Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 2009

Mr. President, on a day in a week when there is a lot of news where people are hurting in a serious economy, I have some good news to report, and it will just take me a few minutes to do it. Our senior Senator, Mr. Byrd, Senator Ted Kennedy, who is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and I introduced legislation today that will help push the teaching of U.S. history in our classrooms. The way I like to describe it is by saying this: that it will help to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place, in our classrooms, so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American.

The legislation which we have introduced would expand summer academies for outstanding teachers, authorize new teacher programs, require States to set standards for the teaching and learning of U.S. History, and create new opportunities to compare the tests that students take on U.S. history.

Specifically, the legislation would, No. 1, authorize 100 new summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of U.S. history and align those academies with locations in our national park system, such as the John Adams' House in Massachusetts or the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I see the pages sitting here today. They are real students of U.S. history because they live it and learn it each day they are here. I don't know what their scores are on the advanced placement tests for U.S. history, but I know one fact, which the Chair may be interested in learning: The highest scores in any high school in America on the advanced placement test for U.S. history is not from a New England prep school or a Tennessee prep school or an elite school in some rich part of America; it is from the page school of the House of Representatives. They had better scores on U.S. history than any other high school. I don't know what the Senate page scores were, so I won't compare them.

The point is--and this is an idea David McCullough, a well-known author, had: We would expand the number of presidential and congressional academies for outstanding students and teachers and have them placed in the National Park Service initiative.

Second, the bill we've introduced today would double the authorization of funding for the teaching of American history programs in local school districts, which today involve 20,000 students as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Third, it would require States to develop and implement standards for student assessments in U.S. history, although there would be no Federal reporting requirement, as there is now for reading and mathematics.

Finally, it would allow States to compare history and civics student test scores in the 8th and 12th grades by establishing a 10-State pilot program expanding the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is also called the ``Nation's Report Card.'' We have a tradition in the Senate where each of us, when we first arrive, make a maiden speech. We still call it that. Most of us pick a subject that is important to us. I made mine almost exactly 6 years ago, on March 4, 2003. The subject was something I cared about then and care about today and on which we have made some progress.

I argued, as I mentioned earlier, it was time to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so as our children grow, they can learn what it means to be an American. On the ``Nation's Report Card,'' our worst scores for our seniors in high school are not in math or science but in U.S. history. It will be very difficult for us as a country to succeed if we don't learn where we came from.

I ask unanimous consent that the speech I made 6 years ago be printed in the Record immediately following my remarks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if Senator Byrd and Senator Kennedy make statements today on this legislation, as I believe they will, that our statements be put in the Record in about the same place, with Senator Byrd's first, then Senator Kennedy's, and mine third.

Mr. President, in the speech I made 6 years ago, I called it the American History and Civics Education Act. I suggested we create summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of American history. The idea was to create one of those academies focused on American history and civics for teachers and one for students and to see how they worked and to gradually expand them.

These presidential academies for students and teachers were modeled after the Tennessee Governors School, which I began when I was Governor of Tennessee, which still continue today, after 20 years. They are relatively inexpensive. They are 2-, 3-, or 4-week schools for students, and one for teachers. They held students in a variety of subjects, such as mathematics, science, the arts, international studies. They come together for a while and inspire one another, and then they go back to their schools and inspire their fellow students. They have been a great success in Tennessee and in other States.

Senator Reid, the majority leader, was the whip at that time. He was on the floor when I made my remarks and he asked to be the prime cosponsor of the legislation, and he was. Senator Kennedy, who has had a long interest in U.S. history, takes his family once a year to some an historical part of the United States. A couple years ago, they went into Virginia and saw where Patrick Henry made his famous speech. I kid him and say he cares so much about history because he is a part of it in such a big way. Senator Kennedy heard about the proposal, and he went along the Democratic side and rounded up 20 cosponsors of the legislation. So, Senator Kennedy, Senator Reid and I and several Republican Senators introduced a bill. We had a hearing during which Senator Byrd testified on behalf of my proposal for summer academies. It passed the Senate and the House, and we have had those summer academies now for three summers. One of those is at the Ashland University in Ashland, OH, which has been a great success. I see the students and teachers every summer. I bring them on the Senate floor, and it has been proven that it is good for teachers and good for our country. So that is the reason we want to expand those programs. We also felt we would meet as a group--those of us who have something to do with U.S. history here--and we met with the Library of Congress and with other parts of the Federal Government and many of us are involved in helping Americans learn more about our country's history, especially young people. As part of that, we thought it would be wise to try to consolidate in one section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--which we call No Child Left Behind--the various programs we already have for U.S. history and then to expand those that seemed worthwhile.

That is what this legislation does. There is a great need for it. I mentioned earlier that it is our worst subject for high school, even though some of our pages seem to do pretty well. Very few students score at or above the proficient level on the American history exam conducted by the National Assessment for Education Progress. Twenty percent of fourth graders were proficient in U.S. history, 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient in U.S. history, and 12 percent of high school seniors were proficient in U.S. history.

In addition, the No Child Left Behind Act may have had the unintentional effect of reducing the focus on U.S. history, as some school districts have concentrated their efforts on reading and mathematics. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to improve and expand State and local efforts to increase the understanding and awareness of American history and to do it, of course, in a way that doesn't preempt State and local responsibility and authority for elementary and secondary education.

Therefore, what the legislation we are doing today will do is expand the summer academies. We call them presidential academies for teachers and congressional academies for students. Those academies were created in 2004 to the number of 100 in the summer gradually over the years. The priority would be to place those academies in the National Park Service's national centennial parks initiative so the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and other museums that have innovative programs in U.S. history can be aligned with these academies. David McCullough, for example, suggested we have the academies at locations such as Andrew Jackson's home in Heritage. I think an even better idea would be to have a week for U.S. teachers at John Adams' home in Massachusetts, with Mr. McCullough as the teacher. That is the idea.

Secondly, we would expand the Nation's report card--we call that NAEP--so there could be a 10-State pilot program for American history and civics student assessment in grades 8 and 12. Today, our Nation's report card doesn't measure State performance in American history. It gives us a picture of how 8th to 12th graders do nationally. This would permit Colorado, Tennessee, Alaska, and California to compare the seniors and, in doing so, call attention to improvements that might need to be made.

The third thing would be to require all States to develop and implement standards and assessments in American history under the No Child Left Behind Act. But it doesn't require any Federal reporting, as we do in other subjects.

Finally, it would take Senator Byrd's program--called Teaching American History, which he put into the No Child Left Behind Act 6 years ago--and it would double the authorization for that program from $100 million to $200 million, so it can serve even more than the 20,000 teachers it serves today.

I thank David Cleary and Sarah Rittling of my staff, who have worked hard with the staffs of Senators Byrd and Kennedy to prepare this legislation. We intend to invite all Members of the Senate, and we hope the House will join us in cosponsoring this.

