the bill to offset the impact on small businesses. I was running for office and in Washington at the time that bill was being conferenced and finally debated, and I was pleased to see the former Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Simpson, was the chair on the conference committee, along with Senator Kennedy. The two of them worked out a package that had a raise in the minimum wage and some offsetting things for small business. When the bill was signed in the Rose Garden, then-President Clinton commented on what a great compromise it was that it would drive our economy. Senator Kennedy received a lot of the compliments for that, as he will this time. Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley will be complimented as well.

I can't emphasize enough how pleased I am that the two of them worked together to put this tax package together. It is not an easy job. In fact, I think tax provisions are some of the most difficult and complex matters there are to work on. The Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, and the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, have worked together on most of the Finance Committee issues. I have noticed through the years that they are most successful when they work together.

I tried to build on that knowledge when I became the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It worked well for us for the last 2 years, to work in a very bipartisan way. Almost every issue the Committee had came through this body unanimously. Oh, we had the pension bill, which was a 980-page bill and very complicated and very difficult. And that one wasn't unanimous; it was only 98 to 2. I think my colleagues can see my point on this--that when we work together, we have amazing things happen in fairly short order. That bill took an hour of debate with two amendments and a final vote, and that was all agreed to before it was even brought to the floor. So when we work together, there can be good things, such as the bill we have right now.

The Senate has chosen the right course of coupling an increased wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who will face the greatest difficulty in paying those increased costs. I hope we don't forget the wisdom of that approach, as I mentioned before. I am also heartened that in the course of this debate, we have begun to recognize what I know from my own life to be true; that is, that working families are not only those who are employed by businesses, they are also those who own the businesses.

I know from personal experience that all small businesses have two families--their own and the people who work for them. I also know that small business owners feel the pressure of rising costs, the dilemma of difficult options, and the uncomfortable squeeze of modern life in both of their families, as many workers do on their own. And I know that the smaller the business, the more likely it is that the employees and the employers recognize each other's difficulties and how interdependent and sometimes fragile their businesses and their jobs actually are. I think there is a greater tendency for them to work together under those circumstances.

America has heard a lot of partisan rhetoric during the course of this debate, such as the talk of the so-called war on the middle class and the claim of leaving people out. I would like to note for the record that such rhetoric got us nowhere. There wasn't an attempt to leave anybody out. The middle class is actually made up of those small businessmen who we are trying to help, and in some cases the employees who are working for them.

We didn't try to start a war over statistics, although we were tempted. I do have to mention there were some charts out here to show that wages used to be pretty close together, and the chart had five quintiles. I am more used to quartiles than quintiles, but this had five quintiles. So each 20 percent of the wage capability of the population was shown on the chart, and it showed that from 1943 until 1980, the numbers were pretty close together. Then we saw another chart, and it had this bar on the end which extended far beyond any of the quintiles. I paid a little bit of attention to that chart. It didn't just have quintiles on it; it had quintiles, plus one. If you look at the quintiles, they were almost the same today as they were at the time of the 1943 chart. However this big bar graph at the end--made it look so skewed that it made people look really rich and I guess by association holding the rest of the people down.

Well, instead of just having quintiles on there, the chart had quintiles plus the top 1 percent earners in the United States. I am pretty sure that if you go back to 1943 through whatever date you want and you take the top 1 percent earners in the United States, you will find that they earn drastically more than even the highest quintile. So the chart doesn't treat the wage data equally. I suspect that Bill Gates himself skewed that chart pretty badly. The top 1 percent always makes a lot more money than everybody else and I think that is pretty much the case through the history of the United States. So if we are going to talk about quintiles, we need to talk about the quintiles equally.

That is just one example of how we could have spent more time concentrating on the charts and arguing back and forth. But our point wasn't whether to increase the minimum wage; our point was whether we could do it and keep the economy moving by eliminating some of the impact of the increase on the small businesses that employ those minimum wage workers.

