A bill to amend the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 to require the Bureau of Land Management to provide a claimant of a small miner waiver from claim maintenance fees with a period of 60 days after written receipt of 1 or more defects is provided to the claimant by registered mail to cure the 1 or more defects or pay the claim maintenance fee, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce legislation that I first offered in 2009 to authorize a right-of-way for construction of an Alaska in-state natural gas pipeline. The bill is being co-sponsored by my colleague from Alaska, Sen. Mark Begich. The pipeline would run along the State's main highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage, including 7 miles of highway through Denali National Park and Preserve.

While many in this body are familiar with plans for a large-volume natural gas pipeline to run from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields to the Lower 48 States, there is concern that the large-diameter pipeline will not be finished in time to provide needed gas to Southcentral Alaska-- gas that is vital for electric generation in Anchorage, the Mat-Su Borough, and Kenai Peninsula.

Currently, electricity in Alaska's southern Railbelt, as it is called, is largely generated by burning natural gas produced from the gas fields in Cook Inlet, south of Anchorage. Cook Inlet production has been falling for years and businesses have been forced to close as a result.

Serious concerns exist regarding the region's ability to produce sufficient gas for electric generation and home heating for Alaska's most populated area as early as the winter of 2014-15.

Given the pace of planning for construction of the main line, it is unlikely that a larger Alaska natural gas pipeline will be able to deliver gas until 2020 or later--6 or more years too late to aid Southcentral Alaska's growing need for natural gas. Thus, to provide a reliable natural gas supply, Alaska is considering investing in a smaller pipeline to meet medium term demand.

There are two proposals for small-diameter, 24-inch, in-state pipelines. One would run along the Richardson and Glenn Highways to the east, tying into existing transmission systems near Palmer, Alaska.

The other ``bullet'' line, is the pipeline of concern in this legislation. It would run from Alaska's North Slope region, past Fairbanks, along the Parks Highway to the Mat-Su Valley near Anchorage, bringing about 500 million cubic feet of gas a day to Southcentral Alaska. This project would be completed well in advance of when a larger-diameter pipeline might be in service to deliver 4 to 4.5 billion cubic feet a day to Lower 48 markets.

The shortest and most logical route for a pipeline through or around the roughly 10-mile bottleneck of the Nenana River Canyon and Denali National Park and Preserve follows the existing highway, 7 miles of which pass through the Park. This route causes the least environmental and visual impact due to its location in an existing corridor, and provides a route that is easily accessible for routine pipeline maintenance.

This route would be the least expensive to construct and operate. Moreover, it would offer several environmental advantages. Building the pipeline along the existing, previously disturbed Parks Highway right- of-way, would allow for electricity generation from natural gas in the park facilities at Denali. For the first time, reasonably priced compressed natural gas, CNG, would be available to power park vehicles. Currently, National Park Service permitted diesel tour buses travel 1 million road miles annually. Converting the buses to CNG would significantly reduce air emissions in the park.

Another benefit is that in order for the pipe to cross the Nenana River, a new bridge will need to be built. The bridge would provide a pedestrian access/bicycle path for visitors who otherwise must walk along the heavily traveled highway.

For these reasons, 8 environmental groups have expressed support for pipeline construction along the existing highway right-of-way through Denali Park. These groups are the National Parks and Conservation Association, the Alaska Conservation Alliance, the Denali Citizens Council, The Wilderness Society, Cook Inlet Keeper, the Alaska Center for the Environment, the Wrangell Mountain Center, and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

Last year, the State of Alaska finished a preliminary study of the project. It continues to consider whether to permit and facilitate a ``bullet'' line project, compared to other options, in order to meet future Southcentral power needs. Alaska state regulators and financial markets will ultimately decide which pipeline projects will go forward. It is my desire, however, to introduce legislation that would clear legal impediments to planning for the Parks Highway route.

Approval of the right-of-way would remove a key unknown and provide greater certainty in the cost estimates and the timing for a project. Eliminating the uncertainty of permitting and regulatory delays will enable the Parks Highway route to compete on a level playing field with other pipeline projects.

