SAVE Native Women Act

Mr. President, reserving the right to object--I will not object--and I know we will be getting back onto this matter and I will be seeking time, I certainly do not object to my two friends taking time now.

Mr. President, I appreciate the work the leadership has done, and I know Senator Murray has been very involved with that too, and I appreciate her help in getting us to a point where we now have a unanimous consent to get to votes and we can finally pass this bill.

I think sometimes a bill like this is an abstract matter. It is not an abstract matter to the women's organizations that support it. It is not abstract to law enforcement who support it. And if I might speak personally for a moment, it is not an abstract matter to me.

The distinguished Presiding Officer and I come from probably the safest, lowest crime State in the country, but we both know that crimes do happen. We also know that in a rural State, oftentimes domestic violence is not reported. We don't talk about this outside the family. And I know that in some of those instances, when I had the privilege of serving as a prosecutor in Vermont, they didn't talk about it. I first heard about it usually in the morgue or at the great Fletcher Hospital. I learned about it because when the body was picked up, either the undertaker or the police or the ambulance driver realized this was not a natural cause, and then we would sort of roll the clock back. In rolling the clock back, we found that all these warning signals were there. There was nowhere for the victim to go. The things we now have were not there then.

I was able to prosecute a number of these people. In fact, I probably brought some of the first successful domestic violence prosecutions we had. But police and prosecutors will say that those are always after the fact.

So how do we stop this from happening in the first place? That is what the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act is about. It is there to stop the crime before the crime happens. This bill is based on months of work with survivors, advocates, and law enforcement officers from all across the country, of all political persuasions. I never knew a time

when somebody would come to a crime scene and say: Is this victim a Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, immigrant or not? We would say: How do we catch the person who did this?

We listened to what the survivors, advocates, and law enforcement officers told us. They told us what worked, what did not work, and what could be improved. Then we carefully drafted the legislation to fit these needs, and that is why our bill is supported by more than 1,000 Federal, State, and local organizations, service providers, law enforcement, religious organizations, and many more.

There is one purpose, and one purpose only, for the bill Senator Crapo and I introduced and others cosponsored: It is to help and protect victims of domestic and sexual violence. Our legislation represents the voice of millions of survivors and advocates across the country. The same cannot be said with the Republican proposal brought forward in the last couple of days. That is why that proposal is opposed by such a wide spectrum of people and organizations.

Domestic and sexual violence knows no race, gender, ethnicity, or religion. Its victims can be your next door neighbor, your colleague, a fellow church member, or your child's teacher at school. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act seeks to ensure that services to help victims of domestic violence reach all victims, no matter who they are. That is why civil and human rights organizations like the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and End Violence Against Women International have urged Congress to act to reauthorize VAWA. I ask consent that these letters be printed in the Record.

These organizations recognize the impact VAWA has in reducing incidences of sexual and domestic violence in our country. Since its initial passage in 1994, no law has done more to combat domestic violence and sexual assault. Because of VAWA, victims have access to life-saving services. It is time that we ensure that all victims have access to these resources.

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, which represents dozens of organizations across the country, says the substitute was drafted without input or consultation from the thousands of professionals engaged in this work every day.

The substitute includes damaging, nonworkable provisions that will harm victims, increase costs, and create unnecessary inefficiencies. I know it may be well-intentioned, but it is no substitute for the months of work we have done in a bipartisan way with the people across the country to bring this bill that is before us. Unfortunately, it undermines the core principles of the Violence Against Women Act. It resolves in abandoning some of the most vulnerable victims and strips out key provisions that are critically necessary to protect all victims, including immigrants, Native women, and victims in same-sex relationships. Again, a victim is a victim is a victim. We don't say: We can help you if you fit in this category. But sorry, battered woman, you are on your own because you fit in the wrong category. That is not the America I know and love.

The improvements in the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act are taken out, and the Republican proposal is no substitute. It does nothing to meet the needs of victims. It undermines the focus of protecting women. It literally calls for removing the word ``women'' from the largest VAWA grant program. They are still victimized at far higher rates and with far greater impact on their lives than men. Shifting this focus away from women is unnecessary and harmful, and it could send a terrible message. There is no reason to turn the Violence Against Women Act inside out, to eliminate the focus on the victims the bill has always been intended to protect.

By contrast, our bipartisan bill does not eliminate the focus against women but increases our focus to include all victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I see others on the floor. I have far more I am going to say about this, and I am about to yield the floor in case others wish to speak.

Remember, this bill is the Violence Against Women Act. Let's not go away from that. It has been carefully put together with the best input we could get from law enforcement, from victims organizations, and, I must say, from some victims themselves. This is to protect those people. I have seen some crime scenes that I still have nightmares about decades later, and I can guarantee my colleagues that every prosecutor in this country and every police officer in this country who deals with these matters probably have the same kinds of nightmares.

Are we going to stop all violence against women with this act? Of course not. But as a result of having had this legislation in effect for years, the numbers have come down because there is a place to go, there are people to help, and there are people to stop the violence. That is what we want to do--not to be, as I was during those nights in the morgue, saying to the police: Let's find out who did this so we can catch them, but, rather, to stop them before it happens and to protect the people so they live. That is what we are trying to do. That is what this bill does.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I do not believe I will object, is this based on the unanimous consent agreement that was entered into by the two leaders? I ask, through the Chair, the Senator from Texas, is this amendment No. 2086?

I do not object.

Mr. President, one of the hallmarks of the Violence Against

Women Act is the success it has had reducing violence against women across the country. Because we have made much progress over the past 18 years on domestic violence but have had less success with combating sexual assault, our bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill takes important steps to increase the focus on sexual violence. As we were writing this bipartisan legislation, we consulted with the men and women who work with victims every day to develop a consensus bill that will help emphasize the need to further reduce the incidence of sexual assault. The administration and law enforcement groups like the National Association of Attorneys General, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police understand and support our goals.

Unfortunately, while I do not doubt that Senator Cornyn shares our goals, the amendment he is offering can have the perverse affect of hindering progress on these issues. That is why there will be an amendment offering a better approach and a better way forward together. The alternative to the Cornyn amendment will allow us to make progress on to reduce the backlog in the testing of rape kits and other DNA samples, as I have always supported in the Debbie Smith Act. Accordingly, I will urge all Senators to reject the Cornyn amendment and support the alternative, which will complement the work we are doing by reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

I point out that the provisions in the Cornyn amendment are duplicative of provisions in the Republican proposal offered by Senators Hutchison and Grassley. The Senate is already voting on those provisions.

Further, Senator Cornyn, who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, did not offer his current amendment when the VAWA reauthorization was considered earlier this year. I offered an amendment on his behalf that the committee adopted on another issue.

Moreover, the separate issue of the Debbie Smith Act is part of a larger effort on which the Judiciary Committee is considering as we move to reauthorize the Justice for All Act that we passed with bipartisan support several years ago. Although we have made reduction of rape kit backlogs an additional use for which VAWA STOP grants funding may be used by State and local jurisdictions, this matter is on a separate legislative track.

I am not insisting or formality in this regard and have worked with other Senators on the alternative amendment that should be helpful to our goal of reducing the rape kit testing backlog. To make sure our work is successful, we will also need to pay careful attention to the standards for testing and the controversies surrounding those matters, however. Moreover, there is a risk of making money available that swamps the capacities for accurate testing. This is not as simply as throwing money at the problem. I have worked and remain hard at work on forensic reforms to ensure that our criminal justice system takes advantage of scientific advancements while remaining fair.

A concern with the Cornyn amendment is its mandating the diversion of 7 percent of Debbie Smith Act funding to create an unwieldy national database of rape kits. The amendment would also compel jurisdictions to undergo a burdensome process of entering information into that database without procedural safeguards to ensure its accuracy. These requirements would force state and local law enforcement to invest time and resources to comply with onerous and illogical reporting requirements and divert their focus from their core law enforcement mission of actually responding to calls and investigating sexual assault cases. It is no wonder that the National Association of Police Organizations opposes the Cornyn amendment.

The amendment also contains a number of criminal sentencing mandates that have no place in our VAWA bill. Victims' advocates like the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women say its provisions ``would have a chilling effect on victim reporting and would not help hold perpetrators accountable.'' Victim advocates tell us that, particularly in cases where the perpetrator is known to the victim, these kinds of mandated sentences can deter victims from reporting the crimes and actually contribute to continuing abuse. Mandatory minimum sentences such as these also worsen prison overcrowding and budget crises at the Federal, State, and local level, and undermine our effective Federal sentencing system. The National Network to End Domestic Violence, the National Association to End Sexual Violence, the National Council Against Domestic Violence, and the National Congress of American Indians Task Force oppose these sentencing provisions.

There could be an extended Senate debate about whether mandatory minimums are good policy and the unintended consequence they may have of worsening abuse in domestic violence situations. That would be a long debate with strongly held views. That is not what the Violence Against Women Act is about. We should not complicate passage of this bipartisan measure with such matters beyond the scope and purpose of the bill. Such debates are for another time and other bills.

Our VAWA reauthorization bill should not be seen as a catch-all for all criminal proposals or sentencing mandates. There are other bills and other packages of bills that we are working on and hope to pass this year. Some may come up in the Justice for All Act is we are able to get Senate floor time for that measure. Some have come up on separate bills that are awaiting Republican clearance for Senate passage. Among those are a package of bills including the Strengthening Investigations of Sex Offenders and Missing Children Act, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act, the Dale Long Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvements Act, along with Finding Fugitives Sex Offenders Act from which the Cornyn Amendment takes its administrative subpoena provisions.

Let me turn to the Debbie Smith Act and a woman I admire very much. Debbie Smith is a survivor of a terrible crime who had to wait in terror for far too long before evidence was tested and the perpetrator was caught. She has worked tirelessly to make sure that other victims of sexual assault do not have to endure similar ordeals. I have been a proud supporter of the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program since its creation, and I have worked with Senators of both parties, including Senators Mikulski and Hutchison on the Appropriations Committee, to see that it receives as much funding as possible each year. As I noted, although its authorization does not expire until 2014, I included an extension of its reauthorization in the Justice For All Reauthorization Act I introduced earlier this year. The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program has been very successful in reducing evidence backlogs in crime labs, particularly in sexual assault cases. That is why I am glad that the alternative amendment will allow us to ensure that the program is authorized through 2017 at a level of $151 million a year.

Unfortunately, disturbing reports have emerged of continuing backlogs, with some cities finding thousands of untested rape kits on police department shelves. That means that there is more need than ever for the Debbie Smith Act but also that there must be increased emphasis on reducing law enforcement backlogs, where there has been less progress. That is why it is so important that alternative to the Cornyn amendment expands the Debbie Smith Act to allow law enforcement to obtain funding for the collection and processing of DNA evidence. Law enforcement burden is one of the key bottlenecks in the process at present. In contrast to the Cornyn amendment, the alternative calls for new national best practices and protocols for law enforcement handling of rape kits and for Justice Department assistance to law enforcement in addressing this continuing problem. This will help to make real progress in overcoming the last major hurdles in reducing backlogs of rape kits.

The amendment takes steps to ensure that more of the Debbie Smith Act funds are used directly for DNA evidence testing to reduce backlogs. That will make this key program even quicker and more effective in reducing backlogs. The Debbie Smith program is an important tool in the fight against sexual assault, and I hope all Senators will join us in reauthorizing and

strengthening it by rejecting the Cornyn amendment in favor of the alternative.

As I have said during this debate, we must do more to reduce sexual assault, and the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill focuses on that goal. I believe that Senator Cornyn's amendment will distract from the progress that is most helpful to victims, despite his good intentions. I urge Senators to vote against the Cornyn amendment and support the alternative to expedite improvements to the Debbie Smith Act to reduce the backlog of untested rape kits and other DNA evidence.

Madam President, how much time is remaining on each side?

How much on the other side?

Mr. President, the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act is based on months of work with survivors, advocates, and law enforcement officers from all across the country.

We listened when they told us what was working and what could be improved. We took their input seriously, and we carefully drafted our legislation to respond to those needs.

Our bill is supported by more than 1,000 Federal, State, and local organizations. They include service providers, law enforcement, religious organizations, and many, many more.

There is one purpose and one purpose only for the bill that Senator Crapo and I introduced, and that is to help and protect victims of domestic and sexual violence. Our legislation represents the voices of millions of survivors and their advocates all over the country.

The same cannot be said for the Republican proposal brought forward in these last couple of days. That is why the Republican proposal is opposed by so many and such a wide spectrum of people and organizations.