We are ending the consideration of this issue basically where it began and for many of us where we have been for the last few years-- with the majority of the Senate supporting a minimum wage increase as long as there are provisions to soften the impact of that increase on the small businesses which create minimum wage jobs. Every time I have had to debate this, I have had a bill that had an increase in the minimum wage and it also had some amendments that offset the impact. Now, I didn't take the Finance Committee offsets; I took some other offsets to do it.

One of the things I have noticed around here is that if you ever do an amendment on a bill like this, it will

be considered a poison pill, and the second time you try to do that bill, even if you have changed the wording, the arguments will be exactly the same as before you changed the wording. So we sometimes get locked into the concept and the history of what has gone on around here.

We could have had this increase done earlier had there been some willingness to offset it with a package, as was done the last time the minimum wage was increased and as I suspect will happen every time in the future that the minimum wage is increased because a higher wage is of no use when the job itself is gone.

The Senate chose to look at the whole picture this time around. The minimum wage could have been raised years ago had some on the other side been willing to accept the important role that working families and small businesses--those are a lot of the same people--play in providing employment in this country. Some people like to talk about two Americas. What the Senate is preparing to do today recognizes that there is one America. We are all in this together, and we don't need to do great injury to one group of Americans just to aid another. That kind of partisan rhetoric isn't accurate, and it is aimed at spreading a very skewed view of America. It is aimed to divide rather than unite Americans around the simple solution.

Mandating the wage increase without proper relief to the working families who employee many of America's low-skilled workers is an assault on the middle class. Let's get our facts straight. Passing the Senate's bipartisan minimum wage and small business relief package is good for low-skilled workers and it is good for the middle class working families of America.

It is time we did this. I hope we will have the vote soon. I look forward to the speeches we can do afterwards, thanking all of the people that have made this possible. I am very confident that is exactly what is going to happen.

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

Madam President, I would like to thank both the leaders for their kind words. I thank them on behalf of both Senator Kennedy and myself. We do have a philosophy of working together, and it does work. I am pleased we are at this point today. The bill the Senate has crafted is the right approach to take on this issue. The approach is combining an increase in the minimum wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. The Senate has not forgotten that while we may be able to mandate a wage, we cannot mandate the existence of a job. I hope our colleagues in the House will not forget that either.

In legislating, it is often important to find a third way. The third way is represented by the substitute amendment that was the product of extensive bipartisan cooperation. Democrats and Republicans working together acknowledged the fact that mandated cost increases can have negative economic effects, and together we developed a means of addressing those concerns in the form of the bipartisan substitute amendment. It will affect millions of Americans. I am glad we are at this point.

I would like to thank all of the staffs who have been involved in this issue, doing research and getting information that will help us to be as sure as we can be that we have made the right decisions on the best information possible.

From my staff, that includes my staff director, Katherine McGuire, and Brian Hayes, Kyle Hicks, Ilyse Schuman, Amy Shank, Shana Christrup, Andrew Patzman, Randi Reid, Tara Ord, Greg Dean, Craig Orfield, and Michael Mahaffey. That is a lot of people, but it takes a lot of people to do something like the tax package and the bill we have before us, plus all of the other things that were considered during the process.

From the Republican leader's office, I thank Mike Solon, Malloy McDaniel, and Rohit Kumar. I also thank Ed Egee with Senator Isakson. From the Finance committee, I thank Russ Sullivan and Mark Prater; and from the Republican whip's office, Manny Rossman and John O'Neill.

But I would be very remiss if I did not thank those in Senator Kennedy's office and his staff: Michael Myers, Holly Fechner, Portia Wu, Missy Rohrbach, and Lauren McGarity. They have

done just an outstanding job of keeping us on track and also searching through all of the different things we have had to consider, even those that nobody ever saw discussed here on the Senate floor. It was tireless work, which often goes on late into the nights, well beyond the time Senators are around here--of course, I do not want to give you the impression that Senators are necessarily going home. Sometimes they are working late as well, just in a different building. We get to spend our days here and our nights in our office building. But without the help of all of those people, this bill would not be at the point it is now. We really appreciate their work.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum, with the time equally divided.