In 2009, this bill was modified to meet concerns voiced by the environmental community, congressional staff, and the National Park Service. The version reintroduced today was approved unanimously by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and added to the American Clean Energy Leadership Act that passed from the Committee on June 17, 2009. The provision, according to the Congressional Budget Office, had nominal fiscal impacts when scored as part of the larger bill--S. 1462.

With the pressing need of Southcentral Alaskans in mind for natural gas, I implore this body to quickly approve this legislation in the 112th Session.

Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce legislation, being cosponsored by my colleague Senator Mark Begich from Alaska, to clarify Federal mining law and remedy a problem that has arisen from the extension process for ``small'' miner land claims.

Under revisions to the Federal Mining Law of 1872, 30 U.S.C. 28(f), holders of unpatented mineral claims must pay a claim maintenance fee originally set at $100 per claim by a deadline, set by regulation, of September 1st each year. Since 2004 that fee has risen to $125 per claim. But Congress also has provided a claim maintenance fee waiver for ``small'' miners, those who hold 10 or fewer claims, that they do not have to submit the fee, but that they must file to renew their claims and submit an affidavit of annual labor, work conducted on the claim, Dec. 31st each year, certifying that they had performed more than $100 of work on the claim in the preceding year, 30 U.S.C. 28f(d)(1). The waiver provision further states: ``If a small miner waiver application is determined to be defective for any reason, the claimant shall have a period of 60 days after receipt of written notification of the defect or defects by the Bureau of Land Management to: cure such defect or defects or pay the $100 claim maintenance fee due for such a period.''

Since the last revision to the law last decade, there have been a series of incidents where miners have argued that they submitted their applications and affidavits of annual labor in a timely manner, but due to clerical error by BLM staff, mailing delays or for unexplained reasons, the applications or documents were not recorded as having been received in a timely fashion--and that BLM has then moved to terminate the claims, deeming them null and void. While mining claim holders have argued that the law provides them time to cure claim defects, BLM has argued that the cure only applies when applications or fees have been received in a timely manner. Thus, there is no administrative remedy for miners who believe that clerical errors by BLM or mail issues resulted in loss or the late recording of claim extension applications.

There have been a number of cases where Congress has been asked to override BLM determinations and reinstate mining claims simply because of the disputes over whether the claims had been filed in a timely manner. Congress in 2003 reinstated such claims in a previous Alaska case, and claims in another incident were reinstated following a U.S. District Court case in the 10th Circuit in 2009 in the case of Miller v. United States. Legislation similar to this provision actually cleared the Senate in 2007, but did not ultimately become law.

This bill is intended to short circuit continued litigation and pleas for claim reinstatement by clarifying the intent of Congress that miners do have to be informed that their claims are in jeopardy of being voided and given 60 days notice to cure defects, including giving them time to submit their applications and to submit affidavits of annual labor, should their submittals not be received and processed by BLM officials on time. If all defects are not cured within 60 days--the obvious intent of Congress in passing the original act--then claims still are subject to voidance.

The transition rule included in this measure will solve two pending cases in Alaska, one where a holder of nine claims on the Kenai Peninsula, near Hope, Alaska, has lost title to claims that he had held from 1982 to 2004. In this case, John Trautner had a consistent record of having paid the annual labor assessment fee for the previous 22 years and the local BLM office did have a time-date-stamped record that the maintenance fee waiver certification form had been filed weeks before the deadline, but just not a record that the affidavit of annual labor had arrived. In the second case Don and Judy Mullikin of Homer, Alaska, lost title to nine claims on the Seward Peninsula outside of Nome in Alaska because the Anchorage BLM office has no record of them receiving the paperwork, even though the owners have computer time stamps of them having completed the paperwork 5 months before the deadline, but no other evidence

of filing to meet BLM regulations. They lost their appeal in late 2009. These are claims that have been worked in Alaska yearly since 1937 and are the main livelihood for the Mullikins.

