Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2009

Mr. President, today, I am proud to introduce the Civil Access to Justice Act of 2009, which will expand and improve vital civil legal services to our most vulnerable Americans.

This is an issue that is very personal with me. Before I was elected to Congress, I practiced law with Polk County legal aid. I know first- hand how crucial legal assistance is to struggling families who have no place else to turn

when they have lost a job and are facing a foreclosure. I know the invaluable assistance that legal aid provides to battered women trying to leave abusive marriages while fearing for their safety and the safety of their children. I know that, without access to an attorney, the poor are often powerless against the injustices they suffer. I can honestly say that the work I did with legal aid is some of the most rewarding work of my career.

The type of assistance I was able to provide needy clients in Iowa occurs throughout the country every day. Much of that assistance is the direct result of a commitment the federal government first made over forty years ago. In 1965, the Office of Economic Opportunity created 269 local legal services programs around the country. Ten years later, in 1974, Congress--with bipartisan support, including that of President Nixon--established the Legal Service Corporation, LSC, to be a major source of funding for civil legal aid in this country. LSC is a private, non-profit corporation, funded by Congress, with the mission to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. LSC distributes 95 percent of its annual Federal appropriations to 137 local legal aid programs, with more than 900 offices serving all 50 states and every congressional district.

These LSC funding programs make a crucial difference to millions of Americans. Recipients help clients secure basic human needs, such as access to wrongly denied benefits including social security, pensions and needed health care. Just in the past decade, families of 9-11 victims, flood victims, and hurricane evacuees have received crucial legal assistance in obtaining permanent housing, unemployment compensation and government benefits. Further, members of our Armed Forces and their families receive help with estate planning, consumer and landlord/tenant problems and family law.

It is LSC-funded attorneys who help parents obtain and keep custody of their children, help family members obtain guardianship for children without parents, assist parents in enforcing child support payments and help women who are victims of domestic violence. In fact, three out of four legal aid clients are women, and legal aid programs identify domestic violence as one of their top priorities. Recent studies confirm, moreover, that the only public service that reduces domestic abuse in the long term is a woman's access to legal assistance.

Unfortunately, as the economy continues to wane, those needing legal assistance increase. Yet, the Federal commitment to legal services and LSC is not as effective as it needs to be. LSC has not been authorized since 1981, and since 1995 Congress has slashed funding for legal services for the poor, from $415 million to $350 million in fiscal year 2008, with only a recent increase to $390 million for fiscal year 2009. Further, severe restrictions on LSC funded attorneys impede the ability of legal aid attorneys to provide the most meaningful legal representation to low-income Americans. The result is that access to justice and quality representation has become far from a reality for too many of our citizens.

In many parts of the country, more than 80 percent of those who need legal representation are unable to obtain it. Nationally, 50 percent of eligible applicants who request legal assistance from LSC funded programs are turned away largely because such programs lack adequate funding. That translates into over one million eligible cases per year.

Bear in mind, to be eligible for Federal legal assistance, one must live at or below 125 percent Federal poverty level--an income of about $25,000 a year for a family of four. This means that we are turning away half of the families in America who need and seek civil legal help who make less than $25,000 a year. That is wrong and it makes a mockery of the principle of equal justice under the law.

Unfortunately, a combination of limited federal funding, state budget cuts and an increased demand for services due to the recession has exacerbated the problem. As the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court recently noted, legal aid programs have reached a ``crisis of epic proportions.'' This year, requests for services have risen by 30 percent or more across the country while cutbacks in staffing are expected to reach 20 percent or more over the coming months. Connecticut Legal Services expects to lose as many as 150 legal positions. Boston's legal aid expects to lay off one-fifth of its lawyers. Two whole offices in New Jersey recently had to shut their doors. When legal aid lawyers lose their jobs and when offices close, unfortunately it is our most vulnerable citizens who suffer as their legal needs go unmet.

The housing crisis highlights this problem. Today, millions of Americans are struggling to meet their housing needs, including making their mortgage payments, in many cases traceable to predatory lending practices. Foreclosures are at a historic high and continue to soar. As more and more people face the devastating prospect of losing their home--their most prized possession--legal assistance is necessary to help renegotiate terms of loans or enforce truth-in-lending protections in court. The result is that many legal aid offices have seen a drastic increase in those seeking help. Between 2007 and 2008, for example, Iowa Legal Aid saw a 300 percent increase in foreclosure related cases. The Legal Aid Society of San Diego saw a 250 percent increase. Yet, legal aid is too often unavailable. A recent study, for example, revealed that in New Jersey, 99 percent of defendants in housing eviction cases go to court without an attorney.

Given these needs, the Civil Access to Justice Act of 2009, which I am proud to introduce today with Senators Kennedy, Leahy, Mikulski, Cardin, Kerry, Durbin, Lautenberg, McCaskill and Merkley, renews our commitment to equal justice for all Americans and will improve both the quantity and quality of legal assistance in this country.

The bill is supported by, among others, the American Bar Association, Brennan Center for Justice, National Legal Aid & Defender Association, National Organization of Legal Service Workers and United Auto Workers.

First, this bill authorizes funding for LSC at $750 million, which is approximately the amount appropriated in 1981, adjusted for inflation, the high water mark for LSC funding. That year, Congress allocated $321.3 million to LSC. At the time, that was seen as the level sufficient to provide a minimum level of access to legal aid in every county. Adjusted for inflation, this ``minimum access'' level of funding would need to be about $750 million in 2009 dollars.

Second, this bill lifts many of the restrictions Congress imposed in 1996 on federally funded attorneys. That year, Congress significantly limited whom federally funded attorneys could represent and the types of legal tools these attorneys could use in representing their clients. Proponents of these restrictions argued that LSC funded lawyers had overreached and were using federal funds to pursue what some considered an ideological political agenda through the courts, while neglecting basic legal work for poor Americans.

I vigorously disagreed with this characterization of legal aid attorneys and opposed the restrictions at the time; and I continue to do so. The restrictions have harmed our neediest Americans and in many instances prevent legal counsel from doing what attorneys are ethically bound to do--provide zealous representation for their clients. Further, the restrictions, by limiting the range of tools that legal aid attorneys can employ compared to other members of the bar, have created a system of second-class legal representation. That is why this legislation lifts limits on the legal tools that LSC-funded attorneys can use to represent their clients--for example, prohibitions on attorneys seeking court-ordered attorneys' fees, lobbying with nonfederal funds or representing clients in class action law suits.

With respect to attorney fees, Congress and state legislatures have recognized that such fees are an important remedy, and are critical in ensuring that civil rights and consumer protection suits are brought. As Congress stated in enacting the Civil Rights Attorneys' Fees Awards Act of 1976, ``fee awards have proved an essential remedy if private citizens are to have a

meaningful opportunity to vindicate the important Congressional policies which these laws contain.'' That is why Congress has enacted nearly 200 statutes, and states have enacted approximately 4,000 statutes, that provide for attorney fees. The current restriction preventing LSC-funded attorneys from receiving attorney fees has the effect of weakening the effectiveness of these statutes.

Lifting the restriction on attorney fees makes sense for additional reasons. First, because of the restriction, defendants who otherwise would pay attorney fees are unjustly enriched because they happen to face LSC-funded attorneys as opposed to a private counsel. Second, the potential for attorney fees is important leverage for attorneys as they negotiate settlements, leverage now not available to LSC-funded attorneys. Finally, by prohibiting collecting attorney fees, Congress has needlessly limited potential resources that can be used to provide legal aid to other clients.

The bill also lifts the restriction on LSC-funded attorneys' ability to lobby with non-federal funds for changes in the law that would benefit disadvantaged clients. Legal service attorneys are immersed in the day-to-day legal issues faced by low-income communities and, as a result, are often most knowledgeable about the true impact of state and Federal laws on low income Americans. Yet, LSC-funded attorneys may not participate legislative and administrative efforts unless they are responding to a written request from a legislator or other official.