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, which represents dozens of organizations from across the country says: ``The Grassley-Hutchison substitute was drafted without input or consultation from the thousands of professionals engaged in this work every day.

The substitute includes damaging and unworkable provisions that will harm victims, increase costs, and create unnecessary inefficiencies.'' Although well-intentioned, the Republican proposal is no substitute for the months of work we have done in a bipartisan way with victims and advocates from all over the country.

I regret to say that the Republican proposal undermines core principles of the Violence Against Women Act. It would result in abandoning some of the most vulnerable victims and strips out key provisions that are critically necessary to protect all victims-- including battered immigrants, Native women, and victims in same sex relationships.

The improvements in the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act are gone from the Republican proposal. It is no substitute and does nothing to meet the unmet needs of victims.

The Republican proposal fundamentally undermines VAWA's historic focus on protecting women. It literally calls for removing the word ``women'' from the largest VAWA grant program. Women are still victimized at far higher rates, and with a far greater impact on their lives, than men. Shifting VAWA's focus away from women is unnecessary and harmful.

The Republican proposal would send a terrible message. There is no reason to turn the Violence Against Women Act inside out and eliminate the focus on the victims the bill has always been intended to protect.

Our Leahy-Crapo bipartisan bill, by contrast, does not eliminate the focus on violence against women, but increases our focus to include all victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Republican proposal strips out critical protections for gay and lesbian victims. The rate of violence in same sex relationships is the same as the general population, and we know that victims in that community are having difficulty accessing services.

To strip out these critical provisions is to turn our backs on victims of violence. That is not the spirit of VAWA. We understand that a victim is a victim is a victim, and none of them should be excluded or discriminated against.

The Republican proposal would extend and institutionalize that discrimination. The Republican proposal should be rejected.

The Republican proposal also fails to adequately protect Tribal victims. Domestic violence in tribal communities is an epidemic. Four out of five perpetrators of domestic or sexual violence on Tribal lands are non-Indian and currently cannot be prosecuted by tribal governments.

If you need more convincing of this problem, listen to the senior Senator from Washington and the Senators from New Mexico, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii who have spoken so compellingly to the Senate about these concerns and who strongly support the provisions in the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill.

The Republican proposal is no real alternative to fix the jurisdictional loophole that is allowing the domestic and sexual violence against Native women to go undeterred and unremedied. Its proposal offers a false hope, a provision that purports to allow a tribe to petition a Federal court for a protective order to exclude individuals from tribal land. It does not even allow the victim herself to request the order, and it does nothing to ensure that a violent offender is held accountable.

This is a false alternative. It is not what the Justice Department has suggested. It is not what the Indian Affairs Committee has supported. It will do next to nothing and is no answer to the epidemic of violence against Native women.

The Republican proposal also abandons immigrant victims and disregards law enforcement requests for additional U visas, a law enforcement tool that encourages immigrants to report and help prosecute crime. To the contrary, the Republican proposal would add dangerous restrictions on current U visa requirements that could result in that tool being less effective.

The U visa process already has fraud protections. For law enforcement to employ U visas, law enforcement officers must personally certify that the victim is cooperating with a criminal investigation. The new restrictions the Republican proposal seeks to add will discourage victims from coming forward and will hinder law enforcement's ability to take violent criminals off the street.

I will be offering an amendment to offset the minimal additional costs associated with our increasing the number of U visas that can be used. With

that amendment the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill will not ``score'' and will be deficit neutral.

The Republican proposal also would add burdensome, unnecessary and counterproductive requirements that would compromise the ability of service providers to maximize their ability to reach victims. In contrast, the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo accountability provisions ensure the appropriate use of taxpayer dollars without unnecessary regulatory burdens.

It is all the more ironic that the Republican proposal would add massive, new bureaucratic requirements to service providers who are understaffed and operating on shoestring budgets like most small businesses and nonprofits. These requirements are unnecessary and would add significant costs to victim service providers, undercutting their ability to help victims.

It is easy to call for audits, but without proper resources and focus, such demands could be counterproductive and lead to decreased accountability. The bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill, by contrast, includes targeted accountability provisions.

While I have been willing to accommodate improvements to this legislation from day one, I have also been clear that I will not abandon core principles of fairness. Regrettably, that is what the Republican proposal would result in doing. It would undermine the core principle of VAWA to protect victims--all victims--the best way we know how. Our bill is focused on VAWA and improvements to meet the unmet needs of victims.

It is not a catch-all for all proposals for criminal law reform, for sentencing modifications. There are other bills and other packages of bills that we are working on and hope to pass this year. We should not complicate passage of this bipartisan measure with such matters beyond the scope and purpose of the bill. Such debates are for another time and other bills.

I urge all Senators to join together to protect the most vulnerable victims of violence, including battered immigrant women assisting law enforcement, Native American women who suffer in record numbers, and those who have traditionally had trouble accessing services.

A victim is a victim is a victim. They all deserve our attention and the protection and access to services the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill provides.

The path forward is to reject the Republican proposal, which is no alternative to the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill. Let us move forward together to meet the unmet needs of victims.

I would just say that the Leahy-Crapo bill does not eliminate the focus on violence against women; it protects women, unlike the Republican proposal which strips out so many aspects.

Our bill is inclusive. Theirs is exclusive. A victim is a victim is a victim. We do not exclude anybody. As the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire said earlier today: They do not ask who the victim is when there is a victim.

With my remaining time, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from New Jersey and the remaining time to the Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Klobuchar.

Madam President, we are about to vote. This is a time for both Republicans and Democrats to come together and say what we all know in our heart: We oppose violence against women. Let's say it not just in our heart, let's say it in legislation--good legislation.

Have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Madam President, which is the first amendment to be considered?

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, we have been able to get very good progress on the rape kit backlogs in the Leahy-Crapo bill. I wish we had passed the Klobuchar amendment. The Cornyn amendment is well intentioned, but it will undermine, rather than enhance, the progress we have made.

The Cornyn amendment will divert funding from the Debbie Smith rape kit backlog reduction program. Let me repeat: It will divert funding from the Debbie Smith rape kit backlog reduction program to create an unwieldy national database of rape kits. It could force State and local law enforcement to invest time and resources to comply with onerous and illogical reporting requirements instead of actually responding to calls and investigating sexual assault cases.

Key victims' groups have opposed it, saying all the things it adds in here--the things we have taken care of to help victims--would actually hurt them. It creates new mandatory minimum penalties that victims' groups say will have the opposite effect of what we want by deterring abused women from reporting violence and sexual assault crimes. And I strongly oppose it.

Mr. President, the reason why so many people across the political spectrum support the Leahy-Crapo bill and the reason they oppose this amendment is it is going to remove the historic emphasis of women in VAWA. The improvements we have made in the bipartisan Leahy- Crapo bill are gone from the Republican proposal. There is only one real Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, and this is not it. It undermines core principles. It abandons some of the most vulnerable victims. It strips key provisions that are critically necessary to protect all victims, including battered immigrants, Native women, and victims of same-sex relationships.

I hope my colleagues will strongly and roundly defeat this alternative. It guts the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization.

Mr. President, I wish to commend and thank Senator Klobuchar, Senator Mikulski, Senator Boxer, and Senator Cantwell for their outstanding statements earlier today in support of our bipartisan Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. Their contributions to the bill and their leadership have been essential. They have spoken often and consistently about this legislative priority. They bring their experiences and years of work on these matters to this effort.

I also wish to commend the statements made by Senators from both sides of the aisle yesterday as the Senate began consideration of the bill. I have always enjoyed working with the senior Senator from Texas and recall how we worked together to pass our Amber Alert legislation in record time. As I have said, we have included the Klobuchar- Hutchison provision updating Federal antistalking legislation in our bill from the outset. I appreciate her saying that she ``is going to support'' the Leahy-Crapo bill. Likewise, I

have supported giving the Republican proposal a Senate vote, although I have explained why I will vote against it.

I thought the statements by the majority leader, Senator Begich, Senator Udall of New Mexico, Senator Tester, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Schumer, as well as Senator Heller were strong and compelling.

We now have the opportunity to consider our amendment to improve upon the bill. Our amendment continues to focus on protecting victims. By way of our amendment, we can fix a ``scoring'' problem by adding an offset for the measures in the bill that the Congressional Budget Office determined after its technical analysis would result in affecting budget. That amendment should keep the measure budget neutral. We also are pleased to include provisions suggested by Senators Murkowski and Begich to correct the manner in which Alaska is affected by the tribal provisions in the bill. We worked with them on the initial language and are pleased to continue that bipartisan cooperation. These are additional steps we can take to make sure we pass the best possible legislation we can.

It has been a pleasure to work with Senator Crapo over the last many months to reauthorize and improve the Violence Against Women Act. We have been committed to an open, bipartisan process for this legislation from the beginning. This amendment I am offering continues that process and incorporates further important suggestions we have received from both sides of the aisle.

The substitute makes modest changes to the tribal provisions to further protect the rights of defendants. These changes are in response to concerns raised by Senator Kyl and others, and I am happy to make them. The substitute also responds to concerns raised by Senator Murkowski and Senator Begich about the legislation's impact on Alaska Native villages. Again, I am pleased to be able to address those concerns. The bill is stronger for it.

The substitute also incorporates national security protections at the request of Senator Feinstein.

We also add a small fee for applications for diversity visas that will more than cover the modest costs of protecting additional battered immigrants who assist law enforcement. This addition renders the bill deficit neutral and alleviates budget concerns. It, too, makes the legislation stronger.

The amendment strengthens the campus provision of the legislation while responding to concerns that the bill might have inadvertently affected burdens of proof in campus proceedings. I thank Senator Casey for working with us on this aspect of the amendment.

These are very modest changes, but every one reflects our continued commitment to listening to those who work with victims of domestic and sexual violence every day and to working with Senators of both parties to make the legislation stronger. The legislation came to the floor with 61 Senators, including 8 Republicans, as cosponsors. These adjustments should make it even more of a consensus bill.

I have been heartened by the constructive tone of debate on the floor of the Senate and the near universal support for reauthorizing VAWA. Let's continue this consensus, bipartisan process by passing this amendment and then adopting the bill with these improvements. Let's pass this reauthorization. As Congress faces unrelenting criticism for gridlock and dysfunction, our reauthorizing VAWA in a bipartisan way that helps all victims of domestic and sexual violence is an example of the Senate at its best. I hope all Senators will join us in this effort.

As we proceed to vote to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, I look forward to a strong bipartisan vote. I thank the majority leader and the Republican leader for their work to bring us to this point. I commend the Senators from both sides of the aisle who have worked so hard to bring us to this. In particular I thank my partner in this effort, Senator Crapo, and our bipartisan cosponsors. I also commend Senator Murray and Senator Murkowski who have been so instrumental in helping both sides arrive at a fair process for considering amendments and proceeding without unnecessary delays.

The Violence Against Women Act continues to send a powerful message that violence against women is a crime, and it will not be tolerated. It is helping transform the law enforcement response and provide services to victims all across the country. We are right to renew our commitment to the victims who are helped by this critical legislation and to extend a hand to those whose needs have remained unmet.

As we have done in every VAWA authorization, this bill takes steps to improve the law and meet unmet needs. We recognize those victims who we have not yet reached and find ways to help them. This is what we have always done. As I have said many times the past several weeks, a victim is a victim is a victim. We are reaching out to help all victims. I am proud that the legislation Senator Crapo and I introduced seeks to protect all victims--women, children, and men, immigrants and native born, gay and straight, Indian and non-Indian. They all deserve our attention and the protection and access to services our bill provides.

I have said since we started the process of drafting this legislation that the Violence Against Women Act is an example of what the Senate can accomplish when we work together. I have worked hard to make this reauthorization process open and democratic. Senator Crapo and I have requested input from both sides of the aisle, and we have incorporated many changes to this legislation suggested by Republican as well as Democratic Senators.

Our bill is based on months of work with survivors, advocates, and law enforcement officers from all across the country and from all political persuasions. We worked with them to craft a bill that responds to the needs they see in the field. That is why every one of the provisions in the bill has such widespread support. That is why more than 1000 national, State, and local organizations support our bill.

I appreciate the bipartisan support this bill has had from the beginning, and I want to commend our 61 cosponsors. I commend our eight Republicans for their willingness to work across party lines.

I cannot overstate the important role played by Senators Murray, Murkowski, Mikulski, Feinstein, Klobuchar, Boxer, Hagan, Shaheen, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Collins, Snowe, and Ayotte in this process. The work these women Senators have done in shaping the legislation, and supporting it here on the Senate floor, as well as back home in their States, has helped create the urgency needed to get a bill passed. They are among the strongest supporters of our bill, and the bill is better for their efforts. I also appreciate the gracious comments Senator Hutchison made about the Leahy-Crapo bill, and I am encouraged by her now joining with us to pass the bill.