Finally, I wish to tell one short story to conclude my remarks about some of the teachers who have participated. One of the things a Senator can do is to bring someone on the Senate floor who is not a Senator. It has to be done when the Senate is not in session and I have found it is a great privilege for most Americans. Early one morning last summer, I brought onto the Senate floor the 50 teachers who had been selected-- one from each State--for the presidential academy for outstanding teachers of American history. I showed them Daniel Webster's desk right here, and I showed them Jefferson Davis's desk, which is back there, and where the sword mark is where when the Union soldier came in and started chopping the desk, and the soldier who was stopped by a commander who said, ``We came to save the Union, not destroy it.'' I showed them where the majority and minority leaders speak. They saw ``E Pluribus Unum'' up there, and ``In God We Trust'' back there. They learned that we operate by unanimous consent, and we talked about what it would be like to actually try to operate a classroom by unanimous consent, much less the Senate.

As you might expect, they asked a lot of good questions, being outstanding history teachers. I especially remember the final question. I believe it was from the teacher from Oregon who asked: Senator, what would you like for us to take back to our students? I said that what I hope you will take back is that I get up every day, and I believe most of us on either side get up hoping that by the end of the day, we will have done something to make our country look better. It may not look that way on television or read that way in the newspaper because we are sent here to debate great issues. That produces conflict and disagreement a lot of the time. I feel, and I believe all of us feel, we are in a very special place, in a very special country, with a very special tradition. We would like for the students to know that and to know that is how we feel about the job we have.

I am delighted today that Senators Byrd and Kennedy, who have contributed so much to U.S. history over the years, both in their own personalities and by legislation they have introduced, have joined me in this effort to expand the Federal programs that focus on putting U.S. history and civics in a little higher place in the classroom so that our students learn what it means to be an American.

I invite my colleagues to join us, and I invite all Americans to join us in their communities, in their schools and in their States, to make that a priority.

Exhibit 1

Remarks of Sen. Alexander--American History and Civics Education Act

Introduction

Mr. President, from the Senate's earliest days, new members

have observed as we just heard a ritual of remaining silent

during floor debates for a period of time that ranged from

several weeks to two years. By waiting a respectful amount of

time before giving their so-called ``maiden speeches,''

freshman senators hoped their senior colleagues would respect

them for their humility.

This information comes from the Senate historian, Richard

Baker, who told me that in 1906, the former Governor of

Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, arrived here ``anything but

humble'' (and I'm sensitive to this as a former governor). He

waited just three months, a brief period by the standards of

those days, before launching his first major address. He

spoke for eight hours over three days; his remarks in the

Congressional Record consumed 148 pages. As he began to

speak, most of the senators present in the chamber pointedly

rose from their desks and departed. LaFollete's wife,

observing from the gallery, wrote, ``There was no mistaking

that this was a polite form of hazing.''

From our first day here, as the majority leader said, we

new members of this 108th Congress have been encouraged to

speak up, and most of us have. But, with the encouragement of

the majority leader, several of us intend also to revive the

tradition of the maiden address by making a signature speech

on an issue that is important both to the country and to each

of us. I want to thank my colleagues who are here, and I want

to assure all of you that I will not speak for three days--as

former Governor LaFollette did.

Mr. President, I rise to address the intersection of two

urgent concerns that will determine our country's future.

These are also the two topics I care about the most: the

education of our children and the principles that unite us as

Americans.

It is time that we put the teaching of American history and

civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our

children can grow up learning what it means to be an

American.

Especially during such serious times when our values and

way of life are being attacked, we need to understand clearly

just what those values are.

In this, most Americans would agree. For example, in

Thanksgiving remarks in 2001, President Bush praised our

nation's response to September 11. ``I call it,'' he said,

``the American character.'' At about the same time, while

speaking at Harvard, former Vice-President Al Gore said, ``We

should [fight] for the values that bind us together as a

country.''

Both men were invoking a creed of ideas and values in which

most Americans believe. ``It has been our fate as a nation,''

the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote, ``not to have

ideologies but to be one.'' This value based identity has

inspired both patriotism and division at home, as well as

emulation and hatred abroad. For terrorists, as well as for

those who admire America, at issue is the United States

itself--not what we do, but who we are.

Yet our children do not know what makes America

exceptional. National exams show that three-quarters of the

nation's 4th, 8th and 12th graders are not proficient in

civics knowledge and one-third does not even have basic

knowledge, making them ``civic illiterates.''

Children are not learning about American history and civics

because they are not being taught it. American history has

been watered down, and civics is too often dropped from the

curriculum entirely.

Until the 1960s, civics education, which teaches the duties

of citizenship, was a regular part of the high school

curriculum, but today's college graduates probably have less

civics knowledge than high school graduates of 50 years ago.

Reforms, so-called, in the '60s and '70s resulted in the

widespread elimination of required classes and curriculum in

civics education. Today, more than half the states have no

requirement for students to take a course--even for one

semester--in American government.

To help put the teaching of American history and civics in

its rightful place, today I introduce legislation along with

several distinguished co-sponsors including: Senators Reid,

Gregg, Santorum, Inhofe and Nickles. We call it the

``American History and Civics Act.'' This act creates

Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and

Civics and Congressional Academies for Students of American

History and Civics. These residential academies would operate

for two weeks (in the case of teachers) and four weeks (for

students) during the summer.

Their purpose would be to inspire better teaching and more

learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the

institutions and democratic heritage of the United States.

I have had some experience with such residential summer

academies, when I was Governor of Tennessee. In 1984, we

began creating Governor's schools for students and teachers.

For example, there was the Governor's School for the Arts at

Middle Tennessee State University and the Governor's School

of International Studies at the University of Memphis as well

as the Governor's School for Teachers of Writing at the

University of Tennessee at Knoxville, which was especially

successful. Eventually there were eight Governor's Schools

helping thousands of Tennessee teachers improve their skills

and inspiring outstanding students to learn more about core

curriculum subjects. When these teachers and students

returned to their schools for the next school year, they

brought with them a new enthusiasm for teaching and learning

that infected their peers. Dollar for dollar, the Governor's

Schools were one of the most effective and popular

educational initiatives in our state's history.

States other than Tennessee have had similar success with

summer residential academies. The first Governor's school was

started in North Carolina in 1963 when Governor Terry Sanford

established it at Salem College in Winston-Salem. Upon the

establishment of the first school, several states, including

Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee

established similar schools.

For example, in 1973 Pennsylvania established Governor's

Schools of Excellence, which has 14 different programs of

study. As in Tennessee, students participating in the

Pennsylvania Governor's School program attend academies at 8

different colleges to

study everything from international studies, to health care

and teaching. Also established in 1973, Virginia's Governor's

School is a summer residential program for 7500 of the

Commonwealth's most gifted students. Mississippi established

its Governor's School in 1981. The Mississippi University for

Women hosts the program, which is designed to give students

academic, creative, and leadership experiences. Every year

West Virginia brings 80 of its most talented high school

performing and visual arts students to West Liberty State

College for a three-week residential program.

These are just a few of the more than 100 Governors'

schools in 28 states--clearly the model is a good one. The

legislation I propose today applies that successful model to

American history and civics education at the national level

by establishing Presidential and Congressional academies for

students and teachers of those subjects.

