Patient Safety and Generic Labeling Improvement Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I just had a very wonderful phone call from a young Matt Rutherford, a 31-year-old man. I have spoken about him on the floor on a couple of occasions. He just made it safely home on his boat, the St. Brendan. He just crossed the finish line, coming out of the Atlantic Ocean into the Chesapeake Bay.

For those of you who have not followed this story, about 309 days ago young Matt Rutherford, on a 27-foot sailboat--a 36-year-old sailboat to boot--left the Chesapeake Bay on one of the most audacious adventures ever undertaken. It has never been done before. He sailed his little boat out of the Chesapeake Bay. He sailed it in the Atlantic Ocean, up around Newfoundland, Labrador, by Greenland, and sailed that little boat through the Northwest Passage, from the Atlantic Ocean over to Alaska. He has been certified now as the first person to ever do so solo in a small sailboat.

He sailed around Alaska. He sailed it from Alaska down to Cape Horn. Mind you, he is by himself on a 27-foot boat. He rounded Cape Horn and came up the east coast of South America, sailed up through the Caribbean, and is back, as of just a few hours ago, into the Chesapeake Bay--solo, nonstop, all by himself. He never touched land in all these days. He will set foot on land this Saturday at a homecoming in Annapolis at the National Sailing Hall of Fame dock in Annapolis, this Saturday around noontime. I am sure it will be a big welcome for Matt Rutherford.

To add frosting to the cake of what he did--which, again, is an incredible, incredible adventure--he did it to raise funds for CRAB, Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating, which is an organization that helps people with disabilities, including wounded warriors from our armed services who have service-connected disabilities, to get them out

on boats that will teach them how to sail, to let them know they too can participate in that recreational activity.

So to Matt Rutherford, who has done something that has never been done before, welcome back. I am glad you are safe. I am glad you made it OK.

To those of you who want to catch up on this incredible, incredible journey--I mean, think about Robert Peary going to the North Pole. Think about Roald Amundsen going to the South Pole. Think about Sir Francis Chichester sailing around the world in the Gypsy Moth IV, who, by the way, stopped once, or Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail solo around the world. Think about Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest. These are the kinds of people whom Matt Rutherford now stands alongside of in sailing solo. You can go to the Web site to catch up on this. It is www.solotheamericas.org. To think about him sailing all the way around by the North Pole, all the way down, almost, to the South Pole, back up to America again--nonstop, never touched land, never stopped, and did it solo in a small 27-foot sailboat--it is one of the great adventures of our time--of any time.

So I am happy he is back and he is safe and will be back on dry land this Saturday.

Rebuild America Act

Mr. President, as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I have come to the floor on a number of occasions over the last year to express my concern about the distressed state of the American middle class. I do so again today in order to share with my colleagues my ideas for how we can rebuild the middle class in America and make our economy work for those who work for a living.

Over the past year, while Washington has been gripped by a fear of budget deficits, I gave speech after speech here on the Senate floor pointing out an even more serious deficit: the deficit of vision in Washington, our failure to confront the current economic crisis with the boldness earlier generations of Americans summoned in times of national challenge.

By this economic crisis, I do not just mean the current economic downturn. Instead, I am referring to the economic crisis that has taken place over the last 30 to 40 years that has resulted in a shrinking middle class, rising inequality in our country, a weakened economy, and a sense that the American dream is slipping away. This is the fundamental challenge--the fundamental challenge--facing our Nation today: rebuilding the American middle class.

Altogether, I now have chaired five HELP Committee hearings on the crisis of the middle class. Last year my State staff visited all 99 counties in Iowa to gain greater insight into the challenges facing working Americans. During these events, I have heard from a diverse array of Americans, including economists, employers, union members, community college students, and everyday, hard-working, middle-class families. Not surprisingly, we found that more and more people are struggling just to make ends meet. Their jobs are insecure, their savings and pensions have shrunk, and they see an economic system that is rigged in favor of the very rich and the powerful.

At a hearing last June, I invited Amanda Greubel, a social worker in her local Iowa school district, to share her story with the HELP Committee. During her testimony, she defined what it means to be in the middle class in this way:

My husband and I didn't have dreams of great wealth. We

never expected to have summer homes or expensive cars or

vacations on the Riviera. We chose careers that inspire us,

knowing that we would never make six-figure salaries. All we

have ever wanted is security and a little comfort . . . to

know that our bills are paid, our needs are met, that we can

have a getaway every now and then, that our children can

pursue higher education without the burden of student-loan

debt, and that someday we can retire and enjoy our final

years together in the way we choose. . . . When I think back

over our adult lives, it strikes me that we did everything we

were always told to do in order to have the American dream. .

. . We did everything that all the experts said we should do,

and yet still we're struggling. When you work as hard as we

have and still sometimes scrape for the necessities, it

really gets you down.

That was Amanda.

Unfortunately, those of us in Washington have not listened enough to people such as Amanda. People such as Amanda do not feel this way because of factors such as ``globalization'' or ``technology change.'' Indeed, harnessing those developments has helped to make the U.S. economy the envy of the world.

