Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, this week President Obama has been holding what appear to be made-for-TV events to talk about the economy. He has been talking about the policies he wants Congress to enact, policies that he says will finally get America's economy going again.

President Obama has been in the White House now for more than 5 years, so I think it is fair to ask: What has this administration--the Obama administration--been doing for the economy over the past 5 years? We know that the recession actually ended almost 5 years ago. Since then, our economy has not bounced back the way it should have or the way it typically does after a deep recession.

The Obama administration has spent a lot of money on failed ideas such as the so-called stimulus package. Since the recession ended, Washington has racked up more than $6 trillion worth of additional debt, and it has not gotten us nearly the kind of growth we should have had as a result of this spending.

Now the President has come out with a budget in which he has asked for tax increases of over $1.7 trillion--nearly $2 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade. Taxes are already too high. When I go home to talk to my constituents--as I would think most Members of this body hear from their folks at home--they say taxes are already too high.

Americans are now preparing to file their taxes. Income tax day is coming--April 15. As Americans prepare to file their taxes, they are getting a reminder of just how much of their hard-earned money Washington is taking from them. Next Tuesday, April 15, is the deadline for most of us to fill out the forms and send everything off to the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS. According to the Tax Foundation, Americans will spend more on taxes this year than they spend on food, clothing, and housing combined.

We now know how much President Obama is spending, but what kind of effect have his policies been having on our American economy? We know that the economy is still not producing the number of jobs we need for a real recovery. We know if we want to look for the reasons why that seems to be the case, we could talk about the two million jobs Democrats are blocking with their restrictive energy policies.

We could talk about the minimum wage bill that Democrats are pushing right now. The Congressional Budget Office says that would reduce employment in the United States by one-half million jobs--they say maybe as many as 1 million jobs. Yet the majority leader comes here and says it is the best thing we can do for the economy. Again, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will cost the economy one-half million jobs and maybe up to 1 million jobs.

But probably the largest and most harmful thing the administration has done--not just with regard to the economy, but to other factors, including the lives of the American public--is the President's health care law. This law is hitting people across the country. There are folks who are seeing their premiums go up, losing access to their doctor, getting cancellation notices from their insurance companies, and it is also having an effect on our economy.

Today we had our usual Wyoming Wednesday where people from around the State of Wyoming come to Washington and meet with their two Senators from Wyoming so we can talk to people from our communities. Today I heard another horror story related to the President's health care law. A family had insurance that worked for them, and it worked for them for a long time. It fit their budget, and it fit their needs as a family. But, of course, it was canceled as a result of the President's health care law and the mandates where the President believes he has a better idea of what works for their family than they know in terms of their family.

This husband and wife have a couple of young children, and they lost their insurance. They tried and tried again to get reinsured through the exchange. It took them months. They finally went with paper forms to apply. The stories go on and on, and it is horrible to listen to what American families have had to go through as a result of the President's health care law. This is a family that was hurt as a result of the President's health care law in terms of what they are paying for insurance, in terms of the deductibles that are now in place, and in terms of not being able to go to the doctor of their choice.

We have the effect on the family and the effect on the economy. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the health care law is going to lead to 2\1/2\ million fewer people working over the next decade. These are not my numbers. These are the Congressional Budget Office's numbers. Because of the warped incentives that are built into this law, some people will have to choose between working more and getting higher wages or working less so they can collect government subsidies.

Remember Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House on the Democratic side. When this law was jammed through and down the throats of the American people, she was saying: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it.

I actually read the whole thing, and it continues to astonish me how few Members of this body and the body across the way actually read it and instead just took her for her word. Now what we are seeing are these unintended consequences continuing to show up.

Even some Democrats have had to admit as much about this issue of people having to work more and getting higher wages or choosing to work less so they can collect greater government subsidies.

One liberal columnist wrote in the Washington Post back in February that ObamaCare is ``a drag on economic growth.'' He said it was ``a drag on economic growth.'' It is a drag on economic growth ``as more people decide government handouts are more attractive than working more and paying higher taxes.'' The President wants higher taxes, but he sets into place a health care law that discourages the work and additional income because the government subsidies get greater if you work less and have a lower income.

That is one way that the President's health care law has been harmful, and there is another way as well. Remember, this law requires employers to pay for insurance for anyone working 30 hours per week or more. Thirty hours per week or more is considered a full-time job. There is bipartisan legislation in an effort to try to actually overturn that and get that back to the 40-hour workweek, which is what most Americans think of as a full-time job.

How do people have to respond to the health care law that is out there? What are towns doing with their town budgets? What are counties doing in States all across the country? What are school districts doing? We see what they are doing, and they are talking about it. Towns, communities, counties, school districts, and universities are cutting back on the hours of their part-time bus drivers, librarians, coaches, and other middle-class workers. They are cutting back to get them below 30 hours a week so they don't fall into the mandates of the President's expensive health care law.

What does that mean? It means it hurts people's take-home pay. If someone is working 32 or 33 hours a week and finds that their hours have been cut to 29 hours--regardless of what the majority leader wants to do with minimum wage--their paycheck is going to get smaller. Their paycheck is going to be smaller because of the health care law. Their paycheck will be smaller because of policies that Democrats have voted for--many of whom never read it in the first place.

Is this just a Republican versus a Democratic idea? Not necessarily, because a group of labor union leaders who supported the law initially have said that this health care law will ``destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class.''

The House of Representatives voted last week to do something about it. They passed--in a bipartisan vote--a

bill that would change the definition of full-time work under the health care law from 30 hours to 40 hours.

Senator Susan Collins introduced a bill to do the same thing here in the Senate. So what has happened with it? Well, the Democratic majority leader isn't allowing a vote on that bill.

This is a commonsense way to reverse some of the harm the President's health care law is doing to hard-working Americans--how it is impacting their take-home pay, how they are seeing smaller paychecks and impacting their quality of life. But the Senate majority leader has blocked the vote. So the health care law hurts patients, it hurts health care providers, and is hurting the economy.

It is interesting, because the President said all he wanted to do was insure the people who didn't have insurance. So we have an exchange. We have turned the whole health care system upside down. We have impacted one-sixth of the economy. And the whole purpose: to take people who didn't have insurance and get them insured.

What does the Wall Street Journal say about it today in the headline talking about the newest statistics in the RAND study? They say most who bought policies through the new exchanges--most who bought policies through the new exchanges--already had insurance. They weren't uninsured. These people had insurance already.

Many lost their insurance because of the President's health care law. Yet we have turned upside down one-sixth of the economy in an effort to help some but have hurt so many in the process. That is one of the fundamental flaws and problems of a health care law where the President promised, if you like your coverage, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep him or her. Now we have millions of people whose coverage has been canceled. We have many people who can't keep their doctor, can't go to their hospital. They are seeing higher premiums, higher copays, higher deductibles, more pain because of what the President and the Democrats have forced through the Congress, forced through the House, forced through the Senate.

The American people wanted to change the health care system in this country and they knew what they wanted. They wanted the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower cost. They didn't get that in this health care law. Many Americans have seen their costs go up--their initial out-of-pocket costs--to buy the insurance on the exchange. They have seen their copays go up. They have seen their deductibles go up. And they can't keep the doctor of their choice. So they know what they wanted, and this is not what they wanted, but it is what they have gotten instead. People understand that.

That is why this health care law is still so very unpopular across the country. People see how bad this health care law is in terms of their own lives and how bad it is for the American economy. They see how 5 years of this administration and the policies have held back our economic recovery.

