A bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots ("WASP").

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the pending bill. I understand we will have a unanimous consent agreement that the majority leader and I have worked out on the omnibus lands package. Having spent 10 years in a legislative body, I understand how things work, and I know we have a bill that is a compilation of 150-plus other bills that is so peppered with individual parochial interests that the hopes of defeating the bill are somewhat diminished. However, I would be remiss in the oath I took to the Constitution to not try to inform my colleagues in the Senate as well as--and more importantly--the people of this country what is coming about with this bill.

Yesterday, one of my constituents sent me a news article described as the following: ``Natural Gas Rig Shutting Means Prices May Double.'' Natural gas right now is under $4 a million British thermal units. It was as high as $13 in the height of what I would say was the manipulation of the commodity market but also in the height of the expansion we saw in economies around the world.

Why is that important to the American public? When people look for natural resources, they look for natural resources--to find them--so they can sell them at a profit. Natural gas exploration in the continental United States--not offshore--is fraught with great difficulties in terms of finding great supplies. However, what we do know in terms of the law of economics is: If you cut exploration in natural gas by 45 percent--and that is just through February of this year versus July of last year--what is going to happen? What is going to happen to natural gas prices? Well, they are going to rise and they are going to rise significantly and, most probably, they are going to approach $10 a year from now.

Is it a great policy we are going to pass a bill that is going to make it harder to find additional natural gas resources in this country, that shuts off 13 trillion cubic feet of known reserves right now? That is enough to supply our country for 2 years. Is it smart for us to pass a lands package that is going to take 2.8 million acres and say: You cannot ever touch it for energy, regardless if natural gas is $45 a million Btu's, you cannot touch it?

But at the same time, if our demand rises, what are we going to do? We are going to import it. So we are doing two things highly negative in the long run that will have major effects on the average American family. One is, we are going to limit the ability to go find it; and, No. 2, we are going to continue to fund imports with our dollars to burn the same natural gas we could have developed here.

The same thing could be said for oil. We all remember oil at $140 a barrel. We pretty well like that gasoline--in my hometown, I filled up with regular unleaded gasoline for $1.64 a gallon this weekend versus the highest it got in Oklahoma, I think, was $3.90 a gallon. We like that. But we are getting ready to pass a bill that says the likelihood of us going back to that era of demand--supply inequality--will be increased and that to pay for that will be a tax on every American family's budget. It is a pretty tough tax if you are commuting or if you are heating your home with natural gas our if you are buying heating oil. Many of our families in the Northeast and upper Midwest bought their heating oil at the peak of prices.

So the opposition to this bill, from my standpoint, comes from a lot of areas, and I am going to spend some time outlining that today. But I want to be a predictor of what is going to happen. What is going to happen is energy prices are going to rise. If you are the greenest of green and think we can provide all our energy from renewables,

great. But what you cannot deny is the fact that it is going to take us 20 years to get there. What this bill is going to do is markedly hamper our ability to supply needed energy products for American families. It is not just oil and gas.

Ninety percent of the known geothermal and absolutely clean, safe, environmentally friendly way to produce steam and power a turbine to produce electricity is taken off in this bill--90 percent of the known geothermal reserves. So when we say we want to use renewables and we want to get away from a carbon-based source, there are some things we have to do. One is to recognize how long it is going to take us and make sure we do not have a disruption in our supplies; No. 2, markedly increase the supplies we need in the meantime; and, No. 3, not hamstring our ability to use completely renewable sources from sources we know are available to us right now.

There have been a lot of claims this bill is not controversial. Well, coming from an energy-producing State, it is controversial as all get out for Oklahoma. When we say we are going to shut off large portions of this country forever to future energy exploration, it does not just impact--Oklahomans have cheap energy. We are the least impacted by it. What the American citizens ought to be asking is: What did we get individually that can put 150 bills together that will make your Representative in Congress vote for something that in the long term is damaging to our energy independence and will keep us more dependent on people who are supplying energy who do not necessarily believe in freedom, do not necessarily like our way of life, and do not necessarily believe we ought to have the standard of living we have?

This bill has 1,248 pages--1,248 pages. There is a total of 170 unique, different bills. This bill, also, is going to cost the American taxpayer--our kids--$10 billion, and it has $900 million of mandatory spending that is going to be spent no matter what anybody in Congress says. So we are going to add another $11 billion to our spending. It is opposed by over 200 different groups. Whether it is property rights groups, the Chamber of Commerce, energy-producing groups, recreation interests across the country, they are uniform in their opposition to this bill.

It is not necessarily just in their own self-interests they are in opposition to it. They know what is coming. They are not thinking short term. They are not thinking about how I look good at home. They are thinking about what is in the best long-term interests of our Nation.

One hundred of these bills have no effect on us as individual Americans. They will not have an effect on energy. They will not have an effect on property rights. There probably is no problem with them. But 70 of these bills will markedly impact every American.

When this bill went through the House on suspension--and it is important you know what ``suspension'' means: You get a vote on it, but you do not get any opportunity to amend it--it did not pass the requirement to pass the House without amendment.

This bill has been smoldering here for 2 years. I wish it would smolder a whole lot longer. I will have to admit that. This is the first time in 2 years we are going to be able to offer an amendment to change this bill. It is going to be a limited set of amendments: six amendments on 1,248 pages of legislation, on $11 billion worth of spending, but, more importantly, on a significant decline in the American people's standard of living because energy costs are going to rise. They are going to rise anyway, but they are going to rise dramatically because of what we are going to do in this bill.

It is a massive collection of unique provisions, some quite controversial. There is actually a section of wilderness area in one Congressman's district that nobody from his district wants and neither did he, but it got put in the bill, and he has no ability to amend the bill. So we are going to take a section out of one of our States and put it in a wilderness area, where the citizens do not want that to happen and the Congressman does not have the ability to try to stop it. That is what happens when you start playing games in trading things in Congress to pass a bill that cannot pass any other way except for buying off votes with something that looks good at home.

It creates 10 new National Heritage Areas. It creates three new units of the National Park Service. We have a $9 billion backlog in just keeping the buildings maintained in our national parks right now, and we are going to add three new parks--at a time when we are going to have an over $2 trillion deficit. We are going to have a deficit that will add $7,000 per man, woman, and child, $28,000 per family this year alone--this year alone.

It creates 14 new studies to expand or create more national parks. It creates 80 new wilderness designations or expansions. It takes 2.2 million acres of direct Federal land and says: You can never touch this, regardless of how much oil is there, how much natural gas is there, how much geothermal is there. You can never touch it. No matter what our need is, we will never be able to access it.

How stupid are we when we are going to tell the rest of the world's suppliers of oil we are going to limit our ability to influence their pricing to us?

It creates 92 wild and scenic river designations--that is more than we have total wild and scenic rivers now--1,100 miles of shoreline. It is going to kill an LNG, liquefied natural gas, port in Massachusetts that is not a scenic river at all because we are so green we do not want to use natural gas, one of the cleanest carbon-based fuels we have, and we are going to eliminate the ability for people in the Northeast to have cheap natural gas. But we are going to do it.