Instead, the crisis of the middle class can be traced largely to unwise policy choices made here in Washington. For starters, for the last three decades, too many here in Washington have bought into the failed economic doctrine that says if we give more and more to the very wealthy and to the largest corporations, then prosperity will somehow trickle down to the rest of us. That idea has utterly failed to work for the American people. It is time we get back to policies that are premised on how our economy really works. A strong, vibrant middle class with money in their pockets to spend drives the economy forward because, very simply, businesses will not make things if they do not have any customers.

As Mr. Nick Hanauer, a very successful private sector investor, put it in a recent Business Week column:

Rich business people like me don't create jobs. Middle-

class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses

grow and profit.

So what is the best way forward? Instead of the slash-and-burn approaches of the past year and the failed economic doctrines of the past few decades, we need a way forward that rebuilds the middle class by reflecting the hopes and the can-do spirit of the American people, people such as Amanda Greubel.

To meet the great challenge of our day, restoring and revitalizing the middle class, after having a number of hearings last year, as I said, and countless visits with people throughout my State, I recently introduced sweeping legislation called the Rebuild America Act. It now has a number, S. 2252. This legislation provides comprehensive solutions to rebuilding the American middle class.

Some will say it is too bold and too ambitious, but I disagree. The sweep of this legislation is commensurate with the extraordinary challenge it addresses. The bill aims to rebuild the middle class in four broad ways: creating jobs, investing in the future, helping families, and bringing balance back into our tax system. Let me touch briefly on those four principles.

One, we need to create jobs for all Americans, including for groups of Americans such as people with disabilities who have been especially hard hit by the recent recession. With the official unemployment rate over 8 percent, and some unofficial measures as high as 17 percent, the middle class will continue to lose ground.

When jobs are scarce, workers do not have the leverage to demand fair treatment, paychecks stop growing, or even fall, and even people who are fortunate enough to have a job become fearful of losing it. People have less discretionary money in their pockets or the confidence to spend it. In the absence of robust consumer demand, businesses choose not to expand or invest.

Secondly, we must invest in our future. Not only will investing in our infrastructure help create badly needed jobs in the short term, these investments will lay the groundwork for sustained economic growth in the long term. So my bill tackles this challenge head on by providing for robust new investments in America's infrastructure, including, of course, time-tested things such as roads and bridges, energy efficiency systems, also rebuilding and modernizing our public schools, rebuilding our manufacturing base in America.

In addition, there is also the investment in the human infrastructure: helping prepare great teachers, providing better pathways to good jobs for workers, job retraining so that the old jobs that are now gone, we can now take those workers and retrain them for the future jobs, to ensure that current and future workers will have the education and skills they need to be successful and to be in the middle class.

Three, we need to do more to help middle-class families succeed. It is time for us in Washington to wake up to the harsh reality that middle-class families have been living in for the last few decades. Unfortunately, the programs and policies that helped create

the middle class have been either intentionally discarded or have fallen victim to neglect.

For example, the real value of the minimum wage has declined for the last four decades, dragging down all workers' paychecks. In 1968, that was the height. That was when someone making the minimum wage had the highest purchasing power ever since we had a minimum wage--1968. Since that time, it has fallen in real terms. If, in fact, the minimum wage had kept pace just with inflation from 1968 to today, the minimum wage would be slightly over $10.30 an hour. Right now the Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. So think of it this way: The same class of people that was making the minimum wage in 1968 is basically the same class of people making the minimum wage today: young people, minorities, people in businesses that are just starting, people who are not highly educated, new immigrants to this country, for example. So the same people who are making the minimum wage then are the same kind of class of people making the minimum wage today.

But think about it this way. That same class of people today--today-- has 30 percent less buying power than that same class had in 1968--30 percent less. Think about that. That same person making the minimum wage today is making 30 percent less than his or her counterpart in 1968.

So what my bill does is basically over a stage raise that minimum wage and then peg it to inflation in the future so we do not have that erosion again in the future. Also families and workers have seen basic rights, such as the right to organize and to bargain collectively, eroded. It is harder and harder and harder all the time for people to organize and join a union in this country.

The right to overtime pay has been eroded under the Fair Labor Standards Act. So a lot of these things have been eroded by misguided regulations, bad court decisions, and years of lax enforcement.

The fourth part of the bill. It is essential that we put balance back in the economy through a balanced tax system that will help reduce our deficit, get our fiscal house in order over the longer term. To do so, among other provisions, my bill includes a tax on Wall Street trades, often called a financial transaction tax. At just 3 cents per $100 dollars in trade value, that would raise $350 billion over 10 years.

Again, you might say, well, is this something now? No. We had a transaction tax, a financial transaction tax, in this country until 1966. Then it was done away with. Well, that is again one of the reasons why we have seen this terrible inequality grow in our society where more and more of our wealth goes to fewer and fewer people.

A small transaction tax would do two things. It would raise money. It would also discourage a lot of the spinning and the churning of transactions on Wall Street whereby some of these traders make hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, megamillions of dollars a year, but not adding much to our economy at all. So it's a small transaction tax.

In addition, the bill requires high-income taxpayers to pay their fair share. Well, sort of like the Buffett rule that the present occupant of the chair, the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, championed the other day that we voted on here. It got voted down on party lines. I do not understand this, that we cannot even ask those who have the most in our society to pay their fair share.

