A bill making emergency supplemental appropriations for border security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise this evening to speak about the bill we passed today, what is known as the child nutrition bill, but the actual title is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. We passed it by unanimous consent, which means we have done something that happens all too rarely around here. We passed a major piece of legislation in a bipartisan way, we got consent from the whole Chamber, and we did not have to have a vote on it. That is a good development, to pass a big piece of legislation which will have a tremendously positive impact on our children, and passing it in that manner is encouraging.

I am grateful, as so many of us are, to our chairman, Senator Lincoln, for her continued leadership to craft a child nutrition bill that protects and assists the most vulnerable of our society--pregnant women and children who are food insecure, especially in a time of economic difficulties for so many families and high unemployment in so many communities across the country.

In the Scriptures, they tell us that a faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, and he or she who has found a faithful friend has indeed found a treasure. I am paraphrasing a little bit, but I think that line from the Scriptures about a faithful friend being a sturdy shelter has application to this discussion we have had about the Child Nutrition Act and helping our children because so many elected officials around the country say they are a friend of children. That is a good sentiment. We like to hear that. But often we do not have the opportunity to demonstrate our friendship, our concern for children, and sometimes we don't take the opportunity even when it is presented to us. So in our efforts to show and demonstrate--sometimes in small

ways, sometimes in more substantial ways here in the Senate or in other instances as well--we have a chance to demonstrate, to prove or to provide some proof that we are trying to be a friend to children.

The bill itself reauthorizes our Nation's major Federal child nutrition programs which are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As many people who watch these proceedings know, reauthorization means we want to do it again, we want to continue a policy and keep the policy moving in the right direction and fund it.

Under this program, the following are included: the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known by the end of that program's name, WIC--women, infants, and children; the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which is not something we hear a lot about but is critically important; and the Summer Food Service Program.

The act itself--the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010--provides $4.5 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years, nearly 10 times the amount of money provided for the previous child nutrition bill and the largest new investment in child nutrition programs since the inception of these particular programs.

This historic new investment provided by the act could not come at a more important time, particularly given the incidence of hunger and the corresponding need for Federal nutrition assistance, which has increased in recent years. We know the economic realities. The numbers do not begin to tell the story, but the numbers are part of the story.

Throughout the country, more than 15 million people are out of work. In Pennsylvania, for example, a 9.2-percent unemployment rate equates to 591,000 Pennsylvanians out of work. I know some States are at 10 percent unemployment and 11 percent and 12 percent and some even over 13 percent. But in our State, having more than 591,000 people out of work is close to if not a record number of people.

I have always believed that when it comes to programs and policies that impact our children, whether it is a nutrition program or an education program, whether it is helping to protect our kids, I have always believed that what motivates us and what motivates people across this country to take steps to help children is a basic and fundamental belief that every child in America is born with a light inside them.

Some children, because of their circumstances, because of the family they are born into or because of other reasons, do not need a lot of help, and their light shines so brightly, it is blinding, it is boundless, it is assimilating--you can fill in lots of other words. Some children are born with a light inside them, but it does not burn as brightly because of limitations or because of adverse circumstances they are born into or because the family they are born into does not have some of the advantages many of us have had. They do not have a steady job. They do not have income. They do not have the ability to provide for their family.

I have always believed that it is the obligation of every public official, whether you are in the Senate or whether you are a State official or local official, but especially if you are elected, to do everything you can, to take every opportunity you can to help our children at a minimum with at least four things: nutrition and the prevention of hunger, early education, health care, and certainly basic safety and protection. This legislation takes a substantial step forward in at least one of those areas--the area I mentioned as it relates to preventing hunger and making sure kids are being given nutritious meals.

We know providing care at the beginning of a child's life is so important. That starts with that child's mother. Through the WIC Program, pregnant women and new mothers have access to nutritious foods and learn more about healthy eating--something we could all learn a thing or two about. The program encourages breastfeeding and supplies formula, food packages, and farmers market vouchers. The WIC Program is a strong investment in our future and serves more than half--more than half--of all infants in the United States. As babies grow into toddlers, they benefit from the nutritious meals and snacks provided by childcare homes and centers and Head Start Programs participating in that program.

I mentioned before that we don't hear a lot about the Child and Adult Care Food Program. That program allows children to develop, it prepares children to enter school ready to learn, and it helps working families to work.