Additionally, this proposed legislation authorizes the

creation of a national alliance of American history and

civics teachers who would be connected by the internet. The

alliance would facilitate sharing of best practices in the

teaching of American history and civics. It is modeled after

an alliance I helped the National Geographic Society begin

during the 1980's to put geography back into the American

school curriculum. Tennessee and the University of Tennessee

were among the first sponsors of the alliance.

This legislation creates a pilot program. Up to 12

Presidential academies for teachers and 12 Congressional

Academies for students would be sponsored by educational

institutions. The National Endowment for the Humanities would

award 2-year renewable grants to those institutions after a

peer review process. Each grant would be subject to rigorous

review after three years to determine whether the overall

program should continue, expand or end. The legislation

authorizes $25 million annually for the four year pilot

program.

There is a broad basis of renewed support for and interest

in American history and civics in our country.

David Gordon noted in a recent issue of the Harvard

Education Letter: ``A 1998 survey by the nonpartisan research

organization Public Agenda showed that 84 percent of parents

with school-aged children said they believe that the United

States is a special country and they want schools to convey

that belief to their children by teaching about its heroes

and traditions. Similar numbers identified the American ideal

as including equal opportunity, individual freedom, and

tolerance and respect for others. Those findings were

consistent across racial and ethnic groups.''

Our national leadership has responded to this renewed

interest. In 2000, at the initiative of my distinguished

colleague Senator Byrd, Congress created grants for schools

that teach American history as a separate subject within

school curricula. We appropriated $100 million for those

grants in the recent Omnibus appropriations bill, and

rightfully so. They encourage schools and teachers to focus

on the teaching of traditional American history, and provide

important financial support.

Last September, with historian David McCullough at his

side, President Bush announced a new initiative to encourage

the teaching of American history and civics. He established

the ``We the People'' program at the NEH, which will develop

curricula and sponsor lectures on American history and

civics. He announced the ``Our Documents'' project, run by

the National Archives. This would take one hundred of

America's most important documents from the National Archives

to classrooms and communities across the country. This year,

he will convene a White House forum on American history,

civics, and service. There, we will discuss new policies to

improve the teaching of history and civics in elementary and

secondary schools.

This proposed legislation takes the next step by training

teachers and encouraging outstanding students. We need to

foster a love of this subject and arm teachers with the

skills to impart that love to their students.

I am pleased that today one of the leading members of the

House of Representatives, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, along

with a number of his colleagues, are introducing the same

legislation in the House.

I want to thank Senator Gregg, Chairman of the Committee on

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who has agreed that

the committee will hold hearings on this legislation so that

we can determine how it might supplement and work with

recently enacted legislation and the President's various

initiatives.

Mr. President, in 1988, at a meeting of educators in

Rochester, the President of Notre Dame University, Monk

Malloy, asked this question: ``What is the rationale for the

public school?'' There was an unexpected silence around the

room until Al Shanker, the president of the American

Federation of Teachers, answered in this way: ``The public

school was created to teach immigrant children the three R's

and what it means to be an American with the hope that they

would then go home and teach their parents.''

From the founding of America, we have always understood how

important it is for citizens to understand the principles

that unite us as a country. Other countries are united by

their ethnicity. If you move to Japan for example, you can't

become Japanese. Americans, on the other hand, are united by

a few things in which we believe. To become an American

citizen, you subscribe to those principles. If there were no

agreement on those principles, as Samuel Huntington has

noted, we would be the United Nations instead of the United

States of America.

There has therefore been a continuous education process to

remind Americans just what those principles are. Thomas

Jefferson, in his retirement at Monticello, would spend

evenings explaining to overnight guests what he had in mind

when he helped create what we call America. By the mid-19th

century it was just assumed that everybody knew what it meant

to be an American. In his letter from the Alamo, Col. William

Barrett Travis pleaded for help simply ``in the name of

liberty, patriotism and everything dear to the American

character.''

There were new waves of immigration in the late 19th

century that brought to our country a record number of new

people from other lands whose view of what it means to be an

American was indistinct--and Americans responded by teaching

them. In Wisconsin, for example, the Kohler Company actually

housed German immigrants together so that they might be

``Americanized'' during non-working hours.

But the most important Americanizing institution, as Mr.

Shanker reminded us in Rochester in 1988, was the new common

school. McGuffey's Reader, which was used in many classrooms,

sold more than 120 million copies introducing a common

culture of literature, patriotic speeches and historical

references.

In the 20th century it was war that made Americans stop and

think about what we were defending. President Roosevelt made

certain that those who charged the beaches of Normandy knew

they were defending for freedoms.

But after World War II, the emphasis on teaching and

defining the principles that unite us has waned. Unpleasant

experiences with McCarthyism in the 1950's, discouragement

after the Vietnam War, and history books that left out or

distorted the history of African-Americans made some skittish

about discussing ``Americanism.'' The end of the Cold War

removed a preoccupation with who we were not, making it less

important to consider who we are. The Immigration law changes

in 1965 brought to our shores many new Americans and many

cultural changes. As a result, the American Way became much

more often praised than defined.

Changes in community attitudes, as they always are, were

reflected in our schools. According to historian Diane

Ravitch, the public school virtually abandoned its role as

the chief Americanizing Institution. We have gone, she

explains, from one extreme (simplistic patriotism and

incomplete history) to the other--``public schools with an

adversary culture that emphasize the nation's warts and

diminish its genuine accomplishments. There is no literary

canon. There are no common readings, no agreed upon lists of

books, poems and stories from which students and parents

might be taught a common culture and be reminded of what it

means to be an American.''

During this time many of our national leaders contributed

to this drift toward agnostic Americanism. These leaders

celebrated multiculturalism and bilingualism and diversity at

a time when there should have been more emphasis on a common

culture and learning English and unity.

America's variety and diversity is a great strength, but it

is not our greatest strength. Jerusalem is diverse. The

Balkans are diverse. America's greatest accomplishment is not

its variety and diversity but that we have found a way to

take all that variety and diversity and unite ourselves as

one country. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. That is what

makes America truly exceptional.

Since 9/11 the national conversation about what it means to

be an American has been different. The terrorists focused

their cross-hairs on the creed that unites Americans as

one country--forcing us to remind ourselves of those

principles, to examine and define them, and to celebrate

them. The President himself has been the lead teacher.

President Bush has literally taken us back to school on

what it means to be an American. When he took the country

to church on television after the attacks he reminded us

that no country is more religious than we are. When he

walked across the street to the mosque he reminded the

world that we separate church and state and that there is

freedom here to believe in whatever one wants to believe.

When he attacked and defeated the Taliban, he honored

life. When we put planes back in the air and opened

financial markets and began going to football games again

we celebrated liberty. The President called on us to make

those magnificent images of courage and charity and

leadership and selflessness more permanent in our every

day lives through Freedom Corps. And with his optimism, he

warded off doomsayers who tried to diminish the real gift

of Americans to civilization, our cockeyed optimism that

anything is possible.