When legal aid attorneys' input is requested, the results are telling. For example, Maryland Legal Aid Bureau was recently invited by the legislature to testify on an overhaul of state foreclosure and lending laws. Although the lending, mortgage and banking industries were well represented, the legal aid attorney was the only person there representing borrowers' views. While the attorney's voice was critical in ensuring appropriate consumer protections, it is significant that that voice was only heard because legislators chose to seek input from legal aid. Because of the current restrictions, absent an invitation, the experiences and knowledge of that attorney would be silenced, leaving a one-sided debate.

Let me be clear, I disagree with those who advocated for and enacted the 1996 restrictions. However, in the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship, and with the intent to avoid a repeat of the contentious debates of the 1990s, this legislation does not lift all of the restrictions. Illustrative is the present restriction on LSC-funded attorneys pursuing class action suits. Such cases are often the most efficient and cost-effective lawsuits, not only for clients but for the judicial system. As Congress found in enacting the Class Action Fairness Act in 2005, ``class action lawsuits are an important and valuable part of the legal system when they permit the fair and efficient resolution of legitimate claims of numerous parties by allowing the claims to be aggregated into a single action against a defendant that has allegedly caused harm.''

When the procedural requirements of State or Federal law are met, LSC-funded attorneys and their clients, like all others, should be able to utilize this essential litigation tool. That is why the bill lifts the restriction on the ability of legal aid programs to bring such suits. At the same time, again while I disagree, I acknowledge the concern that led to the restriction--that prior to the restriction some felt that LSC-funded attorneys were using class action suits to ``push the envelope'' and have courts establish ``new law.'' To allay this concern, the bill permits only class action suits that are grounded in ``established'' law. This will enable, for example, LSC-funded attorneys to represent as a class multiple families who are victims of predatory lending, but will not permit LSC-funded attorneys to attempt to achieve a novel interpretation of the law that lacks statutory support or judicial precedent.

Moreover, again in the spirit of compromise, the bill maintains many of the limits on who LSC-funded programs can represent, including the current exclusion of illegal immigrants, with limited exceptions, such as victims of domestic violence, prisoners challenging prison conditions, and people charged with illegal drug possession in public housing eviction proceedings. Also, consistent with current law, the legislation prohibits LSC-funded programs from participating in abortion-related cases.

Third, this legislation lifts all the restrictions, except those related to abortion litigation, on the use of state and local funds and private donations to Federal funded legal services programs that Congress also imposed in 1996. That year, Congress determined that for programs that receive federal funds, the same restrictions applicable to federal funds apply to non-federal funds a program receives.

The result is that millions of dollars in non-federal funds are encumbered by the same restrictions that drastically limit the tools available to legal aid attorneys, to the detriment of their clients. Through direct state and local funding, money from state Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts, IOLTA, and private sources, over $450 million in non-federal funds currently is provided for civil legal assistance. The restrictions place unnecessary and costly hurdles on the use of these non-federal funds. The only way a program and its donors can free themselves from federal restrictions is by diverting non-federal funds into a separate program--with separate staff members, offices and equipment. This is burdensome and wasteful.

Whatever one thinks of placing conditions on the receipt of federal funds, states, cities and private donors should have the ability to determine for themselves how best to spend their money to ensure access to justice for their citizens. It is one thing to attach conditions on the use of the federal funds, but to impose conditions on the use of non-federal funds is wrong.

Fourth, in addition to providing further tools and support for LSC grantees, better corporate governance--something that is critically needed--is a central feature of this legislation. Last year, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, reported on troubling management practices and lack of oversight by LSC. The reports found that there had been questionable expenditures by LSC management and that LSC lacked a ``properly implemented governance and accountability structure'' needed to prevent problems. GAO included in its report a series of recommendations as to how LSC should address these shortcomings and prevent similar problems in the future.

No one was more upset about the GAO reports than I. That is why I personally made it clear to LSC management, in no uncertain terms, that they needed to act immediately to address the GAO recommendations, and why a central feature of this bill is provisions to ensure better corporate governance. LSC acted quickly to address the issues GAO raised, and both LSC management and its Board of Directors have publicly accepted all of GAO's recommendations and have worked diligently to implement them. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to lock the recommendations into statute.

Finally, the bill authorizes a grant program from the Department of Education to expand law school clinics. A recent study found that students in law school clinics serve approximately 90,000 civil clients every school year, excluding summer semesters, and provide over 1.8 million hours of legal service. These legal clinics are a significant resource for legal services. But they are much more. For many students, these programs are stepping stones towards careers in legal service and public interest law following graduation. Recent studies demonstrate that law students who participate in law school clinics are more likely to work in public service jobs and do more pro bono than their peers who do not.

We need to do all we can to encourage young lawyers to make legal aid a career. One important way of doing this is by exposing them to the challenges, and more importantly the rewards, of representing people who otherwise would not have the legal assistance they deserve.

Our promise of ``equal justice under law'' rings hollow if those who are most vulnerable are denied access to representation. As former Justice Lewis Powell said, ``[e]qual justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society . . . it is fundamental that justice should be the same,

in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.'' Legal aid attorneys across the country protect the safety, security, and health of low-income citizens. When a senior citizen is the victim of a financial scam, when a family faces the loss of their home, or, all too often, when a woman seeks protection from abuse, legal aid can help--but only if it has the funds and the tools needed to do so.

As our former colleague Senator Domenici once declared: ``I do not know what is wrong with the United States of America saying to the needy people of this country that the judicial system is not only for the rich. What is wrong with that? . . . That is what America is all about.''

That is the aim of this bill. After years of grossly underfunding this essential program, denying legal representation to millions of low-income citizens, and denying legal aid lawyers the full panoply of tools they need to represent their clients effectively, this bill will fulfill the promise of our Constitution. ``Equal Justice Under Law'' will be more than an ideal chiseled on a marble facade, it will be a concrete reality for millions of our citizens, who, today, are denied it. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

I am proud to join Senator Harkin, along with Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, Senator Mikulski, Senator Durbin, Senator Lautenberg, Senator McCaskill, and Senator Merkley on this important legislation to reauthorize the Legal Services Corporation, LSC. I thank Senator Harkin for his hard work and dedication to this issue. Along with reauthorizing the funding for the LSC, the bill also removes several restrictions that have encumbered the efforts of legal services providers around the country.

The funding authorization in this legislation will help ensure that in future years, the Legal Services Corporation, and all of the state legal aid organizations it assists, will continue the critical work they do to help lower-income American citizens who need legal assistance. Similar to the Sixth Amendment's requirement that an indigent criminal defendant be provided counsel, the voice that legal aid attorneys give to the less fortunate among us is an indispensable component of a fair justice system. What Justice Hugo Black called the ``noble ideal'' of a fair and impartial trial is extended through the work of those around the country who serve their fellow citizens in our courts. This reauthorization will continue the policy of the Federal Government to provide assistance to those who seek access to the courts in civil matters.

As part of this reauthorization, and in an effort to support the integrity of the LSC, the bill codifies recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office, GAO, related to the LSC's corporate governance. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing in May 2008 in part to shed light on these recommendations, and to give the LSC an opportunity to respond about plans to address the problems identified by the GAO. The LSC's leadership has been open and responsive to making improvements, and including these recommendations in the bill will assist the LSC in strengthening its governance practices for the future.

This legislation also takes the long-overdue step of removing several of the restrictions that have hindered legal aid organizations for too long. But I wish to make clear that the restrictions on both state and Federal funds prohibiting litigation involving reproductive rights remain in place. Several restrictions on Federal funds remain: the use of Federal funds for litigation concerning unlawful immigrants, prison conditions, and certain eviction cases involving the sale of illegal drugs in public housing, will remain prohibited. But many of the restrictions this bill finally lifts are the product of an ideology long since rejected by the American people. It is time for Congress to reconsider the usefulness of these restrictions in providing the services that so many Americans desperately need.

All Americans should understand the effects of these restrictions on the provision of legal services for lower-income citizens. Chief among them is the overarching requirement prohibiting the use of non-Federal funds for enumerated purposes when legal aid organizations accept Federal funding from the LSC. Currently, non-federal funds received by legal aid providers that also accept LSC funding are subject to the same restrictions that Federal funds are. This has resulted in a waste of resources that providers can ill afford. For example, a legal aid provider that wishes to use state, foundation, or other private funding as it sees fit must physically segregate its operations so that funds from the two sources are administered separately through duplicated processes. In this era of economic difficulty, the impact of every Federal and state dollar provided to help Americans must be maximized. This requirement has resulted in little more than wasted resources. Legal aid providers are capable of honoring Federal restrictions without the necessity of such an onerous approach.