In the vast majority of States, the Child and Adult Care Food Program--the afterschool program that it is--only provides reimbursement for a snack. The bill we passed today gives communities in all 50 States the ability to be reimbursed for a meal.

When toddlers grow into young children and arrive for their first day of school, many are able to enter the cafeteria and eat a healthy meal for breakfast and for lunch. These meals fuel them with the energy they need to grow into healthy adults. We know the numbers on these for children are so substantial. More than 10 million children receive a free or reduced-priced breakfast, and nearly 20 million children in the United States receive a lunch. In Pennsylvania, that translates into 1 million kids having the benefit of school lunch and just about a quarter of a million children getting the benefit of the School Breakfast Program.

Congress has taken a step now--at least the Senate has today--to ensure more eligible children receive meals, increasing the number of eligible children and increasing the nutritional value of meals. Hungry and malnourished children cannot fully participate in school. If a child can't, during school, have the benefit of a school lunch or a school breakfast or sometimes both, they can't learn. It is as simple as that. None of us could learn. None of us can function if we don't have enough to eat. I have always thought that if we invest in children, making sure they can learn at a very young age, they can learn more now and earn more later. We have to remain committed to these programs.

I have had a very strong interest in and have advocated for a long time for the so-called universal feeding concept because I believe the experience in a major urban school district--in this case, the city of Philadelphia--in that school district, that universal feeding concept as a model in one school district has reduced the stigma of poverty and increased participation in the School Lunch Program. Philadelphia schools are reimbursed for only the number of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals but agree to offer free meals to all children. It covers everyone; it doesn't single children out for different treatment. Universal feeding enhances efficiency by dramatically reducing the administrative burdens of the program, and it maintains the integrity and congressional intent of the National School Lunch Program.

There is a lot more I could talk about with regard to the bill, but I wish to move very quickly and then conclude by highlighting some photographs.

This first photograph was made available to us by a Dr. Mariane Chilton. Dr. Chilton is at Drexel University. I have met a lot of people who have been champions for our children, who have stood up for children in all circumstances, but if there is one person who I can think of in any university of the United States who has done so much for our children and has stood up for them, who has been even more than just a faithful friend--Dr. Chilton has been the person who, time and again, has reminded us about the moral gravity of making sure children are first on our list.

She developed a program called Witnesses to Hunger. This particular project began after consent was given by mothers across the city of Philadelphia who agreed to participate. More than 40 of them were given a camera. They took pictures of their lives, the lives of their children, their own life, what happens in their homes. They made these pictures available. They gave us a window into their own lives by their own consent. By providing that insight, they allowed us to see the real misery of hunger for children. They allowed us to see the horrific nightmare so many children and so many families were living through, even before this recession.

The first picture I have is a photograph of a young boy sitting at a table.

Here is what his mother Melissa said about him:

My son, he's already on the small side and he needs every

bit of food that he can get to make him healthy, keep him

healthy. He has failure to thrive. He has a bone deficiency

that doesn't allow him to grow. He's only 30 pounds. He has

acid reflux. He had RSV, failure to thrive, chronic asthma.

This is one example of a child who doesn't have enough to eat, which leads to the obvious health problems that entails.

This next picture is a photograph of three children sitting at a table. They have beautiful smiles. They are wonderful children. The title of this picture is ``Oodles of noodles.'' These children are eating lots and lots of noodles. Their mother says:

And the kids know my food stamps got cut off. Because when

they came home from school today, they didn't have their

snacks. So they know that I didn't go to the market. I really

didn't tell them why or anything like that, because I don't

think they understand. But it affected them.

When people make decisions about cutting programs or voting against programs, we know they have real consequences.

The last picture is a young boy holding bananas and giving the photographer a great smile. In this photo, Gale, his mother, captures her son's happiness as he holds up a bunch of bananas.

Some people tell us people choose to eat unhealthy foods. They use that as a rationale, a pathetic and insulting rationale. But sometimes they make that argument. We know families want more access to fresh fruits and vegetables. But, frankly, in a lot of inner cities, they are not available, not at all. We have to recognize that, rather than denigrate or judge people who live in those communities. There are plenty of folks in Washington who are good at judging. They are not real good at responding to the needs of people.