Well, just because we lost the vote on the Senate floor the other day does not mean we have to give up on it. I am sure the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, is going to continue his efforts, as he always has, to make sure that we have more fairness in our tax system. So that is in our bill also.

Restoring balance and fairness to the Tax Code is critical to the success of our economy and is critical to the rebuilding of the middle class in America. So in sort of broad strokes, that is my Rebuild America Act, S. 2522.

Over the last few years, the American people have heard from too many of us politicians and talking heads that our country is broke, that we can no longer afford the investments that make for a strong middle class. You know, that is sort of the premise of the Ryan budget in the House, cut and slash. The premise is one that has been in favor around this town for far too long. Here is the premise. The premise is that we are broke, the United States of America is broke and we cannot afford to do these things.

This is false. The United States of America remains a wealthy Nation. We are the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. We have the highest per capita income of any major country. So one might reasonably ask: If we are so rich, how come we are so broke? Think about that. If we are the richest Nation in the history of the world, if we have the highest per capita income of any major country, then why can we not afford to invest in our infrastructure, invest in better teachers, make sure our kids get a good education without a mountain of debt on their heads? Why cannot we invest in making new energy systems that are cleaner and more productive for the future?

We can. We can do these things. The problem is not that we are broke, the problem is that because of actions or inactions by this government over the last 30 years, America's wealth has not been spread among our people in a reasonable way. The wealth has been concentrated in fewer and fewer and fewer hands. And the middle class in the meantime has been decimated.

I submit that there can be no sustainable economic recovery to America, no sustained return to fiscal balance, without the recovery of the middle class. That is exactly the aim of the Rebuild America Act. It is comprehensive. Yes. Ambitious. Of course. But it rises to the challenge of our time.

I urge my colleagues to join me in advancing this legislation and doing all we can to restore the American middle class. It is the fundamental challenge of our time.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

First, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Cardin, and just recently Senator Brown of Ohio, for referencing the highway bill.

The state of play on that at this point is that the House has just passed another extension. We passed an extension back at the end of March that extended the existing highway program to the end of June. What that bill did is cause significant job loss because not knowing for sure what the highway plan will be means that jobs will fall off the list of the departments of transportation around the country. So a further extension to September--which just passed the House 1 hour ago--just makes the situation even worse.

The solution to that problem is to make sure the House and the Senate appoint their conferees so we can get to conference quickly on that bill and get out a lasting authorization.

So I want to again thank Senator Cardin for spending some time on the floor this afternoon on that subject. We will keep the pressure on until we actually have a highway authorization as we go through these different procedural hurdles.

Climate Change

I came to speak on the floor about an issue that many in Washington would prefer to ignore; that is, climate changes that are being caused by our carbon pollution. Nature keeps sending us messages about what is happening out there, and in Washington we continue to ignore those messages. But they keep on coming.

Every week for the past 15 months I have distributed in our caucus, as the Presiding Officer knows, a quick thumbnail summary of the week's Climate News.

The stories from this week include that ``Temperature Variations''-- which relate to the extra energy put into the climate by the warming weather--``Could Lower Life Expectancies of the Chronically Ill.'' That is one story.

Another is a new report from the NOAA that ``Coral Risks Extinction Due to Climate Change.'' More than 50 coral species in U.S. waters are likely to go extinct by the end of the century, and the experts cited human-driven releases of carbon dioxide as a key driver of the ocean's warming and acidification that is causing these extinctions.

A third is, ``Tree Diseases Likely to Spread as Temperatures Rise.'' According to a new report by the U.S. Forest Service, forest diseases are expected to spread more quickly in the western U.S. as climate change warms the region's forests.

The fourth is a recent study published in the journal Nature, which finds that rising carbon dioxide levels drove temperature increases at the end of the last Ice Age. At the end of the last Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose 80 parts per million. Over the past 100 years, CO2 concentrations have risen roughly 100 parts per million. So the effects are linked very closely to climate.

Other news, as reported in the Providence Journal on March 30, said: The winter's warm air temperatures have helped drive up water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, in line with a continuing trend, and the warm waters could result in lobsters molting their shells earlier than usual and ocean algae blooming ahead of schedule.

Jeffrey Runge, a biological oceanographer at the University of Maine and a researcher at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, told the paper that the Gulf of Maine water temperatures have been rising gradually since at least the 1870s, but the increase has been pronounced in the last decade or so.

Moving from the North to the South, we have Professor Emeritus Orrin H. Pilkey, a professor of geology at Duke University, who wrote in the Charlotte Observer on March 25 that new peer-reviewed research demonstrates that sea level rise and storm-surge elevations could be greater along much of the U.S. coastline than has been predicted. His opinion piece went on to say that North Carolina, Washington, California, Louisiana, Florida, and Maine have convened sea level rise panels that estimate a sea level rise of 3 to 5 feet by the year 2100.

A new study has come out from the Center for Biological Diversity confirming the link between massive oyster die-offs in the Pacific Northwest and ocean acidification caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The release reports that each day the oceans absorb 22 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution from cars and industry, setting off an unprecedented chemical reaction that since the Industrial Revolution has made the world's oceans 30 percent more acidic.