Thank you.

Madam President, I yield back.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to express my concerns about the growing politicalization of the debate over the war in Iraq. The reason I am concerned is because I think the revolving door of resolutions we have seen emanating from Washington, DC, has caused confusion. Now, I would be happy if the confusion were limited to our enemies. But, unfortunately, I think that confusion extends to our allies and perhaps even to the troops who are now serving in that war-torn country.

I do not believe that confusion is called for; rather, clarity is what we ought to be producing here. But this revolving door of resolutions being produced by those primarily on the other side of the aisle has seemed to contribute to our inability to speak with one voice on the one subject where we ought to be speaking with one voice; that is, our Nation's security. We ought not to be playing politics of any kind when talking about the lives of our troops or the resolutions which might have the unintended consequence of undermining their morale or causing our friends and allies confusion as to whether we are willing to stay the course in this battle of wills. This is a battle of wills.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle feel so strongly--as some of them clearly do--about the conflict in Iraq, then I believe they have an obligation to cut off funding. We have at least two Senators who have offered those kinds of resolutions--Senator Dodd and Senator Feingold. I would put it this way: If my colleagues really believe all is lost in Iraq and there is no possible way to succeed, then I think Senators could justly reach the conclusion that the only moral decision would be to deny funding to send them into harm's way. But instead what we see is an uncontrollable desire to tinker with our military operations, deciding in some cases what individual Members of Congress think should be done on the ground and then on the other hand what kind of decisions ought to be left to commanders. I suggest to my colleagues that strategy will lead us nowhere. Congress should not be involved in micromanaging the day-to-day tactics of military commanders on the ground. Our Constitution provides for a single Commander in Chief, not 535 chieftains who can make tactical decisions about something as sensitive and challenging as war operations in Iraq.

We have heard there are between 5,000 and 6,000 members of al-Qaida in Iraq, primarily in Anbar Province. It makes no sense to me for us to pull out our troops until we have defeated those terrorists. Certainly, I disagree with those who say we ought to pull out our troops before we are able to stabilize Iraq in a way that it can sustain itself, defend itself, and govern itself because I think we know what will happen if Iraq becomes just another failed state in the Middle East, particularly with those 5,000 to 6,000 members of al-Qaida present in Iraq: It will become another Afghanistan.

As we all know, when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Afghanistan became a failed state, giving rise to the Taliban and al-Qaida in Iraq, the likes of Osama bin Laden among them. Of course, it was because they had a safe haven in Afghanistan that they could then plot and plan and train and recruit and finance their terrorist operations, and it allows them the safety and convenience to plan an attack against the United States, which they did on September 11, 2001.

Of course, we know, because they have told us, that one of al-Qaida's major goals in Iraq is to increase sectarian violence between the Sunnis and the Shias. Al-Qaida cannot defeat us on the battlefield; we know that and they know that. The only way they can prevail is if we give up, if we pull our combat troops out of Iraq until al-Qaida is no longer a threat there. We know that Sunni extremists, including al- Qaida, want to create a civil war that will tear the country apart. The only way al-Qaida will be successful in doing that is if we allow them to do so.

We need to let our military do the job in Iraq. We can't pretend to be able to make the best decisions from here in Washington, DC, about what kinds of tactics are likely or reasonably calculated to be successful several thousand miles away.

As recently as Sunday, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee appeared on a weekend talk show. I would like to read a little bit of the questions and answers which were produced from that interaction because I think it demonstrates exactly the kind of confusion I am talking about that I think ill-serves our troops and ill-serves our Nation during a time of war.

The question was this:

Will you set a goal for withdrawing combat troops?

Senator Levin says:

We would. We would follow basically the pattern that was

set or proposed by the Iraq Study Group, which was to set a

goal for the removal of combat troops, as you put it

correctly, by March of next year.

Mr. Russert:

So how many troops would that be by March of next year

would be taken out?

Mr. Levin said:

We don't have a specific number, nor did the study group,

but it would be most. There would be a limited number of

troops that would be left.