There is so much in this bill. I will not go through more of it because we don't have time. I believe this bill does meet that basic obligation to do everything we can, at least in this program, at least with this opportunity, to make sure that light inside every child burns as brightly as the full measure of that child's potential, as brightly as we can possibly allow it to burn with our help. I believe this bill does one thing as well, going back to that reference to Scripture about a faithful friend being a sturdy shelter. This bill will not solve all the problems of the families who will be positively impacted. It will not eliminate hunger. It will not rescue a child from so many challenges in the life of a child who lives in a poor family. But this bill is one example of one way we can demonstrate what that scriptural reference tells us. It gives us a chance to demonstrate in a significant way that we are trying to do all we can to be that faithful friend to our children and to provide some measure of shelter when the storms of this recession hit that family and hit that child. We can take a step in proving that we are trying to be that faithful friend to children.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I intend to speak for a few minutes on climate change and the need for a new energy strategy for this country.

I will just note that if any of my colleagues intend to seek the floor to conclude the business Senator Schumer and Senator McCain were engaged in, they can just signal me and I will yield the floor to allow them to finish that business.

Mr. President, we are now at the end of this work period, and we will shortly be going back to our home States for our home work during the August recess from Washington. We are doing so without having done anything about our dependence on fossil fuels, the carbon pollution that we subsidize going into our atmosphere, the undisputed science of what is happening in our atmosphere as a result of that, and the consequences that are beginning to pile up on our planet as a result of our negligence in addressing this pressing issue.

It is easy when you are in Washington to think that this is the center of the universe and that the little fights and quarrels that happen here and the politics of this town are what is most important. In this Chamber, which is very often a hotbed of those politics, I think that problem is particularly severe. There are political situations where, if we don't get it resolved, then it just keeps going along and there is no real harm done. But nature doesn't give a darn about our politics. Nature doesn't give a hoot about our campaign contributions. Nature doesn't care about what motivates delay. Nature doesn't care whether you are lying or telling the truth. Nature just goes on about her business, driven by chemistry, biology, physics--the basic elemental forces of nature.

We are getting ourselves into a situation where by ignoring those forces we are beginning to imperil ourselves and future generations.

It is astonishingly irresponsible to be in the predicament we are in right now, with what is fair to describe as a looming global emergency that we can't get anything done on.

The big oil companies, the big coal companies, the big energy companies are able to drop into this particular Chamber their delay, their desire to have nothing happen on this subject, and that trumps the interests of all the people of the United States, all the people of the planet, their children and grandchildren, off into our future.

I want to read into the Record a few things that have come out in the press in the last few weeks. Here is USA Today, in the middle of last month:

The world is hotter than ever. March, April, May and June

set records, making 2010 the warmest year worldwide since

recordkeeping began in 1880. . . .

That is not some fringe group reporting this. That is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Government of the United States of America.

In my home State, back in Rhode Island, ``July was more than 4 degrees above normal,'' quoting from the Providence Journal on August 2, ``and the second hottest month on record for Providence; 4.2 degrees higher than normal.''

Here is a newsclip about what effect these temperatures are having on our oceans:

The rising temperatures have been particularly hard on

oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat

trapped by greenhouse gases over the past 50 years.

This was another NOAA report.

Oceans are taking in increasingly more carbon. The report's

analysis of global ocean uptake of carbon dioxide estimates

that the seas stored 33 percent more anthropogenic [man made]

carbon in 2008 than they did 14 years earlier. Oceans'

absorbsion of CO2 has caused rising acidity that

is damaging the ability of shellfish, crustaceans, corals and

plankton to build shells and skeletons.

You might ask, who cares about shellfish, crustaceans, corals, and plankton? Shellfish keep a lot of American fishermen busy and occupied and productive, and feed an awful lot of families. Ditto crustaceans-- the Rhode Island lobster in particular. Corals are the nurseries of our tropic seas. When they die, it has a pronounced effect throughout the oceanic food chain. And phytoplankton--all plankton--are the base of the oceanic food chain. When you have a collapse in the phytoplankton, you have a potential collapse of the entire oceanic food chain.

There have been massive die-offs in the historic record of the ocean and we are trending toward having another one, with an ocean that is more acidic now than it has been in 8,000 centuries. We are getting to the point where the small animals that form the base of the ocean food chain are becoming soluble in the water that is their environment.

Lobsters in particular--again from the Providence Journal of July 29:

Meanwhile, the water off our coast has been unusually warm.

Lobsters like cold water and in the colder waters east of

Cape Cod, the heartland of the fishery, the crustaceans seem

unaffected. No moratorium has been recommended there. The

lobstermen explain a decline in the local stocks by saying

there has been a general migration toward cooler waters.