Tax day, April 15, coming next week, will be another opportunity for Americans to reflect on how much of their money Washington has been taking from them and what they have gotten in return. I would say, as they reflect upon that, they will continue to say they are not getting value for their money. They are not getting value for their money.

Polling shows that--and I hear this at home in Wyoming--for every dollar people send to the government, they think they are getting less than 50 cents on the dollar in value. They don't like it because it means when the government takes more, they have less to spend.

The government is deciding where the money is spent, not families. And it is families who want to make decisions for themselves about their freedoms, about their health care, about their financial choices--what they want, what they need, and what works best for them.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on a bill I have introduced. It is S. 1596. It is the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act.

I wish to thank my cosponsors on this legislation. It is a bipartisan bill. Senator Joe Manchin and I have introduced this together, and I am grateful to Senators McConnell and Inhofe for their cosponsorship.

This bill was inspired by a terrible story. It is the story of Jeremy Bell, and it begins at a school in Delaware County, PA. One of the schoolteachers molested several boys and raped one of them. Prosecutors decided they did not have enough evidence to bring a case, but the school was aware of what happened, so they dismissed the teacher for this outrageous behavior. But then, amazingly, the school also decided that they would help this teacher get another job at another school so they could be rid of him. And they did exactly that, in fact, passing along a letter of recommendation, helping this predator get a job at a school in West Virginia.

The story ends in 1997 when that teacher--by then a school principal--raped and murdered 12-year-old Jeremy Bell in West Virginia. Justice finally caught up with that teacher, and he is now in jail serving a life sentence for the murder, but for Jeremy Bell that justice came too late.

The very sad truth is that Jeremy Bell is not alone. Every day seems to bring a new report of a child robbed of his or her innocence by someone they should have been able to trust, someone their parents told them they should obey. The numbers are absolutely terrifying, and, worse still, the numbers are growing.

On April 10 of this year, I came to this floor and spoke about the need to pass this legislation to protect our kids from predators in the classroom. I explained then that since January 1 of this year, at that point, 130 teachers had been arrested across America for sexual misconduct with children. Well, here we are just over 3 months later and that number has more than doubled. Since January 1 of this year, 275 teachers have been arrested in America for sexual misconduct with children--275. These are teachers. That is more than one per day so far this year.

Let's be honest. These are the ones whom we have caught. These are the ones who have actually been arrested. These are the ones against whom there is enough evidence that they have actually been arrested. How many more are out there who have not been caught or for whom the evidence is not yet sufficiently clear?

The damage these predators are doing is enormous. It is far beyond what any numbers or my words can express. So I want to let some of the victims speak for themselves.

I will tell you a brief story from Shannon. Shannon is from Nevada. She was raped by a teacher. The teacher was later convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to life in prison. Nine years later, this is what Shannon wrote:

When I was a senior in high school, Mr. Peterson approached

me and said I would need to go to night school if I wanted

enough credits to graduate on time. And, of course, he taught

one of those courses--a computer class. I was 17, and he

raped me 4 times over the course of a year. He said he would

fail me if I ever told. He also hit me and made threats

against me and my family. So I didn't. I held it in for a

year and a half.

In the end, 66 people offered to testify against Peterson.

His first victim dated back to the year I was born. Some of

those who spoke up were parents. Their daughters had

complained at the time, but nothing was done. That made me

very angry. It still does. I learned that a handful of

teachers, and two principals, knew about him. And his

teaching license had been revoked in Michigan years

before, and no one knew why.

I'm different [now] because of what happened. I have to

watch people all the time, analyze them. I can't be carefree.

Now I have a seven-year-old son and two daughters, ages three

and one. I will home-school my girls.

So when you see the number 275, remember Shannon, and remember that so far this year there are 275 others like her.

Gary of South Carolina is one of at least 29 boys abused by a teacher named Mr. Fisher over that teacher's 37-year career. Now the teacher is serving 20 years in prison. Two school principals were sued for allegedly covering up the abuse. Here is what Gary wrote about his experience:

I was nine when it started. The abuse was frequent and

long-term--till I went to college. I knew there were others,

too, but until it all came out, I never knew how many.

You feel so guilty, so ashamed. It's frightening now to

look back and see how calculating Fisher was. I did

everything I could to get kicked out of school. I was in the

guidance counselor's office all the time. Finally, in tenth

grade, I got myself kicked out for cheating. By the time I

want to college, I was drinking all the time. I was terrified

to quit because then I'd have to feel. But I couldn't drink

and do school, so I entered rehab. I was 18. It took me a

year and a half, and I've been sober since.

My life is good now, for the first time. You can survive

it, but you have to deal with it. I always felt that what the

school did was far worse than what Fisher did. Fisher was

sick, an evil monster. But [the school] just calculated the

damage to its public relations. We kids were disposable,

which is a whole other category of evil.

So when you see the number 275, remember Gary, and remember that there are 275 others like him that we know of already this year alone.

So what can we do? Well, my bill is a first step at addressing this problem. It is called the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act. It is pretty simple, really. It requires a mandatory background check for existing and prospective employees, and it requires that those checks be periodically repeated. There are five States that do no background checks.

The second thing my bill would do is it would apply to all employees of a school--employees or contractors who have unsupervised access to children, not just teachers. So it would include bus drivers and coaches. There are 12 States that currently do no checks at all on contractors.

The legislation would also require more thorough background checks. It would require that school districts check four major databases, both State and Federal. In my own State of Pennsylvania, for instance, if an employee has been a resident of my State for 2 years or more, then only the State database is checked. We just do not find out what this person might have done in another State at a different time.

The legislation also would prohibit what has--tragically, it has developed its own name; the name is ``passing the trash.'' This is the phenomenon of when a school knowingly recommends one of these predators to another school. As outrageous as that sounds, it actually happens. Some of these school and school districts so want to be rid of this problem, this embarrassment, that they actually facilitate the person moving on to some other place, where, of course, this predator just strikes again against some other children. That would be banned under this legislation.

In addition, there would be a prohibition against hiring these kinds of predators. Schools would not be able to hire a person who has ever been convicted of any violent or sexual crime against a child--if they were convicted of a violent or sexual crime against a child. There are a number of other felonies that would also preclude someone from being hired by a school if they are going to have access to children. Those would include homicide, child abuse or neglect, crimes against children, including pornography, rape, or sexual assault, kidnapping.

In addition, a person who has been convicted within the past 5 years of a felony physical assault or battery or a felony drug-related offense--for 5 years from the time at which those crimes were committed, the person would be precluded from being hired in a position, in a capacity where they would have supervisory responsibility over children.

The enforcement for all of this is the only way the Federal Government can or should enforce policies such as this on school districts and schools; that is, if a State refuses to adopt these provisions, then they would lose the funding they get from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That is one of many--but an important one--of the Federal Government funding streams for K-12 education. No State wants to lose that source of funding, so I think States would respond by adopting this very commonsense series of measures to protect their children.

I should say this is a bill with very broad support--so broad, in fact, that in the House the companion legislation passed unanimously. There was not a single dissenting vote. They voted last year, and it passed unanimously.

We have bipartisan support here in the Senate, as I mentioned. I am joined by Senators Manchin, McConnell, and Inhofe.

It is supported by child advocacy groups. The National Children's Alliance, the Children's Defense Fund, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children all strongly support this legislation. I appreciate their support.