The legislation also removes restrictions that currently prohibit legal aid attorneys from receiving attorney's fees, as authorized by law, in cases in which they prevail. Contrary to arguments that claim such a practice would cause legal aid attorneys to act unethically or out of an interest divergent from the legitimate needs of their clients, allowing these fees to be retained would help shift the cost of wrongdoing from the Federal Government to the wrongdoer. Moreover, allowing legal aid attorneys to retain these fees when merited would provide increased assistance to the organizations for which they work. In an effort to monitor the effect of removing this restriction, the legislation requires all fees received to be reported to the LSC.

The bill removes restrictions on class action suits by legal aid providers. Contrary to the popular rhetoric, in some cases class action suits can maximize the benefits provided by legal aid organizations by allowing similarly situated plaintiffs to pursue their rights in a single case. The legislation does restrict class action suits to actions based on established law, and thus is intended to discourage truly frivolous suits. Additionally, the legislation removes the restriction prohibiting legal aid providers from lobbying their elected officials. Allowing legal aid providers to advocate on behalf of those they serve will advance civil justice issues and raise the awareness of lawmakers in matters affecting many Americans. And I would remind those who would disparage this practice on the part of legal aid providers that many of the financial institutions that the American taxpayers have recently bailed out continue to lobby extensively in Washington. If banks that have been bailed out with taxpayer money can freely access their elected officials, so too should those who represent the least politically powerful among us.

I hope all Senators will give serious consideration to reauthorizing the Legal Services Corporation and ending many of the restrictions that have burdened the provision of legal services to so many American citizens. Lawyers across the U.S. have dedicated their lives to helping the least fortunate among us gain access to the courts that serve us all. These lawyers play a critical role in ensuring that justice is carried out in a manner consistent with the Constitution's promise, and when justice is served fairly, it benefits us all. I hope all Senators will join us in support of this legislation.

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

Mr. President, I am excited that we are wrapping up this historic legislation.

We all know that our Nation is facing many challenges. But times of crisis are times of great opportunity. They are the times in which our Nation's character is forged and in which Americans show their mettle. We are a nation of believers. We believe in ourselves, and we believe in our country's ability.

And at such a time of national need, we here in the Congress also know how to come together.

This bill is the result of extensive bipartisan work by Senators Kennedy and Hatch who have worked for more than a year on this legislation. They have lived lives that are a testament to the values expressed in this legislation. Thus, it is more than just a bipartisan bill, it is an American bill, and exemplifies everything that is good about our country.

It exemplifies not only their great friendship but their shared passion for service and for giving back and working across the aisle to do get things done. This really shows the Senate acting at its best.

I am no stranger to National Service. In 1989 I introduced the National and Community Service Act with Senators Kennedy, Nunn, and McCain to establish the Commission on National and Community Service, to oversee and coordinate our national volunteer efforts.

That legislation also created a demonstration program that evolved into AmeriCorps. That program provided vouchers for full and part-time service, to pay for education, job training, and homeownership

In 1993, we took national service to the next level, by enacting the National and Community Service Trust Act. We worked on that landmark legislation with President Clinton. It created the framework for the programs we are strengthening and expanding today.

National service is not just another social program. We created national service as a social invention. It was

created to address two critical questions, a practical question and an idealistic one:

How would young people pay for their education?

How could we reinstall the habits of the heart that made our country great?

And it worked. As our economy struggles, these American habits of the heart are shining through. Americans across the country are also doing their best by signing up to serve their communities and their country. City Year applications are up 180 percent. AmeriCorps applications are up as much as three to four times over last year's levels. Teach for America received 35,000 applications for just 4,000 slots. The help they get with student loans through the educational award is a real incentive for these young people. That worked as well.

This legislation will help us to harness a renewed energy for service to our communities and our country. It increases the number of AmeriCorps volunteers to 250,000 a year over 8 years, from 75,000. This will provide opportunities for more Americans to serve while ensuring the Corporation has time to handle the growth.

This bill isn't just about growth. It is about focusing AmeriCorps on areas of the most pressing national need, and where service can do the most good. That is why we include an education corps, a health futures corps, a clean energy corps, a veterans corps, and an opportunity corps focusing on poverty. This is why we are focusing our service efforts.

If we are going to do more in service we need to be sure it is done right. That is why this bill contains many vital accountability measures, to measure outcomes for specific service grantees and outcomes for the Corporation itself. And for this we can truly thank our colleague, Senator Enzi, the Ranking Member of the HELP Committee and a vital partner in this bill. He has once again brought his very sound accounting skills to the table, and we came up with a way to, again, ensure value for the taxpayer, value for the community.

One of the things that is so exciting about this bill is what it does to encourage service among young people. We all know that our future lies with the next generation, with America's youth. And we know that young people who learn to serve take those lessons with them for a lifetime. I look at my colleagues--Senator Hatch, Senator Dodd, and Senator Rockefeller. Many of them had important service experiences when they were young that encouraged them to embark on a career of public service. Indeed, working on this bill has reminded me of many things that I did in my own life.

When I started my career as a social worker, I wasn't just working in the jobs that paid. I was volunteering with nuns to help women get their lives back on track after getting out of prison. I was working with foster children and children with special needs--our most vulnerable population--to help them get the services and the care they needed. I was a trainer at the very first VISTA training center in Baltimore, making sure that those VISTA members weren't just working to build President Johnson's ``Great Society,'' but that they were doing great work in their communities.

I didn't do all of this because anyone asked me to, I did it because nobody asked me to. I saw the compelling human need, and I used my skills as a community organizer to do the best I could in my neighborhood, and my hometown of Baltimore. It led to me fighting to stop a highway, which led to the city council in Baltimore, then to the House of Representatives and, now, to the floor of the U.S. Senate. I didn't know that I would be here when I started my career, but I know that what I did in those early years as a social worker, and volunteer has impacted everything that I've done since.

These experiences that we have when we are young truly shape the habits of a lifetime. That is why it is so important that this legislation makes key investments in our Nation's young people.

The bill will increase service-learning opportunities for students. Working with Senator Dodd, who has been such a leader on these issues, we create ``summer of service'' opportunities for middle and high school students. In return for spending the summer doing service, students will receive an educational award--which will not only help them pay for college, but will send them a signal that college is within reach. It will also create ``youth engagement zones,'' which provide for coordinated community-wide service learning programs in areas with high dropout rates. Both of these programs provide students with meaningful service experiences and put them on a path to a lifetime of service.

College is where so much of our young people's character and experiences are shaped, and our colleges must do a good job instilling the virtues of service. This bill recognizes those that are going the extra mile by allowing for the designation of 25 ``Campuses of Service'' across the country, schools which are undertaking activities to help their students engage in service, service-learning, and go on to public service careers.

As I mentioned, this bill will also help students pay for college and decrease student debt for those who serve in AmeriCorps. This was something we thought about very carefully when we created this program. And with college costs rising, it is more important than ever that we reaffirm this commitment. Across AmeriCorps, it will increase the Eli Segal Education Award to $5,350 for the first time since its creation. We also pegged the award to the Pell grant, to ensure it does not get stuck once again in the future.

This bill also recognizes we must to do more to appreciate what older Americans have to give back and more to ask them to do them. The largest generation in American history is retiring, but in many cases they have more to give. Recent surveys show that many older Americans are interested in continuing to do more to help the greater good, and a full 58 percent of the first wave of baby boomers reported that they would consider entering ``encore'' careers in service.

To help them help us, this bill makes AmeriCorps work better for adults. It allows adults over the age of 55 to transfer their educational award to a child or grandchild, to help such a young person go to college. This keeps the tie between service and educational benefit, but makes it work better for adults.

The legislation also creates encore fellowships to help adults transition to longer-term public service. This is a way to bring in people who have retired and who have incredible skills, such as that retired accountant who can help a nonprofit get its books together and maybe find new grant opportunities.