This legislation, supported by the Alaska Miners Association--S. 3175 in the 111th Congress--clearly is intended to remedy a simple drafting error in congressional crafting of the small miner claim defect process. While only a few cases of potential clerical errors have occurred over the past decade, it still makes sense for Congress to clarify that claim holders have a right to know that their applications have not been processed, in time for them to cure application-claim defects prior to being informed of the loss of the claim rights forever. Simple equity and due process requires no less.

Given the minute cost of this administrative change to the Department of the Interior, but its big impact on affected small mineral claim holders, I hope this bill can be considered and approved promptly this year.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would make a minor technical change to a provision that this Congress approved in 2004 to further construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline system to move Alaska's conventional gas to market.

In 2004 Congress approved two pieces of legislation to help facilitate construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline. In Public Law 108-324 Congress approved a Federal loan guarantee program, streamlined regulatory processes and approved a worker training program to guarantee a domestic labor supply for construction of the largest private-sector capital infrastructure project in the world's history. In a separate bill, Public Law 108-357, Congress also approved tax changes to provide accelerated depreciation for the pipe and a related gas conditioning plant needed for the project. A pipeline to move Alaska's 35 trillion cubic feet of known gas reserves, and its likely 315 trillion cubic feet of additional Arctic gas reserves from lands and Arctic waters would have a host of benefits to the Nation.

Being able to market only the known gas reserves at the Prudhoe Bay field will involve construction of a pipeline system estimated to cost between $26 and $40 billion. It is expected to produce 38,000 direct job-years of labor in Alaska and up to 31,000 direct jobs at the peak of construction. According to the National Defense Foundation it will produce direct employment of 172,369 jobs nationwide when related steel, pipe, valve and equipment jobs are included, not counting many more indirect jobs. At current prices it will generate about $100 billion in Federal tax revenues, not counting $40 billion in Alaska State revenues and $30 billion in Canadian tax revenues over its first 20 years of operation. Recent estimates, however, indicate that development of gas from the offshore Arctic that a gas line will permit to occur, would add an average of an additional 54,700 new jobs in the U.S.--91,500 at peak employment. That would provide $145 billion in total payroll--$82 billion to workers in the Lower 48--and provide $167 billion in tax and royalty revenues to the Federal Government, $15 billion to the State of Alaska and total revenues of $193 billion at forecast gas prices.

In the intervening 7 years since the gas line loan-permitting package became law, it has become clear that changes are needed. While those changes include revisions in the loan guarantee program, they also involve changes in the construction worker training provisions.

In the 2004 act, Sect. 113, the bill authorized $20 million for worker training programs, with at least 15 percent of those funds going to pay for ``design and construction of a training facility to be located in Fairbanks, Alaska.'' But language in the bill has prevented that training center from moving forward. This proposed bill would authorize Federal funding to be released immediately upon the request of the Governor of Alaska, to fund construction of the training center, and to broaden the center to permit it also to train oil, besides gas field workers, and environmental response employees.

According to the Alaska Department of Labor, the demand for skilled workers for gas and oil line projects on Alaska's North Slope grew by 50 percent from 2005 to 2009 to nearly 12,000 workers. At the same time, the average age of Alaska's skilled workforce is now 53, meaning that Alaska needs to train 1,000 new construction and pipeline workers annually simply to maintain the State's existing skilled workforce. Since it takes roughly 5 years to train a skilled construction/ pipefitter, it is imperative that such training begin far in advance of estimated pipeline construction. According to State data, there are only about 2,130 plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters working in Alaska and another 1,004 welders, solderers, brazers, and machine setters. Past estimates by one of the two consortia proposing to build an Alaska gas pipeline are that the gas line alone will require 1,650 welders/helpers, 2,000 equipment operators, 418 inspectors and 90 UT technicians, just to build the Alaska sections of the pipeline. That means there is an urgent need for the pipeline training center now.

The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center's core mission is to provide a highly trained workforce that will meet the needs of the entire oil/ gas/pipeline/refining industry; which is a significant component of Alaska's economy, providing 80 percent of the State's industrial tax base, 74 percent of all resources produced in the State, and 85 percent of State revenues) and a crucial component of the Nation's domestic energy supply, currently 13 percent of all domestically produced oil, while the proposed overland gas line will produce 7 percent of the Nation's total estimated gas demand in 2020. The necessity for this workforce is further emphasized because it is clear that an aging infrastructure will require an accelerated repair, replacement, and maintenance regime if production requirements and safety standard are to be met.