It creates six new National Trails. I will tell you, the trails it creates have eminent domain. Even though this bill says they are not going to use it, the bureaucrats are still going to have the ability to take private property from individuals without their consent.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act will prohibit any gas transmission lines, any electrical lines, any utility lines, that may be in our Nation's best interest, to either pump oil from Canada or natural gas. You cannot go near the river, so you cannot cross the river. So what we are going to do is, not only are we going to raise the cost, we are going to increase the cost of getting it here because we are going to have to go circuitous routes to bring energy to people in this country.

It includes 19 specific instances where Federal lands are permanently--permanently--withdrawn from future mineral and geothermal leasing. Three million acres are impacted by this permanent withdrawal. In the Wyoming Range that is in this bill, according to the National Petroleum Council, 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is proven and sitting there right now--and that is enough to run our country for almost 3 years--300 million barrels of oil. That is the most up-to-date study by the BLM. Each of the 19 withdrawal provisions of the 3 million acres also excludes future geothermal leasing. Studies performed by the Bureau of Land Management confirm geopotential on many of the designations in this bill. In other words, it has been studied. I will have a chart later to show that. We know where the geothermal sources are in this country--clean energy, cheap, abundant--yet we are going to take it away. We are going to say we are not going to use it.

The threats posed by this bill to American energy independence have grown since the last time we considered this bill. Secretary Salazar has withdrawn 77 major leases in Utah. He has withdrawn eight--and these are leases that are already completed, signed, and paid for-- energy leases in Wyoming, outside of this bill. He has delayed any increase in offshore drilling because it ``needs more study.'' We do it with perfection in the Gulf of Mexico. The vast quantity of our oil that we produce domestically comes from there. He has delayed the development of oil shale because it needs more testing, except all the prototype plants have been highly effective in how they have utilized it.

The bill is another direct challenge from Congress to President Obama's pledge to clean up the earmark process. There are multiple earmarks in this bill for things that none of us would be proud of and none of us would say would meet with any common sense, especially in light of the fiscal and monetary difficulties in which we find ourselves.

There is $1 billion for a water project in California to repopulate 500 salmon. There is $5 million for a wolf compensation and prevention program for

wolves that we reintroduced in the wild that are now killing cattle. So we are reintroducing wolves, and then we are going to pay the ranchers for the cows the wolves killed.

There is $3.5 million to celebrate the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine in 2015. Do we really think right now we ought to spend $3.5 million to plan a birthday party in 2015 when we are stealing every penny we are going to spend this year--in the remaining portion of this year--from our kids and our grandkids? Is that really something we want to do?

We are going to spend a quarter of a million dollars to study whether Alexander Hamilton's boyhood estate in St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin Islands, is suitable as a new national park. Well, let's do it after we get out of the mess we are in; let's don't do it now. Let's not spend a quarter of a million dollars. What would a quarter of a million dollars do? It would buy at least 20 families health insurance for a year, 20 families who don't have it. It would supply lots of small businesses with the working capital they require to keep going and keep their employees on board instead of laying them off.

This bill gives $5 million for the National Tropical Botanical Garden to operate and maintain new gardens in Hawaii and Florida. Is that really a priority for us right now? Is that something--if we were a family, would we be making those kinds of decisions? It gives us a new ocean exploration program which has as its No. 1 job to locate, find, and document historic shipwrecks. It may be a good idea in a time of plenty, but in a time of hurt it is a terrible idea.

There is $12 million for the Smithsonian to build a new greenhouse for a national orchid collection. Is that something we should do now? A full waiver for the Cave Institute in New Mexico to be fully funded by the American taxpayers rather than by the State of New Mexico. It just happens to be one of those little things snuck into the bill.

What about property rights? There is little transparency. It is estimated the Federal Government now owns 653 million acres, 1 out of 3 acres in the United States, and 1 out of 2 acres in the Western United States. The 10 national heritage areas--what does that mean? The Park Service funds advisory committees in these heritage areas which means they have an advantage over the local residents because they have money. So they come in and pass requirements and code changes that impact private property rights in all of these areas.

So if you are in the heritage area or if you are abutting it, you now have the Federal Government funding a group that may be counter to your own private property rights. Eighty wilderness areas and another 2.2 million acres. Recent court decisions have now said being in the wilderness area isn't enough. If you are close to it, you can't have your rights; we will decide what you do with your land.

Ninety-two national scenic rivers--again, eminent domain--anything touching it or anything they want to have touch it, they have eminent domain to take private property, and we are creating 92 of those. So if you live along one of those rivers, you should worry about whether you are going to have the freedom to do with your property as you want, whether you are on the river or not. You just have to be in proximity.

Six national trail designations. The underlying National Trails Act grants land acquisition and eminent domain authority. So if they want to put a national trail through your backyard, they can come and take your home. Do we really want to give that kind of capability, and is now the time to do it?

Here is a quote from the National Property Rights Advocates:

This bill is a serious threat to all property owners in

this country. Over the past several decades there has been a

proliferation of programs dedicated to the preservation of

land that has extended the grasp of the Federal Government

and its influence over private property rights.

Amen.

As a result of this legislation, landowners will see their

property value diminish due to increased land use regulations

and outdoor recreation enthusiasts will find new restrictions

on both public and private land.

So you can have private land where you allow people to horseback ride, but if you are next to one of these areas and they are not allowed in that area, you are not going to be allowed. So you may actually even lose income because you no longer have that as a capability of your property.

The experts go on and say:

This legislation should never arbitrarily attempt to seize

land from the public and restrict its use as this package

will.

The problem is, there is no priority in this bill--there is no priority for energy independence or less dependence. There is no priority to protect rights that are guaranteed under the Constitution.

Let's think for a minute about what we have tasked the American agencies with. The National Park Service, here is what they are responsible for: 84 million acres of land in the National Park Service, 391 different units; 54 national wilderness areas which include 44 million acres; 15 wild and scenic rivers, and we are getting ready to add 92 to that; 40 national heritage areas, and we are getting ready to add 12; 28 national memorials, 4 national parkways, 120 national historic parks, 20 national preserves and reserves, 24 national battlefields, 18 national recreation areas, 74 national monument areas, 10 national seashores, 4 national lake shores, 3,565 miles of national scenic trails, 12,250 miles of unpaved trails, 46 miles of Canadian border, 285 miles of Mexican border to patrol and manage, 27,000 historic structures--27,000 historic structures that are falling down-- 26,830 camp sites, 7,580 administrative and public use buildings, 8,505 monuments and statues, 1,804 bridges and tunnels, 505 dams, 8,500 miles of road that they have to maintain yearly, 680 waste water treatment systems, and 272 million visits annually.