Just this morning in the Senate, Senators Bingaman and Murkowski held a bipartisan hearing on the devastating effects of sea level rise on coastal communities. So it is good that some leaders on both sides of the aisle are starting to talk about the terrible consequences of climate change.

However, the special interests who control so much of what goes on around here and who deny that carbon pollution causes global temperatures to increase and deny that melting ice caps will raise our seas to dangerous levels still have a stronghold. Dr. Pilkey, writing in the Charlotte Observer, warned that the deniers' influence is, tragically, starting to influence local planning decisions, despite what he calls ``new studies that predict higher than previously predicted sea level rise and storm-surge levels in coming decades.'' He concludes:

Preservation of the status quo (including real estate

prices) may prevail on our coasts, but in a democratic

society such as ours, the state has no right to shield

citizens from unpleasant environmental realities.

In the face of so much evidence constantly, daily, of a changing climate, we have special interests working overtime in Washington to propagate a myth. This myth is that the jury is still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution. So with the jury still out, we don't need to worry about it or even take precautions.

This is simply outright false. Virtually all of our most prestigious scientific and academic institutions have stated that climate change is happening and that human activities are the driving cause of this change.

On October 21, 2009, I think all of us in the Senate received a letter from virtually every leading scientific organization in the country, stating:

Observations throughout the world make it clear that

climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research

demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human

activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are

based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and

contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective

assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

Contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective

assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

So the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Chemical Society, Geophysical Union, Institute of Biological Sciences, Meteorological Society, Society of Agronomy, Society of Plant Biologists, Botanical Society, and on and on it goes of the scientific community signed up for this.

It is, of course, not just the scientific community that knows that the jury is not in fact still out; that knows that in fact the verdict is in and that it is time to act. The insurance industry is alarmed about our inaction and has started to take action, holding a press conference with myself and Senator Sanders not too long ago.

Marsh & McLennan, one of the largest insurance brokers in the world, called climate change ``one of the most significant emerging risks facing the world today.'' The insurance giant AIG has established an Office of Environment and Climate Change to assess the risks to insurers in the years ahead.

It is not just the insurance industry. It is our intelligence community, it is our military services, many of our electric utilities, some of our biggest capitalists and investors all recognize that the jury is not still out; that in fact a verdict is in, and we should act.

Unfortunately, Governor Romney once wrote:

I believe that climate change is occurring. I also believe

that human activity is a contributing factor.

Under the pressure of the Republican primary, he has changed his views and now claims: ``We don't know what's causing climate change on this planet.''

Well, that runs contrary to the evidence. More than 97 percent of the climate scientists most actively involved in publishing on this issue accept that the verdict is actually in on carbon pollution causing climate change and oceanic changes--97 percent. Think of that in terms of your own life if you were relying on expert opinion.

If you had a child who was sick and you went to a doctor and they said: She is pretty sick and she needs treatment, you thought: Well, let's be prudent and let's get a second opinion. So on you went and got a third opinion and a fourth opinion. Let's say you were just a wildly determined parent, and you went and got 99 more second opinions so that you had 100 opinions of doctors, and 97 of those 100 doctors said: Yes, your child is ill and you need to do something about this.

How foolish would you be if you did not pay attention to the 97 percent and you allowed the 3 percent to sway your judgment and not take action to protect your child. Well, it looks as if Governor Romney is with the 1 percent when it comes to the economy for the middle class, and he is with the 3 percent when it comes to the science of carbon pollution.

This is not very debatable stuff. The basic principle that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere and traps more of it as its concentration increases was determined in 1863, at the time of the American Civil War. There is nothing new about this.

In the early 1900s it became clear that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could account for significant increases and decreases in the Earth's annual average temperatures, and that carbon dioxide released from what we call anthropogenic sources, manmade sources--primarily then the burning of coal--would contribute to these changes. This is well-established stuff, and the effects are measurable.

Over the last 800,000 years, until very recently, the atmosphere stayed within a bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide, 170 to 300 parts per million. That is the bandwidth, and that is a measurement. That is not a theory. We know that. We can find ancient bubbles in ancient ice and measure, and there are different ways that scientists do this, but it is measurement.

Since the Industrial Revolution, we have burned carbon-rich fuels, also in a measurable way. Now we know we burn up to 7 to 8 gigatons a year. That is the release. A gigaton, by the way, is a billion with a ``b'' metric tons. When you release that enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere, it is predictable that it would have a result, and, indeed, it is having a result. We now measure carbon concentrations climbing in the Earth's atmosphere--again, a measurement, not a theory. The present concentration exceeds 390 parts per million. For 8,000 centuries we were in a bandwidth of between 170 and 300, and in recent years we have veered out that bandwidth. We are at 390 parts per million and climbing.

The increase has a trajectory--there is nothing very new about plotting trajectories either. Children do that in school, soldiers do that in the field, corporations do that to plan their businesses, and scientists do that. We do that every day. If you follow the trajectory of our carbon pollution, it predicts 668 parts per million at the end of this century and 1,097 parts per million at the end of the next century. Those carbon concentrations are not just outside the bounds of 8,000 centuries but of millions of years.