I also want to thank the many members of the Judiciary Committee who helped draft various provisions in the bill. Senators Kohl, Durbin, Schumer, Franken, Klobuchar, Whitehouse, Coons, and Blumenthal offered significant contributions.

The Senate's action today could not have been accomplished without the hard work of many dedicated staffers. I would like to thank in particular Anya McMurray, Noah Bookbinder, Ed Chung, Erica Chabot, Liz Aloi, Matt Smith, Kelsey Kobelt, Tara Magner, Ed Pagano, John Dowd and Bruce Cohen from my staff.

I know the staff of Senator Grassley has put in significant time on this legislation as well. I thank Kolan Davis, Fred Ansell, and Kathy Neubel for their efforts.

I also commend the hardworking Senate floor staff, Tim Mitchell and Trish Engle, and the staffs of other Senators who I know have worked hard on this legislation, including Erik Stegman, Wendy Helgemo, Josh Riley, Ken Flanz, Susan Stoner, Nate Bergerbest, Kristi Williams, Stacy

Rich, Mike Spahn, Serena Hoy, Bill Dauster, and Gary Myrick.

Most importantly, I thank the many individuals, organizations, and coalitions that have helped with this effort. I thank the Vermonters who have helped inform me and this legislation, Karen Tronsgard-Scott of the Vermont Network to End Domestic and Sexual Violence and Jane Van Buren with Women Helping Battered Women. And I thank all those involved with the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence, Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, Break the Cycle, Casa de Esperanza, Futures Without Violence, Jewish Women International, Legal Momentum, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, National Center for Victims of Crime, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, National Congress of American Indians Taskforce on Violence Against Women, National Council of Jewish Women, National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Network to End Domestic Violence, National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault, SCESA, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, National Sexual Violence Resource Center, Resource Sharing Project of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, YWCA USA, Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, NAACP, Mayors of Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, the National Sheriff's Association, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, FLEOA, National Center for State Courts, National Association of Attorneys General, National Association of Women Judges, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Faith Groups, and so many more for their focus on the victims and their unmet needs.

This is an example of what the Senate can do when we put aside rhetoric and partisanship. I believe that if Senators, Members of the House, Americans from across the country take an honest look at the provisions in our bipartisan VAWA reauthorization bill, they will find them to be commonsense measures that we all can support. Sixty-one Senators have already reached this conclusion. I hope more will join us and the Senate can promptly pass and Congress can promptly enact the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.

I thank the bipartisan coalition that has come together on this. Most importantly, the coalition across the political spectrum that is so opposed to violence against women will thank us for passing this bill.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I yield back all time on our side.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Madam President, I have seen the good the law called the Violence Against Women Act has done in providing victim services in my State of Iowa. We all recognize the harm that flows from domestic violence. It is harmful to the victims as well as the families of victims.

I have supported reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act each time it has come up. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization on each of these occasions has been highly bipartisan. We have passed consensus bills and we have not played politics with reauthorizing the law; that is, until now. This time it seems to be different. I don't know why it should be. The majority turned this issue into a partisan issue.

In the Judiciary Committee, the majority gave no notice it would inject new matters into the Violence Against Women Act. When the committee held a hearing on this issue, these ideas were not discussed. Their need has not been demonstrated. We do not know exactly how they will work. It was clear committee Republicans would not be able to agree to this new added material. Of course, the majority refused during negotiations when we asked they be removed.

Republicans will be offering a substitute amendment to the Leahy bill. Probably 80 to 85 percent of the substitute we are offering is the same as the Leahy bill. This includes whole titles of the bill. We could have again reached a near consensus bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, but the majority intentionally decided not to change the bill. They didn't want it to pass with an overwhelming bipartisan majority.

Now the media has reported this was a deliberate strategy of the majority. A recent Politico article quoted a prominent Democratic Senator. The article

said he ``wants to fast track the bill to the floor, let the GOP block it, then allow Democrats to accuse Republicans of waging a war against women.'' This is the cynical, partisan game-playing Americans are sick of. At every town meeting people say to me: When are you going to get together and stop the partisanship? This is especially the case on this bill.

Republicans aren't even blocking the bill. We have called for the bill to be brought up. Instead, the majority has taken 6 months to reauthorize this program that expired last October. That says something about the priorities of the other party.

For instance, last week, we wasted time on political votes. That seems to be the case in the Senate most of this year. The Senate can pass a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act by an overwhelming margin, but it seems as though the other party doesn't want that to happen. When they say unfavorable things about Republicans and women, they aren't being forthright. A few weeks ago, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising e- mail. The e-mail stated, in part:

Now, there are news reports that Republicans in Congress

will oppose re-authorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

Enough is enough! The Republican War on Women must stop NOW .

. . Will you chip in $3 by midnight tonight to hold

Republicans accountable for their War on Women?

The majority had a decision between raising money for campaigns or trying to get the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill that would actually help these victims. I say to my colleagues, there is no war on women except the political one. It is a figment of the imagination of Democratic strategists who don't want to remember health care reform, unemployment or high gas prices. Instead of talking about those issues--particularly high gas prices--they would rather make up a war against women. All evidence points to the other side being more interested in raising money.

The media has also reported the bill is coming out now because the Democrats' desire to gin up a Republican so-called war on women was derailed last week, I suppose by other issues. It should be clear at the outset Republicans are not blocking, have not blocked, and never threatened to block the Senate's consideration of this bill. The Judiciary Committee only reported the bill to the Senate 2 months ago. It was March before the committee filed its usual committee report to the entire Senate. Democrats immediately came to the floor and urged the bill to come up right now. It was up to the majority leader to decide when the bill should be debated. He finally decided--not right after the bill was reported out of committee or not right after the committee report was filed--to do it now. Why not back then?

As long as there is a fair process for offering amendments, including our alternative bill and pointing out the flaws in the majority's bill, this should be a relatively short process. As the previous speaker said, I hope we can get it done this very day.

There are several other important points I wish to establish. First, I hope a consensus version of the Violence Against Women Act will be reauthorized. If a consensus bill doesn't pass, no rights of women or anyone else will be affected if the bill does not pass because, contrary to the statements made, there would be no cutbacks of services.

The Violence Against Women Act--the bill before us--is an authorization bill only, not an appropriations bill. This bill does not allow the expenditure of one dime because that result occurs through the appropriations process. Appropriators can and will fund the Violence Against Women Act programs regardless of whether this bill is reauthorized. This is exactly what happened over the past year. We think new issues have arisen since the last Violence Against Women Act reauthorization. These issues should be addressed in a consensus reauthorization. That can happen. We should give guidance to the appropriators. That is what authorization committees, such as in this case, the Judiciary Committee, is all about.

I support the appropriators continuing to fund the Violence Against Women Act while we are trying to put together a consensus bill. The Violence Against Women Act is being funded despite the expiration of its previous authorization. No existing rights of anyone are affected if the Violence Against Women Act is not reauthorized. No existing rights of anyone are affected if we pass a consensus bill rather than this partisan bill--I should say the majority's bill, not the partisan bill.

Second, the majority controls how bills move in the Senate. As I said, the current Violence Against Women Act reauthorization expired 6 months ago. If reauthorization was so important, I think the majority party could have moved to reauthorize this bill months ago. They didn't move a bill because no one's substantive rights or funding are at stake. This is true, even though the prior reauthorization has expired and a new reauthorization bill has not yet passed.

Third, nothing like the majority's bill, where it does not reflect consensus, will become law. It is a political exercise. The other body, meaning the House of Representatives, doesn't seem as though it is going to pass it the way the majority party here wants it to pass. If we want to pass a consensus violence against women reauthorization bill, we ought to start with the alternative Senator Hutchison and I are going to present to the Senate.

Fourth, the majority's bill, as reported out of committee, was and is fiscally irresponsible. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the majority's bill would have added more than $100 million in new direct spending. That will increase the deficit by that same amount. The reason is the immigration provisions that we said previously were nonstarters. These were some of the provisions the majority refused to take out. Those provisions are bad immigration policy. Nonetheless, I am glad the majority has now found an offset for this spending.

The Republican alternative does more to protect the rights of victims of domestic violence and sex crimes than does, in fact, the majority bill. There are many ways in which this substitute does that. Under the substitute amendment, more money goes to victims and less to bureaucrats. It requires that 10 percent of the grantees be audited every year. This is to ensure taxpayer funds are actually being used for the purpose of the legislation--to combat domestic violence.

This is a very important point. The Justice Department inspector general conducted a review of 22 grantees under this law between 1998 and 2010. Of these 22 audits, 21 were found to have some form of violation of grant requirements. The violations range from unauthorized and unallowable expenditures to sloppy recordkeeping and failure to report in a timely manner. When this happens, the money is not getting to the victims and the taxpayers' money is being wasted.

Let me give some examples. In 2010, one grantee was found by the inspector general to have questionable costs for 93 percent of the nearly $900,000 they received from the Justice Department. A 2009 audit found that nearly $500,000 of a $680,000 grant was questionable.

The fiscal irregularities continue. An inspector general audit from just this year found that this law's grant recipients in the Virgin Islands engaged in almost $850,000 in questionable spending. Also, a grant to an Indian tribe in Idaho found about $250,000 in improperly spent funds. This included--can my colleagues believe it--$171,000 in salary for an unapproved position.

In Michigan this year, a woman, at a VAWA grant recipient facility, used grant funds to purchase goods and services for personal use.

We should make sure then that Violence Against Women Act money goes to victims and not to waste such as this. That hasn't been the case, obviously, under the current situation. So our Republican substitute deals with this spending problem.

The substitute also prevents grantees from using taxpayer funds to lobby for more taxpayer funds. That will ensure that more money is available for victims' services. Money that goes to grantees and is squandered helps no woman or other victims.

In addition, the Republican alternative limits the amount of Violence Against Women Act funds that can go to administrative fees and salaries to 7.5 percent. That means money that now is over the 7.5-percent suggested

limit is going to bureaucrats and not to victims. Of course, the underlying bill, the Leahy bill, contains no such limit. If you want the money to go to victims and not bureaucrats, those overhead expenses should be capped at this 7.5-percent level.

The Republican substitute amendment requires that 30 percent of the STOP grants and grants for arrest policies and protective orders are targeted to sexual assault. The Leahy-Crapo bill sets aside only 20 percent instead of that 30 percent to fight sexual assault.

The substitute Senator Hutchison and I offer--hopefully this afternoon--requires that training materials be approved by an outside accredited organization. This ensures that those who address domestic violence help victims based on knowledge and not ideology. This will result in more effective assistance to victims. The Leahy-Crapo bill contains no such requirement.

The Hutchison-Grassley substitute protects due process rights that the majority bill threatens. I will give you an instance. The majority bill said that college campuses must provide for ``prompt and equitable investigation and resolution'' of charges of violence or stalking. This would have codified a proposed rule of the Department of Education that would have required imposition of a civil standard or preponderance of the evidence for what is essentially a criminal charge, one that, if proved, rightly should harm reputation. But if established on a barely ``more probable than not'' standard, reputations can be ruined unfairly and very quickly. The substitute eliminates this provision.

The majority has changed their own bill's language. I thank them for that. I take that as an implicit recognition of the injustice of the original language.

The substitute also eliminates a provision that allowed the victim who could not prove such a charge to appeal if she lost, creating double jeopardy.

The majority bill also would give Indian tribal courts the ability to issue protection orders and full civil jurisdiction over non-Indians based on actions allegedly taking place in Indian country.

Noting that the due process clause requires that courts exercise jurisdiction over only those persons who have ``minimum contacts'' with the forum, the Congressional Research Service has raised constitutional questions about this provision. The administration and its supporters in this body pursue their policy agendas headlong without bothering to consider the Constitution. The substitute contains provisions that would benefit tribal women and would not run afoul of the Constitution.

We have heard a lot of talk about how important the rape kit provisions in the Judiciary Committee bill are. I strongly support funds to reduce the backlog of testing rape kits. But that bill provides that only 40 percent of the rape kit money actually be used to reduce the backlog. The substitute requires that 70 percent of the funding would go for that purpose and get rid of the backlog sooner.

It requires that 1 percent of the Debbie Smith Act funds be used to create a national database to track the rape kit backlog. It also mandates that 7 percent of the existing Debbie Smith Act funds be used to pay for State and local audits of the backlog.