The National Park Service has a $9.6 billion maintenance backlog, so severe that the backlog grew $400 million since the time we first passed this bill and its coming back to us. The backlog has grown by $400 million, which includes some of our treasures--the USS Arizona Memorial, where 1,117 American sailors were killed--and faces a backlog of $33.4 million. It is not getting fixed; Gettysburg National Battlefield, 51,000 casualties in 3 days, $29 million backlog; the Grand Canyon National Park, $299 million backlog; the Statue of Liberty Park, $197 million backlog; The National Mall in Washington, DC--The Mall that is just west of here--$700 million backlog. There is even miscellaneous and supposedly noncontroversial provisions in the bill that could pose a threat to American families. It is not intended; it is just that it is a consequence.

In this bill is a little provision that if you are on Federal lands and you happen to pick up a rock--not intentionally to steal a fossil, but if it is a fossil, 5 years in jail, and they can confiscate your automobile, plus a fine. One of the amendments we have tries to fix that. We don't have a big problem with fossils being stolen, but we are going to fix a problem that isn't great by this amendment, by this bill, and we need to clean it up.

There is a provision to codify an existing agency program at the Bureau of Land Management which will, in fact, consolidate power over 38 million acres of land onto a few anti-energy, anti-recreational bureaucrats. This jurisdiction will extend the wilderness study areas lands, many of which have been deemed already nonsuitable for wilderness.

I am going to make a point later in the presentation just to show my colleagues--as a matter of fact, I will make it right now. One of the things the law requires is that we, in fact, do studies on the applicability of lands for wilderness area. My staff just had time to go through California, Oregon, and Washington. By law, it is mandated there has to be a study to see if it is suitable. I am going to read through some of these.

Granite Mountain, CA. It is not suitable for wilderness recommendation because resource conflicts in the WSA include modern to high geothermal resource potential. It should never get a wilderness designation. We are going to designate it a wilderness area.

Spring Basin, oil and gas, moderate potential for occurrence based on several factors. Soda Mountain wilderness study area, California; again, the entire wilderness is considered to have a moderate potential for the occurrence of oil and gas. So we know in many of

these areas there is tremendous energy potential for us, and we are going to shut it off forever.

Sabinoso wilderness study area, oil and gas; Pinto Mountain, CA, zero acres--this is by the Bureau of Land Management--zero acres were deemed suitable for wilderness. Yet we are going to put that area in a wilderness classification. Beauty Mountain, CA, no wilderness is recommended for this wilderness study area. The wilderness values for most of the area are not outstanding at all and commonplace.

Little Jackson, Big Jackson, wilderness study area, Idaho, natural gas pipeline between it and a supposed source of minerals; Bruno River wilderness study area, geothermal resources are found at the northern and southern ends of it. The solitude of this area is frequently disrupted by flying military aircraft utilizing the U.S. Air Force bombing range just east of the wilderness study area.

I can go through Oregon, Idaho, Washington--and we will go through the rest of them before this debate is over--but the fact is, we are not even paying attention to what the law says. When we have a study that says we shouldn't be, we are putting them in wilderness areas anyway.

One of the things I would like to do is commend to my colleagues highlights of GAO-09-425T, a study released March 3, 2009, on the Department of the Interior by the GAO. I would bet my colleagues a nickel against a penny, or any multiple of that, that less than one person in the Senate besides myself has read this report because you can't read this report and come out and vote on this bill. This is the Government Accountability Office. What they say is, the Department of the Interior is essentially poorly run, poorly managed, and the safety and welfare of our people who are on BLM lands and in the national parks is at risk because of the poor management and the lack of oversight that has been carried out by Congress. It is the very same committee that brings us this bill.

Mr. President, I also commend to my colleagues the testimony of Mary Kendall, the acting inspector general for the Department of the Interior, her statement before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. When you read it, it will scare you to death. Here is what the internal inspector general is saying, and it mirrors what the GAO is saying. Yet this has received zero consideration from the authors of this bill; otherwise, we would see an opportunity to fix the problems that are outlined in these two documents in this bill. There has been no consideration to fix the problems and no significant oversight.

What does it find? At no point during their testimony did they agree that it was a good idea to add any additional responsibilities to the Department of the Interior, based on what has been found: We find ourselves in the biggest mess in terms of maintenance. There is actually a public safety and health issue for people who are visiting our parks highlighted throughout both of these reports. There is no attempt to fix that, no attempt to authorize the money to get the backlog caught up with what we presently have and should be taking care of. There is no attempt whatsoever.

In the GAO report--I quoted almost $9 billion--they are saying it is between $13.2 billion and $19.4 billion to get our national parks up to date and manage the things we should be managing. In contrast, the entire budget for the Department of the Interior in 2007 was under $11 billion. We are going to take significant moneys that should be spent on the backlog of repair and maintenance and we are going to use that to implement this 1,243-page bill. I don't get it. I don't understand the lack of common sense. I understand the political drive. I understand we want to do things for people back at home. But I don't understand why there hasn't been a change in behavior given the economic situation we are in. I flat don't get it. I guess I have a lot to learn about politics.

The GAO wasn't necessarily critical of the management of the Department of the Interior, they were really critical of Congress. They said that although Interior has made a concentrated effort to address its deferred backlog, the dollar estimate of the backlog has continued to escalate. It sounds as if they need help. The last thing they need is another 3 million acres for which they have to be responsible. They classify the backlog into four categories: roads, bridges, and trails, between $6 billion and $9 billion; buildings, including historic buildings, between $2 billion and $3.5 billion; irrigation, dams, and other water structures, between $2.4 billion and $3.6 billion; recreation sites and fisheries, between $2 billion and $2.93 billion.

The Department of Interior by itself manages more than 500 million acres of Federal land, more than 1.8 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf, and its 70,000 employees working in 2,400 locations. Yet congressional leadership intends to add another 3 million acres and hundreds of new commitments to DOI in this bill.

In one instance of mismanagement, in this GAO report, GAO points out that the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for 132,000 acres of farmland, most of which it doesn't manage. However, even though these farmlands are unwanted, the Fish and Wildlife Service cannot sell these lands because they are now part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. So Fish and Wildlife owns thousands of acres of good farmland that it doesn't manage and doesn't even inspect. It is less than 13 percent of the land they inspect yearly. It is land we could use for agricultural production, but we don't use it because we in the Congress have handicapped them.

What the GAO report also said was, in describing the maintenance backlogs, that the deterioration of these facilities can impair public health and safety, reduce employee morale and productivity, and increase the cost for major repairs and early replacement of structures and equipment.

Other groups have made similar observations. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, ``From neglected trails to dirty or deteriorating facilities, national parks across the country are showing the strain of budget shortfalls in excess of $600 million annually. . . .'' It will be greater than that this year. ``The visitor center at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii is overcrowded, its foundation is cracking, and it is sinking. . . .a shortage of staff and funding limits the ability of the Park Service to maintain campgrounds at Nevada's Great Basin National Park. Broken benches, dilapidated buildings, and a crumbling boardwalk greet visitors to Riis Park in Gateway National Recreation Area in New York and New Jersey. Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico lacks funding to maintain and repair the park's 28 miles of backcountry trails. As a result, trails are damaged by heavy use and weather, compromising the experiences of visitors and the integrity of cultural resources and nearby natural resources that become trampled when visitors cannot follow the trails.'' They are not maintained, and that becomes an ecological problem.