Finally, the bill updates and expands the Senior Corps programs, RSVP, Senior Companions, and Foster Grandparents. These programs have been providing opportunities for seniors across the country for decades, and this bill will ensure they continue to do so.

Some of the most important work this bill does is around supporting social innovation. We don't know ahead of time what these will be, but every generation comes up with a social invention that shapes our nation for years to come.

Often, these ideas come from a young social entrepreneur who has the courage to think they have a new way to solve a tough problem--and they're right. From Teach for America to the Community Health Corps to New Song Urban Ministries' Youth Mentoring Program in Baltimore, they have so much to teach us.

The Social Innovation Fund in this bill will do just that, by creating public-private funds to support the expansion of effective, outcomes-based nonprofits that are meeting real needs.

One of the things that is truly a hallmark of the American character is our willingness to help each other. There is an overwhelming majority of Americans that donate a few hours of their time each week to do just that. Particularly in this time of need, we must continue to focus on these part-time volunteers. To help organizations better recruit and manage these volunteers, this legislation creates a Volunteer Generation Fund to improve volunteer management and increase capacity at small organizations that rely on volunteers.

From part-time volunteers to full-time volunteers, from students to retirees, this bill will help every American at every stage of life give back.

By doing so, it will draw on some of our best attributes as a nation--our strength, our compassion, our ingenuity--to address the challenges we are

facing. We all agree there is nothing about our country's current situation that is easy. But there are some easy steps on the path to getting back on our feet. This legislation is one such step.

In a very short time, we will vote on final passage of the Serve America Act. This is going to be a great day for the Senate and a great day for people everywhere who wish to give back to their country. The content of the bill is outstanding. The way the process has worked has been amazing. What is so wonderful about this bill is, it showed that the Congress and the Senate can work together. We can check our party hats at the door and then concentrate on what we need to do to help the American people.

This legislation passed in the House. In the Senate, we have been deliberating on it this week. This bill is the result of extensive bipartisan work by Senators Kennedy and Hatch who have worked for more than a year on the legislation. They, too, have devoted their lives to service. Senator Kennedy's role is well known. For more than 40 years, his steadfast commitment to the Peace Corps, to the VISTA volunteers, to being a founding father of AmeriCorps, he has been there every single time benchmark legislation has passed that has led to the opportunity for greater service.

Senator Hatch brings his wonderful background, his Mormon commitment to service, where he himself went on a service mission and to know how it would change their lives. They have brought extensive work on the bill, and they brought a lifetime of experience.

I am no stranger to national service because in 1989, I introduced the National Community Service Act with Senators Kennedy, Nunn and McCain to establish a commission and a demonstration project to look at national service. We actually wanted to test out ideas.

Then, in 1993, working with President Clinton, we took national service to the next level by enacting the National and Community Service Trust Act. We worked on that landmark legislation with President Clinton. It created the framework for the programs we are strengthening and expanding today.

When we did this in 1993, we did not want national service to be just another social program. We wanted to see this as a social invention that would spark a social movement. At that time in the 1990s, everyone was worried about the me generation, where young people were forgetting the legacy of what this country is, the habits of the heart, of neighbor helping neighbor. We wanted to stimulate a movement from the me generation to the we generation. At the same time we faced the hard reality that access to the American dream, particularly higher education, was slipping away from many young people.

It worked. We found that the framework for AmeriCorps and other important programs that are in the Corporation for National Service did generate exactly what we wanted. Thousands and thousands of people stepped forward to volunteer, people of all ages, young people and not so young people, in AmeriCorps, the foster grandparent corps, the RSVP, and Senior Companions Programs. It absolutely changed their lives.

What is it that we see now? What we see now, as we come into the new century, those habits of the heart continue to burn brightly among our population. We are seeing that as the economy struggles, the American habits of the heart are shining through.

All across America, people want to volunteer, if they have the opportunity to do so. City Year applications are up 180 percent. Teach for America has received 35,000 applicants for 4,000 slots. AmeriCorps applications are three or four times last year's level. That is not because they don't have a job and they see AmeriCorps or Teach for America as a substitute for a job. They see it as a calling. They see it as an opportunity to take all this talent and put it to work for our society.

We are going to do that. This legislation helps us to harness a renewed energy for service to our communities and our country. It increases the number of AmeriCorps volunteers to 250,000 volunteers a year. But we do it in a well paced way and also in an affordable way. It increases the number of AmeriCorps volunteers to 250,000 a year over 8 years. We will get the job done. It will provide opportunities for more Americans to serve while we ensure that the corporation has time to handle the growth.

Also, we wanted to reform, reinvigorate, and refocus AmeriCorps. In AmeriCorps now we are refocusing it on the areas of the most pressing national need and where service can do the most good. That is why we have included the permissible use of establishing an education corps to work at improving school outcomes for young people, more literacy, more math skills, better attendance. We also have a healthy futures corps which will work to make sure people who are eligible for benefits can get them but also to go into schools to be able to help develop those new healthy habits that will last over a lifetime. We have a clean energy corps that will work on weatherization and helping clean our parks and neighborhoods. We have an opportunity corps to focus on poverty, and a veterans corps to help those families where men and women are deployed. That is why we are focusing our service efforts.

This bill also includes many accountability measures to ensure to not only measure outcomes but to ensure fiscal stewardship. I thank Senator Enzi, the ranking member of the HELP Committee, a vital partner on this bill. He brought his very sound accounting skills to the table. Working together, we found a way to ensure value for the taxpayer and value for the community. That is what I mean about working together, taking the time to listen to one another, to recognize there is not only talent out there in the community, there is talent right here in the Senate.

If we take the time to listen to one another and the ideas we have, sort them through, pay attention to one another, talk with one another--first of all, talk with one another, and do it in a civil way, wow, we can really do some very special things. That is what we did in this bill.

We know our future lies with the next generation. We know young people who learn to serve take those lessons with them for a lifetime. My colleagues Hatch, Dodd, and Rockefeller did a year of service. My own work as a social worker had a profound impact on me. My work as a foster care worker and a child abuse worker will stay with me all of my life, when I think about vulnerable populations and what we need to do. The work I was able to do in my own community, working with women who were in jail, who had no programs to assist them when they came out, to the work in the church I belonged to in the African American community, where they did not have access to credit except to the gougers and scammers and schemers, to work to establish a credit union. And then, of course, as a grassroots volunteer, I helped fight a highway that saved neighborhoods in Baltimore and took me into politics.

In our country, sometimes those of us who are active in those activities raise the dickens, or in dissent, end up in jail. I ended up in the city council, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. I turned my protest signs into amendment and legislative signs. This is what we see today.

Habits last a long time. When we look at what is happening in the healthy futures corps where young people are already working in their community health centers and so on, when they finish their year of service, many of them are going into health careers. They go into medicine, nursing, allied health, or in the great area of public health. Eighty five percent of the people who volunteer in this area want to go into some kind of career that produces improvements in health outcomes. So this is what AmeriCorps is all about.

When I worked in the community, I didn't do this because somebody asked me. I did it because it needed to be done. It is not only about what I did as a young volunteer. It is about what young volunteers are doing now. Sure, President Obama is inviting them to participate. But a lot of young people out there see compelling human need, and they want to make a difference. These experiences are going to shape them for a lifetime. We cannot minimize the impact this will have on communities. In its decade and a half of existence, AmeriCorps has already changed lives and communities.

When we talk to people where our young people have volunteered in public schools, we know that attendance went up, behavioral problems went down, motivation increased. Working with those volunteers, they even took the time to look at what were the opportunities for scholarships and loans and grants that they could go on to higher education.

They make a difference.

When we take a look at what they were able to do working in response to disaster assistance, weren't we proud of what our volunteers were able to do--working side-by-side-down there dealing with Katrina where they helped New Orleans dig out? But not only dig out, they dug in to help Louisiana and New Orleans move to a better future. Those AmeriCorps young men and women helped clean up after the debris, clean up after the terrible hurricane that hit. They are working with Habitat for Humanity to build housing or to repair housing and also working side-by-side with public school leadership to create a new New Orleans public school system.

This is fantastic. Every community that has been hard hit in many ways enjoys the benefits of these programs. There were other programs we were able to do. One of the things we are especially pleased with was that we were able to increase the education award named after its first founder, Eli Segal, and increased it to $5,300. There are other programs in here.