Debbie Smith herself has endorsed these provisions. The majority bill has no such provisions. Making sure that money that is claimed to reduce the rape kit backlog actually does so is provictim. True reform in the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization should further that goal.

Combating violence against women also means tougher penalties for those who commit these terrible crimes. The Hutchison-Grassley substitute creates a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for Federal convictions for forcible rape. The majority bill establishes a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence. That provision is only in there because Republicans offered it and we won that point in our committee.

Child pornography is an actual record of a crime scene of violence against women. Our alternative establishes a 1-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of child pornography where the victim depicted is under 12 years of age.

I believe the mandatory minimum for this crime should be higher. In light of the lenient sentences many Federal judges hand out, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence for all child pornography possession convictions. But the substitute is at least a start. This is especially true because the majority bill takes no action against child pornography.

The alternative also imposes a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for the crime of aggravated sexual assault. This crime involves sexual assault through the use of drugs or by otherwise rendering the victim unconscious. The Leahy bill does nothing about aggravated sexual assault. The status quo appears to be fine for the people who are going to vote for the underlying bill if the Hutchison-Grassley amendment is not adopted.

Instead, the Hutchison-Grassley amendment establishes a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for the crime of interstate domestic violence that results in the death of the victim.

It increases from 20 to 25 years the statutory maximum sentence for a crime where it results in life-threatening bodily injury to, or the permanent disfigurement of, the victim.

It increases from 10 to 15 years the statutory maximum sentence for this crime when serious bodily injury to the victim results.

The Leahy bill contains none of these important protections for domestic violence victims.

The substitute grants administrative subpoena power to the U.S. Marshals Service to help them discharge their duty of tracking and apprehending unregistered sex offenders. The Leahy bill does nothing to help locate and apprehend unregistered sex offenders.

And the substitute cracks down on abuse in the award of U visas for illegal aliens and the fraud in the Violence Against Women Act self- petitioning process. The majority bill does not include any reforms of these benefits, despite actual evidence of fraud in the program.

One of the Senators who recently came to the floor complained that there had never been controversy in reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. But in the past there were no deliberate efforts to create partisan divisions. We always proceeded in the past in a consensus fashion.

Domestic violence is an important issue, serious problem. We all recognize that. In the past, we put victims ahead of politics in addressing it. When the other side says this should not be about politics and partisanship, why, heavens, we obviously agree. It is the majority that has now decided they want to score political points above assisting victims. They want to portray a phony war on women because this is an election year. They are raising campaign money by trying to exploit this issue, and I demonstrated that in one of the e-mails that came to our attention.

There could have been a consensus bill before us today, as in the past. There is controversy now because that is what the majority seems to want. We look forward to a fair debate on this bill and the chance to offer and vote on our substitute amendment. That amendment contains much that is in agreement with the Leahy bill. The substitute also is much closer to what can actually be enacted into law to protect victims of domestic violence.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to commend my colleague from Texas, Senator Hutchison, for offering her substitute amendment to the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill. I am pleased to cosponsor her amendment. This amendment is vitally needed.

The Violence Against Women Act has always been reauthorized in the past on a bipartisan, consensus basis.

It would have been so easy to do so again.

All of us who support the amendment of the Senator from Texas are in agreement with 80 percent of the bill that is before us.

But the majority has decided to place a higher priority on scoring political points than on passing another consensus reauthorization of the law.

Recently, Vice President Biden asked what kind of message it would send to women if VAWA were allowed to expire.

He implied that a crisis would be at hand that must be avoided at all costs.

But the actual answer to his question is clear.

The majority party has already allowed VAWA to expire.

VAWA's reauthorization expired last October.

There has been no crisis of any kind because the appropriations for VAWA programs have kept flowing.

It is the majority, not us, that is responsible for the lapse in VAWA's authorization.

The way that the Judiciary Committee handled reauthorization this time has been very disappointing.

The majority insisted on including--and retaining--provisions that appear designed to provoke partisan opposition.

For instance, the majority insisted on giving Indian tribal courts criminal jurisdiction over non-Indian Americans for the first time in our country's history.

The committee held one hearing on reauthorizing this bill, and it devoted no attention to exploring how this provision would operate.

As a result, the committee described this provision in only four sentences in its report on the legislation.

We all recognize that domestic violence rates in Indian country are too high.

Both the committee-reported bill and the Hutchison-Grassley substitute contain provisions to address the problem.

But the majority cannot explain why expanding the power of tribal courts would be effective or how this would work.

Do the tribes have the resources and expertise and resources to comply with the Constitution?

How would the Federal courts' caseload be affected by all the new habeas petitions that would necessarily be filed if this became law?

What changes would occur in the existing relationships between Federal, State, and tribal law enforcement?

The majority has no idea whether this provision would help matters or not because it simply did not give this issue any careful attention.

Moreover, the Congressional Research Service has raised several constitutional issues that would be posed by this provision as it was reported from the committee.

These include due process, equal protection, fifth amendment grand jury and double jeopardy issues, as well as sixth amendment rights to counsel and a jury trial by one's peers.

At the eleventh hour before floor consideration, the majority has recognized the serious constitutional issues that were raised by the committee language.

It has changed the language in an effort to respond to the constitutional questions it had denied existed.

If we had had a hearing on these questions, matters could have proceeded differently.

These changes do not address the constitutional questions CRS posed about congressional power to recognize the inherent power of tribes to prosecute non-Indians, nor do they affect the inability of a defendant to appeal his conviction.

And, of course, they do not address the practical concerns that I have raised all along.

CRS also raises constitutional due process concerns regarding another section in the bill that would give tribal courts the authority to enforce protective orders. That section remains unchanged.

Ironically, the constitutional concerns about the criminal provisions are made more severe because the majority refused to eliminate language we asked them to omit.

Constitutional problems are made worse because the bill gives tribes criminal jurisdiction as part of their claimed inherent sovereignty.

Our substitute strikes the provisions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the relevant portions of the CRS analysis.

Mr. President, to address the real problems of domestic violence among Native Americans, our substitute would permit tribes to petition for protective orders against non-Indians in Federal court.

The committee-reported bill did not respect due process in the area of accusations against college students.

Of course, allegations of sexual assault on campus should be taken as seriously as anywhere else.

But reputations can be ruined by false charges, so it is important that fairness in adjudications occur.

As a practical matter, the committee-reported bill imposed on these campus proceedings the standards of proof issued in a controversial proposed regulation by the Department of Education.

They were very weak and unfair.

Additionally, under the committee-reported bill, if the campus disciplinary authority exonerated the innocent even under the weak standard of proof, the accuser could appeal for another round of proceedings.

That just is not fair.

At the last minute, the majority has changed the first but not the second of these provisions.

Now, the investigation must be fair and impartial.

That is progress.

This change should have been made much earlier.

But the bill still allows a person who has been found innocent after a fair investigation to be pursued again at the victim's request.

Our substitute eliminates that unfairness.

The committee bill also mishandles immigration issues.

The one hearing the Judiciary Committee held presented testimony that fraud exists in the VAWA-self petitioning process.

We heard from victims who fell in love with foreign nationals, sponsored them for residency in the United States, only to be accused of abuse so that the foreign national could get a green card.

The chairman promised at the hearing to include language in the bill that would address this immigration fraud, but his bill fails to include anything of the sort.

Our substitute contains language that will reduce fraud and abuse by requiring an in person interview whenever possible with the applicant who alleges abuse.

We cannot allow people to misuse the VAWA self-petitioning process to obtain a green card.

The committee-reported bill also expands the number of U visas by tens of thousands without changing the rules by which they are issued.

Under current law, an individual may be eligible for a U visa if he or she has been or is likely to be helpful to the investigation or prosecution of a crime.

However, the requirements for a U visa are generous.

There is no requirement that an investigation be commenced as a result of the alien reporting the crime; there is no time period within which an alien has to report the crime; the crime could have occurred years before it is reported and there could be no way to identify the perpetrator; the alien seeking the ``U'' visa could even have a criminal record of their own.

Our substitute includes commonsense, best practices to ensure that U visas are truly used as a tool to fight crime.

The Hutchison-Grassley substitute amendment will better protect victims of domestic violence than does the underlying bill.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money for domestic violence programs are distributed every year.

For that money to be effective, it must actually reach victims.

But too much of the money does not reach victims.

Excess amounts are spent on administrative expenses, conferences, and lobbying, and some is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.

For example, since 1998, the inspector general has audited 22 individual VAWA grantees.

In those random audits, 21 were found to have unallowable costs, unsupported expenditures, or other serious deficiencies in how they expended taxpayer dollars.

That is millions of dollars that could have helped an untold number of victims but instead were lost.

Although some good accountability measures were included in the committee-reported bill, more are necessary.

The substitute amendment requires audits and includes mandatory exclusions for those who are found to have violated program rules.

It limits conference expenditures at the Justice Department and Health and Human Services Department unless there is proper oversight.

It prohibits lobbying by grantees, and it limits administrative expenses in the government's management of the grants.

Our substitute directs more money to victims of the most serious crimes than the committee bill by requiring 30 percent--not 20 percent--of the funds go toward sexual assault.

It directs that 70 percent of the funds for reducing rape kit backlogs actually be used for that purpose, not the mere 40 percent in the committee-reported bill.

The substitute protects victims in other ways that are not contained in the underlying bill.

It contains a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated sexual abuse.

It imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 1 year for possession of child pornography where the child depicted is under 12.

That does not go far enough, but it is a step in the right direction.

It is a consensus item that has passed the Judiciary Committee in the past with a strong bipartisan vote.

The alternative also creates a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for interstate domestic violence that results in death.

There are opponents of mandatory minimum sentences.

The leniency-industrial complex is active in this area as in others.

But we should not take too seriously the claims of opponents of the mandatory minimums that they take away judicial discretion.

They think that judges should be able to give any sentence they want on these crimes, even potentially no jail time at all.

Contrary to victims' groups, they fear that any requirement of jail time for these crimes will be counterproductive and lead to lower sentences.

But those same opponents support the grants for arrest in the committee-reported bill.

Unlike sentences, mandatory arrest policies tie the hands of law enforcement to take action against people who have not been convicted of anything.

They may reduce the likelihood that the police may be called in actual cases of domestic violence.

They may result in calls to the police by one person for leverage against another.

They may cause other negative unintended consequences as well.

Our substitute also gives the Marshals Service administrative subpoena authority to pursue unregistered sex offenders.

These are individuals who are required by law to register as sex offenders but fail to comply.

This is another provision that has enjoyed wide bipartisan support in the Judiciary Committee.

Victims will also be helped by the substitute's requirement of an audit of the Justice Department's use of the Crime Victims Fund.

When criminals are convicted and made to pay fines, these fines are placed in a fund for the sole purpose of assisting victims.

However, there are questions whether the Justice Department is spending these funds only for their one permitted use.

An audit is in order.

And the bill also includes a bipartisan provision to enable victims to receive restitution that is owed to them but has not been paid.

The IRS would be permitted to deduct the money from payments it would otherwise make to the perpetrator.

Mr. President, there is broad bipartisan support for reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

The Hutchison-Grassley substitute would of the underlying bill reauthorize the 80 percent that enjoys that consensus.

It eliminates provisions that are not consensus and would not pass the other body and become law.

And it adds other provisions that are widely supported and would provide real benefits to victims of domestic violence.

I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I write today to explain my vote in opposition to S. 1925, Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, VAWA. I have several outstanding concerns with this legislation, some of which were reflected in the amendments I circulated during the Senate Judiciary Committee's February 2012 markup of this legislation. In particular, I believe this legislation violates the principles of federalism outlined in the Constitution, fails to completely address duplication and overlap both within VAWA programs and with non-VAWA programs administered by both the Department of Justice, DOJ, and the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, ignores the continuing problem of grant management and waste, fraud and abuse at the Office of Violence Against Women, OVW, and disregards our country's fragile financial condition, which has worsened significantly since the last VAWA reauthorization in 2005.

First and foremost, I do not think anyone would disagree with the fact that violence of any type against women, domestic, dating or sexual violence, is reprehensible and should not be tolerated. However, regardless of the extent of this or any other problem, we must carefully weigh the proper role of the Federal Government so Congress does not violate its limited authority under the Constitution. Domestic violence laws, like most other criminal laws, are State laws, and nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government tasked with providing basic funding to States, localities, and private organizations to operate programs aimed at victims of State crimes such as domestic violence. Far too often, Congress infringes upon the rights of the people and the States by overreaching in its legislative efforts.