The training center is an innovative statewide collaboration between labor, industry, and local, State, and Federal Governments. Additionally, it is understood that as alternative fuel technologies emerge and are commercialize, a highly skilled, highly trained, highly motivated workforce will be required. Again, through collaboration with others: the University of Alaska, the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, United Technologies Corporation, General Electric, and Alaskan commercial interests, requisite evolving workforce needs are understood and can be met.

The facility needs to be located in Interior Alaska, because the climate will permit workers to be fully trained in the real-world conditions they will face on the job. In order to complete the training center and thereby meet anticipated labor demand in a timely manner, funds must be secured in the upcoming budget cycle. Federal funding needed includes: $5.5 million for Central Facility classrooms and shops, $1.5 million for a Construction Camp Facility, $1.0 million for a Pipeline Coating Training Facility and for corrosion control training, $0.5 million for civil work improvements to the Field Training Site, and $1.5 million for pipeline and transportation/ logistical equipment.

The bill's changes will permit the creation of a domestic energy workforce that is stable, productive, and encourages safe working practices that will help to protect Alaska's environment and wildlife, while producing the energy that America needs. The proposal does not expand the size of the funding authorization approved in 2004. It simply makes it more likely that American workers will benefit from a gas line project when it proceeds--an important fact when the national unemployment rate remains at 9.4 percent. I hope that this Congress will consider this bill for quick consideration and passage.

Mr. President, in honor of World Social Work Day, I rise today to introduce the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act and the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2011. I am proud to introduce legislation that will reduce the shortage of social workers in our nation and properly reimburse social workers for the services they provide.

Social workers play a crucial role combating the social problems facing our nation and are essential providers in our health care system. Our health care and social service needs have drastically increased over the past decade and will continue to do so in the next decade. We must have the workforce in place to make sure that our returning soldiers have access to mental health services, our elderly maintain their independence in the communities in which they live, and abused children are placed in safe homes. Social workers provide mental health therapy, caregiver and family counseling, health education, program coordination, and case management. In these tough economic times, social workers have an essential role in keeping communities together and helping individuals and families cope with the stresses they are facing. Social workers are vital to America's social safety net.

The Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act provides grants to social workers, identifies workforce challenges and resource needs, and determines how any workforce shortage will affect the communities social workers serve. I am honored to introduce this bill named after two social visionaries, Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young. Dorothy Height, who passed away last year, was a pioneer of the civil rights movement. Like me, she began her career as a case worker and continued to fight for social justice. Whitney Young, another trailblazer of the civil rights movement, also began his career transforming our social landscape as a social worker. He helped create President Johnson's War on Poverty and has served as President of the National Association of Social Workers.

This bill is about continued investment in social work. It provides grants for social work education, research, and training. These grants will fund community-based programs of excellence and provide scholarships to train the next generation of social workers. This bill addresses the recruitment and retention of social workers and will result in a renewed focus on improving social worker workplace safety. According to the National Association of Social Workers, 44 percent of social workers surveyed have faced personal safety issues when on the job. In addition, this bill will help identify and disseminate evidence-based best practices in social work interventions. This bill also establishes a national coordination center that will allow social education, advocacy and research institutions to collaborate and work together. The coordination center will facilitate gathering and distributing social work research to make the most effective use of the information we have on how social work service improves our social fabric. This bill also creates a media campaign that will promote social work. This bill gives social work the attention it deserves.

As a social worker, I understand the critical role social workers have in the overall care of our populations. Social workers can be found in every facet of community life--in hospitals, mental health clinics, senior centers, and private agencies that serve individuals and families in need. Social workers are there to help struggling students, returning soldiers, and the chronically ill. Oftentimes, socials workers are the only available option for mental health care in rural and underserved urban areas. Yet there are not enough social workers to meet these needs. By 2018, it is estimated an additional 100,000 social workers will be needed. We need to get our workforce in place today so that we can meet the needs of our population, particularly our aging Americans. The first of the baby boomers turn 65 this year. The aging tsunami will hit us. We must be prepared.