It is coming home to roost particularly in our oceans, which is a matter of real concern to me as a Senator from the Ocean State. In April of last year, a group of scientific experts came together at the University of Oxford to discuss the current state of our oceans. Their workshop report stated:

Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of

the oceans and are now causing increased hypoxia.

That is when there is not enough oxygen in the water to sustain life.

Studies of the Earth's past indicate that these are the

three symptoms . . . associated with each of the previous 5

mass extinctions on Earth.

We experienced two mass ocean extinctions, 55 and 251 million years ago. Last year at Brown University in Providence, RI, paleobiologist Jessica Whiteside published a study demonstrating that after the earlier extinction 251 million years ago, it took 8 million years for plant and animal diversity to return to preextinction levels. We also know that in the lead-up to those extinctions, scientists have estimated that the Earth was emitting carbon into the atmosphere at the rate in the first one of 2.2 gigatons and 1 to 2 gigatons per year, respectively. You recall we are currently releasing at the rate of 7 to 8 gigatons per year.

We are taking some very dangerous chances with our planet. We have very solid information that is the product of measurement and not theory about the changes that are already underway. It is a continuing disgrace that in this building and in this Chamber, we are unable to do anything about this issue because of the continuing power of a small group of special interests who are controlling the debate, who are interfering with progress, and who are putting us all at risk.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to speak to the Senate, but in a broader sense to the American people and, in particular, to the young people of America. An Internet posting went viral a few weeks ago, by a group called Invisible Children about Joseph Koni in Uganda, the Central African Republic, Congo, and the South Sudan.

As a member of the Africa Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee and one who travels to Africa quite frequently, I have just returned from a trip to meet, in part, with our special forces and U.S. advisers who have been deployed in those countries to help assist in the search for Joseph Koni.

I wish to share with the Senate the information about what America is doing, what Joseph Koni has done, and how important our commitment is to Central Africa and to see to it that this evil man is brought to justice. Joseph Koni is under indictment by the International Criminal Court today, but for 26 years he has roamed Central Africa with his Lord's Resistance Army, killing, raping, and maiming the African people. By some estimates, Joseph Koni has abducted 66,000 children into his army and young women as sex slaves. He has displaced over 2 million Africans into camps, and they have had to be displaced because their villages were destroyed and their families disrupted. He has killed untold tens of thousands of people. He is by any stretch of the imagination an evil person. Invisible Children's posting, which went viral on the Internet, has caught the attention of America's youth, because they see the damage that has been done to the youth of Africa, and they want to know what America is doing.

I am proud to include in my remarks what America is doing, and has been doing even before the posting went viral on the Internet and most people didn't know who Joseph Koni was. Our President deployed 100 special advisers to the Central African Republic, in the Sudan and Uganda, about 2 months before this posting went viral. I met with them in a private, secured briefing, a lot of which I cannot talk about but a lot of which I can.

Because of U.S. technology, U.S. resources, and the commitment of these individuals, we are assisting to a much higher level in the intelligence that we are gaining on Joseph Koni. A lot of people think Koni is in Uganda. He isn't there and hasn't been there for 5 or 6 years. He is somewhere near the Central African Republic, where it is extremely easy to hide. We thought Vietnam had jungles. You haven't seen foliage until you've seen the Central African Republic, the Sudan, and the Congo. There is no electricity, no roads, no paths, and no listening devices. Intelligence is all human intelligence. We are fortunate to have great intelligence operatives over there and great resources there, and we are gaining more and more information.

I commend our forces also in what they have done in an amnesty program. They dropped leaflets in villages that are known to house some of Koni's workers and cronies. They drop leaflets that offer amnesty for anybody who leaves Koni, comes back to their village, and gives information to our forces, the Ugandan Army, and the African Union Army as to where Joseph Koni might be. We are getting closer all the time. We are not there yet, but thanks to the assistance of our foreign- deployed individuals, the commitment of our country, the commitment of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and the new country of South Sudan, we are going to close that noose and stay until the job is finished, because Joseph Koni needs to be brought to justice. He is an evil man who has killed and raped far too many people and maimed far too many people, and Africa is too good a friend of the United States for us not to offer the necessary assistance.

My message to the American people and our youth is we are doing our job. Joseph Koni hasn't been caught, but we are in pursuit. I commend Senator Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Coons, chairman of the Africa Subcommittee; and Senator Lugar and myself have joined together to support legislation that will be introduced in the Senate to include Joseph Koni, or information leading to the arrest and conviction of Joseph Koni, in our rewards program that we offer mostly now for terrorist capture. That will be an incentive for more information to be brought forward so that the noose will grow tighter.

It is time for Joseph Koni to be brought to justice, and the United States is making every effort to assist in that process in Central Africa.

My other reason for going to Central Africa is equally important. I was accompanied by members of CARE. CARE is a tremendous nongovernmental organization that delivers humanitarian aid, assistance, education, knowledge, and technical assistance to countries around the world and, in particular, in the nation of Africa. It was the second time I traveled with CARE; the first time was 10 years ago to Ethiopia, where I saw CARE's outreach in terms of basic education and improvement and enhancement of educating young Muslim women.