Although many VAWA programs are laudable, they are not the Federal Government's responsibility. In fact, the entire purpose of this legislation is to provide funding for State, local, non-profit, and victim services grantees to serve victims of State crimes, such as domestic violence, stalking, and sexual violence. These crimes and the treatment of its victims are appropriately in the jurisdiction of the States, not the Federal Government. In light of our current economic crisis, Congress must evaluate each and every program to determine if it is constitutional, whether it is a Federal responsibility, and whether it is a priority. Combating violence against women is certainly a priority, but it is not a Federal responsibility.

Second, this legislation fails to completely address the duplication and overlap within VAWA programs and with non-VAWA programs operated by both the DOJ and HHS. At the beginning of every Congress, I send to each Senator my letter outlining the criteria he will use to evaluate legislation. This Congress, it was also signed by seven other Members. The VAWA reauthorization violates several of those criteria, including elimination and consolidation of duplicative programs prior to reauthorization.

While I recognize the legislation does consolidate some programs, it has not eliminated all duplication. There are several VAWA grant programs that are so broad that they duplicate one another, providing multiple opportunities for grantees to double dip into Federal funds. In addition, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, FVPSA, which predates the original VAWA legislation, authorized several HHS programs aimed at reducing domestic violence and helping victims. Several of those programs fund the same types of

services as those authorized by the VAWA grants in this legislation.

Furthermore, in the Government Accountability Office, GAO Duplication Report released at the end of February 2012, GAO found the DOJ administers more than 250 grant programs to provide crime prevention, law enforcement, and victims' services, totaling approximately $30 billion since 2005. Specifically, GAO noted more than 20 percent of the 253 grants reviewed by GAO are for victims' assistance.

In addition, according to GAO, this June that office will be releasing yet another duplication report specifically on the OVW, Office of Justice Programs, OJP, and Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS Program. Before moving forward with a VAWA reauthorization, Congress should evaluate this report on OVW to determine how we can streamline the victims' services DOJ already provides. Reauthorizing VAWA programs now, without taking into account the recent and forthcoming work of GAO, is premature.

As a result, I am very disappointed the Democrats refused to allow a vote on the amendment No. 2085 I filed to eliminate unnecessary duplication within DOJ, especially since the savings would have been largely directed to helping bring justice to rape cases. This amendment would have provided at least $600 million in additional funds to support efforts to use DNA to solve crimes.

This amendment would have required the Department of Justice to identify every program its administers, consolidate unnecessary duplication, and apply savings towards resolving rape cases and reducing the deficit.

Specifically, the amendment directed the Attorney General to develop a plan that would result in financial cost savings of at least 20 percent of the nearly $3.9 billion in duplicative grant programs identified by the Government Accountability Office.

According to GAO, since 2005, Congress has spent $30 billion in overlapping Department of Justice grants for crime prevention police and victims services from more than 250 DOJ grant programs, and $3.9 billion in grants just in 2010.

As much as 75 percent of the savings, nearly $600 million, may be directed towards alleviating any backlogs of analysis and placement of DNA samples from rape, sexual assault, homicide, kidnapping and other criminal cases, including casework sample and convicted offender backlogs, into the Combined DNA Index System. The remainder of the savings will be returned to the Treasury for the purpose of deficit reduction.

By requiring the consolidation and elimination of duplication at DOJ, Congress will free Federal funding which can be more appropriately dedicated to bringing justice to rape victims, while also reducing the deficit.

DNA testing provides a powerful criminal justice tool to convicting rapists and exonerating the innocent--DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, testing has become a powerful criminal justice tool in recent years. ``DNA can be used to identify criminals with incredible accuracy when biological evidence exists. By the same token, DNA can be used to clear suspects and exonerate persons mistakenly accused or convicted of crimes. In all, DNA technology is increasingly vital to ensuring accuracy and fairness in the criminal justice system,'' according to the Department of Justice.

``Each person's DNA is unique (with the exception of identical twins). Therefore, DNA evidence collected from a crime scene can implicate or eliminate a suspect, similar to the use of fingerprints. It also can analyze unidentified remains through comparisons with DNA from relatives. Additionally, when evidence from one crime scene is compared with evidence from another using the Combined DNA Index System, those crime scenes can be linked to the same perpetrator locally, statewide, and nationally.''

``When biological evidence from crime scenes is collected and stored properly, forensically valuable DNA can be found on evidence that may be decades old. Therefore, old cases that were previously thought unsolvable may contain valuable DNA evidence capable of identifying the perpetrator.''

In New York authorities used DNA evidence to link a man to at least 22 sexual assaults and robberies. Authorities in Philadelphia, PA, and Fort Collins, CO, used DNA evidence to link and then solve a series of crimes--rapes and a murder--perpetrated by the same individual.

DNA is generally used to solve crimes in one of two ways. First, in cases where a suspect is identified, a sample of that person's DNA can be compared to evidence from the crime scene. The results of this comparison may help establish whether the suspect committed the crime. Second, in cases where a suspect has not yet been identified, biological evidence from the crime scene can be analyzed and compared to offender profiles in DNA databases to help identify the perpetrator. Crime scene evidence can also be linked to other crime scenes through the use of DNA databases.

DNA evidence is generally linked to DNA offender profiles through DNA databases. In the late 1980s, the Federal Government laid the groundwork for a system of national, State, and local DNA databases for the storage and exchange of DNA profiles. This system, called the Combined DNA Index System, CODIS, maintains DNA profiles obtained under the Federal, State, and local systems in a set of databases that are available to law enforcement agencies across the country for law enforcement purposes. CODIS can compare crime scene evidence to a database of DNA profiles obtained from convicted offenders. CODIS can also link DNA evidence obtained from different crime scenes, thereby identifying serial criminals.

In order to take advantage of the investigative potential of CODIS, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, States began passing laws requiring offenders convicted of certain offenses to provide DNA samples. Currently all 50 states and the Federal Government have laws requiring that DNA samples be collected from some categories of offenders.

When used to its full potential, DNA evidence will help solve and may even prevent some of the Nation's most serious violent crimes. However, the current Federal and State DNA collection and analysis system needs improvement, according to the Department of Justice: In many instances, public crime labs are overwhelmed by backlogs of unanalyzed DNA samples. In addition, these labs may be ill-equipped to handle the increasing influx of DNA samples and evidence. The problems of backlogs and lack of up-to-date technology result in significant delays in the administration of justice. More research is needed to develop faster methods for analyzing DNA evidence. Professionals working in the criminal justice system need additional training and assistance in order to ensure the optimal use of DNA evidence to solve crimes and assist victims.

Thousands of sexual assault DNA kits are still not tested--``The demand for DNA testing continues to outstrip the capacity of crime laboratories to process these cases,'' according to a National Institute of Justice report. ``The bottom line: crime laboratories are processing more cases than ever before, but their expanded capacity has not been able to meet the increased demand.''

The DNA casework backlog, consisting of forensic evidence collected-- from crime scenes, victims and suspects in criminal cases--has more than doubled from less than 50,000 in 2005 to more than 100,000 in 2009.

There are thousands of rape kits ``sitting waiting to be tested'' in Houston, TX alone. The Houston Police Department may have up to 7,000 sexual assault kits that have not been tested. Houston recently accepted an $821,000 Federal grant to study the backlog of untested kits, but ``the bulk of the money has to be spent on figuring out the reasons rape kits have gone untested'' and less than half of the money ``will go towards dealing with the actual backlog.''

This amendment provides roughly $600 million to help resolve more than 340,000 rape and other criminal cases with DNA testing--This amendment would have provided at least $600 million in additional funds to support efforts to use DNA to solve crimes.

The amendment would have directed the Attorney General to develop a plan that would result in financial cost savings of at least 20 percent of the nearly $3.9 billion in duplicative grant programs identified by the Government

Accountability Office. As much as 75 percent of the savings, nearly $600 million, may be directed towards alleviating any backlogs of analysis and placement of DNA samples from rape, sexual assault, homicide, kidnapping, and other criminal cases, including casework sample and convicted offender backlogs, into the Combined DNA Index System. The remainder of the savings will be returned to the Treasury for the purpose of deficit reduction.

In 2010, National Institute of Justice's DNA Backlog Reduction Program provided more than $64.8 million which allowed more than 37,000 cases to be tested. The $600 million provided by this amendment could therefore be enough to provide testing for over 342,000 cases.

No list of Justice Department programs exists, yet GAO found more than 250 overlapping DOJ grant programs--As with many other agencies, the Justice Department cannot fully account for each program in its purview. In fact, in its review of DOJ programs for their annual report on duplication, even the GAO could not fully account for every program at the agency.

The number of Justice programs detailed by GAO, 253, may actually be an understatement. The report explains Justice grant programs can continue for up to 5 years, and as such, ``the total number of active justice grant programs can be higher than what is presented,'' which is only a one year snapshot of the Department's programs.

This amendment would require the Department to provide a full listing of every single program administered under their jurisdiction, which will assist in Congress's work to address this extensive overlap when making funding decisions.

In their duplication report, GAO revealed that ``overlap and fragmentation among government programs or activities can be harbingers of unnecessary duplication. Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services.''

This amendment would have addressed this overlap and unnecessary duplication at the Department of Justice by also requiring the following: a listing of other programs within the Federal Government with duplicative or overlapping missions and services; the latest performance reviews for the program, including the metrics used to review the program; the latest improper payment rate for the program, including fraudulent payments; and the total amount of unspent and unobligated program funds held by the agency and grant recipients.

This information would be updated annually and posted on-line, along with recommendations from the agency to consolidate duplicative and overlapping programs, eliminate waste and inefficiency, and terminate lower priority, outdated and unnecessary programs.

According to GAO, since 2005 Congress has spent $30 billion in overlapping Department of Justice grants for crime prevention, police, and victims services through more than 250 programs, and $3.9 billion in grants in 2010.--In February, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, released its second annual report addressing duplication and areas for cost savings throughout the Federal Government. The report, ``Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue,'' exposed 51 specific examples of government duplication and areas of Federal spending with potential for significant cost savings.

Included in this year's report are some very troubling findings of extensive duplication in a large portion of Department of Justice, DOJ, programs. GAO found the Justice Department administers more than 250 duplicative programs to provide ``crime prevention, law enforcement, and crime victim services,'' costing taxpayers roughly $30 billion in the last 6 years.

Their report details the widespread duplication in the Department, enumerating at least 56 victims' assistance programs, 33 juvenile justice efforts, more than 40 technology and forensics grant solicitations, and 16 community crime prevention strategy programs, to name a handful of the many identified.

In 1 year alone, three primary offices--the Office of Justice Programs, the Office on Violence Against Women, and the Community Oriented Policing Services Office--awarded $3.9 billion through 11,000 grants, many of which the GAO found to be duplicative and in need of review and coordination.

GAO attributes much of the duplication among these 253 grant programs to the fact Justice officials do not conduct a full cross reference check to ensure applicants have not applied for or received overlapping grants from the Department.

In fact, Justice employees contend they simply do not have enough time before providing a grant to ensure recipients have not already received funding. GAO observed, ``Justice officials stated that the timeline for reviewing applications, making recommendations on their merit, and processing awards each year is compressed and that it would be difficult to build in the extra time and level of coordination required to complete an intradepartmental review for potentially unnecessary duplication of funding prior to making awards.''

This amendment would direct DOJ to use their own authority to eliminate and consolidate overlapping programs as identified by GAO and develop a plan that would result in financial cost savings of no less than 20 percent of the nearly $3.9 billion in duplicative grant programs identified by the Government Accountability Office.

Addressing duplication at GAO is one step in addressing our nearly $16 trillion debt--With the release of the GAO report, combined with last year's recommendations, Congress and the administration have been given extensive details in 132 areas of government duplication and opportunities for significant cost savings, with dozens of recommendations for how to address the duplication and find these savings.

The problem in Congress today is not an issue of ignorance--it is one of indifference and incompetence. We know we have a problem. We know we have cancer. Yet we refuse to stop making it worse, we refuse to apply the treatment, and we refuse to take the pain of the medication for the long-term benefit of a cure.

The report provides a clear listing of dozens of areas ripe for reform and in need of collaboration from members on both sides of the aisle, to find solutions to address these issues.

We are looking into a future of trillion dollar deficits and a national debt quickly headed toward $20 trillion. Our Nation is not on the verge of bankruptcy, it is already bankrupt. Over the last 2 years, there have been countless discussions and bipartisan talks about how to address our debt and deficit. Yet there has been little agreement, and at the end of this year we will be faced with another tax extenders package and another increase in the debt limit, all while sequestration will be poised to kick in and achieve the savings Congress has been unable to muster the courage to pass.