Mr. Russert said:

So out of 150,000, we would take out how many?

Mr. Levin:

I would say most.

Mr. Russert:

What would be left behind?

Senator Levin said:

It would be a limited number, which would--

Mr. Russert said:

Ten thousand, 20,000?

Senator Levin said:

I don't want to put a specific number on it because that

really should be left to the commanders to decide how many

would be needed to carry out these limited functions.

I think this brief Q-and-A demonstrates the kind of confusion that occurs when Members of the Senate, notwithstanding their best intentions, tinker with tactical decisions made with fighting a war several thousand miles away.

We know the power Congress has under our Constitution, and if, in fact, there are those, as I said earlier, who believe that all is lost, then I believe the only appropriate action to take would be for those people who hold that belief to try to bring a resolution to the floor that would cut off funding for this ill-fated, in their view, conflict. But my colleagues can't have it both ways. On the one hand, they can't say we should leave it to our commanders in the field to determine the number of troops, and yet when General Petraeus says he needs 21,500 troops to fight the terrorists in Iraq, these same individuals would tell him: No, you can't have them.

This is a question and answer from the nomination hearing for GEN David Petraeus.

Senator McCain asked him:

Suppose we send you over there to your new job, General,

only we tell you that you can't have any additional troops.

Can you get your job done?

General Petraeus said:

No, sir.

The kind of confusion I think we have seen emanating from Capitol Hill is directly related to the revolving door of resolutions we have seen since the beginning of the year.

First, there was the Biden resolution. Senator Reid, the distinguished majority leader, said, ``Tomorrow the Senate will proceed to S. Con. Res. 2, the bipartisan Iraq resolution.'' He said that

on January 31, 2007. Then Senator Reid said later the same day, ``There will be a bipartisan group of Senators who believe the more appropriate matter is the Warner resolution.''

So first we had the Biden resolution, then we had the Warner resolution, and then there was the Levin resolution. Senator Reid said, on January 31, 2007, ``In my caucus there was near unanimity for the Levin resolution.'' Then--I mentioned this a moment ago--there are those such as Senator Feingold who said: ``I oppose the weak Warner- Levin resolution as currently written because it misunderstands the situation in Iraq and shortchanges our national security interests.'' He said that on February 1.

Then there was the Reid-Pelosi resolution. This was the one on which the majority leader said, ``I think it is so much more direct. We support the troops. We are opposed to the surge. Perfect.'' He was asked this question: I was asking you why you prefer the House resolution to move forward. This is the press asking the majority leader. He said, ``I think it is so much more direct. We support the troops. We are opposed to the surge. Perfect.'' That is the majority leader on February 13, 2007.

Then one of the Democratic candidates for President, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, made this observation, and I happen to think he is exactly right. He said: ``We have a sense of Senate resolution on asparagus. They don't mean a whole lot.''

Well, I have heard a lot from my constituents back in Texas who just wonder what in the world are we doing here in Washington debating a series of nonbinding resolutions. Senator Dodd has it exactly right. To show the dignity of these nonbinding resolutions, we even have a Senate resolution on asparagus. It is demeaning and inappropriate, in my view, for us to be talking in those kinds of terms when it comes to something as serious as Iraq.

Then there was the Murtha plan, named after Representative Jack Murtha, the Democrat from Pennsylvania. This is Representative Murtha's plan. He said:

They won't be able to continue. They won't be able to do

the deployment.

This is his plan.

They won't have the equipment, they won't have the

training, and they won't be able to do the work. There is no

question in my mind. We have analyzed this and we have come

to the conclusion that it can't be done.

So this is what the Democrats in the House have had to offer in terms of resolutions: Let's not vote to cut off funding, but let's tie our troops in so much redtape and deny them the ability to be successful with the new plan the President has proposed in Iraq. That was on February 15.

Representative Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee, I think tagged it right, tagged Representative Murtha's plan correctly. He said on Murtha's clumsy strategy:

Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off

funding or even conditioning these funds.