Just after 9/11, I proposed an idea I called ``Pledge Plus

Three.'' Why not start each school day with the Pledge of

Allegiance--as we do here in the Senate--followed by a

faculty member or student sharing for three minutes ``what it

means to be an American.'' The Pledge embodies many of the

ideals of our National Creed: ``one nation, under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' It speaks to

our unity, to our faith, to our

value of freedom, and to our belief in the fair treatment of

all Americans. If more future federal judges took more

classes in American history and civics and learned more about

those values, we might have fewer mind-boggling decisions

like the one issued recently by the Ninth Circuit.

Before I was elected to the Senate, I taught some of our

future judges and legislators a course at Harvard's John F.

Kennedy School of Government entitled ``The American

Character and America's Government.'' The purpose of the

course was to help policy makers, civil servants and

journalists analyze the American creed and character and

apply it in the solving of public policy problems. We tried

to figure out, if you will, what would be ``the American

way'' to solve a given problem.

The students and I did not have much trouble deciding that

America is truly exceptional (not always better, but truly

exceptional) or in identifying the major principles of the

American Creed or the distinct characteristics of our

country. Such principles as: liberty, equal opportunity, rule

of law, laissez faire, individualism, e pluribus unum, the

separation of church and state.

But what we also found as we find in this body was that

applying those principles to today's issues was hard work.

This was because the principles of the creed often

conflicted. For example, when discussing President Bush's

faith-based charity legislation, we know that ``In God We

Trust'' but we also know that we don't trust government with

God.

When considering whether the federal government should pay

for scholarships which middle and low income families might

use at any accredited school--public, private or religious--

we find that the principle of equal opportunity conflicted

with the separation of church and state.

And we find there are great disappointments when we try to

live up to our greatest dreams, for example, President

Kennedy's pledge that we will ``pay any price or bear any

burden'' to defend freedom, or Thomas Jefferson's assertion

that ``all men are created equal,'' or the American dream

that for anyone who works hard, tomorrow will always be

better than today. We are often disappointed when we try to

live up to those dreams.

We learned that, as Samuel Huntington has written,

balancing these conflicts and disappointments is what most of

American politics and government is about.

Mr. President, if most of our politics and government is

about applying to our most urgent problems the principles and

characteristics that make us the exceptional United States of

America, then we had better get about the teaching and

learning of those principles and characteristics.

The legislation I propose today with several co-sponsors

will help our schools do what they were established to do in

the first place. At a time when there are record numbers of

new Americans, and at a time when our values are under

attack, at a time when we are considering going to war to

defend those values, there can be no more urgent task than

putting the teaching of American history and civics back in

its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up

learning what it means to be an American.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2009. This bill would abolish the death penalty at the Federal level. It would put an immediate halt to Federal executions and forbid the imposition of the death penalty as a sentence for violations of Federal law.

Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,130 executions across the country, including three at the Federal level. During that same time period, 130 people on death row have been exonerated and released from death row. Consider those numbers: 1,130 executions and 130 exonerations in the modern death penalty era. Had those exonerations not taken place, had those 130 people been executed, those executions would have represented an error rate of nearly eleven percent. That is more than an embarrassing statistic; it is a horrifying one, one that should have us all questioning the use of capital punishment in this country. In fact, since 1999 when I first introduced this bill, 54 death row inmates have been exonerated throughout the country.

In the face of these numbers, the national debate on the death penalty has intensified. The country experienced a nationwide moratorium on executions from September 2007 to May 2008 while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether the lethal injection method of execution complied with the Constitution. From 2004 to 2007 the number of executions and the number of death sentences imposed decreased as more and more voices joined to express doubt about the use of capital punishment in America. The voices of those questioning the fairness of the death penalty have been heard from college campuses and courtrooms and podiums across the Nation, to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, to the United States Supreme Court. The American public understands that the death penalty raises serious and complex issues. In fact, for the first time, a May 2006 Gallup poll reported that more Americans prefer a sentence of life without parole over the death penalty when given a choice. The same poll indicates that 63 percent of Americans think that within the past 5 years an innocent person has been executed. And a 2008 Gallop shows a 5 percent drop in support for the death penalty from October 2007 to October 2008. If anything, the consensus is that it is time for a change. We must not ignore these voices.

The United States Supreme Court also has limited the constitutionally permissible scope of the death penalty in recent years. In 2008 the Court held in Kennedy vs. Louisiana that with respect to ``crimes against individuals the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was not taken.'' This decision is consistent with other recent cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the execution of juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded is unconstitutional.

On the state level, there have been some encouraging developments. Most significantly, just last night, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico signed legislation into law that repeals the death penalty in his state. I commend Governor Richardson for his leadership and courage in signing this bill. Governor Richardson issued a statement after he signed the bill that gets to the heart of this issue. His statement read, in part:

The sad truth is the wrong person can still be convicted in

this day and age, and in cases where that conviction carries

with it the ultimate sanction, we must have ultimate

confidence I would say certitude that the system is without

flaw or prejudice. Unfortunately, this is demonstrably not

the case . . .

Last year New Jersey to legislatively repealed its death penalty statute after a state commission reported that the death penalty ``is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency'' and recommended abolition. In New York, the death penalty was overturned by a court decision in 2004 and has not been reinstated by the legislature. While Kansas and New Hampshire still technically have the death penalty on their books, they have not executed anyone since 1976.

Other States have created commissions that have identified serious problems with their capital punishment systems. In Maryland, a 23- member commission tasked with studying all

aspects of the State's capital punishment system voted on November 12, 2008, to recommend abolition of the State's death penalty. The Commission cited as reasons the possibility that an innocent person could be mistakenly executed, as well as geographical and racial disparities in its application. The chair of the commission, a former United States Attorney General, stated simply, ``It's haphazard in how it's applied, and that's terribly unfair.''

This past June, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice completed its review of the California capital punishment system. It found, unanimously and not surprisingly, that the death penalty system in California is broken and in need of repair. North Carolina and Tennessee are also in the midst of studies of their respective death penalty systems.

Of course the state that started it all was Illinois, where on January 31, 2000, then-Governor George Ryan took the historic step of placing a moratorium on executions and creating an independent, blue ribbon commission to review the State's death penalty system. That commission conducted an extensive study of the death penalty in Illinois and released a report with 85 recommendations for reform. The commission concluded that the death penalty system is not fair, and that the risk of executing the innocent is alarmingly real. Governor Ryan later pardoned four death row inmates and commuted the sentences of all remaining Illinois death row inmates to life in prison before he left office in January 2003. Illinois has not executed anyone since.

In addition, in 2007, the American Bar Association issued a series of reports on the fairness and accuracy of capital punishment systems in eight states, and concluded there were serious problems in every state it reviewed.

So while detailed reviews have not been conducted in every state, the studies that have been done have revealed major problems. And these problems whether they be racial disparities, inconsistent application of the death penalty, inadequate indigent defense, or other shortcomings cannot be brushed aside as atypical or as revealing state- specific anomalies in an otherwise perfect system. Years of study have shown that the death penalty does little to deter crime, and that defendants' likelihood of being sentenced to death depends heavily on illegitimate factors such as whether they are rich or poor.