But, before us, we have part of the answer. GAO's work presents Washington with literally hundreds of options for areas in which we could make a decision now to start finding savings, potentially hundreds of billions of dollars. If we are unable to agree on eliminating even one small duplicative program or tax credit when clearly we know there are hundreds, we have little hope of ever coming to a comprehensive compromise for fixing our floundering budget.

Congress should require the Department of Justice to provide a full listing of every program in their jurisdiction. Further, the Department can find savings from consolidating the overlap outlined by the GAO, freeing up Federal funding to dedicate toward solving unresolved rape cases, while also reducing the deficit.

As a Nation, we simply cannot afford to reauthorize programs that waste taxpayer dollars by duplicating programs operated by other Federal agencies for the same purposes. To be clear, addressing duplication and overlap is not a matter of refusing to provide services to victims of domestic violence but, rather, it is to ensure they are properly served by programs that are efficient, effective and not bogged down in Federal Government bureaucracy.

Third, both the Government Accountability Office, GAO, and the DOJ

Office of the Inspector General, DOJ OIG, have repeatedly documented the failure of OVW to manage its grants and monitor its grantees effectively. Following this statement, I have included in the Record summaries of both GAO and DOJ OIG reports on OVW and VAWA grants. Overall, DOJ has long had problems with its grant management. The DOJ OIG has published for more than a decade a list of the Top 10 Management Challenges at the DOJ. Grant management, unfortunately, has appeared on that list ever since the inception of this evaluation, with OVW being called out as particularly problematic.

Since 2001, GAO has noted various problems at OVW and with particular VAWA grants. With regard to OVW grant management, GAO noted grants awarded by OVW ``often lacked the documentation necessary to ensure that the required monitoring activities occurred.'' As a result OVW ``was not positioned to systematically determine staff compliance with monitoring requirements and assess overall performance.''

Furthermore, since 1998, the DOJ IG has issued audit after audit noting unallowable expenditures, questioned grant costs, weak internal reporting, and poor oversight in numerous VAWA grants across the country. For example, a 2011 DOJ IG audit of a Boston grantee questioned over half $638,298 of its $1.3 million grant. The questioned costs were used for unsupportable conferences, bonus payments, and consultant fees.

Even my constituents have directly experienced OVW mismanagement. For example, the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council, OK DAC, which is the Oklahoma State administrative agency for many Federal grants, has had specific, documented problems with the poor job OVW has been doing in its grant management and oversight. OVW does not answer or return phone calls in a timely manner and has consistently been unavailable to answer grantees' questions in the middle of the work week. Moreover, according to the OK DAC, in the last 4 years that Oklahoma has received one particular VAWA grant, OVW has failed to perform even one site visit to check on the implementation of the grant and the grantee's use of Federal funds.

After more than a decade of significant challenges, it is my hope the DOJ OIG will be able to remove grant management from DOJ's top 10 management challenges. However, until that occurs, it is the job of Congress to ensure we are not turning a blind eye to DOJ's failure to properly administer taxpayer funds through Federal grant programs, including those authorized by VAWA.

Fourth, the fiscal condition of our country has worsened dramatically since the original passage of this bill in 1994 and the last reauthorization in 2005. In fact, at the end of 2005, our national debt was approximately $8.1 trillion. It is now over $15.6 trillion--a growth of over $7.5 trillion, or 92.6 percent, in just over 6 years. The Federal Government is in no position to spend more money on any grant programs without offsets. We simply cannot afford it.

Although Chairman Leahy recognized the inordinately high authorization levels in the last VAWA reauthorization by reducing some of those amounts, S. 1925 continues to inflate the actual funding we know Congress will provide to VAWA grantees. The bill authorizes approximately $660 million in grants each year for 5 years, totaling $3.3 billion. None of these funds are offset. The 2005 VAWA reauthorization provided approximately $779 million per year for 5 years, totaling $3.89 billion. Thus, while S. 1925 reauthorizes a total of $590 million less than the 2005 VAWA reauthorization, this total is still much higher than actual past appropriations.

In fact, from 2007 to 2011, Congress appropriated a total of $2.71 billion for VAWA grant programs, which is $590 million less than this bill's authorized funding. From 2007 to 2011, although Congress authorized a total of $3.89 billion, it actually appropriated $1.18 billion less than that figure, 2.71 billion. Thus, while S. 1925 may reduce authorizations, it still provides a total authorization that is significantly higher than total VAWA appropriations over the past 5 years. If we know, based on past funding history, it is highly unlikely Congress will ever provide to VAWA grantees the level of funding authorized in this legislation, why would we send a false message to grantees by retaining such inflated estimates in VAWA?

Fifth, I also have concerns about a section of this bill that allows a tribal court to have jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit a domestic violence crime in Indian country or against an Indian. The language explicitly provides that the self-governance of a tribe includes the right ``to exercise special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction over all persons.'' To my knowledge, this is the first time the Federal Government has given Indian courts jurisdiction over ``all persons.'' While I recognize domestic violence is a serious problem in Indian Country, this change could cause particular problems with tribes in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has no reservations, but it does have 39 separate Indian governments. The individual allotment lands and trust lands are small and dispersed within Oklahoma communities and counties. The tribes do not have large continuous land bases, and because of its unique history, many Oklahomans claim Indian enrollment but have no relationship to the tribe or a tribal community.

Further, the Bill of Rights does not apply in Indian courts. Instead, most of the protections are preserved because of the Indian Civil Rights Act, but it does not preserve all rights. For example, the Indian Civil Rights Act only guarantees right to counsel at an individual's own expense. If the ``all persons'' language is as absolute as it appears, it could allow a non-Indian to be tried in tribal court without the full protection of the Constitution. S. 1925 includes language that says: ``In a criminal proceeding in which a participating tribe exercises special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction, the participating tribe shall provide to the defendant . . . all other rights whose protection is necessary under the Constitution of the United States in order for Congress to recognize and affirm the inherent power of the participating tribe to exercise special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction over the defendant.'' Still, I am not certain this is enough and am afraid it will be subject to future court challenges.

Proponents of this provision argue that such allowances to tribal courts are necessary because no one is prosecuting non-Indian offenders, and that may be true in some cases. But, instead of creating a conflict between Indian country and the Federal Government's jurisdiction over American citizens who commit crimes, we believe we should deal with the bigger problem by holding the Department of Justice and local U.S. attorneys accountable for not prosecuting these cases.

Finally, while I applaud and support Senator Grassley's effort to increase accountability at the DOJ and to address problematic definitions, immigration provisions, and criminal statutes in his substitute amendment, for many of the same reasons I outline above, I must also oppose his substitute. Although Senator Grassley's alternative is, in several areas, likely a better alternative than S. 1925, it fails to reduce authorizations or offset those amounts, does not fully address grant management problems at OVW or program duplication, and still runs counter to my basic constitutional concerns with VAWA programs.

As a result, I cannot support S. 1925 or Senator Grassley's substitute.

I ask unanimous consent to have the attached documents supporting my statement on the Violence Against Women Act of 2011 in the Record.

Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

I do not want to change the Senator's line of thought. It was beautiful and I want to hear every word. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that after the conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Tennessee, that there will be 10 minutes given to the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Barrasso, and that I have the remainder of the Republican time.

First of all, Madam President, let me say we are very fortunate to have the Senator from Wyoming, with his background, come and give us his second opinion. The ratings are very high on his second opinion, and I am very glad of that.

I am also very pleased we had the Senator from Tennessee talking about the big issue of today. There is no one--having been the Secretary of Education in a previous administration--who is more qualified to talk about student loans than the Senator from Tennessee. So I am very appreciative.

Ironically, we have talked about two subjects, and I am here to talk about one totally unrelated that I think is equally critical--and I have to be critical--of this administration. I am going to state something that hasn't been stated before. I am going to release something that hasn't been released before, and I think it is very significant that people really listen.

You know, this President has had a war on fossil fuels--and when we talk about fossil fuels, we are talking about oil, gas, and coal--ever since before he was in office. He is very clever because what he has attempted to do is to kill oil, gas, and coal when we had the huge supply of it here and yet do it in a way that the American people won't be aware over it. How many people in America, I ask the Chair, know what hydraulic fracturing is? I daresay more people know about it today than knew about it a short while ago.

So today I wish to address for the first time ever the questionable actions recently taken by the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency to stop domestic energy production, particularly doing so by using hydraulic fracturing.

Today I wish to draw attention to a little-known video from 2010 which shows a top EPA official, region 6 Administrator Al Armendairiz, using the vivid metaphor of crucifixion to explain EPA's enforcement tactics over oil and gas producers.

This is a long quote, and I am going to ask everyone to bear with me because it is all a quote by Armendairiz. He is, as I said, the Administrator of region 6, and he is instructing at this time people who are working for them in what their behavior should be. So this is an actual quote I am going to use. It is a long quote. Bear with me.

I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff

about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was

probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the

meeting but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was

kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages

in the Mediterranean. They would go into a little Turkish

town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and

they would crucify them. And then you know that town was

really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make

examples out of people who are in this case not compliant

with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law,

and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out

of them, and there is a great deterrent effect there. And,

companies that are smart see that, they don't want to play

that game, and they decide at that point that it's time to

clean up. And, that won't happen unless you have somebody out

there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at

the industry, you find the people violating the law, you go

aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective

enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very

quickly. That's what these companies respond to, is both

their public image but also financial pressure. So you put

some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in

that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that's our

general philosophy.

Again, that is a quote from the EPA Administrator of region 6. He actually said: You know, it is kind of like the Romans, when they used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They would go into a little Turkish town and find the first five guys they saw and crucify them. That is how you get their attention.

I remember a few years ago a lumber company in my State of Oklahoma called me up and said: I am not sure what to do. The EPA is putting us out of business.

I said: What do you mean, putting you out of business?

This was a lumber company in Tulsa, OK--Mill Creek Lumber. The man who was calling me was the president.

He said: We have been disposing of our used crankcase oil in the same legal, licensed depository for 10 years now, and they have traced some of this oil to a Superfund site, and they say they are now going to fine me $5,000 a day for that violation. Now, that is what the letter said.

I said: Send the letter to me. That is a typical threat by the EPA to try to make you voluntarily go out of business.

So he sent it to me, and sure enough that is what it said. Any concerned reader would look at that and say: They are going to put us out of business. He said they could stay in business maybe another 30 days and that would be the end.

Well, that was a threat. That is what they do to intimidate people. It is not

quite to the level of a crucifixion, but nonetheless times have changed and things have gotten worse over the past few years. So, yes, they have the enforcement tools, and they are able to scare people, intimidate people. And these are the very people who are working and hiring people and doing what is necessary to run this machine we call America.

So according to Administrator Armendairiz, EPA's general philosophy is to crucify and make examples of domestic energy producers so that other companies will fall in line with EPA's regulatory whims. His comments give us a rare glimpse into the Obama administration's true agenda. No matter how much President Obama may pretend to be a friend of oil, gas, and coal, his green team constantly betrays the truth that the Obama administration is fully engaged in an all-out war on hydraulic fracturing, thinking people won't know that if you kill hydraulic fracturing, you kill oil and gas production in America.

Not long after Armendairiz made his stunning admission, the EPA, apparently, began to zero in on the first crucifixion victims. The Agency targeted U.S. natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, in Texas, and in Wyoming, and in all three of these cases, before these investigations were complete, EPA made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming that hydraulic fracturing was the cause of water contamination. But in each of these three cases, the EPA's comments were contrived, and despite their best efforts they have been unable to find any science to back up their accusations.

Of course, this administration has a propensity for making embarrassing announcements on days when they hope no one will notice. During the past 2-week recess, while Congress was out of town, the EPA released several late-Friday-night statements reversing their earlier assertions in these cases. Still, the problem is people are walking around believing these things are true.

The Agency hopes they can admit they were wrong quietly, but we are not going to let that happen. We are not going to let them get away with it. The American people deserve to know exactly why the EPA is pushing ahead with such intensity to capture alarmist headlines, and then, when no one is looking and when their investigation shows they were wrong, quietly backing away from it.

The EPA, in Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania, not only reversed their assertions but did so with a stunning lack of transparency, strategically attempting to make these announcements as quietly as possible, at times they know Congress won't be looking. Let me quickly highlight a few of these examples. In Parker County, TX, the Agency's major announcement--the withdrawal of their administrative order--was announced at a time they knew Congress was adjourning for Easter recess. In Dimock, PA, the EPA made two announcements, and the same thing happened there. In Pavillion, WY, the EPA announced their reversal as Congress was wrapping up that week.