According to Acting IG Mary Kendall, ``Our work has documented decades of maintenance, health and safety issues that place the Department of Interior employees and the public at risk.'' She listed the following examples of where poor management has led to safety concerns:

The U.S. Park Police, responsible for maintaining security at national icons, ``failed to establish a comprehensive security program and lacks adequate staffing and formal training for those responsible for protection [of those assets].''

Opportunities for improvement remain in the security of our Nation's dams.

The Department's Office of Law Enforcement, Security, and Emergency Management still struggles with issuing centralized policy and providing effective oversight of DOI law enforcement.

In 2006, they found a National Park Service visitor center literally falling apart, severe deterioration at the Bureau of Indian Education elementary and secondary schools, and Fish and Wildlife employees working for almost 7 years in two buildings that were condemned and closed to the public.

That is how good the oversight is that we have done.

They identified abandoned mines where members of the public had been ``killed, injured, or exposed to dangerous environmental contaminants''

by abandoned mines, and Congress is prioritizing a massive increase in the public lands without funding or prioritizing the true national concerns in DOI.

What was also found in the GAO report is that despite increasing firefighting funds fourfold, there is incompetent forest fire management. The fact is that they are made worse because of poor management. We have done nothing for that.

Her statement was:

In other words, DOI has not managed to even develop goals

for maximizing fire management and prevention funds.

Another statement is:

High prevalence of waste and fraud in the procurement and

Federal assistance process.

They also found problems throughout the solicitation process: a lack of presolicitation planning, a lack of competition, selection of inappropriate award vehicles, and poor administration of contracts and grants.

Mary Kendall said:

Financial management has remained a top challenge for the

department.

Why don't we fix it? You cannot fix what you cannot measure. Yet we are going to add this bloated bill.

There is something everybody should know. For the Native American schools in this country, we are spending a billion dollars a year for 50,000 kids. And when you look at performance, what you see is something akin, in many areas, to Washington, DC--not all but in many. The cost per student running through that is $20,000. We could put them in the best private schools, with the best private teachers, and bunk them, for $20,000 a year. Yet we continue to allow this.

BLM grazing fees collected were $12 million in fiscal year 2004--that is the latest year for which we have numbers, which tells you something about the accounting--even though the cost to implement the grazing program was $58 million. We would be better off eliminating the grazing program and saving $46 million.

So what is it about this bill that has had me so persistent? I will tell you. It is a great example of what we do wrong. It is a great example of the worst tendency of Congress. We were in an energy-short environment, and even though it doesn't feel that way today, it will feel that way 10, 12, 18 months from now. We are going to eliminate the potential for us getting out of it. We are going to add significant responsibilities to an agency that both the GAO and their own IG says is in trouble. Yet we don't approach anything to fix it.

We are going to make everybody feel good in this body because they all have something in the bill and they can go home and say: Look what I did, look what I accomplished. I got something that is important for our State. The problem with that thinking is that, when we only think in a parochial manner--if I only think about Oklahoma or if the Senator from Texas only thinks about Texas or any other Senator thinks only about their State and themselves--the whole country loses. Not once in our oath does it say that our allegiance is to our State. What it says is that our allegiance is to our country. And if our country is not healthy, no State can be healthy. Yet we have allowed parochialism and the politics of the Senate to design a bill that, for sure, will pass but which in the long run is going to be harmful to the country. It is going to pass. It will have 65 or 70 votes, maybe even 80 votes, because the press release at home is more important than the principle in Washington. Consequently, not only will we spend this $11 billion and overburden an agency that is struggling to keep itself above water, we will commit the Department of Interior to further backlogs, further problems, and we will strangle our ability to respond both with clean energy and the energy we know we are going to need for the next 20 years the next time the supply-demand balance gets upset.

The question the American people ought to ask is, Is it worth it? Is it worth it for somebody from Oklahoma to get something and to do this to the Nation as a whole? Is it responsible? Is that how our country is going to work in the future? Are we going to always place parochial interests first or are we going to go back and grab ahold of the heritage which made this country great, which says the politician doesn't matter; the principles and forbearance of our forefathers in accomplishing what is best for the nation, is that going to win the day? My thoughts are that it won't. When it doesn't win the day, I don't lose--I fought for it--but my kids lose, my grandkids lose, and so does everybody else in this country. In the name of playing the good game, what we are doing is undermining our country.

We have a lot of financial problems in front of us today. We as a nation can get out of those problems. As a matter of fact, we will get out of those in spite of the U.S. Congress because what makes America great is its people, not its politicians. What makes America great is the fact that the people get up every day, and no matter what is ahead of them, they will struggle to try to defeat the problems in front of them to make a better life for themselves, their kids, and their neighbors. We could learn a great deal from the average American citizen as we approach the legislation.

This little bill, which I assure you nobody in this body has read, is a compilation of 170 bills--some good; some don't have any of the negative effects I have described. But 50 of them are going to have devastating effects. And how we respond, how the American people respond to our doing this, is going to reflect on the character of the American people. They need to become informed about what we are doing.

Later today, we will have a unanimous consent that I thank the majority leader for. He has the toughest job in the Senate, and I recognize that. I have given him fits on this bill. I don't apologize for that. I think this bill is the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reason. But we will have a unanimous consent agreement that allows six amendments, which I will offer either later this evening or tomorrow, which eliminate some of the stupidity in this bill. It won't fix the bill. It won't fix the problem I have described.

We are then going to walk out of here happy, because it will go back to the House, not have a chance to be amended in the House, and the President is going to sign a bill that is going to hurt our energy independence. We are going to hear all sorts of statements to the contrary, but that is not true. The fact is it is going to hurt our capability of becoming more self-sufficient for our own energy needs.

So a year or 18 months from now, when you are no longer paying under $2 for gasoline, and it is $4, I hope the American people will remember this bill, because this is the start of the battle against undermining utilizing our own resources in our own country for what is in the best long-term interest--not the short-term--for our country. And it doesn't have anything to do with climate change or global warming. Because if it did, we wouldn't worry about 20 years of carbon usage when we know we are going to go away from it.

Mr. President, I thank you for your patience and the time today. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on legislation I am introducing today that relates to congenital heart disease research. Congenital heart disease is a rapidly growing national health problem. Congenital heart defects are the most common and most deadly form of birth defects, affecting nearly 1 percent of births, approximately 36,000 a year. In fact, a child is born with a congenital heart defect every 15 minutes. A congenital heart defect occurs when heart structures are malformed, missing or in the wrong place. There are over 30 types of congenital heart defects. These defects cause congenital heart disease--cardiovascular problems caused by the birth defect.

The good news is that modern medicine has made major advances in treating heart defects in newborns. In 1950, a child born with a congenital heart defect only had a 20 percent chance of surviving, but today that number has increased to 90 percent. Due to the increase in childhood survival rates, the congenital heart disease population increases by an estimated 5 percent every year.