It is also supported by prosecutors--the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. As a matter of fact, there were five district attorneys from southeastern Pennsylvania alone, from different political parties, who wrote an op- ed--a very persuasive op-ed--arguing why this bill is necessary based on what they see every day in their jobs as prosecutors. I wish to thank those district attorneys. Risa Ferman from Montgomery County, Seth Williams from Philadelphia County, Tom Hogan from Chester County, David Heckler from Bucks County, and Jack Whelan from Delaware County all weighed in in favor of this legislation.

Finally, there are teacher groups that support this as well. The American Federation of Teachers supports this legislation. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association does as well.

I do not think I would be going far out on a limb to suggest that probably a huge majority of Americans support this legislation because one thing I know for sure as a parent of three young kids--my kids are 14, 12, and 4. There is one thing that is most important to most parents I know; that is, that our children be safe and secure. When you put your kid on a schoolbus, you expect that child will be in a safe environment all day long--on the ride to school, while they are in school, and on the way back home. Frankly, we owe it to parents as well as to their children to do all we can to ensure that they do, in fact, have a safe environment--as safe as we can make it--for their kids.

Two hundred seventy-five is the number. That is the number that should give us all pause. It marks 275 tragedies that we know of already this year--275 childhoods that are shattered, 275 families torn by grief, betrayal, self-blame. It marks a failure on our part. This kind of child abuse can be prevented. We have the tools to prevent it and to prevent so many children from harm.

Again, last year the House acted unanimously to protect children from these sexual predators. This is something we could have done a long time ago. We certainly should not be letting a new school year begin-- really in a matter of weeks--without doing something about this shameful number and without making sure this number does not continue to grow.

I hope we will be able to bring this bill to the Senate floor. I hope we will have very broad bipartisan support for it here in the Senate, as we already have in the House.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today, as I have repeatedly since the health care law has been passed, with concerns I have and to share some information with the Senate because of my concerns that in order to help some people who did not have insurance, I am afraid we have hurt many people who did have insurance, did have care they liked. The President continued to focus on coverage, and I have more concerns, as a doctor, about people actually getting care, getting health care, the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs.

So I come to the floor today to talk about a new story out this morning, actually in the Huffington Post, called ``How Obamacare Leaves Some Patients Without Doctors.''

I recall how the President had said: If you like your policy, you can keep your policy. He said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Yet we are hearing stories from all around the country of people who have found that not to be true.

I have heard the majority leader come to the floor and say in a statement that so many stories are lies, they are made up. But I will tell you that this morning, in this publication, there is a lengthy story of several patients in California who have had pain, problems, medical concerns, signed up for insurance, and, as a result, have found out they have insurance, they have coverage, but they cannot find care.

So I would like to share with the Senate today a story, and it has some of the concerns I raised during the debate and the discussion of the health care law. But the Speaker of the House at the time, Nancy Pelosi, from California--the State where this happened--said: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it. Well, now people all across the country are finding out what is in it, and they are finding out they are terribly disappointed and they feel they have been sold a bill of goods and they are getting stuck with a bill, and they are finding out it is not very good for them.

The report in this morning's Huffington Post starts out:

In January, a doctor told [Ms.] Friedlander, who was

suffering from excruciating lower back pain, that she needed

surgery to remove part of a severely herniated disc.

Well, she had Blue Shield insurance, as they report, through Covered California, which is California's version of ObamaCare, and she planned to use that coverage to pay for the operation. It makes sense.

This is what happened. It says:

But when she started to call surgeons covered by Blue

Shield, she ran into a roadblock. Surgeons who were covered

by her insurance--

amazingly--

operated out of hospitals no longer covered by her insurance.

. . .

So if the surgeon was covered, the hospital was not or, vice versa, she could find a hospital that would cover her surgery but could not find a surgeon who was covered by her insurance that was on the staff of that hospital.

It says:

[Ms.] Friedlander spent days on the phone, hours on hold,

making dozens of calls across Southern California, trying to

match a surgeon with a hospital that would both be covered.

In total, she reached out to 20 [different] surgeons and five

[different] hospitals.

``No one could help me. Some expressed sympathy,''

Friedlander, 40, told The Huffington Post in an email. ``They

told me, `I'm so sorry--it's all just so new. You're a victim

of the changes. No one knows what they're doing.' ''

So what we have here is a victim of the Obama health care legislation because first we had to pass it before we get to find out what is in it.

Unable to match a hospital and a surgeon that were both

covered, [Ms.] Friedlander started haggling between doctors

for a cash price for the surgery. She chose a surgeon who

wasn't covered by her insurance but who operated in a

hospital that was covered.

Because she could not, with her insurance, get both the hospital and the doctor.

She expects her insurance to pay the hospital bill, but she

had to pay her surgeon's bill herself.

All out of her own pocket.

The article goes on to report:

. . . nationwide, about 70 percent of Obamacare plans--

About 70 percent of the plans purchased on the Obama health care law--

offer fewer hospitals and doctors than employer-sponsored

group plans or pre-ACA individual market plans, according to

a study by consulting firm KcKinsey & Company released in

December. This narrowed number of doctors and hospitals is

what [Ms.] Friedlander encountered when trying to match a

surgeon and hospital that would both be covered.

What we are hearing today is that about 70 percent of ObamaCare plans offer fewer hospitals, fewer doctors, in spite of the President's promise to the American people that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.

Now, Covered California says they are aware of the problem. A spokesman for the group--a senior medical adviser with the ObamaCare plan in California--says:

We understand that some people are having trouble getting

access to the doctors and hospitals they need. And we're

working very hard to fix [that] as fast as we can.

Well, perhaps if people had actually read the law, understood what was in it, they would have seen this coming.

The President said your insurance premiums would drop. He said families would save $2,500 a family. But the article says:

To make up for ACA costs and keep premiums low, Blue Shield

asked its doctors

and hospitals to accept payments from the insurer at rates

[well] reduced--

Reduced from what they normally got--

reduced [by] up to 30 percent.

The article goes on:

Not surprisingly, some doctors and hospitals rejected Blue

Shield's reduced payment rates and decided not to re-sign

contracts with the insurer. At least three major Los Angeles

hospitals previously covered by Blue Shield--

And, Madam President, I will tell you, these are first-class hospitals, these are highly thought-of hospitals, hospitals with incredibly good reputations.

. . . three major Los Angeles hospitals previously covered

by Blue Shield--UCLA--

The University of California-Los Angeles--

Cedars Sinai and Good Samaritan--have opted out of the

insurer's new network. . . .

According to [the communications manager from Blue Shield],

Blue Shield of California now has about 40 percent fewer

physicians and 25 percent fewer hospitals in its network than

last year.

You listen to what is happening, and they talk about the significant gaps occurring in California.

These are the concerns I hear about when I go home to Wyoming every weekend. These are the concerns I heard about this past weekend in Casper, in Douglas, in Riverton, in Thermopolis, and in Newcastle traveling around the State. People are not able to keep their insurance. They are not able to keep their doctors. It is happening all across the country, and we see this story out of California today.

The interesting part of the issue with California is that--the article goes on and they talk to an insurance agent in Sacramento who says: `` . . . people who already had insurance''--`` . . . people who already had insurance''--``especially healthy, young people, may be paying more under Covered California''--``may be paying more''; not what the President promised--``for fewer hospitals and doctors.''

That is not what the intent of the health care law was but it is what the health care law has delivered.

This is what is happening to real people, real families, all across the country. The majority leader says: false, made up, whole cloth. But I will tell you, these stories will continue to occur.

It is interesting, in today's article in the Huffington Post it says:

And when signing up for a plan, it's difficult to determine

which doctors and hospitals are still covered.