So the warming of our waters is having a pronounced effect on Rhode Island businesses, on Rhode Island lobstermen. I was out the other day with Rhode Island lobstermen, hauling in pots, seeing what was down there, and the fishery has not been wiped out, but it is suffering, it is under pressure, and it relates to our warming planet and to climate change.

It is a global situation. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 400 oxygen-depleted dead zones identified by scientists in our oceans--oxygen-depleted dead zones in our oceans, 400 of them, covering an area of nearly 100,000 square miles of dead ocean because there is not enough oxygen in it to support life, as though it is on some alien planet.

Now a very recent study, July 29, reported:

Researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University say the global

population of phytoplankton--

Again, the basis of the oceanic food chain--

has fallen about 40 percent since 1950. That translates to an

annual drop of about 1 percent of the average plankton

population between 1899 and 2008. The scientists believe that

rising sea surface temperatures are to blame.

There is another side to this story and, frankly, most of it is phony baloney science. It is bought-and-paid-for mercenary science. It is not the real deal. It masquerades as the real deal, it is designed to fool the public, and it is designed to prevent us from taking action. Regrettably, for a while it is working.

Here is what Paul Krugman wrote the other day, looking at the variety of evidence that supports the need for us to do something about that for the sake of our planet, our children, and our grandchildren.

Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You

probably heard about the accusations leveled against

climate researchers--allegations of fabricated data, the

supposedly damning e-mail messages of ``Climategate,'' and

so on. What you may not have heard, because it has

received much less publicity, is that every one of these

supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud

concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into

by many in the news media.

This should be a win-win. This is an issue that is important to us as humans trying to live on this planet as dramatic changes begin to take place in our atmosphere and ecosystems. This should be a win for us economically as green jobs grow, as we compete with China and India, as we stop losing the race to China and India for this next economy, as we stop sending money overseas to people who do not care for us much, who fund our enemies, and who drain hundreds of millions of dollars a year out of our economy.

It should be a win on national security, protecting us from those circumstances. It should be a win across the board. But the special interests will not let go, will not step into the future. They know they control enough votes in this place to make this not happen.

I promise my colleagues this is a day that the future will look back at and look at this Senate, and this will be our day of infamy. This will be the day when all of the evidence was before us, we had every chance in the world to do

what was right, we in fact knew what was right, and we allowed lies and phony science, concocted evidence and the big money from big oil, from big coal, from the big polluters, to steer us away from our duty.

I hope when we come back in September we will take this back up, that we will take it up seriously. It is my strong belief that if we go at this with real diligence as a Senate--if we have the White House with us and behind us and fighting for us, if we have the environmental groups out there in the field doing their work, pushing this issue, and if we have the hundreds of thousands of Americans who work in green energy industries and who are green energy investors and who are going to grow into this green energy economy out there explaining the true economic value, and if we have our national security apparatus making the point as to how important this is, as all the national intelligence estimates have already said--we can push this over the top. Not the first time, because the lies and the money will trump the first time. But if we do it a second and a third and fourth time and force this issue, I think we can bring it home. I hope we will at least try. Some battles are worth the fight even if you are not sure you can win.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am going to ask unanimous consent for a proposal on the border. First, I will speak for a minute and then ask consent. I know my colleague from Arizona will then speak and offer some amendments to it.

Today, I join my cosponsors--Senators Reid, Inouye, Murray, Feinstein, Bingaman, McCaskill, Casey, Udall of Colorado, Begich, and Burris--to try to make our borders as secure as possible. We are asking unanimous consent to pass a smart and tough $600 million emergency border security appropriations package that will provide immediate relief to the border.

Here is what our border security package will do: It will provide over $250 million to hire 1,500 new agents to permanently patrol our southern border and ports of entry.

It will also create a strike force that will be deployed in different areas of the southwest border, depending on where the need is greatest at any particular moment.

It will provide funds to deploy unmanned drones to fly along our southern border and provide our patrol officers on the ground with real time information on unlawful border crossings. I believe there are seven working now. They have been very successful, and they should be expanded quickly and immediately.

It will provide funds to improve communications capabilities between Federal border enforcement and State and local officers along the border.

It will provide funds to construct forward operating bases for the Border Patrol to use that are actually located on the border instead of being hundreds of miles away.