I believe that social work is full of great opportunities, both to serve and to lead. Social work is about putting our values into action. Social workers are among our best and brightest, our most committed and compassionate. They are at the frontlines of providing care, often putting themselves in dangerous and violent situations. Social workers have the ability to provide psychological, emotional, and social support--quite simply, the ability to change lives. I think we can do better by our constituents including our servicemembers, seniors, and children. We must make sure we have the social workers in place to meet their needs. I'm fighting to make sure we do.

I also stand on the Senate floor today to introduce the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2009. This bill ensures that clinical social workers receive Medicare reimbursement for the mental health services they provide in skilled nursing facilities. Under the current system, social workers cannot

bill Medicare directly for the services they provide. Psychologists and psychiatrists, who provide similar counseling, are able to separately bill Medicare for their services.

Since my first days in Congress, I have been fighting to protect and strengthen the safety of our Nation's seniors. Making sure that seniors have access to quality, affordable mental health care is an important part of this fight. I know that millions of seniors do not have access to, or are not receiving, the mental health services they urgently need. Five million seniors are affected by depression, yet few ever receive treatment. According to the American Psychological Association, 20 percent of people over the age of 55 have a mental health disorder and 2/3 of nursing home residents have a mental or behavioral health issue, but less than 3 percent receive treatment. These mental health disorders, which include severe depression and debilitating anxiety, interfere with a person's ability to carry out activities of daily living and adversely affect their quality of life. Furthermore, older people account for 20 percent of suicide deaths in the U.S., and white men age 85 or older have the highest suicide rate of any age group. Every year nearly 5,000 older Americans kill themselves. This is unacceptable and must be addressed.

This bill helps residents of skilled nursing facilities across the country get the mental health and psychosocial services they need. It ensures that seniors living in underserved urban and rural areas, where clinical social workers are often the only available option for mental health care, continue to receive the treatment they need. Clinical social workers, much like psychologists and psychiatrists, diagnose and treat mental illnesses. In fact, clinical social workers are the primary mental health providers for nursing home residents and seniors residing in rural environments. Unlike other mental health providers, clinical social workers cannot bill Medicare directly for the important services they provide to their patients. Protecting seniors' access to clinical social workers ensures that our most vulnerable citizens get the quality, affordable mental health care they need. This bill will correct this inequity and make sure clinical social workers get the payments and respect they deserve.

Before the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, clinical social workers billed Medicare Part B directly for mental health services they provided in nursing facilities for each patient they served. Under the Prospective Payment System, services provided by clinical social workers are lumped, or ``bundled,'' along with the services of other health care providers for the purposes of billing and payments. Psychologists and psychiatrists, who provide similar counseling, were exempted from this system and continue to bill Medicare directly. This bill would exempt clinical social workers, like their colleagues, from the Prospective Payment System, and would make sure that clinical social workers are paid for the services they provide to patients in skilled nursing facilities.

This bill is about more than paperwork and payment procedures. This bill is about equal access to Medicare payments for the equal and important work done by clinical social workers. It is about making sure our nation's most vulnerable citizens have access to quality, affordable mental health care. The overarching goal we should be striving to achieve for our seniors is an improved quality of life. Without clinical social workers, many nursing home residents would never get the counseling they need when faced with a life threatening illness or the loss of a loved one. I think we can do better by our nation's seniors. I am fighting to make sure we do.

As a social worker, I have been on the frontlines of helping people cope with issues in their everyday lives. I started off fighting for abused children, making sure they were placed in safe homes. I will continue to fight every day for our children, seniors, and families on the floor of the United States Senate.

The Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act and the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2011 are both strongly supported by the National Association of Social Workers. I also want to thank Senator Inouye for his cosponsorship of the Clinical Social Work Medicare Equity Act of 2012 and thank Senator Begich, Senator Cardin, and Senator Inouye for their cosponsorship of the Social Work Reinvestment Act. I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact these two important pieces of legislation.