They are talking about California now. The article says, quoting an insurance agent in California:

``You can sign up on Covered California and think you're

totally fine, only to find out later that you're totally

hosed''. . . .

This man, David Fear, goes on to say:

Specialist doctors, such as surgeons, ob-gyns and

urologists, declined Blue Cross and Blue Shield's lower

payments most frequently. Fear estimates that about two-

thirds of Blue Cross and Blue Shield's specialists have opted

out of the networks.

It is not just that one patient whom I talked about. There is, like Ms. Friedlander, Ruth Iorio, a 35-year-old new mother from Los Angeles. She is struggling to find the care she needs in Blue Shield's smaller network.

She signed up for Blue Shield through Covered California in

November because the Covered California website listed her

hospital--

The Web site, the President's Web site, the Covered California Web site--

listed her hospital, UCLA, as accepting Blue Shield. . . .

Continuing:

However, after Iorio gave birth in December, she was told

that her ob-gyn at UCLA was not covered by her insurance. So

she paid out of pocket.

Iorio has not been able to find a urologist for her son or

an ob-gyn who is both covered by her insurance and practicing

in a hospital that is covered.

The President said: You can keep your hospital, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.

She's called over a dozen doctors who are covered by her

insurance, and each has told her that if she or her son needs

an operation in the hospitals the doctor contracts with, it

won't be covered.

So even if they get a doctor who is under their plan, they cannot go to a hospital to get actually a procedure done.

As this lady says:

``My insurance is pretty useless. And I'm not fussy about

what doctor I see,'' Iorio said. ``I don't know what to do. I

may just drop it for myself and keep my son on it. It's

really depressing.''

It is really depressing what the President and the Democrats have forced down the throat of the American people with this health care law.

The article continues:

Before joining Covered California, Iorio had an individual

Blue Shield plan that was cheaper than what she now pays and

that gave her wider access to doctors and hospitals.

Cheaper, wider access. Exactly what the President had promised her is exactly what this woman has lost because of the health care law.

She goes on and says:

``I'm paying $500 a month and every doctor I'm calling is

saying, `No, I can't see you,' '' she said. ``I feel like a

second-class citizen.''

Is that what the President's health care law is all about: making people feel like second-class citizens, hearing from folks when they call and ask for help that, sorry, you are just a victim of the Obama health care law--a nation of more and more victims? It does seem, as you look around the country, for those who have been helped, we should not have had to hurt this many people because of a law the American people said ``we do not want'' and was forced, on single-party lines, down the throats of the American people.

This law is bad for patients. We have seen that today. It continues to be bad for providers--the nurses, the doctors, who take care of those patients--and it is terrible for taxpayers. Tax rates will continue to go up. Taxes are continuing to go up as a result of the health care law and the expenses related to it. It has failed repeatedly in dealing with the needs of the American people, who knew what they wanted in the first place, which was they wanted the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs. Instead, they got this.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to start this afternoon by thanking Chairman Murray for her tireless work on the Budget Committee--on which I serve--to develop and pass a bipartisan budget, a budget that sets us on a path to return to regular order.

Senator Murray has also been a tireless advocate for transportation and infrastructure programs, and as chair of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee--on which I also serve--she fought tirelessly to include adequate funding for Amtrak back in the fiscal year 2014 omnibus and moving forward.

The topic I would like to take up today is the role of Amtrak in our country and our communities and its appropriate role as a central piece of

Federal transportation policy going forward.

Senator Murray has been a terrific advocate for investing across a wide range of transportation modalities. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I look forward to working with her and our leading full committee chair Senator Mikulski to make sure we are successful in fighting ardently and steadfastly for Amtrak this year and into the future.

I come to talk on the floor today about the importance of our national passenger rail system--Amtrak--because this is not just about getting people from point A to point B. Investing in Amtrak also means creating jobs, making our whole economy more dynamic, and making America more competitive.

Amtrak is performing better and better each and every year. As the Presiding Officer knows all too well, ridership over the last decade has steadily increased. In fact, 10 of the last 11 years have seen record numbers, and last year we broke through 31.6 million riders on Amtrak. The trains are more and more crowded, but they are arriving more and more frequently on time and the quality of the train sets and the quality of the service provided by the conductors and the other folks who work for Amtrak has steadily increased.

As the value proposition of Amtrak has increased, so has ridership. Record ticket sales and other revenues have made this possible. Today Amtrak covers nearly 89 percent of the cost of operating their trains, which is by far the best of any passenger rail operation in the United States. They are, in fact, on track to cover 90 percent, through revenues, of their total operating costs in 2014. Because of this success, since 2002 Amtrak has decreased its debt by more than half.

My home State of Delaware and the Presiding Officer's home State of New Jersey are part of one of the oldest and most critical sections of our national passenger rail system, the so-called Northeast corridor, which goes from Boston to Washington. If it were its own separate economy, the Northeast corridor would produce $3 trillion a year--21 percent of our Nation's total economic output--which would make it the fifth largest economy in the world if it were on its own. But it is not. It is an integrated part of our Nation, and its passenger rail infrastructure is an integrated part of our national commitment to efficient and effective transportation.

In this region in particular, Amtrak is not a luxury; it is a fundamental and critical part of our economy and moving our community and our people forward. If Amtrak service were cut off in the region for just a day, it would cost our economy $13 million. One-third of all the jobs in the Northeast corridor--or 7 million jobs--are within 5 miles of a station.

Amtrak's impact on my home State of Delaware is particularly large because Amtrak employs over 1,000 men and women in the State of Delaware. Many of them work at two maintenance facilities--Wilmington and Bear--where they repair everything from train seats to the heavy trucks to the cars themselves. I have had a chance to visit them on a number of occasions. It is incredible to see the work ethic and capabilities of the men and women of Amtrak. These shops have been there for a long time. They have worked hard to modernize, to be relevant, and to contribute to the strengthening bottom line of Amtrak overall.

I would like to mention ``Irish'' John, who is a good friend of mine and has been a leader for the sheet metal workers for a long time. Sheet metal workers with Amtrak were one of the unions that worked with management to find ways to significantly save costs on overhaul work on Acela train sets, which resulted in Amtrak choosing not to farm out their service work and instead do a $125 million job to overhaul 20 Acela sets in-house. This is union labor, and this helps support good middle-wage jobs. This helps support good middle-class families and middle-class communities in Delaware and our region. This particular work on this Acela overhaul will last more than 3\1/2\ years and sustain dozens of jobs at our Bear repair facility.

My friend Bill, who is with the IBEW Amtrak union, is another friend who has helped me understand the critical role of the employment Amtrak provides to our whole region--not just to Delaware, not just to the Philadelphia area, but to the whole Northeast corridor.

When we talk about investing in Amtrak, we are not only investing in new options for commuters and businesses, we are talking about investing in our communities and in workers who will build and maintain the next generation of American rail. As I said, these are great, high- skilled jobs. By investing in Amtrak's present and giving them a predictable future, we will preserve and continue these important skills and these important workers and their families in our communities.

Amtrak's benefits go beyond just the immediate skilled workers and their families and the communities that benefit from them.

In Delaware, the services Amtrak provides help to keep and draw in new businesses through a ripple effect in our whole economy. Last week there was an announcement of a new company that is spinning off out of Sallie Mae that will be locating its headquarters and 120 jobs in Wilmington. They have chosen a site specifically because it is walking distance from our Amtrak station--from the Joseph R. Biden Amtrak Station in Wilmington, DE.