Racial disparities also have been documented again and again. Since reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 80 percent of murder victims in cases where death sentences were handed down were white, even though only 50 percent of murder victims are white. Nationwide, more than half of death row inmates nationwide are African Americans or Hispanic Americans. Since 1976, cases that had a white defendant and a black victim have resulted in 15 executions; in cases involving a black defendant and a white victim, there have been 229 executions.

There is also evidence that seeking capital punishment comes at great monetary cost to taxpayers. The Urban Institute in Maryland examined 162 capital cases that were prosecuted between 1978 and 1999. It found that seeking the death penalty in those cases cost $186 million more than what those cases would have cost had the death penalty not been sought. In California, according to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, ``the additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California's current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually.'' A report in Washington state indicates that ``at the trial level, death penalty cases are estimated to generate roughly $470,000 in additional costs to the prosecution and defense over the cost of trying the same case as an aggravated murder without the death penalty and costs of $47,000 to $70,000 for court personnel.'' Similar reports detailing the extraordinary financial costs of the death penalty have been generated for States across the Nation.

There are also enormous problems with the right to counsel in death penalty cases. I held a hearing in the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee last year to examine the State of capital defense in this country, and the results were shocking. The witnesses provided sobering testimony about over-worked and under-paid court- appointed lawyers in capital cases, and the lack of investigative and other resources available to them. Just to take a couple of specific examples, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative testified that in Alabama, 60 percent of people on death row were defended by lawyers appointed by courts who, by statute, could not be paid more than $1,000 for their out of court time to prepare the case for trial. In Texas, hundreds of death row inmates are awaiting execution after being represented by lawyers who could not receive more then $500 for experts or mitigation evidence. Across the country there are hundreds of death row inmates whose lawyers had their compensation capped at levels that make effective assistance impossible.

We also heard more about the American Bar Association State Assessment Project, which found that ineffective defense representation was a serious problem in each of the eight states that the ABA reviewed--and is a major reason why the ABA continues to advocate for a moratorium on capital punishment.

The Federal death penalty, too, has had its share of problems. Capital punishment at the Federal level was reinstated in 1988 in a Federal law that provided for the death penalty for murder in the course of a drug-kingpin conspiracy. It was then expanded significantly in 1994, when an omnibus crime bill expanded its use to a total of some 60 Federal offenses. Despite my best efforts to halt the expansion of the Federal death penalty, more and more provisions have been added over the years. Three individuals have now been executed under the Federal system, and there are 55 inmates on Federal death row.

In 2007, I held a hearing on oversight of the Federal death penalty the first such oversight hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in 6 years. Once again, the results were disturbing. The hearing focused on a range of issues, including the lack of information the Justice Department maintains about the application and cost of the death penalty, the lack of transparency in the DOJ decision-making process, concerns about the politicization of the federal death penalty, and the continuing problem of racial disparities in the Federal system.

I was alarmed to learn at the hearing that the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2006 kept virtually no statistics about its implementation of the Federal death penalty. Prior to the hearing, I requested basic statistics for that time period, such as the rate at which the Attorney General overruled U.S. Attorney recommendations not to seek the death penalty, and the race of defendants and victims in Federal capital cases. Before I asked for this information, the Department had not tracked it. Further, the DOJ does not track the monetary costs of the Federal death penalty in any way at all.

We are still lacking basic information about racial disparities in the application of the Federal death penalty. After putting off for years a National Institute of Justice study report ordered by Attorney General Reno at the end of the Clinton Administration to examine this question, DOJ finally released a RAND study in 2006. But the long anticipated report did not address the root question about the application of the Federal death penalty; it did not study the decision-making process for bringing defendants into the Federal system in the first place. Of course, this study only covers 1995-2000. So we still have very little information about racial disparities from 2001 forward.

I was particularly concerned about information the hearing uncovered about the Attorney General overrule rates. In the Federal system, the Attorney General makes the final decision whether to seek the death penalty in federal cases. Between 2001 and 2006, the Attorney General overruled local U.S. Attorney recommendations not to seek the death penalty in one out of every three Federal capital cases. This number is substantially higher than the 16 percent of recommendations not to seek death that were overruled by

Attorney General Reno from 1995 to 2000. Not only was the Bush administration far more willing to overrule local U.S. Attorney recommendations, but when it did so, the Government was less likely to actually obtain a death sentence in the case. The Government secured a death sentence in 33 percent of cases where the Attorney General approved a U.S. Attorney recommendation to seek death, but in only 20 percent of cases where the Attorney General overruled the U.S. Attorney recommendation not to seek death.

And at least one U.S. Attorney who objected when his recommendation not to seek death was overruled by Main Justice learned the hard way that dissent was not acceptable. Former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who testified at the hearing I chaired, was fired at least in part because he had the audacity to ask to speak with the Attorney General directly after the Attorney General ordered him to pursue the death penalty in a case where he had recommended against seeking the death penalty.

There is every reason to be optimistic that the new administration will take the significant problems in our federal death penalty system much more seriously. But while we examine the flaws in our death penalty system at both the State and Federal level, we cannot help but note that any use of the death penalty in the United States stands in stark contrast to the majority of nations, which have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. There are now 123 countries that have done so. In 2007, only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan executed more people than we did in the United States. These countries, and others on the list of nations that actively use capital punishment, are countries that we often criticize for human rights abuses. The European Union denies membership to nations that use the death penalty. In fact, it passed a resolution calling for the immediate and unconditional global abolition of the death penalty, and it specifically called on all states within the United States to abolish the death penalty. Moreover, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on December 18, 2007, calling for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.

We are a Nation that prides itself on the fundamental principles of justice, liberty, equality and due process. We are a Nation that scrutinizes the human rights records of other nations. We should hold our own system of justice to the highest standard.

As a matter of justice, this is an issue that transcends political allegiances. A range of prominent voices in our country is raising serious questions about the death penalty, and these are not just voices of liberals, or of the faith community. They are the voices of former FBI Director William Sessions, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Reverend Pat Robertson, commentator George Will, former Mississippi warden Donald Cabana, and former Baltimore City police officer Michael May. And notably, the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News each finally came out in opposition to the death penalty in 2007. The voices of those questioning our application of the death penalty are growing in number, and they are growing louder.

As we begin a new year and a new Congress, I believe the continued use of the death penalty in the United States is beneath us. The death penalty is at odds with our best traditions. It is wrong and it is ineffective. The adage ``two wrongs do not make a right'' applies here in the most fundamental way. It is time to abolish the death penalty as we seek to spread peace and justice both here and overseas. And it is not just a matter of morality. The continued viability of our criminal justice system as a truly just system that deserves the respect of our own people and the world requires that we take this step. Our Nation's goal to remain the world's leading defender of freedom, liberty and equality demands that we do so.

Abolishing the death penalty will not be an easy task. It will take patience, persistence, and courage. As we work to move forward in a rapidly changing world, let us leave this archaic practice behind.

I ask my colleagues to join me in taking the first step in abolishing the death penalty in our great Nation by enacting this legislation to do away with the Federal death penalty. I also call on each State that authorizes the use of the death penalty to cease this practice. Let us together reject violence and restore fairness and integrity to our criminal justice system.