It will provide funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct investigations of drug runners, money launderers, and human traffickers along our border.

It will provide over $200 million to increase the number of ATF, DEA, and FBI agents on our border because the focus on drug dealing and crime on our border is very important and has to be coordinated with immigration enforcement and bolster the number of prosecutors and court resources along our border so wrongdoers can be immediately brought to justice.

The best part of this border package is it is fully paid for and will not increase the deficit by a single penny. The emergency border funds will be paid for by assessing fees on foreign

companies known as chop shops that outsource good, high-paying American technology jobs to lower wage, temporary immigrant workers from other countries. These are companies such as Infosys. But it will not affect the high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft that play by the rules and recruit workers in America.

This border package will, therefore, accomplish two important goals. It will make our border far more secure extremely quickly, and it will level the playing field for American companies and American workers to compete against these foreign companies known in the industry as using ``outsourcing visas.''

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5875, which is at the desk; that the Schumer substitute amendment, which is the text of S. 3721, a bill making emergency supplemental appropriations for border security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Yes; 1,000 Border Patrol and 500 ICE and DEA.

So far, exactly right.

Yes.

That is basically correct, yes.

The bottom line is this. I like the H-1B program, and I think it does a lot of good for a lot of American companies. In fact, in the immigration proposal I made, along with Senator Reid and Senator Menendez, as well as the outline with Senator Graham, we expand H-1B in a variety of ways.

There is a part of H-1B that is abused, and it is by companies that are not American companies or even companies that are making something. Rather, they are companies that take foreign folks, bring them here, and then they stay here for a few years, learn their expertise, and go back. We think we should increase the fees when they do that.

Madam President, first, I appreciate the spirit in which the Senator from Arizona has talked about the proposal. Let me try to be in the same spirit. I always said I believe in comprehensive immigration reform. I know my colleague from Arizona has focused on this issue for at least as long as I have. I was involved in the original legislation back in the late eighties with a great deal of care, a great deal of concern, and a great deal of focus.

I hope, even though I cannot accept these amendments, that maybe we could come together on something that we could bring back in September because I do believe we have to secure the border. Even in the comprehensive proposal that we made, we said we have to secure the border and do other things as well. It is my belief that securing the border alone will not solve our immigration problems; that until we have comprehensive reform, particularly in making sure employers do not hire illegal immigrants--which they now do, even though they do not know they are illegal immigrants because documents are so easily forged, that we have to do comprehensive. But we should do the border. To say we have to do comprehensive does not gainsay that we have to work on the border and work on it quickly and soon.

My problems with the amendments are as follows: First and foremost, taking funds from the stimulus is something I could not support. The reason is very simple. In my view--and it may be different than my colleague's--the stimulus creates jobs. I do not want to tell my constituents in Buffalo that they may be laid off or not have the opportunity for a job to work on a road, to be employed as a sheriff or firefighter or teacher because there are less stimulus dollars. I do not believe in robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I prefer our source, which is from these companies which are not, as I say--they are companies whose whole purpose is to bring people in on H-1B and the vast majority of them from other countries who go back to the other countries. That is a better funding source.

On the third amendment, I do believe we have that one, the $21 million for the center. I believe that is in our bill, the Law Enforcement Support Center. I believe that is in our proposal.

As for the second amendment, which is probably the one where we have a substantive disagreement, Operation Streamline is, first, expensive. If you are going to immediately incarcerate everyone who is apprehended at the border, you pay for their medicine, you pay for their health care, you pay for their food. It is over $100 a day. DHS has been using a different program. When they find someone crossing the border illegally, they bring them to the Mexican interior. Secretary Napolitano has shown some good documentation that works, and it is a lot cheaper.

Until proven otherwise, I think we ought to continue that program and maybe expand that program based on the agreement we have that there should be more people on the border so there are more apprehensions.

What we learned in a different area--asylum--is that building detention centers for all those who are caught creates problems.

In New York, we have a large number of asylees--and I support asylum in many justified cases--and it has proven to be very expensive. It has proven to be cumbersome, and oftentimes you don't have the supply of space to keep up with the demand.

So I would respectfully oppose the three amendments and urge that the original proposal be supported.

I yield to my colleague.

I believe so, yes.

I thank the Senator, and I am glad we were able to--

I yield to the Senator for a few thoughts.

I have been told they need to do some conferring in our cloakroom, so the Senator may speak and I will hold off for a minute.