When we talk about programs, it sounds so bloodless, so ``there they go again.'' But that is right; here we go again. We are creating an opportunity ladder for people to be able to participate in our society. There is no other country in the world that does this. I am not just talking about bragging rights for the United States, but it is a lesson learned that in our society, we have a public sector and a private sector. But we have a vibrant sector that is really in the nonprofit field where people can get involved and get engaged. It is what we call the intermediary institutions. It is what de Tocqueville called the habits of the heart. It is what sociologists called the little platoons of neighbor helping neighbor. It is what George Bush the elder called the Thousand Points of Light. But whatever you call it, it is called serving America.

Shortly, we will be voting on this bill. I think we have done a very good job. We have created opportunity. We have done it in a way that is affordable. We have built-in, sound accountability measures, and we have governed on a truly bipartisan basis.

I thank Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch for being the lead architects on this bill. I also thank Senator Enzi and Senator Dodd for their very important contributions in improving this bill.

I thank all of the staff who have participated in this effort: from Senator Hatch's staff, Chris Campbell, Bryan Hickman, and Jace Johnson; from Senator Kennedy's staff, Christine Leonard, Charlotte Burrows, Janice Kaguyutan, Portia Wu, Michael Myers, and Emma Vadehra; from Senator Enzi's staff, Beth Buehlmann, Adam Briddell, Frank Macchiarola, and Greg Dean; from my own staff, Julia Frifield, Ben Gruenbaum, and Mario Cardona. And the Corporation's general counsel was available to us all the time through Frank Trinity.

So I thank the staff who put in so many hours in helping design the bill but also working with other Senators to get the best ideas and the best thinking on how we could get the bill done, but to do it in a way that has accountability and outcome measurements.

But also, when the American people hear about what we have done this week, it is such an antidote to last week, when we were talking about AIG and bonuses and ``ain't I greedy,'' and all of those things. What we are talking about here today is about the very best of the American people and how we can draw upon it, and also the very best of the Senate. We do govern best when we work together.

So today we were not a red State, we were not a blue State, we were the United States of America States, and we will be ready to vote on it.

Mr. President, at the appropriate time--or even now--I urge passage of this bill.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Today I am pleased to be introducing a piece of legislation designed to establish a national criminal justice commission. I do so with, at the moment, 12 cosponsors, including our majority leader, the chairman and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman and the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, and other members of our leadership. I introduce this bill after more than 2 years of effort here in the Senate that I will explain shortly; also with the prior conferral with Supreme Court Justice Kennedy and having discussed this matter with the President and the Attorney General, both of whom I think are strongly supportive of this concept.

Our design, our goal in this legislation, is to create a national commission with an 18-month timeline, not to simply talk about the problems that we have in our criminal justice system but actually to look at all of the elements in this system, how they are interrelated in terms of the difficulties that we have in remedying issues of criminal justice in this country, and to deliver us from a situation that has evolved over time where we are putting far too many of the wrong people into prison and we are still not feeling safer in our neighborhoods; we are still not putting in prison or bringing to justice those people who are perpetrating violence and criminality as a way of life.

I would like to say that, although I am not on the Judiciary Committee, I come to this issue as someone who first became interested in criminal justice issues while I was serving as a U.S. marine, serving on a number of courts-martial and thinking about the interrelationship between discipline and fairness; then after that, from having spent time as an attorney at one point representing, pro bono, a young former marine who had been convicted of murder in Vietnam. I represented him for 6 years pro bono. He took his life halfway through this process. I cleared his name 3 years later, but I became painfully aware of how sometimes inequities infect our process.

Prior to joining the Senate, I spent time as a journalist, including a stint 25 years ago as the first American journalist to have been inside the Japanese prison system, where I became aware of the systemic difficulties and challenges

we have. At that time, 25 years ago, Japan was half our population, and had only 40,000 sentenced prisoners in jail. We had 480,000. Today, we have 2.38 million prisoners in our criminal justice system and another 5 million involved in the process, either due to probation or parole situations.

This is a system that is very much in need of the right sort of overarching examination. I do note the senior Senator from Pennsylvania has joined me on the Senate floor. I am very gratified he has also joined me as the lead Republican on this measure. I look forward to hearing from him as soon as I am finished with my remarks.

The third thing I would like to say at the outset is, I believe very strongly, even though we are a Federal body, that there is a compelling national interest for us to examine this issue and reshape and reform our criminal justice system at the Federal, State, and local levels. I believe the commission I am going to present would provide us with that opportunity.

I start with a premise I do think not a lot of Americans are aware of. We have 5 percent of the world's population. We have 25 percent of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the incarceration rate in the rest of the world.

There are only two possibilities. Either we have the most evil people on Earth living in the United States or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. And I would ask my fellow Senators and my fellow citizens to think about the challenges that attend these kind of numbers when we are looking at people who have been released from prison and are reentering American society.

We have hundreds and thousands of American people who are reentering American society without the sort of transition that would allow a great percentage of them to again become productive citizens.

I think we need to look at this in terms of our own history, our own recent history. This is a chart that shows our incarceration rate from 1925 until today. Beginning in about 1980, our incarceration rate started to skyrocket. What has happened since 1980 is not reflective of where our own history has been on this issue. That is another need, why we need to examine it fuller. We also, for a complex set of reasons, are warehousing the mentally ill in our prisons. We now have four times as many mentally ill people in our prisons than we do in mental institutions. There are a complex set of reasons for that, but the main point for all of us to consider is, these people who are in prison are not receiving the kind of treatment they would need in order to remedy the disabilities that have brought them to that situation.

Drug incarceration has sharply increased over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison. Today we have more than 500,000. That is an increase of 112 percent.

Those blue disks represent the numbers in 1980. The red disks represent the numbers in 2007. A significant percent of these individuals are incarcerated for possession or nonviolent drug offenses, and in many cases, criminal offenses that stem from drug addiction and those sorts of related behavioral issues.

African Americans are about 12 percent of our population. Contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use, in terms of frequent drug use rate, is about the same as all other elements of our society, about 14 percent. But they end up being 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 59 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison, by the numbers that have been provided to us and to the Joint Economic Committee. This is a disturbing statistic for us. I emphasize to my colleagues and to others that the issues we face with respect to criminal justice are not overall racial issues. They involve issues, in many cases, of how people are treated based on their ability to have proper counsel and other issues like that. But this is a statistic with respect to drugs that we all must come to terms with.

At the same time, I say we are putting too many of the wrong people in prison, and we are not solving the problems that will bring safety to our communities. Gangs are a hot issue today. I am on the Armed Services Committee. I am on the Foreign Relations Committee. There has been a lot of back and forth in recent months about the transnational gangs that are emanating across the Mexican border. Approximately 1 million gang members are currently in our country today. And I emphasis this is not an issue that is simply existent along the Mexican border. This is an issue that affects every community in the United States, and it is not simply an issue with respect to the Mexican drug cartels, although theirs are the most violent and the most visible today.

The Mexican drug cartels are operating in more than 230 American cities, not simply along the border. The incidents along on the border illuminate the largeness of this problem and of this challenge. Gangs in many areas of the United States commit 80 percent of the crimes. They are heavily involved in drug distribution, but they are involved in other violent activities as well.

There has been some talk over the past few days about how our position toward drugs and our gun policies feed this problem. I would ask my colleagues to think very hard about that. Drugs are a demand- pull problem in the United States, there is no question about that. There are a lot of weapons that are going back and forth across the border. But we should remember the Mexican drug cartels are capable of very sophisticated levels of quasi-military violence.

Many of the members who are brought into the gangs by the drug cartels are former Mexican military. Some of them have been trained by our own special forces, and the weapons they use are not the kind of weapons you are going to buy at a gun show. You do not get automatic weapons, RPGs, and grenades at a gun show.

We have to realize these cartels have a lot of money. By some indications they make profit levels of about $25 billion a year. They can buy the weapons they want. We have to get on top of this as a national priority. Again, it is not simply the transnational gangs that come out of Mexico. Many of them are Central American.