Mr. President, we often use the metaphor of credit cards to talk about uncontrolled government spending, but in some cases, wasteful government spending is quite literally enabled by the use of charge cards in the hands of government bureaucrats. That is why I am reintroducing the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act. This legislation will ensure that Federal departments and agencies have in place, and keep in place, the kinds of safeguards necessary to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse with government issued charge

cards. We have made a lot of progress since I first started shining the spotlight on this issue with the help of the Government Accountability Office, GAO. This legislation will secure the gains we have made to prevent any backsliding while adding in extra mechanisms to prevent and detect misuse of government charge cards.

In 1998, the General Service Administration, GSA, entered into a contract with a set of commercial banks to utilize charge cards, not unlike those used by businesses large and small and millions of consumers worldwide. This is called the SmartPay program. These government charge cards include government purchase cards, which are used for acquisition of commercial goods and services by agencies and paid directly by the agency, and government travel cards, which are used to pay for individual government travel expenses and issued in the name of individual government employees.

Government charge cards were intended as a low cost method to streamline government acquisition and travel processes. The whole idea was to adopt the best practices of the commercial sector. In the business sector, charge cards have been a success. They save time and money. The main reason they work so well is because the control environment in the private sector is rock solid and accountability is a fact of life. When a business is spending its own money, it is going to be sure that it accounts for every penny or it won't stay in business. As a result, corporate America, if an employee is caught abusing a card, they'll lose it or get fired.

It is certainly a good idea for government to learn lessons from the business sector. However, there are certain fundamental differences between the private sector and the governmental sector that call for extra vigilance, mainly the fact that government spends other people's money. Human nature being what it is, most people are not nearly as careful spending other people's money as they would be spending their own.

Sure enough, when the SmartPay program was first implemented, Federal departments and agencies did not take near the care that a private business would when handing out company charge cards. When I started looking into this with the GAO, we uncovered blatant examples of wasteful spending. Government employees were using their government- issued charge cards to bypass any authorization and approval procedures and purchase items that had nothing to with their official duties. We are talking about LA-Z-Boy reclining chairs, kitchen appliances, and even a sapphire ring being paid for with government purchase cards, and with the American taxpayer paying the bill no questions asked.

Government travel cards have been used for gambling, sporting events, concerts, cruises, and even gentlemen's clubs and legalized brothels. While travel cards are not paid directly with taxpayers' money like purchase cards, failure by employees to repay these cards results in the loss of millions of dollars in rebates to the Federal Government. Also, when credit card companies are forced to charge off bad debt, they raise interest rates and fees on everyone else.

A series of GAO reports over the last decade have identified an inadequate and inconsistent control environment across numerous Federal agencies with respect to both government purchase cards and government travel cards. This has led to millions of dollars in taxpayers' money wasted. In some cases purchases were outright fraudulent, and others were of questionable need or were unnecessarily expensive. In each report it has issued, the GAO has made recommendations about what kind of controls need to be implemented to prevent such abuses from occurring in the future. In many cases, the same controls were often missing or inadequate, and therefore the same recommendations are repeated in report after report. One agency would promise to clean up its act, but then we would find the exact same problems with another. That is why I worked to develop legislation that would incorporate GAO's recommendations regarding some of the most basic controls needed in every agency to prevent abuse of government charge cards.

As a result of the pressure applied by the relentless oversight of Congress, the GAO, and agency Inspectors General, we have seen some progress toward establishing a better control environment. In fact, the Office of Management and Budget has issued to Federal agencies a circular that seeks to bring about many of the controls we identified. However, this progress would not have been possible without the continual spotlight being shone on the problem and the threat of congressional action.

In addition to requiring the most important internal controls across the government, the bill requires all Federal agencies to establish penalties for violations, including dismissal when circumstances warrant. This is necessary not only so that taxpayers know that those who would squander their money are held accountable, but also to send a message to other government employees that such behavior will not be tolerated. The bill also increases oversight by providing that each agency Inspector General periodically conduct risk assessments and audits to identify fraud and improper use of government charge cards. We have had great success working with Inspectors General using techniques like data mining to reveal instances of improper use of government charge cards. Having this information on an ongoing basis will help maintain and strengthen a rigorous system of internal controls to prevent future instances of waste, fraud, and abuse with government charge cards.