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

Mr. President, I remain very concerned about the continuing prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. The ongoing reports of the vast use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, especially Major League Baseball, illustrate the presence of a disturbing culture throughout all sports. It is becoming all too common to read not only about professional athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, but also college and high school athletes turning to these substances to gain a competitive edge. Although Congress passed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act to disrupt this cycle of abuse in 2004, we cannot relent in our efforts to keep performance- enhancing drugs out of our society and away from our children.

The dietary supplement, Dehydroepiandrosterone, DHEA, is readily

available online and on the shelves of nutritional stores, but can be used as a performance-enhancing substance. In response to the growing use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, Congress passed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act in 2004. When this bill was being considered, DHEA was among 23 anabolic steroids that are now schedule III controlled substances. Some of my colleagues objected to DHEA being included on this list, because they believed DHEA was harmless and did not have the same anabolic effects as the other steroids on the list. DHEA was subsequently removed from the bill, but the facts do not back up the claims that DHEA is not a performance- enhancing drug or harmless.

According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, DHEA is a pre-cursor hormone to androstenedione and testosterone. These substances became illegal anabolic steroids as a result of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004. Although the body naturally produces DHEA, the natural production of the hormone ceases around the age of 35. Many people over this age use DHEA, in low doses, as part of an ``anti-aging'' regimen. However, when taken in high doses over time, DHEA, like its other relatives in the steroid family, may cause liver damage and cancer. In fact, one study conducted by scientists at Oxford University revealed DHEA use to be strongly associated with breast cancer development. The truth is there are few studies about the long term effects DHEA has on the body. According to Dr. F. Clark Holmes, Director of Sports Medicine at Georgetown University, many proposed studies involving high doses of DHEA are denied approval out of concern that the product may cause irreversible harm to human subjects. Because DHEA is marketed as a dietary supplement, companies are not required to prove their safety to the Food and Drug Administration. However, nearly all the professional sports leagues, the Olympics and the NCAA have banned their athletes from using it for good reason.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that DHEA is being marketed online to younger athletes. One bodybuilding website, directed towards teenagers, features a teen bodybuilder of the week to promote performance-enhancing supplements. A 19-year-old Junior National Champion bodybuilder is one of the bodybuilders on this website. When asked what supplement gave him the greatest gains for his competition this teenager replied, ``DHEA.'' In another website, DHEA is advertized as follows, ``If you're a bodybuilder, and want to increase lean body mass at the expense of body fat, actual studies show this supplement may significantly alter body composition, favoring lean mass accrual.'' Another example on another website describes DHEA in this way, ``DHEA is HOT, and you will see why. As a pre-cursor hormone, it leads to the production of other hormones. When this compound is supplemented, it has shown to have awesome effects.'' These advertisements are geared to the younger crowd, even though DHEA has no legitimate use for teenagers.

These DHEA advertisements, and others like it, are having some impact on young athletes, especially in my state of Iowa. The Iowa Orthopaedic Journal published a study on nutritional supplement use in 20 Northwest Iowa high schools. In this study, 495 male football players and 407 female volleyball players were asked if they used nutritional supplements. The results of this anonymous survey revealed that 8 percent of football players and 2 percent of Volleyball players used supplements. These students identified DHEA as one of the supplements that they used. The students were then asked to give the reason why they used DHEA and the general response was ``for performance enhancement.''

We have to find a way to keep young people from using a substance that can do them harm. Three states currently prohibit the sale of DHEA to minors. There are also various supplement stores like GNC and Walgreens that have policies in place that prohibit the sale of DHEA to anyone under 18. If we cannot place DHEA behind the counter, then we should at least make it difficult for teens to walk out of a store with a potentially harmful substance in hand. This is why I'm pleased to introduce the DHEA Abuse Reduction Act of 2009. This bill will place a nationwide restriction on the sale of DHEA for those under 18 years of age. It will also allow those who use DHEA, legitimately, to not have to obtain a prescription to do so. The Coalition for Anabolic Steroid Precursor and Ephedra Regulation, which is comprised of the Nation's leading medical, public health and sports organizations support this legislation. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency also supports this legislation to keep DHEA away from our children. I urge my colleagues to pass this legislation.

In the highly competitive world of sports, the pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs can be overwhelming. Even though we, as a society, demand excellence from our favorite teams and athletes, we cannot accept this excellence to be falsely aided by a drug. Furthermore, we cannot allow harmful drugs to destroy the health of so many young and promising athletes. We have to continue to curb the use of performance-enhancing drugs for the health of our country and children.

Madam President, I thank the Senator for his kind words. I have had an opportunity to work with him not only on legislation of this type but a lot of other pieces of legislation, and I enjoy working with him because he is a person of great common sense. I thank him for his leadership in this area, and, more importantly, I thank him for serving in the outstanding position as chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, with a lot of responsibilities in the area of making sure aging problems are brought to the forefront.

This legislation we are introducing is called the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act. It brings to the surface some very important issues he is watching as chairman of the Aging Committee. I have some interaction with it because I am a member of the Finance Committee.

This is a critical piece of legislation that brings overdue transparency to consumers regarding nursing home quality and operations. It also provides long needed improvements to our enforcement system.

In America today, there are well over 1.7 million elderly and disabled individuals in over 17,000 nursing home facilities. As the baby boom generation enters retirement, this number is going to rise dramatically. While many people are using alternatives, such as community-based care, nursing homes are going to remain a critical option for elderly and disabled populations.

As the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, I have a longstanding commitment to ensuring that nursing home residents receive the safe and quality care we expect for our loved ones. Why? Because the taxpayers put in tens of billions of dollars--I would imagine over $47 billion or $48 billion now, and maybe that figure is higher than the last time I looked, but it is billions of dollars. Our Aging Committee and all of Congress have a special responsibility to make sure that money is spent well, and one way of spending it well is to make sure it delivers quality care to these people who are in need.

Unfortunately, as in many areas, with nursing homes, a few bad apples often spoil the barrel. Too many Americans receive poor care, often in a subset of nursing homes. Unfortunately, this subset of chronic offenders stays in business, often keeping their poor track records hidden from the public at large and often facing little or no oversight or enforcement from the Federal Government, based on laws that were passed in 1986 and 1987.

There is a lack of transparency, a lack of accountability, and sometimes in our approach to nursing homes, quite simply, a lack of common sense--the sort of common sense the Senator from Wisconsin always exhibits in the legislative approach. These are things this legislation seeks to bring to nursing homes and their residents-- transparency, accountability, and common sense.

Let's look at transparency. In the market for nursing home care, as in all markets, consumers must often have adequate information to make informed choices. For years, people looking at a nursing home for themselves or their loved ones had no way of knowing a nursing home facility's record of care, inspection history, or which individuals were ultimately responsible for caring for their loved ones.

This bill is intended to change that and to emphasize this point about why we have to be concerned about the type of facility in which a person is placed.

I have never once in my life run into a single elderly or disabled person who said to me: I am dying to get into a nursing home. This is on the continuum care, the stop where people cannot be taken care of beforehand. We need to make sure that is right.