Mr. President, we are waiting to see if there are other Members on our side who would like to come and speak, so I would like to either yield time to the Senator from Rhode Island, who has been waiting on another subject, and then come back to this, or suggest the absence of a

quorum, whichever would be OK with my colleague.

Mr. President, I temporarily yield the floor to my colleague from Rhode Island.

Mr. President, I renew my unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague. As you know, our goal--most of us on this side--is comprehensive reform. We believe securing the border is part of that, and this bipartisan effort can help move us in that direction. I hope we can move forward in a bipartisan way on many other parts of immigration reform beyond the border in the future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for yielding me a few minutes to go in front of him even though he was here before me.

I want to say a couple of words in support of the child nutrition bill. I know the Senator from Pennsylvania also wants to speak about that, the child nutrition bill that was passed by unanimous consent here in the Senate this afternoon.

I thank Chairman Lincoln, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, for her tireless efforts to bring this bill to fruition. She has been a great advocate, a great champion of child nutrition and making the changes necessary to get better food for our kids in schools.

I also thank Senator Chambliss, with whom I served on the Agriculture Committee for a number of years, either as ranking member or as chairman, working on agriculture bills.

I also particularly want to thank Senator Murkowski of Alaska. She and I have worked together as partners in this effort for several of the past years on trying to get this bill put together and get the provisions we have in the bill done. She has been a great champion of better food in our school lunch program, school breakfast program, afterschool meals.

I also thank our leader, Senator Reid, and Minority Leader Senator McConnell, for working together on both sides to get this bill to the point where we could actually get to a unanimous consent today.

There are many important components of this bill, many of which I had pushed for many years when I was chairman of the Agriculture Committee. I am particularly supportive of the provisions to increase reimbursement for school meals, expanded use of direct certification in the National School Lunch Program, the expansion of afterschool meals, a new and great focus on promoting breastfeeding, and the very real advances that that makes to health promotion in the early stages of childhood.

I want, however, to mention one provision I worked on for about 15 years, a provision that would require the adoption of school nutrition standards for all foods in all schools. Since the 1970s, the rates of childhood obesity have tripled among children and adolescents in the United States. Type 2 diabetes has increased dramatically. Current estimates suggest that among children born today, the lifetime risk of developing diabetes is 30 percent for boys, 40 percent for girls, and for African Americans and Latinos it is even higher.

Again these are complicated problems that will require multifaceted solutions. To improve the health of our children, all sectors of society must be involved--parents, the media, community organizations, corporate America, and of course our schools.

Again, I am well aware that schools are not the only places where our kids have access to sugary beverages and fried foods, candy, and high sodium foods. But schools can and should do more to provide healthy foods to our kids. What kids learn to eat at an early age they tend to develop habits and tastes for and eat those foods later on in life.

If you start feeding kids sugary soda and French fries for lunch, they tend to keep eating that as they grow older, with all of the health problems that brings on.

To that end, it is critically important that we establish strong nutrition standards for all the foods sold in school through vending machines, snack bars, a la carte lines in the schools. There are several reasons we need to set such standards. Existing USDA nutrition standards for the foods sold outside of school meals are outdated. They allow for the sale of foods that are low in nutrition and high in fat, sugar, and salt. In addition, in recent years science has greatly increased our knowledge of how kids' diets affect their health. Yet we have done very little to adjust our nutrition standards to this new knowledge.

We have had a big loophole here and this is the way it is. The Secretary of Agriculture can set nutritional guidelines for all of the foods sold in the school lunch, in the school lunchroom--school breakfasts, school lunches, and can adopt those standards to follow the dietary guidelines. However, the Secretary has no authority to regulate the foods sold outside the lunchroom. So you have a big loophole here. Kids can eat lunch, they can have good food prepared according to dietary guidelines, but down the hall there are vending machines with candy bars and potato chips and sugary sodas and all kinds of things such as that, which undermines what we are trying to do to get better food for our kids in schools.

It undermines parental supervision. Parents think that if they send their kids to school, they are going to get good meals. Yet they can go down the hallway from the school lunchroom and buy all of those bad foods. So that is what this bill does. It provides that the Secretary of Agriculture now, for the first time, has the authority to regulate all of the foods in schools, even in the vending machines, snack bars, and a-la carte lines.