On this trip, I got to see what they are doing firsthand in the city of Gulu on the border with the Congo and Northern Uganda--an area that 5 or 6 years ago, because of Joseph Koni, had been destroyed, people were displaced, everybody was in hunger, and there was a lot of violence. It is now a beautiful village. Granted, it is not a village such as you and I might know, Mr. President--thatched huts with thatched roofs, mud huts with thatched roofs, small enclaves of African citizens eking out an existence in a very difficult part of the world.

Because of what they are doing in their project, known as the village savings and loan, they are bringing about microeconomics in Africa, and they are empowering women. The village savings and loan program is a very simple program that teaches basic economics and capitalism to these villages. Groups form together, they are given a strongbox, literally like the ones that used to be on the stagecoach in the old ``Lone Ranger'' days. In that box, each of the women will make contributions of the money that they have into the strongbox, and they get a passbook savings account just like the occupant of the chair and I used to get when we were in elementary school a long time ago. Then they make loans out of that money they save to other people in the village to start businesses, whether it is making beads, using the shea tree to make shea butter, or doing boutique cloth, or whatever it may be. As those industries develop, those cottage industries develop, the money they make goes back into the savings and loan to be reinvested in other plans.

We met a young lady who was making beads, and I bought about 12 strands. My wife and grandkids love them. She makes beads for a German distributor in Europe. It is unbelievable what you can see being developed because of what CARE is doing. They are empowering African women and families and are bringing about the principles of economics that you and I enjoy and appreciate, and they are uplifting people who need that with empowerment, so they can be sufficient on their own, so they can rise up economically and educationally.

I also visited with the CDC folks delivering PEPFAR and health care and better awareness and better testing to identify those with AIDS, to get our retrovirals distributed to those mothers who are pregnant, so their babies

can be born without AIDS and live a happy life. One of our great challenges now in Africa--it used to be that the challenge was what we did with all the children who died because they were born to a mother with AIDS. Now we see what we can do to keep them through their life because they live a normal and happy life. And their mother, although infected with AIDS, because of the U.S. technology and retrovirals, and the CDC is providing them with a lifetime of drugs and an opportunity to live as normal and productive a life as possible.

It was great to go with CARE and to see U.S. tax dollars deployed and helping uplift the nation, uplift the people, help solve the greatest scourge on the continent, which is AIDS and its spread, and help people to be able to reinvest in themselves. CARE is a great nongovernmental entity that happens to be housed in Georgia, which is helping all over the continent of Africa, and they are empowering women and African citizens, and they are making their plight in life better, and they are reducing the amount of Federal assistance we will provide in the years to come because they will be more productive, which is the payback you want to see from foreign assistance dollars when they are invested.

As far as Joseph Koni is concerned, America knows he is a bad man, that he is indicted by the International Criminal Court, and America is making the investment of intelligence and manpower to assist the Central African Republic, Uganda, the Congo, and the South Sudan to pursue him until he is captured. He needs to be brought to justice for the evil and terror he has contributed to the continent of Africa.

I was proud to go and see America's investment of our best, our men and women in harm's way in Africa who are looking for him and providing the assistance necessary to bring him to justice.

With that said, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before I proceed to the Senator from Missouri, I want to thank my friend from Florida for his principled and passionate statement. He speaks from his own experience--his family's own experience in leaving a dictatorship in Cuba and coming to the freedom of this country, but he speaks more broadly from the depths of American history and American experience. We are a very different nation. We are different from our beginning because we defined ourselves not by our geographical borders but by our values and the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence about those human rights, that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the endowment of our Creator. Those rights, obviously, were not just the endowment God gave the people of the United States but all human beings anywhere on this planet. It is what makes us a great nation. I think the extent to which we hold to that principle that was the motivation for our founding is one by which we can measure ourselves day by day.

I really appreciate that the Senator from Florida has committed himself both to the upholding and the application of the principle of human rights, the sanctity of human rights, and America's role in protecting them, and to persistently continue to come to the floor to speak of particular cases where that principle is being violated. I happened to be on the floor for the postal reform bill, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank him for his very compelling statement.

I yield the floor to my friend from Missouri.

Mr. President, I thank Senator McCaskill for her statement. What is interesting, this is one of those cases where maybe we appreciate something more than we would every day when we think it may disappear. It is true of institutions as well as people. There is no question that post offices, both in rural areas and small towns--and I will say for Connecticut, in neighborhoods and cities--that the post office has played an important community-building role. But beyond that, in a tough time economically, a lot of people depend on those post offices for their mail, for their prescription drugs, and for the business interactions they need. But here is the other side of it, which my friend from Missouri knows very well.

We have 32,000 post offices in America. If we consider them to be retail outlets, which they are, that is more retail outlets than Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonald's combined. But we are talking about necessities. So we are very concerned that post offices not be closed in a precipitous manner if some have to be closed.