In Northern Virginia, right across the Potomac River, we have thousands of members who belong to the MS-13 gangs emanating out of Central America, who are very active up the I-95 corridor. There are Asian gangs. We have to get our arms around this problem as we address the other problem of mass incarceration in the United States.

Another piece of this issue I hope we will be able to address with this national criminal justice commission is what happens inside our prisons. When I was looking at the Japanese system many years ago, their model in terms of prison administration was basically designed after a traditional military model. You could not be a warden in a Japanese jail unless you started as a turnkey. They had national examinations. They had a year of preparation, training in psychology, in counseling techniques, before an individual was allowed to be a turnkey in a jail. The promotion systems were internal, like the U.S. military. It provided a quality career path, and it brought highly trained people in at the very beginning.

We do not have that in America. Prisons vary warden to warden; they vary locality to locality. We need to examine a better way to do that in our country.

We also have a situation in this country with respect to prison violence and sexual victimization that is off the charts. We must get our arms around this problem.

We also have many people in our prisons who are among what are called the criminally ill, people who are suffering from hepatitis and HIV who are not getting the sorts of treatment they deserve.

I started, once I arrived in the Senate, working on this issue. I was pleased to be working with Senator Schumer on the Joint Economic Committee. He allowed me to chair hearings to try to get our arms around this problem and see what sort of legislative approach might help. I chaired a hearing on mass incarceration in October of 2007. I chaired another hearing last year on the overall impact of illegal drugs from point of origin through the criminal justice system. How does this work in terms of the underground

business environment? How does it work in terms of the disparity in treatment of people who end up incarcerated? How does it affect people's long-term lives? What are the costs associated with it?

I was able to work with the George Mason University Law Center to put together a forum bringing people in from across the country to talk about our overall drug policy. Once we started talking about this, particularly over the last year, we started being contacted by people all across the country, people from every different aspect of the political and the philosophical areas that come into play when we talk about incarceration. It is a very emotional issue.

As I said, I heard from Justice Kennedy at the Supreme Court. I have heard from prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, former offenders, people in prison, police on the street. All of them are saying we have a mess; we have a mess. We have to get a holistic view of how to solve it. There are many good pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the Congress to deal with different pieces of this issue. But after going through this process over the past year, I have come to the conclusion that the way we should address this is with a national commission that will examine all of these pieces together and make specific findings so we can turn it around.

These are examples of some of the editorial support that we have received. I have written a piece for Parade magazine which will be out this weekend to summarize the challenges we have; I hope our fellow citizens will take a look at it.

As to the design of this legislation, we are looking for two things. One is to shape a commission with bipartisan balance: the President nominating the chairman; the majority and minority leaders in the Senate, in consultation with the Judiciary Committee, each nominating two members; the Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader, in concert with the Judiciary Committee, each nominating two members; and the National Governors Association, Republican and Democrat, each getting one member. The idea is not to have a group of people who are going to sit around and simply remonstrate about the problem. It is to get a group of people with credibility and wide expertise to examine specific findings and to come up with policy recommendations on an 18- month time period.

This commission will be asked to investigate the reasons in our own history that we have seen this incredible increase in incarceration. What do other countries do, particularly countries that have the same basic governmental systems we do? How do they handle comparable types of crime? What should we do about prison administration policies, prison management? How can we bring more quality, stability, and predictability in terms of the prison environment itself? What are the costs of our current incarceration policies, not only in terms of the billions of dollars we spend on building prisons or the billions we spend on housing people in prisons but also in terms of lost opportunities with our post-prison systems, and how we can better manage that area. What is the impact of gang activities, including these transnational gangs, and how should we approach that issue, not simply in terms of incarceration but as a nation that is under duress from not being able to respond properly? Importantly, what are we going to do about drug policy, the whole area of drug policy, and how does that affect sentencing procedures and other alternatives we might look at? We need to examine the policies as they relate to the mentally ill. We should look at the historical role of the military when it comes to how we are approaching these cross-border situations, particularly on the Mexican border. Finally, importantly, any other area the Commission deems relevant.

This is our best effort, after 2 years of coming up with the universe of issues that need to be examined. There are many people, including the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, who have worked on these areas for a number of years. If they have specific findings they believe the Commission should review, we are very happy to accommodate that.

The first step for the commission would be to give us findings, factual findings. From those findings, then give us recommendations for policy changes. The same areas I addressed in terms of findings apply in terms of the policy recommendations: How we can refocus our incarceration policies, work toward properly reducing the incarceration rate in fair, cost-effective ways that still protect communities; how we should address the issue of prison violence in all forms; how we can improve prison administration; how we can establish meaningful reentry programs. I believe with the high volume of people coming out of prisons, we must, on a national level, assist local and State communities in figuring out a way to transition these people so those former offenders who are not going to become recidivists will have a true pathway to get away from the stigma of incarceration and move into a productive future.

Again, importantly, the last category, any other aspect of the system the Commission or the people participating in it determine necessary.

This is our approach. I am gratified to have had as initial cosponsors six members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, Senator Leahy; the ranking Republican, Senator Specter; the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, Senator Durbin; the ranking Republican on that subcommittee, Senator Graham; and a number of others, including key Democratic leadership--most importantly, our leader.

I hope we can get this legislation done this year. This is an issue that does not percolate up in the same way. It doesn't have a programmatic element to it in many cases, but it is an issue that threatens every community and begs for the notion of fairness.

I see the senior Senator from Pennsylvania is on the floor. I greatly admire the work he has done in this area over many years, and I appreciate his support on this endeavor.

I wish to express my appreciation to the senior Senator from Pennsylvania for joining me on this legislation and in this endeavor because it will be an endeavor, as the Senator knows, well beyond the legislative approval of the commission. I think this is going to take years. But I wish to express my appreciation for that, for his comments today, and for all the work he has done in this field.

I wish to emphasize a couple of things, in reaction to what the Senator mentioned. I agree. I do believe we can

meaningfully address this problem. And ``solution'' is perhaps a more illusive word. But we can certainly meaningfully address this problem. I think it is very important to say that it is in the interest of every American we do so.

There are a lot of people who will look at this and talk about specific elements of who has committed a crime and whether you should do the time and these sorts of things, but we do need to sort it out. When we have 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population, there are better ways. When we still have public safety issues in every community because of gang violence, and particularly transnational gang violence at this moment, there are better ways.

That is the purpose of having a commission: getting the greatest minds in this area in the country together, with a specific timeline, to bring us specific findings and recommendations for the entire gamut of criminal justice in the country--not simply incarceration, not simply gang violence, not simply reentry--but all of those and other issues together, so we can have a much needed and long overdue restructuring of how we address the issue of crime in this country.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kennedy be added as an original cosponsor on this bill.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for the wonderful leadership she has provided on this bill for and on behalf of the majority and, I think, all of us. She is a terrific Senator and somebody for whom I have a great deal of respect. It has been a privilege to stand side by side with her and her staff and work together on this monumental piece of legislation. This is landmark legislation, and it will make a real difference in all of our lives.

As we close out this debate, I can't help but think about the road that has led us here. I know that I have said that this bill is 2 years in the making, but, given the work that many of our colleagues have done in national service, it is probably been longer than that. I am proud to have played a role in this effort and I believe that, with this as we close out this legislation, we are bringing something of real value to the American people.

Once again, my interest in volunteer service began long ago when, as a 20-year-old young man, I spent 2 full years serving as Mormon missionary. That experience was, for me, a pivotal time in my life. It altered my world view and gave a greater understanding of people and of the world around me. I have said numerous times I would not trade my time as a missionary those 2 years with being a Senator. It was that meaningful.

I have to say I learned a great deal from that mission--how to deal with people, how to work with people, how to work with people who had problems, how to consult with people, how to counsel people. I can tell story after story the ways I grew in those 2 years and the respect I have for my fellow human beings.

Other Members of this Chamber have similar stories to tell about times in their lives when they were able to set aside their own desires to help others in need. We heard many of those stories this week on the Senate floor, including Senator Mikulski's experience as a social worker and Senator Dodd's time in the Peace Corps. The common thread among all these stories is that each of us was left with a lifelong desire to serve.