This legislation requires nursing facilities to make available ownership information, including the individuals and entities that are ultimately responsible for a home's operation and management.

Today when I am discussing this bill with people in the industry, I don't have anybody objecting who actually owns a nursing home. But early on, that seemed to be something that, for some reason or another, did not seem to be anybody's business. Tell me it isn't anybody's business who owns a nursing home if they are receiving $45 billion to $50 billion of taxpayer money going to that industry. That ownership is very important.

How nursing homes are staffed can greatly affect the care they provide, especially when dealing with complex conditions, such as nursing homes. So you go behind who owns a nursing home, who is working there, and that is pretty important. If you do not have all this information, it leaves residents and their families without clear information about who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that a resident is consistently provided with high-quality care.

This provides transparency, as well, concerning nursing home staffing and surveys. Homes differ widely in terms of the number of specialized staff available to residents, as well as the number of registered nurses and certified nursing assistants who provide much hands-on care.

Let me say it a second time. How a nursing home is staffed can greatly affect the care it provides, especially when dealing with complex cases. This legislation requires better tracking of this information and requires that this information is available to prospective residents and their families.

In addition, this legislation will help families have a better idea of a nursing home's track record in that it requires better transparency for nursing home inspection reports that are completed on a routine basis.

The Secretary will also now be required to provide consumers with a summary of information on enforcement actions taken against a facility during the previous 3 years.

This same transparency will also provide additional market incentives for poor homes to improve. If customers know about problems, that home is incentivized to improve or face going out of business.

This effort also requires a strong, effective enforcement and monitoring system to ensure safe and quality care at facilities that will not take the necessary steps voluntarily. But even with improved transparency, there are some nursing homes that will not improve on their own.

In the nursing home industry, most homes provide quality care on a very consistent basis. So we need to give inspectors better enforcement tools.

The current system provides incentives to correct problems only temporarily and allows homes to avoid regulatory sanctions while continuing to deliver substandard care to residents. This system must be fixed.

Last year, CMS requested two things: one, statutory authority to collect civil monetary penalties sooner, and, two, the ability to hold those penalties in escrow pending appeal.

To that end, this bill requires nursing homes that have been found in violation of law be given the opportunity to participate in an independent, informal dispute resolution process within 30 days. After that point, depending on the outcome of the appeal, the penalties are collected and held in escrow pending the exhaustion of the appeals process. This will ensure that nursing homes found to be violating the rules actually pay the penalties assessed if it is determined those penalties are appropriate. But we should not have to resort to enforcement. Problems resulting in penalties should be avoided or detected and fixed immediately by the nursing home in the first place. That is why this bill now requires all nursing homes to have compliance and ethics programs, as well as quality assurance and performance improvement programs.

In addition to increased transparency and improved enforcement, this bill provides commonsense solutions to a number of other problems.

This legislation requires the Secretary of HHS to establish a national independent monitoring program to tackle problems specific to interstate and large intrastate nursing chains.

In the case of nursing homes being closed due to poor safety or quality of care, this bill requires that residents and their representatives be given sufficient notice so they can adequately plan a transfer to an appropriate setting.

We need to be very sensitive--and I am very sensitive--to the fact that nursing home residents are often elderly and fragile. Moving them into a new facility is traumatic. So we have to make sure these residents are transferred appropriately and with adequate time and care.

This bill also aims to help nursing homes that self-report their concerns and remedy certain deficiencies, giving those homes that are trying to do their best and find things wrong on their own to get credit for that. By doing so, nursing homes then may have any penalties reduced by 50 percent. This will encourage facilities to take the lead in finding, flagging, and fixing violations.

This bill is also intended to strengthen training requirements for nursing staff by including dementia and abuse prevention training as part of pre-employment.

I am proud to introduce this bill along with my friend Senator Kohl. The Committee on Aging and I have a long history of working together on elderly care issues, and I am happy to continue that work.

I also note today the Government Accountability Office is releasing a report critical of CMS's funding of State oversight entities, such as nursing homes. This report notes that survey activity is sometimes so unreliable that certain homes have not even been inspected in more than 6 years. The report makes a number of recommendations to CMS, and I will be looking very carefully at how CMS follows those recommendations. In the meantime, it is important that we improve transparency and accountability for the inspections that are taking place.

We will continue to do everything we can to make sure that American nursing home residents receive the safe and quality care they deserve. Increasing transparency, improving enforcement tools, strengthening training requirements will go a long way toward achieving that goal. I thank, once again, Senator Kohl.

Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator Bingaman to introduce legislation to rectify a long standing problem for community health centers and the millions of Americans who depend on them for primary care access. Health centers serve as the medical home for over 18 million underserved patients. Annually, over 1.2 million of those patients are Medicare beneficiaries and 8.5 million patients are living below the Federal poverty level. Health centers are known for providing high quality, comprehensive care to some of our nation's most vulnerable populations.

Over 17 years ago, Congress created the Federally Qualified Health Center, FQHC, Medicare benefit to ensure that health centers were not forced to subsidize Medicare payments with Federal grant dollars. Therefore, Congress required that centers be paid their reasonable costs for providing care to their Medicare patients. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, later established a per visit payment cap in regulations based on a payment cap applicable to rural health clinics. CMS applied the cap to FQHCs with the promise of future reviews to guarantee that health centers were adequately reimbursed. However, CMS has failed to update payments.

Today, the majority of health centers are losing money serving Medicare beneficiaries, causing them to use their Federal grant dollars, intended for care for the uninsured, to supplement Medicare payments. These losses exceed $50 million annually according to an analysis completed by the National Association of Community Health Centers.

We have repeatedly requested that CMS review this antiquated payment structure with little success. So I rise today again with Senator Bingaman to see that FQHCs receive payment for services they provide. This bill will establish a prospective payment system for FQHCs, based on the actual cost of providing care to health center patients. This new mechanism mirrors the successful Medicaid FQHC prospective payment system. By reforming the payment structure at FQHCs, we will ensure that health centers are able to dedicate their Federal grant dollars for their originally intended purpose--providing care to the uninsured.

This legislation is long overdue. I ask my colleagues to join me in strengthening the Medicare FQHC program to make certain that health centers can continue to provide high quality, affordable primary and preventive care to our Nation's seniors and people with disabilities.

Mr. President, I rise today, along with Senator Kerry, to introduce legislation that initiates the first step toward comprehensive spectrum policy reform, which is long overdue and paramount to achieving the long-term telecommunications needs of this nation. In addressing comprehensive spectrum reform, the first thing we must do is to have a clear understanding of how the spectrum is currently being utilized, which is called for by the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act.

Specifically, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act directs the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, with assistance from the Office of Science and Technology, to create a comprehensive and accurate inventory of each spectrum band between 300 Megahertz to 3.5 Gigahertz. The information collected would include the licenses assigned in that band, the number and type of end-user devices deployed, the amount of deployed infrastructure, as well as any relevant unlicensed end user devices operating in the band. This information is fundamental to constructing a comprehensive framework for spectrum policy.