In Newark, the University of Delaware is building a new campus called the Science, Technology and Advanced Research--STAR--Campus, which will build partnerships between several important entities, such as the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. What makes that partnership possible is the backbone of the Northeast corridor--the connection between these different cities that has made all of us stronger and better because of passenger rail.

I hope from these few examples it is clear that passenger rail is also a critical component of economic development. Passenger rail tends to link downtown urban areas and tends to be absolutely central to anchoring their revitalization, as the Presiding Officer knows so well.

Passenger rail is also critical not just in the Northeast corridor but in communities across the country that rely on it to connect with other communities and our country's major economic centers.

State-supported services have become a major source of ridership growth for Amtrak as well, with that ridership nearly doubling between 1998 and 2013.

Long-distance ridership across the great heartland of our country has also grown by roughly 20 percent without the introduction of any new services, frequencies, or equipment. In fiscal year 2013, long-distance ridership reached its highest point in 20 years.

However, we are at the proverbial crossroads--or I suppose I should say crossing--now because ridership is soaring, Amtrak is more popular than ever before, and demand will continue to grow, but we are not keeping up with the investment in infrastructure that we need to sustain this growth into the future.

For instance, right now there is nearly $6 billion in outdated, delayed investments that need to be made just in the Northeast corridor to bring it to what is called a state of good repair. I will focus on a few of the critical infrastructure needs in the Northeast corridor, but there are also needs across the country.

Baltimore is a city I traveled through this morning on my way to this Capitol on the Amtrak train. In Baltimore, Senator Mikulski's home State, the B&P tunnels have stayed open since 1873. Although they have undergone periodic repairs, none of them were built to be permanent. We can't be competitive if we continue to rely on tunnels that have been around since roughly the time of our own Civil War. We need to invest in modernizing this infrastructure.

Between the Presiding Officer's home State of New Jersey and the great State of New York, preliminary planning is underway on the Gateway Tunnel, which is a critical tunnel that will ease the bottleneck under the Hudson that causes delays throughout the whole region, limits the options of travelers, and ends up costing the economy more in the short and long run. We need to invest in our infrastructure.

In Delaware, we have a bottleneck around our most popular station, the Joseph R. Biden Station in Wilmington. The rail lines north and south of that station slim from three lines to two, restricting service and preventing the addition of new rail service. Thanks in part to a Federal high-speed rail grant, construction will soon be underway to add a third track to alleviate this critical chokepoint, the main one just south of the station. Without new investment, that chokepoint will continue north of the station.

And that is not to mention the hundreds of bridges and tunnels and other connection points--including the overhead centenary lines--that require repair and replacement on the Northeast corridor alone. We need to invest in our infrastructure not just in the Northeast corridor but across this whole country. We do spend a lot of time here on this floor, as we should, talking about our Nation's fiscal deficit and debt, but we should also focus on our physical deficit and debt--the delayed repair of critical pieces of infrastructure that we rely on for our economy and for our communities but that we are not focused on.

If we invest in our infrastructure today, it will employ people in repairing it and lay the groundwork for improvement of our economy over the long term. I recognize the reality that while the budget picture has improved, it is not yet as good as it should be. We are still facing real fiscal challenges.

I ride between Wilmington and Washington nearly every day on Amtrak, and our workers are responsible for repairing and retrofitting a lot of the trains on which I ride. I am impressed with their skill and the caliber of their repair work. As a rider and our State Senator, I see how critical Amtrak is to our economy, our communities, and to our country as a whole. I hope that is clear to the rest of the Members of this Chamber.

I hope that anyone watching who has appreciated the value of Amtrak's connecting power that links this country together from east to west and north to south will communicate with their Senator and convey the importance of strong and sustained investment in the Northeast corridor, yes, but across the whole reach of our country. Only by strengthening Amtrak and ensuring the vibrancy of the entire Nation's system of passenger rail can we really ensure that American rail will be there for years and generations to come.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I support the Senator from Iowa and his request that this bill go to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

In the Republican Conference, we talk a lot about the importance of taking legislation through committee so it can be amended and considered through the regular order. This is certainly important legislation. All of us would agree on that.

The Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from West Virginia deserve a lot of credit for bringing this terrible story to our attention and proposing we address it. And I think we should. But the appropriate way to do that here, is to take it to the committee of jurisdiction to be considered in a markup, amended, and see if anyone has a better idea.

My second reason for hoping this bill goes to the HELP committee is that I have my own idea. I think this bill poses an important question to the Senate about whether we want to constitute ourselves as a national school board. That is, in fact, what we would be doing if we passed it into law.

In our country there are 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools. They all have a principal who is in charge of the employees in that school.

This bill is about determining what kind of criminal background check those school employees should have. What is the principal supposed to do? Doesn't the principal have any responsibility for this? Can the principal just say that this is the job of the United States Senate, so I don't have to worry about that?

There are 14,000 local school boards across West Virginia, Tennessee, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and all of our other States. What is the responsibility of these local school boards when it comes to determining the qualifications of their teachers or the health and safety of their students? Do the members of the local school board say: We don't have to worry about those questions too much because the U.S. Senate will determine for us what the qualifications for teaching will be or how we will keep students healthy and safe in our local public schools?

There are 50 Governors of our states. I used to be one of them, as was the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. I got pretty tired of people flying to Washington, D.C. thinking that they were the only ones who had any sense of responsibility for the public school students in Tennessee. In fact, I felt like the more Washington, D.C. intruded into Tennessee by making decisions that we should be making for ourselves, the less responsible we felt for those decisions and the less effective we were at doing our jobs.

I remember in the early 1990s there was a piece of legislation which whizzed through the Senate and the House just like this piece of legislation has been doing. It was called the Gun-Free School Zones Act, and it came after a particularly terrible shooting at a school. We still have those shootings today, and it wrenches our heart every time they happen.

So, after the shooting, the U.S. Congress said: We will fix it. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it exceeded the authority of Congress under the commerce clause--that in effect it wasn't Washington's job; it was the job of the states and local communities to determine the issue of gun possession around schools.

I submit that the safety of our schools is the job of the parents of those schools, of the principal in that school, of the community which supports that school, of the local school board, of the supporting organizations, and of the governor and the legislature of the state. If they can pretend they can kick that responsibility up to Washington, I think that is wrong. I do

not think that is within our constitutional framework in the United States. Those responsibilities belong locally.

The Senator from Iowa and I have a terrific relationship and ideological differences on many occasions. I spent the morning debating with him about whether his proposal for early childhood education would in effect create a national school board.

He basically made the same argument that is being made here. He said: If we are going to give states money from Washington for early childhood education, we have a responsibility to define how that money is spent, including the parameters for what the teachers' salaries should be.

So if we can define what criminal background checks ought to be for school employees in Maryville, TN, public schools, we can define what the teachers' salaries ought to be in the Maryville, TN, public schools. If we can decide what the safety measures in the school ought to be, we can decide what the maximum size of classes ought to be. We can decide what the length of the school day ought to be and what kind of vision and health screenings we ought to provide. Those decisions are important for children as well. Whether the children are fed properly is important as well. Are we going to kick those decisions upstairs to the U.S. Senate and say: You set the rules for that.

Physical activity programs. The distinguished Senator from Iowa has been a champion for more physical activity his whole career here. He would like to set that as a goal from Washington. I think that is the job of a local community.

Professional development for school staff. If we make decisions about criminal background checks for staff, we can make decisions about their professional development as well.