So as my friend from Missouri knows, we put language in this bill that doesn't stop the process of review but forces the Postal Service to consider other options, such as consolidating post offices within a reasonable distance, reducing the number of operating hours, for instance, and permitting a contractor or a rural carrier to provide retail services in the communities served by the post office.

We also allow an appeal to the Postal Regulatory Commission, and I know there are other amendments that will come in to strengthen that part of the bill.

We have to find a balance between the financial pressures on the post office--which, if unresponded to, will take it down--and the continuing dependence that millions of American people, including in small towns and rural areas, have on the post office.

Just a final word. Some of our colleagues have come to the floor and spoken about the post office as if it was in its entirety a relic which has no purpose anymore because of the Internet. Obviously, the Internet is affecting the volume of first-class mail. But the fact is today--I repeat, every day 563 million pieces of mail are delivered by the Postal Service, as you said, consistent with the promise of universal service anywhere you are, anywhere your business is.

Incidentally, that capacity to deliver to the last mile is one of the great, unique, irreplaceable assets of the Postal Service, so irreplaceable that big private sector companies such as FedEx and UPS depend on it. People depend on the Postal Service increasingly for packages too. I maybe have a limited horizon, but I still can't conceive of an Internet that can transport a package from one place to another, and a lot of those packages are needed by the recipients, including, particularly, prescription drugs.

So I thank my friend from Missouri. I say that Senator Collins and I would like to work with her. I think we can find a way without doing damage to the purpose of the bill to accommodate the concerns about the preservation of rural post offices, and I look forward to doing so.

I might add this for the information of Members who haven't said this yet today: Yesterday, both cloakrooms hotlined--in the vocabulary of the Senate--a request to every Senator to indicate whether they have an intention to file amendments. At this point, we have a list of over 50 amendments that have been filed. Senator Collins and I, Senator Carper, and Senator Brown are working to try to reduce that to a number that can be the basis, I hope, of a bipartisan agreement to go ahead and debate those amendments and vote on them.

We have a cloture vote that probably will occur tomorrow, unless vitiated, which will critically determine whether we have the 60 votes that say we can go forward. If we get those 60 votes, I think we can come to an agreement on a number of amendments, have a good, open debate, both sides, and then pass this bill.

If we don't pass this bill or if we don't achieve the 60 votes tomorrow, it is not as if nothing is going to happen to the post office. The fact is the deficit will continue to build, and let me be more specific.

A while back the Postmaster General issued a notice, which he was required to do, saying that as of May 15, less than a month from now, he would have a list of mail processing facilities--not post offices but mail processing facilities--which are candidates for closure. I believe he will close some on or about May 15 unless there is movement on this bill.

So I hope we can reason together; that we can agree on a good, balanced, representative, bipartisan group of amendments and, most of all, that we will not block the bill from being taken up for the lack of 60 votes to grant cloture and stop any attempt at a filibuster.

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

Mr. President, I rise to thank my friend for his moving and eloquent statement, as a Senator from Connecticut, a proud fan and admirer of UConn women's basketball, with the great coach Geno Auriemma. No one appreciates someone such as Coach Summitt more than those who have competed against her, including Coach Auriemma and the great players in the University of Connecticut women's basketball history.

She sets the standard and she has set the standard. I join my colleague in his praise of her, and with some confidence, wishing her well in the future.

It is fortuitous and I cannot believe it is accidental.

If Geno Auriemma were here, he would have at least echoed what I had to say and added some great stories and words of tribute because I know the respect that Coach Auriemma has for Coach Summitt.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Connecticut for his words. I stand with him in this cause. You can say this is parochial, but it is obvious that we are all--both of us and most everybody in Connecticut are very proud of our UConn basketball programs, both the men's and the women's. But there by the grace of the NCAA go every one of our colleagues and their teams.

Everybody understands and agrees that there has to be academic standards. As Senator Blumenthal said so well, these standards are being unfairly applied to the University of Connecticut men's basketball program in this case because they have been punished essentially already and they have corrected the shortcomings. They have had what might be described as a perfect record in terms of players achieving academic--the threshold standard.

To keep them out of the NCAA tournament next year is unfair. Frankly, in a direct sense, it hurts the University of Connecticut in terms of the revenues it needs to continue to produce not only good basketball but great academic offerings. It also deprives basketball fans around the country of a competition with all the best teams in it. And it has, for our program at the University of Connecticut, consequences beyond next year. In my opinion, this is cruel and unusual punishment.

I am very glad to be joining with Senator Blumenthal. He has taken the lead on it, but I stand arm in arm with him and the other members of the Connecticut congressional delegation. We are going to push forward until we get this unjust decision overturned.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I concur with my friend from Mississippi on the importance of passing the RESTORE Act. It is in our transportation reauthorization bill, and it is an important part. It not only helps the Gulf States but all the States that border oceans in this country. It is an important part of the bill that we worked out in a consensus manner in the Senate.

I take this time and ask unanimous consent that I may speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, we need to pass a long-term transportation reauthorization bill. The Senate has done this. The Senate passed its bill 2 months ago by a very strong margin of 74 to 22. I call it a consensus bill and not a bipartisan bill, because we went beyond bipartisan. This bill came out of the two committees of jurisdiction, the Banking Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, by a unanimous vote. The Finance Committee dealt with the financing provisions.