However, the bad news is that there is no cure for congenital heart disease. Even survivors of successful childhood intervention face lifelong risks, including heart failure, rhythmic disorders, stroke, renal dysfunction, and neurocognitive dysfunction. Sadly, the estimated life expectancy for those with congenital heart disease is significantly lower than for the general population. The life expectancy for those born with moderately complex heart defects is 55, while the estimated life expectancy for those born with highly complex defects is between 35 and 40.

Unfortunately, fewer than 10 percent of adults living with complex congenital heart disease currently receive the cardiac care they need, and many don't know that they should have life-long specialized health surveillance. Even with access to the best care, living with congenital heart disease involves risk. But for people who don't have the medical care or who don't have it promptly, the risks of premature death or disability are much higher.

In 2004, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute convened a working group on congenital heart disease. This group recommended developing a research network for clinical research, establishing a national database of patients, and creating an outreach education program on the need for continued cardiac care.

Today, I am pleased to introduce the Congenital Heart Futures Act, which builds on these recommendations in several ways. First, the legislation authorizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, to lead a comprehensive public education and awareness campaign around congenital heart disease. Next, it authorizes a National Congenital Heart Disease Registry at the CDC to track the epidemiology of congenital heart disease and creates an advisory committee to provide expert information and advice to CDC. And, finally, it authorizes congenital heart disease research through NHLBI.

Despite the prevalence and seriousness of congenital heart disease, research, data collection, education, and awareness are limited. The Congenital Heart Futures Act will help prevent premature death and disability in this rapidly growing but dramatically underserved population.

I say to those who are interested in promoting health research, this is an area where we can expend more effort and save more lives. I hope my colleagues will take a look at this legislation which we are introducing today and join me in cosponsoring it.

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

Later this week we will mark World Water Day. It is an important reminder of the many challenges we continue to face in providing clean water and sanitation to the world's poor.

We have made progress in recent years, but around the world today, nearly 1 billion people continue to lack access to clean, safe water. More than 2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Most of these people live on less than $2 a day. They are the voiceless and the powerless of the world.

That is why today, Senator Bob Corker and Senator Patty Murray and I are introducing the Paul Simon Water for the World Act in the United States Senate. Congressmen Blumenauer and Payne have introduced the same bill in the House.

Our bill will reestablish U.S. leadership on one of the defining challenges of the 21st century: water.

The goal is to reach an additional 100 million of the world's poorest people with sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. This would represent the largest single commitment of any donor country to meeting the Millennium Development Goal on water, which is to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.

The bill targets aid to areas with the greatest need. It helps build the capacity of poor nations to meet their own water and sanitation challenges. It supports research on clean water technologies and regional partnerships to find solutions to shared water challenges.

The bill provides technical assistance--best practices, credit authorities, and training--to help countries expand access to clean water and sanitation. Our development experts will design the assistance based on local needs.

The Water for the World Act also designates within the State Department a high-level representative to ensure that water receives priority attention in our foreign policy, and establishes a new Office of Water at USAID to implement development assistance efforts related to water.

We ought to be assigning some of our best minds to solve the global water challenge. Right now, however, we don't have the staff at USAID to meet our goals on water or any other urgent development need.

At a time when it is more important than ever to win the hearts and minds of those around the world, as well as to address the challenges of fragile and failed states, our top development agency is suffering from an inexcusable shortage of expert staff.

In the 1960s, USAID had more than 5,000 Foreign Service Officers; today, when the needs are greater than ever, it has just over 1,000.

To correct this imbalance and help rebuild our smart power, I recently introduced a bill that would triple the number of USAID Foreign Service Officers by 2012. It's called the Increasing America's Development Capacity Act, and it's an essential part of our efforts to rebuild America's smart power role in the world--on food security, health, economic development, and yes, water.

I owe my passion on water to my friend and mentor, the man whose seat I now occupy in the U.S. Senate: the late Senator Paul Simon.

He was a profoundly good and wise man. He was also a visionary. He saw connections that many people missed. He saw answers to problems before most people even saw the problems.

As many of you know, solving the global water crisis was his last great campaign. In 1998, he wrote a book called ``Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It.''

Paul Simon would go anywhere, and talk to anyone, to try to get people and governments to take the global water crisis seriously. In the last year of his life, he traveled to Israel to moderate a panel between the Israeli and Palestinian water commissioners. He said that he and most of the people in the audience--were amazed that the two commissioners agreed on almost everything.

But when he looked in the newspapers the next day, there was nothing about the meeting. Not a word. He said that was ``because nobody was shouting at each other.'' That's part of the challenge.

The global water crisis is a quiet killer. In the developing world, water-related diseases claim the lives of 5,000 children every day. Diarrhea alone kills nearly 2 million children under the age of 5 each year. As CSIS's ``Global Water Futures'' report hauntingly points out, that is the equivalent of all the children under age 5 in New York and London combined.

Mothers who fear the deaths of their children bear more, in a desperate race against the odds. The lack of clean water enslaves poor women in other ways, as well. In many poor nations, women and girls walk two or three hours or more each way, every day, to collect water that is often dirty and unsafe.

The UN estimates that women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa spend a total of 40 billion working hours each year collecting water. That is equivalent to all of the hours worked in France in a year.

A developing economy cannot grow if its people are too busy collecting water, or too sick from drinking unsafe water, to work or to go to school.

What Senator Simon knew 10 years ago, and the rest of us are slowly coming around to see, is that we can't begin to solve the problems of global hunger and poverty without addressing the global water crisis.

And water is not simply a humanitarian challenge. It is a threat to global stability and the global economy.

Last June, Goldman Sachs held a meeting to assess the top five risks facing the world economy. Resource scarcity--including competition for water, food and energy--was at the top of the list.

Fortune magazine recently predicted that the global water crisis will be as serious in the 21st century as the oil crises were in the 20th, potentially leading to war.

Paul Simon understood the potential for conflicts over dwindling supplies of clean water. It alarmed him. He used to say, ``Nations go to war for oil, but there are substitutes for oil. There are no substitutes for water.'' We see that in the roots of the conflict in Darfur.

I have seen the challenge of water in so many of my recent trips abroad.

Two years ago I travelled to Jordan after a trip to Iraq. I went to talk with people there about the impact of the

war in Iraq on one of our most important allies in the region.

The Jordanian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Ms. Suhair-al-Ali, told me that between 600,000 and 700,000 Iraqi refugees were living in Jordan at that time. That was equivalent to 10 percent of Jordan's entire population. For us in the U.S., that would be the equivalent of 30 million refugees.

The massive influx of Iraqi refugees had strained the ability of Jordan's government to provide basic services almost to the breaking point. What did the minister identify as one of Jordan's biggest problems? Water.

It is not just Jordan. Water is central to the fate of the entire Middle East.

In his book, Paul Simon quoted former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as saying, ``If we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode. Peace will not be possible.''

You do not have to travel halfway around the world to see the devastating consequences of lack of access to clean water.