So the same thing was happening. The EPA's general philosophy is to crucify domestic energy producers. Let's look at the three of their crucifixions.

Parker County, TX. I think this could be the most outrageous of all the examples we will be talking about today. I will not have time to hit them all, but I will go back and make the complete statement I was going to make. Unfortunately, there isn't time to finish it now.

But what happened in Parker County, TX, took place in region 6, where my State of Oklahoma is located. Despite Texas State regulators actively investigating the issue, EPA region 6 issued a December 7, 2010, Emergency Administration Order, which determined--I use the word ``determined'' because that is the word they used--determined that State and local authorities had not taken sufficient action and ordered a company called Range Resources to provide clean drinking water to affected residents and begin taking steps to resolve the problem.

Along with this order, the EPA went on a publicity barrage in an attempt to publicize its premature and unjustified conclusions. The day of the order, EPA issued a press release in which it mentioned hydraulic fracturing--not once, not twice but four times--in trying to tie that to problems with groundwater contamination.

The Agency claimed they also had ``determined''--again, they used that word--that natural gas drilling near the homes by Range Resources in Parker County, TX, had caused the contamination of at least two residential drinking water wells.

Regional administrator Al Armendariz was quoted in a press story posted online, prior to him even notifying the State of Texas, that EPA was making their order--and the e-mails have been obtained from the day the order was released--showing him gleefully sharing information with rabid antifracking advocates--and this is a quote by this EPA regional administrator: ``We're about to make a lot of news . . . time to Tivo channel 8.'' He was rejoicing.

In subsequent interviews, Armendariz made comments specifically intending to incite fear and sway public opinion against hydraulic fracturing, citing multiple times a danger of fire or explosion. When State regulators were made aware of EPA's action, they made it clear they felt the Agency was proceeding prematurely, to which Armendariz forwarded their reply calling it ``stunning.''

What was ``stunning,'' to quote Armendariz, were revelations about the way in which the EPA acted in this particular case, which led me to send a letter, at that time, to the EPA inspector general requesting him to preserve all records of communication in connection with the emergency order issued by the EPA region 6 administrator.

Subsequent to the EPA's December 7, 2010, administrative order, on January 18, 2011, EPA followed through on Regional Administrator Armendariz's promise to ``make examples of people'' and filed a complaint in Federal district court, requesting penalties against Range Resources of $16,500 a day for each violation they alleged took place-- for each violation. I don't know how many violations there are. I think there are three or four.

Again, this goes back to the same thing that happened in my State of Oklahoma with the EPA trying to put a lumber company out of business by EPA, except this is a larger company so there are larger fines.

So $16,500 a day in order to align with Armendariz's pursuit of fines which ``can get very high very, very quickly.''

If these actions alone didn't create an appearance of impropriety and call into serious question the ability of Regional Administrator Armendariz to conduct unbiased investigations and fairly enforce the law, just 7 months prior to the region's actions in Parker County, Regional Administrator Armendariz laid the groundwork of how he planned to reign over his region.

In a townhall meeting in Dish, TX, he ``gave an analogy'' of his ``philosophy of enforcement.'' Again, we have already talked about that analogy.

This is a quote I highlighted at the beginning of my speech:

It was kind of like the Romans used to conquer little

villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little

Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they

saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town

was really easy to manage.

Let me go back and be clear about this. This is President Obama's appointed regional administrator for the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma comparing his philosophy of enforcement over the oil and gas industries to Roman crucifixions, where they would ``just grab the first five guys they saw'' in order to set the policy and to scare everybody else and crucify them.

Fast forward to late Friday afternoon, March 30 of this year, just a few hours after Congress left town for the Easter recess. The Wall Street Journal reported that:

EPA told a federal judge it withdrew an administrative

order that alleged Range Resources had polluted water wells

in a rural Texas county west of Fort Worth. Under an

agreement filed by U.S. district court in Dallas, the EPA

will also drop the lawsuit it filed in January 2011 against

Range, and Range will end its appeal of the administrative

order.

Listen to this. A few weeks prior to EPA's withdrawal, a judge also concluded that one of the residents involved in the investigation worked

with environmental activists to create a ``deceptive video'' that was ``calculated to alarm the public into believing the water was burning''--water that was the result of the hydraulic fracturing--when it appears the resident attached a hose to the water well's gas vent, not the water, and of course lit it on fire.

I was on a TV show the other night by someone whom I will not mention their name--she happens to be one of my three favorite liberals--and she mentioned: ``This water is so bad it is burning.'' That judge showed what it was and of course made them cease from doing that.

Remember, this is only one of the three recent high-profile instances of backtracking on behalf of the Agency, after they have already scared everybody into thinking it is a serious problem.

Next we go into Wyoming--Pavillion, WY. Last December, EPA publicized and released nonpeer-reviewed draft findings which pointed to hydraulic fracturing as the cause of groundwater contamination. Again, the culprit is always hydraulic fracturing because we all know we can't get any large oil and gas out of tight formations without hydraulic fracturing.

Here again, the EPA stepped in over the actions of the State and made a press announcement designed to capture headlines where definitive evidence linking the act of hydraulic fracturing to water contamination simply didn't exist.

The announcement came in December, despite as late as November of 2011 EPA regional administrator James Martin saying the results of the last round of testing in Pavillion were not significantly different from the first two rounds of testing which showed no link between the hydraulic fracturing and contamination. That is three rounds of testing which showed no contamination from hydraulic fracturing. Yet only a few weeks later EPA announced the opposite.

In another reversal by the EPA in the past few weeks, the EPA stepped back and quietly agreed to take more water samples and postpone a peer review of the findings, something the State of Wyoming had been requesting for quite some time.

Again, the damage was done. They didn't do anything wrong. There was no water groundwater contamination at all. This is hydraulic fracturing.

As I have mentioned so many times before, I know a little bit about this because the first hydraulic fracturing took place in my State of Oklahoma in 1949. There has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination as a result of it. Yet this administration is doing everything they can to destroy hydraulic fracturing.

Dimock, PA, is the third site of the EPA's recent backtracking of its publicized attempts to link hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination. In this instance, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection had taken substantial action to and including working out an agreement with an oil and gas company ensuring residents clean drinking water.

In line with the State's Department of Environmental Protection, on December 2, 2011, the EPA declared that water in Dimock was safe to drink. Just over a month later, EPA reversed that position.

So they go back and forth. What do people remember? They remember this process of hydraulic fracturing is the culprit and is creating serious environmental problems.

What is maybe more egregious was--to quote Pennsylvania DEP secretary Michael Krancer--EPA's ``rudimentary'' understanding of the facts and history of the region's water: Independent geologists and water consultants such as Brian Oram have been puzzled by the Agency's rationale for their involvement in Dimock because the substances of greatest concern by EPA are naturally occurring and commonly found in this area of Pennsylvania. Yet EPA has chosen this area to attack because of the presence of hydraulic fracturing.

In other words, this has been going on for years, long before hydraulic fracturing.

By the way, I have to say they used to attack oil and gas, but it was always out West in the Western States. The chair knows something about that. This is different now because we have these huge reserves that are in places such as New York and Pennsylvania. All that time there has not been hydraulic fracturing, but as soon as hydraulic fracturing came in, they said this is the result of hydraulic fracturing when it has been there all the time.

Of course, this is part of the strategy to try to convince Americans we don't have the vast supply of natural resources we clearly have.

I was redeemed by this. I have seen saying all along that of all the untruths this President has been saying, the one he says more than any other is that we only have 2 percent of the reserves of gas and oil and we use 25 percent. It is not true. I don't want to use the ``L'' word. I don't want to get everybody mad, but it is just not true.

The U.S. Geological Survey revealed just a few days ago that President Obama's favorite talking point, that we only have 2 percent of the world's proven oil, is less than honest. The 2 percent the President quotes is proven reserves, but he ignores our recoverable reserves. This is coming from the USGS. Our recoverable reserves are some of the largest in the world.

According to information gleaned from the USGS report, America has 26 percent of the world's recoverable conventional oil reserves. That doesn't begin to include our enormous oil shale, tight oil and heavy oil deposits. That is just a fraction of it. But that is 26 percent of the world's recoverable oil.

Our problem is our politicians will not allow us--and particularly the Obama administration--to drill on public lands and to be able to capture that.

We also hold almost 30 percent of the world's technically recoverable conventional natural gas.

In other words, to put it in a way that I think is more understandable: Just from our own resources and at our own consumption level, we could run this country for 90 years on natural gas at our current level of consumption and for 60 years on oil. That is what we have. That is the answer to the problem. It is called supply and demand. There is not a person listening now who would not remember back in the elementary school days that the supply and demand is real.

But we all know he remains fully committed to his cap-and-trade, global warming, green energy agenda--a plan that is to severely restrict domestic development of natural gas, oil, and coal, to drive up the price of fossil fuels so their favorite forms of green energy can compete. It is, quite simply, a war on affordable energy--and, at that time, they weren't afraid to admit it.

Now they are backtracking a little bit--such as using hydraulic fracturing and not saying they are opposed to oil and gas.

Do you remember Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, President Obama's man? He told the Wall Street Journal that ``[s]omehow we have to figure out a way to boost the price of gasoline to levels in Europe.''

We all know the infamous quote from President Obama. He said that, under his cap-and-trade plan, ``electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.''

The President himself has been on record supporting an increase in gas prices. Although, according to him, he would ``have preferred a gradual adjustment'' increasing the average family's pain at the pump. But this isn't a plan that gets you reelected. So the gas prices have skyrocketed, and with the utter failure of Solyndra, President Obama's dream of green energy economy is in shambles. We can be sure we won't be talking about this plan to raise energy costs until after the election.

I would have to say the President's own Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman last month made a statement, and I appreciate it, because he said we have a very strong belief that the laws of supply and demand are real.

They have been saying that the laws of supply and demand are not real. Gary Becker--I quoted this the other day. He is a Nobel Prize- winning economist, professor at the University of Chicago. He has said ``supply and demand are the cause of the vast majority of large fluctuations in oil prices, and it is hard to believe that speculation has played a major role in causing a large swing in oil prices.''

The President tried to say it is not supply and demand. We do not need to

develop our own resources to bring down the price of gas at the pumps. It is speculation. Here is a Nobel Prize winner saying that just flat is not true.

The President's budget proposal this year alone--I want to get back to how he has made this attempt to tax oil and gas out of business. The President's budget proposal this year alone amounts to a $38.6 billion tax increase on oil and gas companies, which would hit my own State of Oklahoma where 70,000 people are employed in oil and gas development especially hard. His proposal specifically would either modify or outright cancel section 199--that is the manufacturers' tax deduction that is something all other manufacturers would be able to enjoy--for the intangible drilling costs, IDCs: percentage depreciation, tertiary injections. All of these were in his budget--not just this year, not just last year, but every year since his budget 4 years ago--to try to tax the oil and gas companies out of business.

His actions have not slowed his rhetoric. In fact, President Obama has become so desperate to run from his antifossil fuel record that he ran all the way to Cushing, OK. That is my State. We have a major intersection of the pipeline down there. This President, in his attack on fossil fuels, stopped the XL Pipeline that goes from Canada down through my State of Oklahoma. He came all the way to Oklahoma to say: I am in support of the pipeline that goes south out of Oklahoma into Texas.

Wait a minute, that is because he cannot stop it. He could only stop the other one because it crossed the line from Canada to the United States. So he came all the way to Oklahoma to say he was not going to stop something that he could not stop anyway.

President Obama is trying to take credit for the increase in oil and gas. I have to get this out because I think so many people do not understand this. The increase that is taking place in production is all on private lands. It is not increasing on public lands. It is decreasing on public lands, but on private lands he has no control. In the report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, since 2007, quoting now from the CRS:

About 96 percent of the [oil production] increase took

place on non-federal lands.

According to the Obama Energy Information Administration, total fossil fuel sales of production from Federal lands are down since 2008--they are down, not up--and during a time of a natural gas boom throughout the country. In other words we have gone through the biggest boom on private land, but he will not allow us to do it on public land, and that is where these tremendous reserves are. Gas sales from production on Federal lands are down 17 percent since 2008.

Finally, according to PFC Energy, which is a global consulting firm specializing in the oil and gas industry, 93 percent of shale oil and gas wells in the United States are located on private and State lands, hardly the Federal Government triumph that the President falsely attempts to take credit for when you put all the pieces together.

President Obama's election strategy is clear: Say great things about oil and gas, say great things about coal and the virtues of domestic energy production, but under the surface try hard to manufacture something wrong with hydraulic fracturing. Remember, not 1 cubic foot of natural gas can be retrieved in tight shale formations without using hydraulic fracturing.