That was what Representative Jim Cooper said on February 23 in the Washington Post.

Congressman Chet Edwards from my State of Texas, another Democrat, said:

If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate

troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could

put some missions and some troops at risk.

He said that on February 23 in the Washington Post.

The latest resolution, the Biden-Levin proposal, was described by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, another Democrat candidate for President: ``And that resolution can be simply entitled: Revoke the authorization.''

What he is talking about is revoking the authorization of the use of military force that Congress passed in 2001. He is talking about, in 2007, going back to 2001 and revoking the original authorization for use of military force that has resulted in 130,000 American troops currently in Iraq.

Senator Biden said this:

The next best step is to revoke the authorization the

United States Congress gave to the President to go to war in

the first place.

He said that in Des Moines, IA, on February 17.

Senator Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a Democrat of Michigan, said:

We should limit the mission. One thought is that we should

limit the mission to a support mission. In other words, an

anti-terrorist mission to go after al-Qaida in Iraq, to

support and train the Iraqi Army, to protect our own

diplomatic personnel and other personnel in Iraq.

So Senator Levin's proposal would be to limit the mission, to put conditions on our troops and on the rules of engagement that would deny them the ability to be successful, if they were otherwise able to be successful. He said that on September 19.

Representative Chet Edwards, again of Texas, a Democrat, I think nailed it. He said:

I think Congress begins to skate on thin ice when we start

to micromanage troop deployment and rotation.

He said that on February 23, 2007.

Then there are other resolutions by other candidates for President.

The Senator from Illinois, Mr. Obama, on his resolution said:

The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-

ended commitment must come to a close. The need to bring this

war to an end is here, and that is why today I am introducing

the Iraq War Deescalation Act of 2007.

That was on January 30, 2007. He wanted to cap troops who could be deployed into Iraq and opposed the President's plan.

Then Senator Clinton, on her proposal, said:

I don't want to defund our troops, I am against that, but I

want to defund Iraqi troops.

Just remember, a moment ago Senator Levin in his resolution said he wanted to train and equip the Iraqis, and now Senator Clinton says she wants to defund the Iraqi troops. She said:

I want to defund the private security going for the Iraqi

government if they don't meet these certain requirements.

She said that on FOX News, a special report with Brit Hume on January 18, 2007.

I could go on and on. I know the Senator from Florida is here and wants to speak on the same topic. But the plethora of resolutions that seem to be emanating from the other side of the aisle can't do anything but engender confusion about our aims in Iraq and in the Middle East, not only for our troops who put themselves in harm's way but for Iraqis who have allied themselves with us, who have helped us. I would think that out of the new majority, at least there ought to be a consensus on what it is we ought to be doing there, that we ought not to be leaving our troops with any doubt in their minds about our commitment to support them. We ought not to be leaving any of our friends in Iraq, who have allied themselves with us by helping us, to doubt, wondering whether we would pull our troops out precipitously and leave them exposed to a huge humanitarian crisis and a huge ethnic cleansing by the violence that would ensue.

My hope is we will give this new plan a chance. As the Iraq Study Group said, they believe they could support a surge, under appropriate conditions, on page 73 in that report--a bipartisan report of a group who have been given great weight in Congress. They have studied the issue and made recommendations to the President. The President has consulted broadly with a large number of people, military experts, people on both sides of the aisle, and has come up with not only a new commander but a new plan, and we have a new Secretary of Defense.

I fail to understand, and I cannot understand, why it is there are so many people who are determined to see that plan be unsuccessful by not providing the troops, by not providing the funding, and by tying our troops' hands with redtape, in terms of the rules of engagement and the conditions under which they fight.

Mr. President, I ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with us and come up with some plan that can have the support of the Members of Congress. As I said, it used to be that differences between political parties stopped at the water's edge, particularly on a matter so important as our national security. A confusing message is sent by these revolving-door resolutions that are mutually contradictory and inconsistent and do nothing to help us win the war there, to stabilize Iraq, and to bring our troops home as fast as we can.

I yield the floor.