How about academic standards and curriculum? In the State of Tennessee and in many other States there has been a near rebellion over the so-called Common Core State Standards. The important issue is about how we raise standards for children who need to learn more to succeed. But the problem is that Washington got involved with the standards, and people in our State and many other States don't like national school boards and Washington-control of public schools.

So I think we should stop and think about this. I would prefer to see the federal government in Washington act as an enabler of States and local school boards rather than a mandator.

I would like to see us take this terrific focus the Senators from Pennsylvania and West Virginia have put on the importance of criminal background checks and the safety of our children by making it easier for States and local school boards to search a State criminal registry, a State-based child abuse and neglect registry, a fingerprint-based FBI criminal history, a search of the national sex offender registry.

Forty-six States already require all public school employees to go through some form of a background check. Are we to say we know better than they do? If so, what does that say about our entire structure of public education and whether we should just tell the 14,000 local school boards in the U.S. to disband. We don't need you to make decisions about the safety of the schools in your district. We will do it in Washington. We don't need you to make decisions about academic standards and curriculum. We will do that here?

I think we in Congress should be enablers, not mandators. I think we should take this powerful focus the two Senators have put on criminal background checks for school employees, take it to the HELP committee, and put a spotlight on making it easier and more important for all 100,000 principals, all 14,000 local school boards, all 50 State Governors to do it, help parents to be aroused, and put the spotlight where the spotlight ought to be.

If they want a gun-free school zone, put the spotlight on the school and the community around it. If they want a safe school, put the spotlight on the school and the community around it. If they want to have a criminal background check system to keep predators out of schools, put the spotlight on the principal, the school board, and the community around it. That is the way to effectively do it. That is the way to respect our federalist system of government and our constitutional framework. That is the way to avoid creating a national school board.

So I look forward to working with the Senator from Iowa, the Senator from West Virginia, and the Senator from Pennsylvania. This is an important issue. I would like to see it become law. But I would like for our government in Washington to be more of an enabler of local school boards and school principals than a mandator from Washington.

I am willing to support holding a hearing on the bill, moving it rapidly through the HELP committee, and moving it back to the Senate floor. I will make my argument in committee or on the floor, and I may win or I may lose. But I have thought about the gun-free school zones act for more than 20 years, and I thought about it from the point of view of a parent and of a Governor.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has conservative Republicans on one side and liberal Democrats on the other. I spend most of my days on the committee trying to argue my Democratic friends out of their good ideas that they want to impose on every local school district in America. There is a moral imperative to have high academic standards for children. There is a moral imperative to have physical education for children. There is a moral imperative to have breakfast for children. There is a moral imperative to help disabled children. There is a moral imperative to do all these things. We all feel that. But just because we in Washington contribute 10 percent of the money spent on elementary and secondary education doesn't mean we should substitute our judgment for that of the local school board and the principal who is accountable to that community for the safety of each child in their school. We ought to think about that before we start assuming these responsibilities because if we pass this bill into law, leave people to think that we solved the problem, and another problem happens, then who is going to be held accountable? The local principal? The local school board? The Governor? No. Maybe the Senate will be held accountable because we took it upon ourselves to say to the parents: We have kept your child safe.

We should enable parents. We should enable schools. We should enable local school districts to create safe and effective schools with high standards. We should give parents choices of schools with effective teachers, but we shouldn't mandate it or define it from Washington. That is my argument, which I would like to be considered when we think about the extent to which we ought to say to a local school board or principal: We are going to define for you what a criminal background check should consist of for the people you hire in your schools.

I pledge to work on it as rapidly as Senator Harkin can move it through the committee. I will make my argument, and we will come to a conclusion.

I appreciate the Senators from Pennsylvania and West Virginia putting a focus on such an important issue, and I look forward to a speedy conclusion to the debate and a passage of an appropriate bill on an important issue. I just hope it enables instead of mandates.

Thank you, Madam President.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Today we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. This week, again and again, I will rise to remind my colleagues and fellow citizens of the humanity we share and appeal to their conscience about the mass atrocities the Assad regime is perpetrating in Syria.

This past Sunday the world joined Rwanda in marking 20 years since the beginning of the genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 innocent men, women, and children. As we reflect on our failures to stop the genocide there, I can't help but think of the lessons we learned from Rwanda and those we didn't.

President Obama stated in his remarks on Sunday that the Rwandan genocide was ``neither an accident nor unavoidable. . . . The genocide we remember today--and the world's failure to respond more quickly-- reminds us that we always have a choice. In the face of hatred, we must remember the humanity we share. In the face of cruelty, we must choose compassion. In the face of intolerance and suffering, we must never be indifferent.'' I couldn't agree more with the President of the United States.

The United States, along with the international community, failed to take the necessary action to prevent a tragedy in Rwanda. We chose to ignore the death of hundreds of thousands of people, and in so doing we forsook our humanity. And now we are dangerously close to doing the same in Syria.

While I would like to believe that ``never again'' means something in this context, I look around the world today, and I am haunted by the fact that we simply haven't learned the fundamental lesson from Rwanda that preventing the slaughter of innocents means taking hard political action.

Nowhere is this truer than in Syria, where President Bashar Assad's regime continues its brutal assault against the Syrian people with increasing ferocity. The slaughter of innocent men, women, and children is being carried out by Syria's national army and loyal paramilitaries as a result of state policy, and the terror continues to escalate every day that Assad's crimes go unpunished.

The regime has accelerated attacks against civilians by indiscriminately dropping barbaric barrel bombs on mosques, schools, and bakeries, systematically detaining, torturing, and killing thousands of people--including hundreds of children--and starving entire neighborhoods to death. It was over 5 months ago that Secretary John Kerry wrote that ``the world must act quickly'' to stop a ``war of starvation'' being waged by Assad's regime against ``huge portions of the population.'' Yet the world did nothing, and hundreds have died of starvation--thousands--in those 5 months.

Eventually the international community responded by passing resolution 2139 through the U.N. Security Council, which ordered the regime to promptly allow unhindered humanitarian access and threatened further consequences for noncompliance. This was 2 months ago, and yet again the world did nothing to back the resolution. In fact, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Valerie Amos, reports that the war of starvation has worsened since its passing. The number of Syrians cut off from aid since January has grown by over 1 million people. The Syrian Government continues to prevent supplies of food from entering opposition-held areas, in direct contravention of the U.N. resolution, and it is using U.S.-provided humanitarian aid as leverage in its war against the people. Meanwhile, Iran sends 30,000 tons of food supplies to Assad's regime. While children starve throughout Syria, the government is at least well fed.

Although 800,000 people have not been slaughtered in mere months, as was the case in Rwanda, over the course of 3 years of conflict in Syria, we have witnessed 9 million people forced from their homes, with 2.5 million refugees escaping the violence in neighboring countries, and an estimated 150,000 people dead, with casualties escalating daily.

Regardless of the scale or scope, one fact is clear: The world is watching genocide in slow motion, but it seems that regardless of how many innocent men, women, and children die in Syria,

the world's conscience will not be tipped.

What is happening in Syria should be an affront to our conscience, and it should be a call to action. Each day the media floods our newspapers and television screens with some gruesome and horrific evidence of Assad's war crimes. We cannot claim ignorance as we have in the past. Yet we do nothing. It is as if watching all the suffering and simply feeling bad about it has become an adequate moral response. Conventional wisdom tells us that this is because the American public is war-weary. We are scarred by our experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and thus unwilling to get involved in another conflict in the Middle East.