As I said before, that was started in my State of Oklahoma. We are going to make sure we are the truth squad that tells the truth about how we can bring down the price of gas at the pump. It gets right back to supply and demand.

I am going to come back at a later date and give the long version of what I have just given in the last 45 minutes, but I see my friend from Tennessee is here. So I yield the floor.

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

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

Madam President, next month students all over the United States will begin graduating from college. There is a lot of pride in that experience. Family and friends will gather and celebrate. These young graduates are going to be filled with hope and expectation, and gratitude to those who helped them reach this milestone in their lives. But they are also going to be graduating with debt--in some cases massive amounts of debt.

Ninety-six percent of for-profit college students will graduate with a debt of $33,000. Fifteen percent of them--one out of six--will default on their loans within 2 years. There is now more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. As I have mentioned on the Senate floor several times, a little over a year ago, for the first time in history, student loan debt in America surpassed credit card debt.

One of the reasons there has been such a huge influx is that college costs continue to rise at unsustainable rates. Tuition fees at 4-year schools have rocketed up 300 percent from 1990 through 2011. Over the same period, broad inflation was just 75 percent. Even health care costs rose at half the rate of the cost of higher education.

The average for-profit college costs $30,900 a year in tuition and fees. Private nonprofit institutions are not too far behind. The average tuition and fees run about $26,600. Schools with larger endowments charge even more--upwards of $50,000 to $57,000 in total fees. They use their endowment to give students large financial aid packages, which is admirable, but it has consequences. The elevated sticker price for these schools provides for-profit colleges the cover to raise their prices to similar levels.

Let me remind you, for-profit schools, for-profit colleges in America get up to and more than 90 percent of their revenue directly from the Federal Government. They are 10 percent away from being Federal agencies.

Students graduating this year have one advantage: If they took out Federal subsidized loans, their interest rate is low. In 2007, Congress set interest rates on subsidized Federal student loans for the last several years. Current graduates have low, affordable interest rates on their Federal loans, ranging from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent, depending on the year they took out the loan.

Graduates next year may not be so lucky. The interest rate goes up to 6.8 percent for all unless Congress acts. That is because these interest rates are set to double for 740 million students across the country on July 1 and will only be changed if Congress acts. That is going to affect 365,000-plus borrowers in my State of Illinois. Each borrower in Illinois will save $1,000-plus over the lifetime of their loan if current interest rates of 3.4 percent continue. Across the State, borrowers will save a total of $387,000.

Every week in my office we hear from students who would be directly affected by interest rate increases. One of them is George Jacobs, a constituent of mine and a graduate of the International Academy of Design and Technology in Chicago, a for-profit college owned by the Career Education Corporation.

Every day of his life, George Jacobs regrets that he ever attended this school. He is 29 years old. His current private student loan balance has ballooned to $107,000. The original loan was $60,000. But with a variable interest rate, George has been paying anywhere from 7 percent to 13.9 percent. Combine that with his Federal loan balance, and his total outstanding student loan debt is $142,000. George is not even 30 years old, and he already has the debt the size of some people's mortgages on their homes. Unlike a lot of his peers who attend for-profit colleges, George has a job in his field of study. His annual salary is $45,000, but since his lender will not let him consolidate his loans, his monthly payment is $1,364. Half of his income goes to pay his loan.

Unfortunately, because of high interest rates, very little of his payment reduces the principal. He does not know when he will possibly pay off this loan. When asked if he has tried to work out a plan with his lender, he says: They won't talk to me. They just don't care.

George was the first in his immediate family to attend college. He did not ask people for advice on financial matters. He trusted the school. George was subjected to high-pressure sales that some for- profit colleges use.

Reflecting on that experience now, George believes the school took advantage of him. He believes the school's primary focus is to identify people they can make money off of. George owes about $29,000 in Federal loans. With low interest rates, his monthly payment is $230 a month on the Federal loans--an amount he says is not a real problem.

He is married, and although he and his wife own a car, he does not think they will ever qualify for a mortgage. He is 29 years old.

George is not the only one affected by the private student loans. His parents are in their fifties. To help George, they cosigned his private student loans. They cannot refinance the mortgage on their home because of George's outstanding debt.

There was a story in the Washington Post about 2 weeks ago of a woman--a grandmother--who now has her Social Security check garnished because she was kind enough to cosign her granddaughter's college loan. Her granddaughter has defaulted. Her grandmother is watching her Social Security check reduced.

Making college affordable should not be partisan. It affects everybody. Just this week, during a news conference in Pennsylvania, Gov. Mitt Romney acknowledged the tough job market new graduates face and expressed support for keeping interest rates low. He said:

I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate

on student loans . . . . temporary relief on interest rates

for students . . . in part because of the extraordinarily

poor conditions in the job market.

Higher education is not a luxury anymore. It is part of the American dream that many of us bought into and invested in. An educated workforce will make us a stronger nation. By 2018, 63 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education. Keeping debt levels low and manageable for college graduates is essential.

George Jacobs, like so many other students I have spoken about on this floor, is going to spend the rest of his young adult life paying for student loans. There has always been a lot of talk around here about mortgage crises--and rightly so--but think about the 17- and 18- and 19-year-old students signing away their income for the next 30 years before they can even dream of owning a home.

When we get back from the break in about 10 days, we are going to consider legislation on making sure student loan interest rates are manageable. There is more to this issue. We have to deal with the reality the President raised in his State of the Union Address. This spiraling cost of higher education is unsustainable and unfair-- fundamentally unfair.

We say to the young people: Get educated for your future.

They follow our advice and walk into the student loan trap. Unfortunately, many for-profit schools are the worst offenders. These schools have enrollment that has grown 225 percent over the past 10 years. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the enrollment of for-profit colleges in my State has grown 556 percent over the last 10 years. They enrolled 1.2 million students in 2009. In the 2008 2009 academic year, the GAO found for-profit colleges took in $24 billion in title IV aid; 4-year for-profit schools an average of $27,900 a year before aid, as compared to $16,900 for public 4-year universities.

The chief executives at most of the for-profit schools--parent companies--make many times more than their counterparts in nonprofit schools. Remember, 90 percent-plus of their revenue comes directly from the Federal Government. These are not great entrepreneurs; these are folks who have

managed to tap into one of the most generous Federal subsidies in the law.

Five years ago, we gave them a break. In the bankruptcy bill, we said private for-profit schools will be the only private loans in America that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, which means you carry them to the grave. So the for-profit schools give these private loans to students, and their parents sign up for them. When it is all said and done, they end up saddled with this impossible debt for a lifetime. That is not even to go to the question about whether they are receiving any kind of valuable education in the process.

For-profits, incidentally, spent 21 percent-plus of their expenses on instruction--21 percent on instruction. It was 29.5 percent at public institutions, 32.7 percent at private nonprofit institutions.

USA Today reported that for-profits educate fewer than 10 percent of students, take in 25 percent of all Federal aid to education, and account for 44 percent of defaults among borrowers. Remember those numbers: 10, 25, and 44. They are taking in 10 percent of the students, taking in 25 percent of all the Federal aid to education, and 44 percent of the defaults on student loans are attributable to these for- profit schools.

According to the Project on Student Debt, 96 percent of for-profit college students graduate with some debt, compared to 72 percent of private nonprofit grads, 62 percent of public school grads. The Project on Student Debt also reported that borrowers who graduated from for- profit 4-year programs have an average debt of $33,000, compared to $27,600 at private nonprofits, $20,000 at public schools.

Last year, the Department of Education released a report showing that for-profit schools have a student loan default rate overall of 15 percent, compared with 7.2 percent at public schools, 4.6 percent at private nonprofit schools. If I were to stand before you and talk about any other business in America, heavily subsidized by the Federal Government--beyond 90 percent of all the revenues they take in--that is luring students and their families into unmanageable debt, I would hope both sides of the aisle would stand and say that is unacceptable. How can we subsidize an operation that is causing such hardship on students and their families--a hardship they are going to carry for a lifetime.

George Jacobs, at age 29, is writing off the possibility of ever owning a home because he signed up at one of those for-profit schools in my State.

The Senate HELP Committee also discovered that out of $640 million in post-9/11 GI benefits, a bill we were all proud to vote for, out of the $640 million that flowed to for-profit schools in the last academic year, $439 million went to the largest 15 publicly traded companies. For-profit colleges are receiving $1 out of every $2 in military tuition assistance, according to the Department of Defense, and more than 60 percent of education benefits available to military spouses go to for-profit schools.

This is significant. We capped Federal aid to for-profit schools at 90 percent of their revenue, but we created an exception for the GI bill. So some of them are up to 95 percent Federal subsidy and still we have these terrible results and terrible indebtedness.

Students at for-profit colleges have lower success rates than similar students in public and nonprofit colleges, including graduation rates, employment outcomes, debt levels, and loan default rates. Yet the Department of Defense is paying more to for-profit schools for the GI bill than public and nonprofit institutions.

I wish to have printed in the Record, along with my remarks, an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, April 18. It tells the story of Jodi Romine, who between the ages of 18 and 22 took out $74,000 in students loans. She attended Kent State University, a public university in Ohio. It seemed like a good investment at the time. But now it is going to delay her career, her marriage, and her decision to have children.

Ms. Romine's $900-a-month loan payments eats up 60 percent of the paycheck she earns as a bank teller in South Carolina, the best job she could get after graduating from college.

Her fiance spends 40 percent of his paycheck on student loans. They each work more than 60 hours a week and volunteer where they can to help the local high school's football and basketball teams. Ms. Romine works a second job as a waitress, making all her loan payments on time. She cannot buy a house. They cannot visit their families in Ohio as often as they would like or spend money to even go out.

Plans to marry or have children are on hold, says Ms. Romine, ``I am just looking for some way to manage my finances.'' This is an indication of a debt crisis that is coming. It is different, I would agree, than the mortgage debt crisis we faced. Smaller in magnitude, perhaps, but no less insidious and no less of a problem for us when it comes to the growth of our economy.

I have a couple bills pending. One of them goes to a very basic question: Should any college, public, private, profit, nonprofit, be allowed to lure a student into a private student loan when they are still eligible for government loans? In other words, should that not be one of the causes for a discharge in bankruptcy? It is fraud. It is fraud to say to that student: You have to take out this private student loan, even though the school knows that student is still eligible for low-interest rate accommodating Federal loans. They are luring them into a debt that is unnecessary and a debt which is crushing, in some circumstances.

At the very minimum, that should be considered fraud in a bankruptcy court, and that debt should be dischargeable in bankruptcy because of the failure of the school to disclose that the student still has eligibility for a Federal loan.

Secondly, I know I am probably crying in the wilderness, but I still find it inconceivable that the only private sector business loan in America that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy goes to these heavily subsidized for-profit schools. First, we lured them with Federal money--90 percent-plus--and then we turn around and say: And we will protect you. When the student who is likely to default ends up defaulting, we will make sure they still have the debt, carrying it to the grave. What were we thinking to give this one business this kind of fantastic Federal subsidy and this kind of amazing support in the Bankruptcy Code?

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, along with that article from the Wall Street Journal, a recent article from Barron's of April 16.

They identified those who were offering these private student loans. The major players in the private nongovernment-backed student loan market: SLM let me translate--formerly known as Sallie Mae, Discover Financial Services, Wells Fargo, and PNC Financial Services. Even with the defaults, if there are defaults on these loans, these loans are protected because they continue forever.

I do not know if my colleagues will join me in this, but all I ask them to do is go home and please talk to some of

the families in their States, and they will find this student loan crisis is not just something manufactured by politicians; it is real, and we are complicit in it. When we allow low-performing and worthless schools to receive Federal aid to education, students and their families are lured into believing these are real schools.

Go to the Internet and put in the words ``college'' or ``university,'' click the mouse and watch what happens. You will be inundated with ads from for-profit schools. Some of them will tell you: Go to school online. One of them ran a television ad here in Washington--I think they have taken it off the air now--that showed this lovely young girl who was in her bedroom in her pajamas with her laptop computer on the bed. The purpose of the ad was: You can graduate from college at home in your pajamas. It is a ruse. It is a farce. It is a fraud.

Many times these schools offer nothing but debt for these students. The students who drop out get the worst of the circumstances. They do not even get the worthless diploma from the for-profit schools; all they get is the debt. That is not fair. If we have a responsibility-- and I think we do--to families across America, for goodness' sake, on a bipartisan basis, we should step up and deal with the student debt crisis and the for-profit schools that are exploiting it.

I yield the floor.