This bill gives us predictability in transportation funding. Here is the problem: The other body, the House, is currently working on a bill that would basically be a short-term extension of our transportation program. We need a long-term commitment as to the Federal partnership in transportation. We need that for many reasons. We need it for predictable funding so our local governments can commit to do the types of transportation programs that are necessary for our safety, necessary for economic expansion, and necessary for our communities.

We are missing the construction season by the failure to enact a long-term transportation reauthorization plan. Major projects cannot be planned--whether it is to replace a bridge, major maintenance programs, new highways, or expansion of our transit systems.

This translates into jobs. We are in a recovery. We all want to do everything we can to maintain and expand job opportunities in this country so our economy can recover at a quicker pace. The transportation reauthorization bill that passed the Senate is responsible for 3 million jobs.

In my State of Maryland, 28,700 jobs are connected to the passage of the transportation reauthorization program--21,000 in highways and over 7,000 in transit.

The Senate bill, as I pointed out, was a consensus bill. It was done in the finest manner of legislating. I compliment Senators Boxer and Inhofe on the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I serve, for marshaling this bill through. There were

numerous challenges in the Senate, and a number of committees had to consider it and, of course, there was floor consideration. During that entire process, we maintained the consensus and the balance that is important.

Let me point out that here you have a bill that invests in transit and roads and bridges. We were able to reach a compromise to make sure that both priorities were preserved in the transportation reauthorization bill.

I authored an amendment, with Senator Cochran, that dealt with local input into the transportation decisions. We had the right balance between the Federal Government's partnership working with our States but allowing the locals to have input particularly on transportation enhancement programs. We have reform in our bill that consolidates a lot of specific programs into broader programs, providing greater flexibility, but still maintaining accountability on the Federal partnership.

During this most recent work period, when we were off for Easter and Passover, I visited various parts of Maryland. I was down in western Maryland, Appalachia country. I heard firsthand how important reauthorization of this transportation bill is to the economy of western Maryland. This is a rural part of our State. They need to build a north-south highway that will connect Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. The bill we passed--the transportation reauthorization bill--contains some very important provisions to allow that highway to be constructed. It provides toll credits so Pennsylvania can complete an important segment of this north-south highway. It also contains a stronger match so that it makes it more feasible that we can move this highway to completion. The completion of the north-south highway means jobs and hope to the people of that region of America. It is very important to get that done. It will mean jobs. They told me--the companies that are directly dependent upon that highway being constructed--if we don't pass a multiyear reauthorization bill, that project gets delayed. Once it is delayed, we lose job opportunities.

I also spent part of the work period visiting other parts of Maryland. I was a few miles from here at the Metro Command, at the Carmen Turner facility in New Carollton, where they operate the bus and rail command center for the Nation's transit system, which is both bus and rail in this area. It is the Nation's system. The Federal Government depends upon this, upon the Washington transit system. Many people who work in the Capitol come to us through the transit program. It is true in all of the Federal facilities.

That is an aging system. The rail system needs to be repaired. It is the second busiest rail transit system in the Nation. It is in desperate need of repair. Without predictable funding, major projects will be delayed. I will give you a list of some of the projects we need to do for the Washington metro transit system:

Overhauling the Landover and Southern Avenue bus maintenance shop in Prince George's County, MD; improving perimeter security at the Bladensburg bus garage, also in PG County; complete the design and construction of 10,000 feet of test track at Greenbelt that is needed to test the new, safer 7,000 series railcars due to arrive in 2014.

I remind my colleagues that we had a tragedy on the transit system here not too long ago. There was a study done as to improvements that need to be made, including replacement of railcars to safer cars. These changes need to be done to improve safety of people who depend upon the transit system in this region. Also we need to continue to implement systemwide switch testing and replacement needed to comply with the National Transportation Safety Board's safety recommendations following the June 2009 red-line crash. All of that will be delayed. Yes, safety will be put at risk if we do not pass a reauthorization of the transportation program.

It is interesting that one part of my State is very rural, which I visited, and the other part of the State is urban, and it is important to that region. It is important to the entire country. We need to get this done. Every State is impacted by bridge replacement, highways, and transit.

The Maryland Department of Transportation tells me that due to the uncertainty, they are planning on a 20-percent reduction in the projects that would otherwise be done in this year. That will have a huge impact on our workforce--a huge impact on our economy.

As I am speaking, the House is taking action. It is going to pass a short-term extension. That is not good enough. That doesn't solve the problem. That doesn't give us the predictability or allow us to complete the north-south highway in western Maryland, or make the improvements we need to in the WMATA system, or in any State, to be able to move forward with transportation projects. That is not good enough. We need to do more.

However, I am pleased to see the House taking some action. I urge that as soon as they complete action, let's get into conference and resolve the differences between the House and Senate and get a bill back on the floor as quickly as possible. We did our work. We passed a bipartisan consensus bill. They are passing a partisan bill in the other body. They are delaying things again. That is not good.

Let's get together and complete a conference as quickly as possible. Let's get Americans back to work building roads and transit systems that are vital to the continued economic recovery of this Nation.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.