A few months ago I traveled to Haiti. This was my second visit and it is always a shock. A 90-minute plane ride from Miami takes you to another world.

There are no public sewage treatment or disposal systems anywhere in the country. Even in the capital, Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million people, the drainage canals are choked with garbage and sewage.

It is no wonder that Haiti has the highest infant and child mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. One-third of Haiti's children do not live to see the age of 5. The leading killer? Water-borne diseases: hepatitis, thyphoid and diarrhea.

While there, I visited a rural health clinic run by a group called Partners in Health, co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer. Dr. Farmer is a wonderful man who has improved the lives of so many, from Rwanda to Haiti.

He showed me a water purification kit that his clinic gives to nursing mothers with HIV/AIDS. This allows them to make formula for their babies and not transmit the virus through breastfeeding. It is simple, inexpensive, and life-saving.

Some years ago I visited Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Bolivia is an example of what awaits many countries' water supplies because of global warming.

Much of its population relies on melting glaciers for its water. But because of climate change the glaciers are not being replenished and some are already disappearing. These trends are happening from the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Alps to the Himalayas.

How will the world respond to the water needs such as Bolivia and others who rely on glaciers for their water supplies?

I recently returned from a visit to Cyprus. The island has been divided now for more than 30 years. The leaders on both sides are engaged in brave and important discussions to reunify the island. Amid this hopeful progress toward peace, another problem plagues this island--water.

The groundwater in Cyprus is being depleted too quickly, often for agriculture, and it is being replenished too often with salt water that creeps into the water table. Global warming is causing rainfall to decrease.

In recognition of the vast water challenges we face around the world, two years after Paul Simon died, Congress passed the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. President Bush signed it into law in December 2005.

It represents the first time the U.S. has codified our commitment to any of the Millennium Development Goals. The Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act makes safe water and basic sanitation a top priority for all U.S. foreign assistance.

In 2007 alone, it helped provide nearly 2 million people in over 30 countries with access to a better source of drinking water, and more than 1.5 million people with better sanitation.

The Water for the Poor Act is saving lives, but its impact could be greater. The Paul Simon Water for the World Act will help us expand these efforts to make a profound and sustainable difference in the lives of the world's poor.

As we prepare to mark World Water Day this Sunday, let us recommit ourselves to a new effort on safe water and sanitation.

Throughout history, civilized nations have put aside political differences to address compelling issues of life and survival. Our generation owes the world nothing less.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Imported Ethanol Parity Act of 2009.

This legislation is cosponsored by Senators Gregg, Bingaman, Collins, Cantwell and Martinez.

First, let me explain what this bill does.

The Imported Ethanol Parity Act instructs the President to lower the secondary ethanol import tariff, so that tariffs on ethanol are no higher than the subsidy for blending ethanol into gasoline.

This would restore parity between the real tariff faced by imported gasoline and ethanol, which currently compete.

This legislation is necessary because last year's Farm Bill shifted the function of ethanol tariffs.

Historically, there has been relative parity between ethanol subsidies and ethanol tariffs. The tariffs served to ``offset'' domestic subsidies for ethanol use, thereby preventing imported ethanol from benefiting from domestic subsidies.

But after passage of the Farm Bill, these tariffs began to serve as a real barrier to trade.

The Farm Bill maintained the primary 2.5 percent tariff and extended the secondary tariff for two more years at $0.54 per gallon, creating a combined tariff of $0.56 to $0.59 per gallon, depending on the sale price. But the Farm Bill reduced the ethanol blending subsidy that these tariffs are intended to offset to $0.45 per gallon.

This disparity means that an ethanol importer pays more tariff than he gets back in subsidy, and parity has been lost.

Specifically, an ethanol importer pays $0.11 to $0.14 per gallon of tariff to the U.S. Treasury that he never gets back from the ethanol subsidy.

Ethanol is therefore disadvantaged when it competes directly with other imported transportation fuels, such as gasoline and diesel.

It increases the cost of gasoline in the United States by making ethanol more expensive.

It prevents Americans from importing ethanol made from sugarcane. Sugar ethanol is the only available transportation fuel that works in today's cars and emits considerably less lifecycle greenhouse gas than gasoline.

It taxes imported transportation fuel from our friends in Brazil, India, and Australia, while oil and gasoline imports from OPEC enter the United States tax free.

It hinders the emergence of a global biofuels marketplace through which countries with a strong biofuel crop could sell fuel to countries that suffered drought or other agricultural difficulties in the same crop year. Such a global market would permit mutually beneficial trade between producing regions and stabilize both fuel and food prices.

It makes us more dependent on the Middle East for fuel when we should be increasing the number of countries from whom we buy fuel. When it comes to energy security for the United States, which has less than 3 percent of proven global oil reserves and 25 percent of demand, we must diversify supply.

Bottom Line: Until the tariff is lowered, the United States will tax the only fuel it can import that increases energy security, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and lowers gasoline prices.

This legislation responds to the Tariff's defenders.

In 2006 I introduced legislation to eliminate the ethanol tariff entirely, and in 2007 I cosponsored an amendment to the Energy Bill which would have eliminated the tariff.

The Imported Ethanol Parity Act is a different proposal that I believe addresses the concerns of tariff defenders.

The advocates of the $0.54 per gallon secondary tariff on ethanol imports have always argued that the tariff is necessary in order to offset the blender subsidy that applies to the use of all ethanol, whether produced domestically or internationally.

They argue that the ethanol subsidy exists to support American farmers who produce ethanol at higher cost than foreign producers. For instance, on May 6, 2006, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee stated on the Senate floor that, ``the U.S. tariff on ethanol operates as an offset to an excise tax credit that applies to both domestically produced and imported ethanol.''

On May 9, 2006, the Renewable Fuels Association stated in a press release: ``the secondary tariff exists as an offset to the tax incentive gasoline refiners receive for every gallon of ethanol they blend, regardless of the ethanol's origin.''

In a letter to Congress dated June 20, 2007, the American Coalition for Ethanol, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the National Sorghum Producers, and the Renewable Fuels Association stated that the blender tax credit is available to refiners regardless of whether the ethanol blended is imported or domestic. To prevent U.S. taxpayers from subsidizing foreign ethanol companies, Congress passed an offset to the tax credit that foreign companies pay in the form of a tariff.

In 2008, the Renewable Fuels Association's Executive Director asserted that ``The tariff is there not so much to protect the industry but the U.S. taxpayer.''

I ask tariff advocates to either support this legislation or explain how a tariff can justifiably be higher than the subsidy it is designed to offset.

Bottom Line: Ethanol from Brazil or Australia should not have to overcome a trade barrier that no drop of OPEC oil must face. The tariffs cannot be justifiably maintained at $0.56-$0.59 per gallon if its intent is to offset a $0.45 per gallon blender subsidy, and it should be reduced.

Climate Change is the most significant environmental challenge we face, and I believe that lowering the ethanol tariff will make it less expensive for the United States to combat global warming.