As I mentioned, Senator Kennedy and I have been working on this legislation for nearly 2 years trying to find the right balance of new programs and the best way to expand upon the existing national service system. I have to be honest, I consider him to be among one of my dearest friends. Senator Kennedy and I do not agree on much. We have found ourselves on opposing sides of some of the toughest battles in modern Senate history, oftentimes in fierce disagreement. But throughout our time together in the Senate, we have also been able to come together on a number of efforts that, in the end, have improved the lives of our fellow citizens. Although there have been numerous legislative efforts to bear the Kennedy-Hatch, Hatch-Kennedy label, depending on who is in the majority, I have never been more pleased with a bill than I am with this one. I know he feels much the same way. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to lock arms with the senior Senator from Massachusetts once again on the Serve America Act. What has made this particularly wonderful for me is being able to lock arms with my distinguished friend from Maryland, Senator Mikulski, Senator Enzi, and others who on this floor have expressed how important this legislation is.

There has been a lot of good will on this floor this week. Most of the floor speeches have been supportive, and I have appreciated this. As I have been managing this bill on the floor, I have been directing many of my comments toward those who are not as supportive because, from the outset, it has been my hope that whatever bill we end up passing receives broad, bipartisan support. I think we are going to get that in the vote today--at least I hope so. But I wish to make a few final pitches anyway in case any of my colleagues are still on the fence.

This is a bill that will address many of our Nation's needs during these difficult economic times, but it will do so not by growing the Federal bureaucracy but by powering individuals and private organizations to work in their communities and to recruit others to join in their efforts. All the programs in this bill have been designed with that purpose in mind.

We are not paying people to volunteer, and we are not creating new positions in Government employment. Over the next 8 years, the bill will expand national service participation to 250,000 participants. That is a significant number to be sure, but in a country of 300 million, it cannot be the measure of our efforts. What matters is what these people will do as they participate in national service.

The participants in these programs will serve as leaders or as anchors for community efforts driven by faith-based and nonprofit organizations. They will recruit, train, and supervise the efforts of millions of traditional volunteers. The model has a proven multiplying effect, leveraging 30 traditional volunteers for every national service participant.

This bill will provide opportunities for people to take the lead in these efforts at all stages of their lives. Everyone from the young adult who wants to make a difference in his or her community and receive some college assistance to the baby boomers and senior citizens wanting to put their skills and experience to good use in all our neighborhoods.

What do these participants receive in return? They get a small living stipend; that is, those who are the 250,000, that puts them below the poverty level, and a modest educational award that will pay only some of the costs of higher education. These are not jobs or careers. People do not go into national service because the pay is good. They do it because they have a desire to give back to their country and to their communities. With this bill, we will be giving more Americans the opportunity to do so.

I have said it many times this week, but I believe it bears repeating, I believe this is a bill that every Member of the Senate can support without reservation. This is not a Democratic bill or a Republican bill, but it is both. The Serve America Act speaks to the best instincts and ideals of both parties. It is a landmark piece of legislation and, once again, I am proud to have been part of this effort.

As we close debate on this legislation, I must express my gratitude to a number of people. Foremost, I wish to, once again, thank Senator Kennedy. His leadership on this bill has been instrumental. Indeed, the Serve America Act basically embodies everything we know about Senator Kennedy.

I also thank Senator Enzi, who worked with Senator Kennedy to make sure that along with the new programs in the Kennedy-Hatch bill, we have reauthorized and reformed the existing national service infrastructure. The Corporation for National and Community Service has not been authorized for over 16 years. It is high time we got around to it. Senator Enzi's efforts have ensured that this, too, was a bipartisan effort.

Of course, we all need to thank Senator Mikulski who has been an advocate and architect for national service for more than a decade. She is, indeed, the godmother of national service, and she has led us through the final stages of this effort at the negotiating table, in the HELP Committee, and on the Senate floor. All things considered, the floor debate has gone pretty smoothly this week, and that is because of Senator Mikulski's tireless encouragement to keep things moving.

I also wish to pay tribute to the President. President Obama is certainly a very brilliant man. He immediately recognized the importance of this bill. I was pleased he mentioned it during his State of the Union Address. He did not have to mention our names, but the fact of the matter is he did because he knows Senator Kennedy played a major role.

A number of our staff members need to be mentioned as well. From my own staff, I thank Chris Campbell and Bryan Hickman for their work on this bill. They worked a lot of late nights and early mornings on this legislation. I know about this because they let me hear about it all the time.

Senator Kennedy's staff has had to pull double and sometimes triple duty in this effort. I wish to single out the efforts of Emma Vadehra, Portia Wu, and Michael Myers--three great staffers. They have carried the breadth of the Herculean load in getting this legislation introduced in committee and ready for passage.

From Senator Enzi's staff, I need to recognize the work of Adam Briddell, Beth Buehlmann, Greg Dean, and Frank Macchiarola. From working on the reauthorization provisions and carrying much of the load on the floor for the Republican side, they have been indispensable.

Of course, Senator Mikulski's staff has been wonderful as well, particularly the work of Mario Cardona and Ben Gruenbaum.

I wish to say, again, I am grateful to be part of this legislation, and I am thankful to my colleagues for their support. I know there are many other staff members who deserve credit. I hope they realize what they have done is very important.

I have a feeling we will see a pretty sizable margin in favor of final passage. I hope so. This bill is worth it. I think we can all walk away feeling like we have done something good, in the most bipartisan way we possibly can, at a time when it is difficult to develop bipartisanship and in a time when our Nation needs it the most.

I thank everybody involved who has helped and even those who oppose this bill. I know they have done so out of sincerity. I think they are sincerely wrong but, nevertheless, I respect them for their particular viewpoints.

This is an important body. It is the most important legislative body in the world today. This body has more freedoms in it than any other body in the world. Even the filibuster rule, which many decry, is a rule for freedom. It protects the minority. We all know when we were in the majority on the Republican side, it was a great protection to Democrats so they could not get run over on everything we wanted to do. And it protects us as Republicans so we cannot get run over on everything the Democrats want to do. Even though sometimes people say: Why do you have all these problems, stopping all these things, sometimes it is good to stop things. Sometimes it is good to stop bad stuff. Sometimes it is just good to see real debate on the floor of the Senate.

In that regard, with this bill, we have had real debate. I think they have been fruitful, they have been helpful, and they have been honest. I thank everybody concerned. I hope that when we vote at approximately 5 o'clock tonight--is what I understand--everybody will consider voting for this bill. It is worth it. It is something that will do an immense amount of good in our society, and it is something we can all walk away and feel pretty good about.

Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, Senators are trying to catch planes, so I am just going to say this much: Thanks. Thanks to those who vote for this. Thanks to this wonderful Senator from Maryland, without whom we could not be this far along. Thanks to Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi. There are so many people whom I would like to thank, and all the staffers who have worked so hard.

This is going to be a very monumental, landmark bill that should really help this country and help people to get in the mood of being volunteers. I am very pleased we have come this far.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor, and I hope we can go to a vote.

Amendment No. 687, as Amended

Mr. President, it is a great honor that we have been able to add the name of a distinguished Senator--one of the most distinguished of all time--to this bill. We expect this to multiply into 7 million volunteers. To call it the Edward M. Kennedy bill is a great honor for all of us, even for those who voted against it. It was an overwhelming vote under the circumstances. There were a lot of sincere people on both sides. I am very happy we could name this after our friend and colleague whom we have served with all these years, who has made such a great difference.

What is great about it is the whole Kennedy family has been a service family. I look at Ted's sister Eunice and what a whirlwind of great achievement and giving she has been all these years. I am sure she is very proud of her brother this evening. I am very pleased we could do this, and I am very grateful to all our colleagues for having participated in this.

It is an honor for all of us to honor our friend, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Madam President, today the Senate has taken a significant step toward engaging many more

Americans in national and community service. Imagine how much stronger America will be if millions more people of all ages answer this legislation's--and our President's--call to serve.

The challenges facing the Nation are among the most serious in our history. Our families, our businesses, and our communities are suffering from unparalleled economic challenges. Jobs are disappearing. Homes are being foreclosed. Debts are soaring. Our health care system is in crisis. Our schools are in trouble. State and local budgets are being forced to make severe cutbacks.

Each of these challenges is daunting, but all of them can be met more effectively if we devote ourselves to the task together. We must overcome the illusion that America's problems are the responsibilities of others to solve.