This sentiment is reinforced by the President, who prides himself on having opposed the war on Iraq and getting America out of the region as quickly as possible regardless of the ramifications. He has emphasized the need to ``contain'' the conflict in Syria, calling it a ``civil war'' and neglecting the dangerous spillover effects we are already witnessing, including the destabilization of all of Syria's neighbors and the growth of an Al Qaeda safe haven in eastern Syria and western Iraq.

Following the President's lead, the American public has largely applauded his restraint and opposed greater U.S. involvement in Syria. But in so doing we have again failed the legacy of Rwanda.

Stopping the slaughter in Syria will require difficult political action, but it is not only profoundly in our national interest to act but also our moral obligation to do so. In his remarks on Sunday, President Obama said that we should be reminded of ``our obligations to our fellow man.'' As President, he is the one who should be showing to the American people why it is so vital to our national interest to carry out our moral obligations to our fellow man.

Our policy should be determined by the realities of the moment, not by today's isolationism dictated by the past. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have nothing to do with how we carry out our responsibilities today. Let there be no mistake; we have a responsibility to stop genocide when we see it happening, as in Syria. ``Never again'' should mean something whether or not we are paralyzed by war-weariness.

Of course we would all like to see the slaughter of Syria's innocent men, women, and children be stopped by diplomacy and through nonviolent means. We all want an end to the violence. We all want to believe that a political solution is possible. But there are only two ways to end the violence. One is for all parties to put down their weapons-- something President Bashar Assad and his Iranian partners are clearly unwilling to do, as they believe a military solution is possible. So that leaves us with only one other option: to neutralize the party dedicated to the slaughter of innocents and force them to put down their guns. There are options to achieve this goal that fall far short of putting boots on the ground. We do not need to concede and allow genocide to continue or to go to war to prevent it. There are steps in between that the United States, along with our international partners, can take to stand by our international commitments and guarantees of protection.

President Assad has already shown that U.N. resolutions mean nothing to him and that he has no intention of negotiating his departure through the Geneva process. It is clear that military pressure is the only lever that will convince Assad that a political solution is in his favor. We must be ready to prove to Assad that not achieving a diplomatic solution will cost his regime dearly, and there are meaningful actions we can take to help in Syria that will not require us to rerun the war in Iraq. It is not a question of options or capabilities, it is a question of will.

There is a famous quote that states, ``All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.'' As we sit back and place our hopes on negotiations and meaningless guarantees of protection, we watch as hundreds of innocent men, women, and children are brutally slaughtered every day; reinvigorated Al Qaeda affiliates operate with more freedom than ever before; terrorist groups loyal to Iran proliferate and threaten our allies; and the region descends into chaos and turmoil that will inevitably reverberate in the United States of America. This is the price we will pay for choosing to remain disengaged, and the consequences to U.S. national interests will be felt.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two articles. One is a Reuters story entitled ``Assad says fighting largely over by end of year,'' a statement by a former Russian Prime Minister with a quote:

Assad's strength now lies in the fact that, unlike

Yanukovich, he has practically no internal enemies. He has a

consolidated, cleansed team.

The second is ``Hezbollah confident in Assad, West resigned to Syria stalemate.''

I won't include it in the Record, but there is an interesting article that states, ``Syria's Assad secure, will seek re- election: Hezbollah leader.''

To show, I think, the very incredible naivety, there is an article in the Washington Post by Secretary Kerry entitled ``Kerry: US strike in Syria wouldn't be devastating.''

The Secretary of State says:

``It would not have had a devastating impact by which he

had to recalculate, because it wasn't going to last that

long,'' Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

``Here we were going to have one or two days to degrade and

send a message. . . . We came up with a better solution.''

We came up with a better solution. The President of the United States said that if Bashar Assad crossed a red line and used chemical weapons, we would act. He announced we would act. All our allies knew we were going to act. Then he took a walk with his national security adviser and said he was going to go to Congress. Meanwhile, Senator Kerry, in a bizarre, incredible act, issued a statement that any attack on Syria would be ``incredibly small.'' It is remarkable.

Finally, our conscience should be shot, but it is not. We get kind of immune to day after day after day of these various reports of the slaughter that is going on.

Look at the situation in Syria 3 years ago and look at it today: 150,000 dead, millions displaced; entry of jihadist fighters from all over the world who continue brutal bombing with barrel bombs which will slaughter innocent men, women, and children; and our Secretary of State says: Well, it wouldn't have been much if we would have struck them anyway.

This is a shameful chapter in American history, I say to my colleagues. Historians in future generations will judge us very harshly, and future generations and younger generations may have to pay the price for our inaction and our neglect of our basic human values.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, this is not easy for me to do, but I am going to do it in good grace here. I congratulate my colleague from Connecticut on The University of Connecticut's victory over the University of Notre Dame last night.

He watched in joy and exuberance, and I watched in dismay. But I do want to congratulate the Senator and those from Connecticut for the singular achievement of having both men's and women's basketball championships.

Those of us in Indiana are deeply immersed in the basketball culture. Statewide, we didn't have the best year or the kind of year we would have liked. But we were very proud of the University of Notre Dame women and the accomplishments they made--in an undefeated season until last evening.

It probably is not politic for me to say this, but it is unfortunate that our all-American center, who was one of the keys to the success of the team, unfortunately had a knee injury which prevented her from playing. I am not saying we would have won had she played because I don't want to take anything away from the Huskies. On the other hand, I think it could have been a more contested contest had she been able to be a part of that.

Either way, both teams deserve congratulations for the phenomenal seasons they had. It was a joy to watch from Indiana our Notre Dame women do so well, just as it was a joy for Senator Murphy to watch his men and women do so well. So I congratulate him for that.

Russian Aggression

Madam President, I rise to advocate for something obviously far more serious and threatening to us than basketball contests, and that is our response to Russia's recent unlawful takeover of Crimea. I urge, and continue to urge, the President as well as our colleagues in the Senate to take more vigorous action to deter further Russian aggression.

As I speak, anxieties are building that Vladimir Putin's first big bite out of Ukraine has not satisfied him and he hungers for more. Many signs indicate Russian aggression threatens further incursions into Eastern Ukraine and possibly beyond.

Troops are positioned on the border, logistics for an invasion are arranged, and the Russian propaganda machine is once again ginning up the excuses needed to justify unjustifiable actions. The only thing I can conclude is that the lack of an effective, forceful response by the United States and by our allies--particularly our European allies--has given President Putin reason to expect that further aggression will not be punished. Despite all the rhetoric, despite all the tough talk, very little has been done, and--with what little has been done--there has been no effect to deter and to condemn what has taken place and deter further aggression.

From the beginning of this blatant act, I have waited for the administration to impose real costs on Russia for its illegal territorial aggression. So far, I have waited in vain.

For the past month, in two separate resolutions which I have offered on the floor, several speeches, and numerous opinion columns I have written in the media, I have consistently attempted to make the case for hard-hitting sanctions on Russia. I joined Senator Durbin, my colleague from Illinois, to achieve a unanimous bipartisan passage of an initial list of sanctions which would signal to Putin that the Senate was unified in condemning and sanctioning Russia for its blatant takeover of Crimea.

I stated at the time that this was an initial list and much tougher sanctions needed to come. But I wanted to give

the administration time to fashion those, to work with our allies across the ocean and to stand strong for the type of hard-hitting, hard-biting economic sanctions which would make Russia pay a real price, as we had said we were going to do.