The Radio Spectrum Inventory Act also provides more transparency related to spectrum use by creating a centralized website or portal that would include relevant spectrum and license information accessible by the public. Given that radio spectrum is a public good, we are obligated to provide the public more clarity and accountability on how it is being utilized by both federal and non-federal licensees. It should be noted that this bill does make certain disclosure exceptions for spectrum being used or reserved for national security.

The ultimate goals this legislation sets the path towards achieving are to implement more efficient use of spectrum and to locate additional spectrum that could be auctioned and used for advanced communications and data services in order to meet the growing demand.

Currently, there are more than 270 million wireless subscribers in the US, and consumers used more than 2.2 trillion minutes of use from July 2007 to June 2008--that is more than 6 billion minutes of use a day! While voice communications is the foundation for wireless services, more and more subscribers are utilizing it for broadband due to new emerging wireless technologies.

More specifically, the FCC reported that from December 2005 to December 2007, mobile wireless high-speed subscribership grew nationwide by more than 1,500 percent, and added 15.6 million subscribers in the second half of 2007 alone. The report also shows that new wireless broadband subscribers accounted for 78 percent of the total growth in broadband during that same time.

So it is clear this once nascent service, which was initially thought of as a luxury, has blossomed into a tool that millions of consumers and countless businesses use on a daily basis. Increased mobility, access, and productivity are all tangible results of wireless technology. It is estimated that the productivity value of all mobile wireless services was worth $185 billion in 2005.

But with all this growth, we are seeing constraints--spectrum is already a scarce resource--there is no new spectrum to allocate, only redistribute. This problem is also compounded by issues such as Shannon's Law, which defines the maximum possible data speed that can be obtained in a data channel of a communications network. So with wireless, in order to achieve greater bandwidth speeds and capacity, more channels have to be assigned, which means more spectrum has to be allocated. Therefore, finding additional spectrum is essential to meeting the growing demands and needs of consumers and businesses alike.

Just as with the Internet, we have only scratched the surface on what the future of wireless will bring to all areas of life. That is why we must be proactive in advancing supportive spectrum policy and spectrum availability. And this begins with the first step--complete an accurate inventory of what is out there and how it is being used. Once we have that information, we can then perform the necessary analysis of where additional spectrum could be found and allocated toward broadband and advanced communications services. That is why I sincerely hope that my colleagues join Senators Kerry, Nelson, Wicker, and me in supporting this critical legislation.

Mr. President, there are a number of factors that caused the economic recession we are faced with today. All of us know that.

We can blame executives on Wall Street, who made reckless choices and ignored long-term consequences to make a quick profit.

We can blame the financial industry regulators, whose lax oversight failed to see the potential risks posed by the new, complex financial products that Wall Street was selling, and we can point a finger at those in the mortgage industry, who ignored that all bubbles eventually burst and that--in the case of housing bubble--the American taxpayers would be left to clean up the mess.

But we also need to look a little closer to home as well. The reality is that one of the contributing causes of this recession is the fact that too many Americans made poor and very often uninformed financial choices when they bought homes in the last several years.

Too many overestimated their own resources, didn't read the fine print, and didn't grasp the terms of their mortgages before signing on the dotted line.

In fact, we need to recognize that too many Americans, from college students to senior citizens, are financially illiterate.

The problem is not limited to mortgage holders. Too many Americans don't know how to budget their household expenses, manage their credit card debt, or even pay their bills on time.

We need to ensure that we don't get into this situation again, by giving all Americans the skills to make sound financial decisions.

We used to say the 3 R's of school are reading, writing, and arithmetic. Well, I think we need to add a fourth R--resource management.

That is why today I am introducing legislation that will help ensure that all Americans get the skills they need to make financial decisions that will protect them and their families.

The Financial and Economic Literacy Improvement Act of 2009 will require the Federal Government to step to the plate and become a real partner in helping Americans manage their finances and make good decisions about housing, employment, and education.

This bipartisan bill, which is cosponsored by Senator Cochran, is aimed at helping people of all ages. Our goal is to ensure that high school and college students know the pitfalls of signing up for credit cards and can make informed decisions about student loans.

All young people understand the importance of saving and making smart decisions to ensure a comfortable and dignified retirement and, most important, that we are taking steps to ensure we do not repeat the misguided and uninformed decisions that have contributed to the recession that we find ourselves in today.

Under our bill, the Federal Government will become a strong supporter of making financial literacy education a core part of K-12 education.

I believe that focusing this effort on young people is critical for two reasons:

One, if we are going to avoid another crisis such as this one, we must begin by teaching the next generation to make smart financial decisions; two, because all signs point to another generation that is coming of age already saddled with debt, and we need to help them before it is too late.

This past Sunday, this article ran on the front page of the Olympian newspaper from my State of Washington. I ask unanimous consent to have this article printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the article discusses the legislation I am introducing today. It also talks about the financial path that the next generation is currently on. The article pointed out that, right now, one-third of our college students have four credit cards when they graduate. More than half of our graduates have piled up $5,000 each in high interest debt. The number of 18 to 24-year-olds who have declared bankruptcy has almost doubled in 10 years.

That article also points out that many of our young people are financially illiterate. They understand very little about concepts such as interest or minimum payments or credit reports and the financial reality of having to pay off their student loans for years to come.

Today, with many of our schools struggling to pay teachers and maintain their current programs, a lot of our State and local governments cannot afford to ramp up financial literacy education right now. That is exactly where I believe the Federal Government needs to step up. We cannot afford for our young people to not understand their own finances.

Our bill will authorize $125 million annually to go to State and local education agencies and their partnerships with organizations experienced in providing high-quality financial literacy and economic instruction.

This funding we will provide will help make financial and economic literacy a part of core academic classes, develop financial literacy standards and testing benchmarks, and provide critical teacher training.

This bill will also help schools weave financial concepts into basic classes, such as math and social studies.

Importantly, this training will not end in high school. Our bill makes the same $125 million investment in teaching financial literacy in our 2- and 4-year colleges.

That is critical. My constituents often write or tell me about the financial trouble they are struggling with. A lot of them are very desperate for help. They got into situations they didn't understand, and they don't have the resources to fix.

For example, one woman from Olympia, who put off credit card bills to pay her mortgage, wrote to me and said:

I am educated, but was unaware that by being late on a

payment or by skipping a payment and trying to make it up, my

interest rate could skyrocket to over 26 percent, and late

fees could be exponential.

Whether it is skyrocketing interest rates or credit cards or an adjustable rate mortgage that somebody can no longer afford or a retirement plan that they don't understand, I often hear the same thing from people: I wish someone had taught this to me in high school.

This bill we are introducing ensures that we are teaching it in our schools, and it will help people learn the basic skills that will give them a leg up when they are dealing with their bankers.

This crisis we are in cost us dearly. Every weekend when I go home I hear about another business that is closing or another family who cannot pay their bills. But we know if we make changes and smart investments, we can move our country forward. I believe this is one of those smart investments. In January, after President Obama took office, he called for an era of personal responsibility. I believe our bill helps Americans to usher in that era.

I encourage my colleagues to take a look at the bill and cosponsor it and help us move it forward so we can make sure that we have a financially literate country.