Fortunately, there are signs of hope. The excitement generated on both sides of the aisle by last year's Presidential campaign showed that Americans young and old want to be more involved in the world in which they live. President Obama's call to service has inspired new interest in doing so. And if there is any silver lining to the economic crisis, it is the fact that the crisis, for all its harsh effects, has also strengthened Americans' desire to do their part.

The greed and selfishness displayed on Wall Street in recent weeks is not America. This desire to help is America.

Applications to City Year are up 180 percent. Teach for America received 35,000 applications for just 4,000 positions. Online AmeriCorps applications--which don't represent all AmeriCorps applications--are three to four times what they were last year.

As they always do, the American people are stepping up just when we need them most, and this legislation will help them do even more.

For the past year, there has been little to agree on in Washington. Last year's political campaigns led to partisan bickering in Congress and beyond. But throughout the year, Senator Hatch felt it was essential to work on this legislation. We heard from Americans old and young. We received ideas from across the ideological spectrum. It wasn't easy, but we were able to reach agreement on the need to make room for more full-time volunteers to give a year of service, and to help small organizations use more part-time volunteers who are the lifeblood of the service army.

I know some of my colleagues are concerned about any increase in spending because of the growing budget deficits. But at a time when all our communities are struggling, this bill is a responsible investment that will pay itself back many times over--in service, in volunteer hours, in private and local investments. The cornerstone of our success as a Nation has always been the drive of the American people. Their ingenuity in mastering any challenge; their compassion for those around them; their strength to see us through the hard times. This bill relies on all of these qualities.

The Serve America Act is fundamentally about strengthening our future, but it draws on lessons from the past. In the past two decades, we have learned a great deal about the power of service. We have learned that it can make a dramatic difference in meeting complex challenges--from improving our schools to conserving our precious natural resources. We have learned that it contributes both to the communities in which individuals serve and to the individuals themselves. We have learned that even skilled professionals with established careers and retiring senior citizens with a lifetime of experience are eager to dedicate their skills to giving back to others. They are more than willing to take their skills and their experience and turn them into something useful for our country.

Most of all, we have learned that Americans want to serve and that all we have to do is ask.

Our bill draws on these lessons to establish the next generation of service. It increases the number of AmeriCorps members from the current level of 75,000 to 250,000 over the next 8 years. We know the demand exists among participants and organizations, and we need to make this investment to increase the supply of opportunities. The bill will also focus existing AmeriCorps programs on areas which its members are best equipped to handle, so we can measure the impact these members are having.

An Education Corps will serve disadvantaged youth through tutoring, mentoring, and connecting schools and parents. A Clean Energy Corps will weatherize homes to increase energy efficiency, teach the Nation's youth about energy use, and serve in our national parks. A Healthy Futures Corps will give low-income Americans greater access to health care and improve their health literacy.

As the cost of college has skyrocketed, the Eli Segal Educational Award has remained stagnant for 16 years, at $4,725. Our bill will finally change that by increasing the award to the same as the maximum Pell grant, $5,350, and link it to that grant in the future to ensure that it never becomes stagnant again.

For younger Americans, the legislation expands the existing Learn and Serve program, which supports service-learning activities for students that place them on a path to a lifetime of service. Learn and Serve was one of the most important experiments we have undertaken in service in the past, and it is still an important investment. Last year, 1.1 million students served through Learn and Serve. This legislation will do more, creating Summer of Service positions for middle and high school students, in return for an education award that will remind them of their own ability to go to college. It will also create Youth Engagement Zones to bring more service-learning to low-income communities with high dropout rates, so that more students will stay in school.

As we focus on the very young through Learn and Serve, and on our youth through AmeriCorps, the next generation of service must do more for adults as well. The largest generation in American history--the baby boom generation--is retiring, with the energy and desire to do more for their communities and more for the Nation. This legislation will draw on that desire and on their skills and experience, and direct them to the nonprofit sector through Encore Fellowships to help them make the transition into long term public service.

Further, since the AmeriCorps education award is not a realistic incentive for adults who have completed their education, the bill makes the award transferable to a child or a grandchild. With the cost of college rising, and the award finally increasing, this provision will make a major difference to these families.

In addition, the bill expands and updates the three existing Senior Corps programs--RSVP, Senior Companions, and Foster Grandparents. These programs have been successful for decades, and will continue to be the backbone for service by persons who are 55 or older.

The bill also creates a social innovation fund, to invest in outcome- focused, effective nonprofit organizations. We should never underestimate the power of a committed young person with a good idea. Social entrepreneurs like those who started City Year, Citizen Schools, and YouthBuild are doing remarkable work, and we should help them expand. It is our role to do so.

To help organizations manage the influx of new volunteers and provide a better experience for occasional volunteers, the legislation creates a Volunteer Generation Fund to improve volunteer management and increase capacity in organizations that rely on volunteers.

Finally, the bill authorizes and focuses the Volunteers for Prosperity program created under President Bush in 2003. For decades, the Peace Corps has been demonstrating the potential of international volunteering for solving practical problems and developing the human ties that are the building blocks of diplomacy. Volunteers for Prosperity offers opportunities for skilled professionals to engage in short-term international service in developing countries to address specific areas of need, from clean water to girls' education.

Much of this bill--and much of what we know about service more broadly--draws on the lessons we have learned from leaders in Massachusetts. City Year began in Boston. Its volunteers show us that they can focus on a specific problem, such as the dropout rate in our schools, and make a real difference.

Last year, almost 2,200 AmeriCorps members served in Massachusetts, in schools, communities, and health centers. This legislation will triple their numbers. It will also support the work of the Massachusetts Service Alliance, which has been an effective leader in coordinating service opportunities across our State.

Service is a cause with champions too numerous to count in Congress and beyond. Invoking the power of service isn't a partisan issue. It is a way to help our country in the current crisis. Leaders on both sides of the aisle agree that part of solving our greatest challenges is to rely on the strength, ingenuity, and compassion of our people to serve their fellow Americans. Nineteen years ago, the original National and Community Service Act was a bipartisan bill, and so is this one.

I commend all of those who have worked on this legislation. We all owe our colleague Senator Mikulski immense gratitude for steering this bill across the finish line.

Senator Enzi, as always, has been an amazing partner. His input made the bill stronger, and it made the Corporation for National and Community Service stronger as well, and better able to carry out the new responsibilities we are placing on it.

We also owe an immense debt to Senator Hatch, whose idea this legislation was. I know when we work together, our friends on both sides of the aisle get suspicious, but as always, we came up with a bipartisan product the Senate can be proud of, and we made it stronger by working through our disagreements.

I particularly commend President Obama as well. From his own experiences over the years, he knows the power of service both to the individual and to the community. He has made clear that his own path in life has been shaped by his early service, and for that we can all be grateful.

There are also many staff members who made this legislation possible. Senator Hatch's staff--Chris Campbell, Bryan Hickman, and Jace Johnson--has been invaluable. On Senator Enzi's staff, I particularly thank Beth Buehlmann, Adam Briddell, and Frank Macchiarola. On Senator Mikulski's staff, Julia Frifield, Ben Gruenbaum, and Mario Cardona have worked hard to bring this legislation to the Senate and get it through.

I also thank Senate Legislative Counsel Liz King, Kristin Romero, and Amy Gaynor, and for his technical assistance, the Corporation's General Counsel, Frank Trinity.

Finally, I thank the members of my staff who worked so long and hard and well on this legislation--Sarah Whitton, Thomas Showalter, Brian Carter, Christine Leonard, Charlotte Burrows, Janice Kaguyutan, Melissa Wagoner, Jay McCarthy, Portia Wu and Michael Myers. Most of all, I thank Emma Vadehra, my senior education counsel, who has worked skillfully and tirelessly on this bill since the beginning. Her leadership was indispensable in bringing us to this successful conclusion.

Now the real work begins: to implement this new vision of service and make it as effective as it can be in the years ahead.

It has been 16 long years since Congress last looked fully at these programs. More and more of us believe that the time has come to do much more. And now we will. President Kennedy's call to service still echoes today, and I am proud we have renewed that call for our day and generation by passing this important legislation.