This legislation has been revised a number of times with considerable input from the GAO as well as the Inspector General community and other stakeholders. In crafting the very carefully thought out bill before us today, I have appreciated the help and support provided by Chairman Lieberman and Ranking Member Collins, who have again joined me as original cosponsors of this bill. The version I have introduced today is the same bill that passed the Senate in the last Congress and I look forward to seeing it pass both houses of Congress and enacted into law in the very near future. That day, the American taxpayers will be able to rest just a little easier knowing that at least one avenue to potentially waste their hard earned money has been blocked.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the FIT Kids Act. That first word, FIT, an acronym for Fitness Integrated with Teaching, an important concept that I am proud to promote today. The FIT Kids Act encourages schools to provide children with quality physical education in an effort to promote health and wellness throughout their lives.

Since the 1970s, the incidence of obesity has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and for young people aged 12-19 years; for children aged 6-11 years, it has more than tripled. Since there are many reasons for this public health crisis, we know that addressing it will require multiple solutions. An important place we can address childhood obesity is in our schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that fewer than 10 percent of our public schools offer daily physical education for the entire school year for all students. Let me repeat that, fewer than 10 percent. Our kids deserve better. Research has shown that physical education not only promotes health and wellness, it also has a direct correlation with kids' academic performance in school.

The FIT Kids Act would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to shine a light on the availability of quality physical education for all public school children through grade 12, and to ensure they receive important health and nutritional information. As Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I have been working in a bipartisan way with my colleagues on the committee to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we must fix the things that are not working, while protecting the goals of the bill, including narrowing achievement gaps. It is truly alarming to see the discrepancies in achievement between children in the United States and children abroad. Here in the U.S., despite making some progress, we continue to have wide and persistent achievement gaps that are leaving behind children of color, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and children with disabilities.

In addition to achievement gaps, I am also concerned about the trends in physical education in schools across the Nation. Currently, schools are decreasing the amount of free play or physical activity that children engage in during school hours. Only about one-third of elementary children have daily physical education, and less than one- fifth have extracurricular physical activity programs at their schools. I know that difficult resource decisions have to be made but we cannot short-change our children's health. This is short-sighted for two big reasons: One, we are fighting a childhood obesity epidemic of frightening proportions. And, two, as research shows, and as any teacher or parent knows, kids have to have time to play and burn off energy if they are going to be in a proper frame of mind to learn.

The association between physical activity and academic achievement is an important part of why we need to continue to support physical education. Broad evidence suggests a positive relationship between physical activity and grade point average, rate of learning, memory, attention span, and classroom behavior, as well as cognitive, social, and motor skill development. Research indicates that youth who report engaging in physical activity at school are 20 percent more likely than their less active peers to earn good grades in math or English. Furthermore, data suggests that children who are overweight have greater risk for school absenteeism than their peers who are average weight. In order for our Nation's children to be successful students, we must do all that we can to ensure they are in school and ready to learn.

This legislation will ensure that parents receive critical information regarding the time and resources devoted to their children for a quality physical education. Specifically, the bill will require schools, local educational agencies, and state educational agencies to publicly report on the quantity and quality of physical education courses provided using nationally recognized guidelines and standards. This will give parents the information they need to assess whether their children are receiving an appropriate physical education. Furthermore, the FIT Kids Act would give parents the tools necessary to encourage and support a healthy and active lifestyle, including increased physical activity during and outside the school day, and nutritious eating habits both at home and at school.

In addition, the bill promotes professional development for teachers and school principals to promote healthy lifestyles and physical activity through evidence-based curricula, and thereby boost students' ability to learn more effectively. The bill also promotes physical activity in after-school programs and amends the school counseling program to take into account both students' emotional wellbeing and their physical wellbeing.

Finally, this legislation authorizes research on the ways physical activity can be incorporated into all aspects of the school day, the impact of physical activity on students' readiness to learn, and the best ways to measure student progress in increasing physical activity.