Here is how: the fuel we burn to power our cars is a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions warming our planet. In California, it accounts for 40 percent of all of our emissions. To reduce this impact, we need to increase the fuel efficiency of our vehicles and lower the lifecycle carbon emissions of the fuel itself.

For this reason, in the 110th Congress I introduced the Clean Fuels and Vehicles Act with Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

The legislation proposed a ``Low Carbon Fuels Standard,'' which would require each major oil company selling gasoline in the United States to reduce the average lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy in their gasoline by 3 percent by 2015 and by 3 percent more in 2020.

This concept became a major aspect of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, in which Congress requires oil companies to use an increasing quantity of ``advanced biofuels'' that produce at least 50 percent less lifecycle greenhouse gas than gasoline.

Unfortunately the ethanol tariff puts a trade barrier in front of the lowest carbon fuel available, making it considerably more expensive for the United States to lower the lifecycle carbon emissions of transportation fuel.

The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of ethanol vary depending on production methods and feedstocks, and these differences will impact the degree to which ethanol may be used to meet ``low-carbon'' fuel requirements under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

For instance, sugar cane ethanol plants use biomass from sugar stalks as process energy, resulting in less fossil fuel input compared to current corn-to-ethanol processes. By comparison, researchers at the University of California concluded that ``only 5 to 26 percent of the energy content in corn ethanol, is renewable. The rest is primarily natural gas and coal,'' which are used in the production process.

The most recent research compiled by the California Air Resources Board concluded that the direct lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of imported sugar based ethanol are 73 percent lower than gasoline, while the direct lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of corn based ethanol from the Midwest are 31 percent lower than gasoline.

Even when land use change is factored in, the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of sugar-based ethanol from Brazil is the single least emitting fuel option available for today's vehicles. It is only surpassed on an emissions basis by electric and fuel cell cars, which are unfortunately at least a few years away from widespread adoption.

Biofuels that protect our planet may be produced abroad, and we should not put tariffs in front of these fuels, if we import crude oil and gasoline tariff free.

This legislation accomplishes two goals: it corrects the Farm Bill's mistaken policy that imposed a real trade barrier on clean and climate friendly ethanol imports, giving gasoline imports a competitive advantage over cleaner fuel that simply should not exist at a time we are trying to combat climate change.

It prevents ethanol producers abroad from receiving American ethanol subsidies, which is supposedly the intent of the ethanol tariff.

I think it strikes the right balance, and I urge Congress to pass this legislation.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that is sponsored by every woman in the Senate. All 17 of us have come together to introduce legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, called the WASP. Senator Mikulski and I are taking the lead on this with the other 15 women Senators to finally honor over 1,000 of the bravest, most courageous women in U.S. military history.

This is a picture of those brave World War II pilots. They were the first women in history to fly America's military aircraft. Between 1942 and 1944, they were recruited to fly non-combat missions so every available male pilot could be deployed in combat.

The women pilots who graduated from Army Air Force flight training earned their silver WASP wings in Texas. The first class graduated at Ellington Field in Houston and the remaining classes from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.

Throughout their service, these courageous women flew over 60 million miles in every type of aircraft and on every type of mission flown by Army Air Force male pilots except direct combat missions. Although they took the military oath and were promised military status when they entered training, they were never afforded Active-Duty military status, were never commissioned, and were not granted veteran status until 1977, over 30 years after they had served. All these women volunteered to serve their country in wartime. They paid their own way to Texas for training, and when victory seemed certain and the program was shut down, they paid their own way back home.

Over 25,000 women applied for the program, but only 1,830 qualified women pilots were accepted. Unlike the males, females were required to be qualified pilots before they could even apply for the Army Air Force's military flight training program. By the time the war ended, 38 women pilots had lost their lives while flying for their country. Their families were not allowed to have an American flag placed on their coffins.

I wrote about the WASP in my 2004 book, ``American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.'' I wanted to raise public awareness about these military pioneers who have had a tremendous impact on the role of women in the military today. Their examples paved the way for the Armed Forces to lift the ban on women attending military flight training in the 1970s and opened the door for women to be fully integrated as pilots in the Armed Forces.

Today, women fly every type of aircraft, from combat fighter aircraft to the space shuttle. However, despite their cultural impact, the WASP have never received honors, nor have they been formally recognized by Congress for their wartime military service--until now. We, the women of the Senate, are introducing legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the courageous WASP of World War II.

The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest and most distinguished award this body can award to a civilian. These women are certainly worthy.

There are precedents for this action. In 2000 and 2006, this body awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, respectively. Those heroes deserved the same type of distinction, and they, too, served in World War II and were finally appropriately honored by their Government. Now it is time for Congress to celebrate the courage of another group of remarkable Americans who served with courage and honor and whose example brought historic change to our Nation. Of the 1,102 WASP, approximately 300 are still alive today and are living in almost every State of our Nation. They have earned this honor, and the time to bestow the honor is now before any of them are away from us and not able to come to the ceremony which I hope we will have.

I am so pleased that every female Senator, all 17 of us, are cosponsors of this bill, and I hope the rest of our colleagues will also join and that we can pass this bill expeditiously.

I would like to take a moment, with this wonderful picture in the background, to read from the bill that we have just introduced today:

Congress finds that--

(1) the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII, known as the

``WASP'', were the first women in history to fly American

military aircraft;

(2) more than 60 years ago, they flew fighter, bomber,

transport, and training aircraft in defense of America's

freedom;

(3) they faced overwhelming cultural and gender bias

against women in nontraditional roles and overcame multiple

injustices and inequities in order to serve their country;

(4) through their actions, the WASP eventually were the

catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women

pilots into the Armed Services;

(5) during the early months of World War II, there was a

severe shortage of combat pilots;

(6) Jacqueline Cochran, America's leading woman pilot of

the time, convinced General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air

Forces, that women, if given the same training as men, would

be equally capable of flying military aircraft and could then

take over some of the stateside military flying jobs, thereby

releasing hundreds of male pilots for combat duty;

(7) the severe loss of male combat pilots made the

necessity of utilizing women pilots to help in the war effort

clear to General Arnold, and a women's pilot training program

was soon approved;

(8) it was not until August, 1943, that the women aviators

would receive their official name;

(9) General Arnold ordered that all women pilots flying

military aircraft, including 28 civilian women ferry pilots,

would be named ``WASP'', Women Airforce Service Pilots;

(10) more than 25,000 American women applied for training,

but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath;

(11) exactly 1,074 of those trainees successfully completed

the 21 to 27 weeks of Army Air Force flight training,

graduated, and received their Army Air Force orders to report

to their assigned air base;

(12) on November 16, 1942, the first class of 29 women

pilots reported to the Houston, Texas Municipal Airport and

began the same military flight training as the male Army Air

Force cadets were taking;

(13) due to a lack of adequate facilities at the airport, 3

months later the training program was moved to Avenger Field

in Sweetwater, Texas;

(14) WASP were eventually stationed at 120 Army air bases

all across America;

(15) they flew more than 60,000,000 miles for their country

in every type of aircraft and on every type of assignment

flown by the male Army Air Force pilots, except combat;

(16) WASP assignments included test piloting, instructor

piloting, towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice,

ground-to-air anti-aircraft practice, ferrying, transporting

personnel and cargo (including parts for the atomic bomb),

simulated strafing, smoke laying, night tracking, and flying

drones;

In October 1943, male pilots were refusing to fly the B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the Widowmaker, because of its fatality record. General Arnold ordered WASP director Jacqueline Cochran to collect 25 WASP to be trained to fly the B-26 to prove to the male pilots that it was safe to fly.