Again, I am proud this provision has had broad support on both sides of the aisle, among public groups and food and beverage companies. I particularly would like to thank the following groups for their help through all these years to bring this bill to this point: the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Association of School Administrators, and the National PTA. They have all been wonderful in working together to get this bill put together and through the floor of the Senate. On the food and beverage side, I particularly wish to thank the American Beverage Association, Mars, Incorporated, the dairy industry, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and many others who brought us to this point.

We cannot ignore the rising toll of diabetes, heart disease, and childhood obesity. By including the commonsense provisions to protect the nutrition environment in our schools, this bill makes a major step forward in efforts to protect our children and promote their health.

I sincerely thank my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania for allowing me to take this time even though he was next in line.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a short colloquy with my colleague from New York.

Madam President, my understanding, I say to my colleague from New York, is this provides for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents; is that correct?

One-hundred ICE, $39 million for Customs and Border Protection, 250 new Customs and Border Patrol agents you mentioned, communications equipment, money to deploy forward operating bases. I wish to go over it again with my colleague.

A Federal law enforcement training center, additional funding for the Department of Justice.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because I think these are significant. It comes to a total of about $600 million; is that correct?

I thank my colleague. I think this is significant legislation. I ask the Senator if he would amend his request to include the adoption of three amendments. Those amendments are Nos. 4590, 4591, and 4592. They are: $200 million for Operation Streamline, which is a program that charges those individuals who have crossed the border illegally with a petty crime or misdemeanor with jail time. This has proved to be a great deterrent for repeat crossers; $68 million additional for the Customs inspectors and the other third would be $20 million for the Law Enforcement Support Center which helps the Federal Government, States, and localities identify those individuals who are here illegally and also determines their status regarding eligibility.

If I may mention to my colleague, I am not complaining about these provisions. I would like to point out that Operation Streamline on the border has been a very effective tool as disincentives to repeat crossers. I hope that either in this legislation the Senator from New York would consider it and, of course, we need more Customs inspectors.

The Law Enforcement Support Center is to identify individuals because right now they are overtaxed, as we know, with the number of illegals, how to identify them and to determine their status.

These three amendments I would obviously pay for out of the stimulus package.

My question to my colleague from New York, I understand he is paying for them--maybe he can elaborate--for these provisions by increasing fees or taxes on companies that issue or need H-1B visas and those companies that have less than 50 percent of their employees as American citizens; is that correct?

Would the Senator describe that.

I thank my colleague. Again, I ask if the Senator from New York would amend his request to include the adoption of those three Kyl-McCain amendments.

I think my colleague may have been referring, when we are talking about the law enforcement support center provision that says U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement salaries and expenses, maybe that is the area that he is referring to that falls under----

The stimulus money. I would remind my colleague that just this morning he voted to use $1.5 billion in stimulus funds for the DOE Loan Guarantee Program. But that is a subject of a different discussion.

Let me just say again about Operation Streamline that I would invite my colleague from New York to come and see one of these facilities and talk to our people down at the border. One of the problems, as you know, is we have had this catch and release, or even catch and take to another part of the United States and put them across the border. So we seem to have these repeat crossers. The experience that we have had, and the people down there will tell you about, is keeping these people incarcerated for a period of time--and it isn't just everybody who comes across, it is somebody who has committed a petty crime, a misdemeanor, et cetera--we have found those individuals do not return or are much less likely to do so.

So I say to the Senator from New York, there is no fence money in here, and we would have liked to have seen that. We need to complete and reinforce the fence. We want 3,000 officers down on the border, but the bill has 1,200, which is certainly a major step forward. And there is 1,000 Border Patrol. We think we need as many as 3,000, as I mentioned.

But I think this $600 million is important. I think it is going to a lot of the right purposes. We will fight some more on these three additional amendments I am talking about. While I appreciate the addition of UAVs, we need more surveillance capability on the border and, obviously, in my view, we need to finish the fences. But this is a step forward, so I would ask unanimous consent on behalf of myself and Senator Kyl to be added as cosponsors. This will move forward our 10- point plan we have put forward to get our border secured.

Reserving the right to object--I will not object--I wish to thank the Senator from New York and those on the other side for taking a significant step forward. I believe we have a lot more to do, but this will contribute to our effort to get our border secured. And we will be continuing to fight for all of the provisions Senator Kyl and I have put forward, but I thank my colleague for his cooperation in sending some $60 million to help our border get secured, and at this time, it is not. But I think this is movement in the right direction. I thank my colleague.