The FIT Kids Act shines a spotlight on children's health and how our schools can play a greater role in teaching our children healthy behaviors. As we move forward in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we cannot neglect the importance of proper physical education. We know that sedentary lifestyles that begin in childhood can lead to number of major chronic diseases that affect their health and wellbeing in adulthood. Accordingly, we owe it to American students to teach them healthy behaviors and the importance of physical activity, and how these lessons will benefit them throughout their lives. The FIT Kids Act provides the framework to accomplish this. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill that will keep the Federal Government accountable.

Whistleblowers are the key to unlocking the secrets of wrongdoing because they have access to information about how the frauds were perpetrated and can help lead authorities in the right direction to uncover the frauds. However, for their brave efforts, they are often the victims of retaliation and are removed from their jobs by supervisors who don't want the wrongdoing uncovered. I have often said whistleblowers are as welcome as skunks at a Sunday picnic, despite the fact that all they do is bring forward the truth. This is wrong and that is why I have supported strong whistleblower protection laws during my time in Congress.

The landmark whistleblower law, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, WPA, provided rights and remedies to Executive Branch whistleblowers that are the victims of retaliation. I proudly cosponsored the WPA, but like many laws that are 20 years old, it needs to be updated. So, I cosponsored legislation introduced by Senator Akaka in the previous Congress to do just that. We are currently working to introduce similar legislation in this Congress. Despite this effort, there is still a critical gap in whistleblower protections for government employees, namely the lack of whistleblower protections for employees of the Legislative and Judicial branches of the Federal Government. I am here today to start that discussion and introduce legislation that will provide the same whistleblower protection rights currently extended to Executive Branch employees to the Legislative Branch.

I am pleased to be joined by Senator McCaskill in introducing the Congressional Whistleblower Protection Act of 2011. This important legislation simply adds whistleblower protections to the Legislative Branch by incorporating the WPA into the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, a law I authored to bring Congress in line with many labor laws and workplace protections. I have long believed Congress should practice what it preaches, and this legislation will do just that.

A theme that has dominated this new Congress, as well as the elections this past November, is accountability and responsibility in Washington. In most instances, the only reason we discover waste or fraud is because employees are brave enough to stand up to the wrongdoers and expose their offenses. Without these whistleblowers, the American taxpayer would continue to foot the bill.

This bill is long overdue. I have previously introduced similar legislation but, unfortunately, those bills were never brought up in Committee. I hope that the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will examine this legislation closely and expeditiously report it to the full Senate so we can ensure employees of the Legislative Branch that they are protected from any reprisals related to protected whistleblowing.

Now, it's been a number of years since the Congressional Accountability Act was signed into law by President Clinton, so I would like to remind my colleagues why we passed this law. It was a time very similar to today, the American people were demanding more from their elected officials in Washington and wanted accountability and transparency in all branches of Government. I believed then, as I do now, that Congress needs to put its money where its mouth is and apply the various labor and employment laws that we enforce on other branches of government

and businesses all across the country to ourselves. The Congressional Accountability Act did just that.

It applied a number of important laws to Congress, including, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination and Employment Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the Rehabilitation Act, as well as some provisions of title 5 related to Federal service labor- management relations. It also created the Office of Compliance in the Legislative Branch that oversees application of these important laws to the Legislative Branch and ensures that employee's rights under these laws are protected. While the Congressional Accountability Act was a good start, the Office of Compliance has recommended additional laws be applied to the Legislative Branch, including the Whistleblower Protection Act.

We have already taken the steps to protect whistleblowers in the Executive Branch. It doesn't make sense not to extend these same protections to whistleblowers in our own backyard. This bill will, very simply, give congressional employees the same protections that workers in the other branches of government already possess. It does this by simply adding the Whistleblower Protection Act to the preexisting list of statutes that are applied to the Legislative Branch by the Congressional Accountability Act. This is a straightforward and simple solution to ensure that employees of the Legislative Branch are not without vital whistleblower protections.

I hope my colleagues will join me and Senator McCaskill in supporting this bill to ensure that those who help us in the fight to hold government accountable are not punished for their efforts.