During the existence of the WASP, 38 women lost their lives while serving their country. Their bodies were sent home in poorly crafted pine boxes. Their burial was at the expense of their families or classmates. There were no gold stars allowed in their parent's windows, and because they were not considered military, no American flags were allowed on their coffins.

In 1944, General Arnold made a personal request to Congress to militarize the WASP, and it was denied.

On December 7, 1944, in a speech to the last graduating class of WASP, General Arnold said:

You and more than 900 of your sisters have shown you can

fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. I salute you . . .

We of the Army Air Force are proud of you. We will never

forget our debt to you.

With victory in World War II almost certain, on December 2, 1944, the

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that is sponsored by every woman in the Senate. All 17 of us have come together to introduce legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, called the WASP. Senator Mikulski and I are taking the lead on this with the other 15 women Senators to finally honor over 1,000 of the bravest, most courageous women in U.S. military history.

This is a picture of those brave World War II pilots. They were the first women in history to fly America's military aircraft. Between 1942 and 1944, they were recruited to fly non-combat missions so every available male pilot could be deployed in combat.

The women pilots who graduated from Army Air Force flight training earned their silver WASP wings in Texas. The first class graduated at Ellington Field in Houston and the remaining classes from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.

Throughout their service, these courageous women flew over 60 million miles in every type of aircraft and on every type of mission flown by Army Air Force male pilots except direct combat missions. Although they took the military oath and were promised military status when they entered training, they were never afforded Active-Duty military status, were never commissioned, and were not granted veteran status until 1977, over 30 years after they had served. All these women volunteered to serve their country in wartime. They paid their own way to Texas for training, and when victory seemed certain and the program was shut down, they paid their own way back home.

Over 25,000 women applied for the program, but only 1,830 qualified women pilots were accepted. Unlike the males, females were required to be qualified pilots before they could even apply for the Army Air Force's military flight training program. By the time the war ended, 38 women pilots had lost their lives while flying for their country. Their families were not allowed to have an American flag placed on their coffins.

I wrote about the WASP in my 2004 book, ``American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.'' I wanted to raise public awareness about these military pioneers who have had a tremendous impact on the role of women in the military today. Their examples paved the way for the Armed Forces to lift the ban on women attending military flight training in the 1970s and opened the door for women to be fully integrated as pilots in the Armed Forces.

Today, women fly every type of aircraft, from combat fighter aircraft to the space shuttle. However, despite their cultural impact, the WASP have never received honors, nor have they been formally recognized by Congress for their wartime military service--until now. We, the women of the Senate, are introducing legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the courageous WASP of World War II.

The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest and most distinguished award this body can award to a civilian. These women are certainly worthy.

There are precedents for this action. In 2000 and 2006, this body awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, respectively. Those heroes deserved the same type of distinction, and they, too, served in World War II and were finally appropriately honored by their Government. Now it is time for Congress to celebrate the courage of another group of remarkable Americans who served with courage and honor and whose example brought historic change to our Nation. Of the 1,102 WASP, approximately 300 are still alive today and are living in almost every State of our Nation. They have earned this honor, and the time to bestow the honor is now before any of them are away from us and not able to come to the ceremony which I hope we will have.

I am so pleased that every female Senator, all 17 of us, are cosponsors of this bill, and I hope the rest of our colleagues will also join and that we can pass this bill expeditiously.

I would like to take a moment, with this wonderful picture in the background, to read from the bill that we have just introduced today:

Congress finds that--

(1) the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII, known as the

``WASP'', were the first women in history to fly American

military aircraft;

(2) more than 60 years ago, they flew fighter, bomber,

transport, and training aircraft in defense of America's

freedom;

(3) they faced overwhelming cultural and gender bias

against women in nontraditional roles and overcame multiple

injustices and inequities in order to serve their country;

(4) through their actions, the WASP eventually were the

catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women

pilots into the Armed Services;

(5) during the early months of World War II, there was a

severe shortage of combat pilots;

(6) Jacqueline Cochran, America's leading woman pilot of

the time, convinced General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air

Forces, that women, if given the same training as men, would

be equally capable of flying military aircraft and could then

take over some of the stateside military flying jobs, thereby

releasing hundreds of male pilots for combat duty;

(7) the severe loss of male combat pilots made the

necessity of utilizing women pilots to help in the war effort

clear to General Arnold, and a women's pilot training program

was soon approved;

(8) it was not until August, 1943, that the women aviators

would receive their official name;

(9) General Arnold ordered that all women pilots flying

military aircraft, including 28 civilian women ferry pilots,

would be named ``WASP'', Women Airforce Service Pilots;

(10) more than 25,000 American women applied for training,

but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath;

(11) exactly 1,074 of those trainees successfully completed

the 21 to 27 weeks of Army Air Force flight training,

graduated, and received their Army Air Force orders to report

to their assigned air base;

(12) on November 16, 1942, the first class of 29 women

pilots reported to the Houston, Texas Municipal Airport and

began the same military flight training as the male Army Air

Force cadets were taking;

(13) due to a lack of adequate facilities at the airport, 3

months later the training program was moved to Avenger Field

in Sweetwater, Texas;

(14) WASP were eventually stationed at 120 Army air bases

all across America;

(15) they flew more than 60,000,000 miles for their country

in every type of aircraft and on every type of assignment

flown by the male Army Air Force pilots, except combat;

(16) WASP assignments included test piloting, instructor

piloting, towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice,

ground-to-air anti-aircraft practice, ferrying, transporting

personnel and cargo (including parts for the atomic bomb),

simulated strafing, smoke laying, night tracking, and flying

drones;

In October 1943, male pilots were refusing to fly the B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the Widowmaker, because of its fatality record. General Arnold ordered WASP director Jacqueline Cochran to collect 25 WASP to be trained to fly the B-26 to prove to the male pilots that it was safe to fly.

During the existence of the WASP, 38 women lost their lives while serving their country. Their bodies were sent home in poorly crafted pine boxes. Their burial was at the expense of their families or classmates. There were no gold stars allowed in their parent's windows, and because they were not considered military, no American flags were allowed on their coffins.

In 1944, General Arnold made a personal request to Congress to militarize the WASP, and it was denied.

On December 7, 1944, in a speech to the last graduating class of WASP, General Arnold said:

You and more than 900 of your sisters have shown you can

fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. I salute you . . .

We of the Army Air Force are proud of you. We will never

forget our debt to you.

With victory in World War II almost certain, on December 2, 1944, the