The administration has to take the lead on economic sanctions because to implement the steps needed to ensure maximum effectiveness we need to coordinate with our friends and our allies. But I have seen little evidence that the administration is leading our European friends in the direction of such sanctions. I have not seen evidence that our European allies are willing to take the lead. I am therefore wondering if anyone is willing to take a lead in this effort.

More needs to be done--and more needs to be done now. With Russian troops mounting their vehicles on the Ukrainian border, the United States should be using every means available to press for firm measures, and our European allies should be joining us in this cause. Those measures should include imposing serious costs so such behavior will not be repeated.

Further, we should defend our allies and reassure them that we have their backs. We need to isolate Russia and prevent it from participating in organizations that give Putin credibility and strength. We should impose obstacles to prevent Russia from taking material advantage of their conquest, and we should convince other nations, businesses, and individuals to follow our lead.

I think recent history shows that in conflict issues around the world, if the United States does not take a firm and a strong lead, other nations simply do not feel they have the strength or the backing to take that lead. So it is imperative the United States takes that lead, steered by our President, and supported by a bipartisan Congress to send a unified message that we are willing to address egregious breaches of international law and lead the way in doing so.

The first task, as I see it, is to make sure we and others do not accept this aggression and annexation--what some others are already calling a fait accompli. Since the United States' refusal to recognize Soviet annexation of the three Baltic states 74 years ago, we have firmly and consistently refused to recognize such annexations. We must do the same in this case.

Unfortunately, words and actions from this administration and from many of our European allies continue to focus on threatening consequences for future Russian incursions, rather than on the illegal annexation that has already taken place. It is exactly this reluctance to impose costs for the annexation of a portion of the Ukraine that paves the way for further Russian aggression.

I sadly note that some of our best European friends are downplaying the importance of the invasion and annexation which have already taken place.

Just as Chancellor Merkel from Germany was showing signs of a more forceful German foreign policy in defense of European territorial integrity, it now appears Germany is showing more interest in dialogue and restraint, backing down from the tough talk about making Russia pay a price for the actions it has taken. I am convinced there is very little reason to believe that further aggression will be adequately discouraged or punished.

In this policy vacuum, if we don't find leadership from our administration or from the Europeans, I believe it is imperative that Congress act--and act now. So today, I am introducing yet another response in addition to those I have previously introduced addressing this situation in Ukraine.

I will be introducing to the Senate the Crimea Annexation Non- Recognition Act--legislation which would mandate an official policy of not recognizing Russian sovereignty over Crimea, its land, airspace, waters, and resources.

The purpose of this act is to ensure the United States will not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea nor take any action which would imply such recognition. Further, my bill imposes obstacles to Russian exploitation of Crimean resources by taking greater legal certainty about investing in Crimea, and it restricts foreign aid to countries which recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

I will illustrate some of the specific proposals I have introduced.

First, establish firm policy that the United States Government does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, its territory, airspace, and territorial waters, and may take no action that implies any recognition of Russian sovereignty.

Second, prohibit the United States from financing or guaranteeing investments in Crimea with Russia as an intermediary.

Third, oppose international financial institutions' assistance programs for Crimea that go through Russia as an intermediary.

Fourth, require the Department of Justice to affirm this nonrecognition policy upon request, in order to create greater legal uncertainty for those who hope to contract with Russia for exploitation of Crimean resources.

Fifth, deny entry to vessels sailing from Crimea with Russian customs documentation.

Sixth, prohibit U.S. ships and aircraft from taking action that imply Russian sovereignty over Crimea, its airspace or territorial waters.

And, seventh, prohibit some forms of foreign assistance to countries that recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

There are very few precedents in postwar history where a state has so boldly and aggressively used force against a neighbor for the purpose of territorial acquisition. What has happened in Crimea is a crime left over from an earlier age. We, together with our European friends, must move aggressively to oppose it before it becomes repetitive.

At a time when so much depends on Vladmir Putin's unspoken plans, it is not hard to guess how he will respond to meekness. The American response must be much greater if we want Putin to understand that his actions in Ukraine are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. At a minimum, I would suggest, Congress must refuse to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea by passing my legislation. I have proposed a number of sanctions which were added to other measures I have introduced and hopefully will convince this administration and our European allies to take a much tougher stance and provide much more of a penalty to Russia over the actions it has taken. I urge my colleagues to join me in this effort.

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

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

Thank you, Madam President.

Health Care

There was a new announcement today from the Secretary of Health and Human Services that 7.5 million people have signed up for private health care through the exchanges by virtue of the Affordable Care Act. The initial estimates from CBO last fall were that in the best case about 6 million people were going to sign up. We have blown through that enrollment expectation, and still, on this floor and in committee hearings as recently as this morning, Republicans continue to criticize and critique this law with blistering attacks--not because they have data on their side, not because they have evidence on their side, but because their entire electoral strategy for the fall depends on an assault on the Affordable Care Act.

The problem is that increasingly day by day, as more information comes out about the life-changing, life-altering success of this law, there simply is not the evidence to back up the claim from the Republicans that the Affordable Care Act isn't working. In fact, the reason why a new Washington Post poll shows that for the first time more Americans support the Affordable Care Act rather than oppose it is because they know the Affordable Care Act is working. Yet my good friend Representative Paul Ryan says that despite 7 million people signing up for the law, ``the architecture of this law is so fundamentally flawed that I think it is going to collapse under its own weight.''

One of our own colleagues said, ``I don't think the 7 million enrollment figure means anything. They are cooking the books on this.''

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer says that the 7.1 million enrollment figure was a ``phony number'' and that all the changes and delays must mean the majority of the law is already on its way out.

Well, that is the story Republicans are telling here in Washington, but our constituents in Democratic States and Republican States are telling a very different story.

I would like to talk about the numbers for a second because data can be pretty tricky when it gets in the way of your political argument. As one of our former colleagues from New York said--and I am paraphrasing--we are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

Here we are. This is the percentage of uninsured in the United States by quarter. We start in 2008, which is essentially the beginning of the recession, and, as would be expected over the course of the recession, the number of uninsured rises from 14.5 percent to a peak of 18 percent. But guess what happens when it hits the peak. The Affordable Care Act goes into operation. The Affordable Care Act begins to be implemented, and in a very short period of time from the beginning of enrollment until the end of the first period of enrollment being March 31, the number goes from 18 percent uninsured to 15.6 uninsured. That is a remarkable decrease over a very short period of time that can only be explained by the fact that 7 million people now have access to private health care insurance, another 3 million people have access to Medicaid, and another 3 million people on top of that have access to insurance on their parents' plans.

When we look at what has happened to young people over a similar period of time, we can see the same dynamic playing out. This is the rate of uninsured of 18- to 25-year-olds in this country. Here, they are at 28 percent. I mean, how on Earth, in the most affluent, most powerful country in the world, did we ever allow for more than one- quarter of our young people to be uninsured? But we were at 28.4 percent, and when the Affordable Care Act was passed and the first provision went into effect, it allowed people who were under 26 to stay on their parents' plans.

Look. The number starts to move downward. It is a pretty consistent downward slope, moving from 28 to about 24. Then the ACA plans start, and then the number--just as in the uninsured data for the population at large--drops again from 24 down to 21. It was 28 percent at the passage of the law, and it is 21.7 percent today.

Other studies show the same. This is survey data from Gallup, which is generally the gold standard on tracking the rate of uninsured in the country. But we also have a RAND study that was done. This is a very well-known consulting study which said that from the period of September of last year until mid-March, 9.3 million people who were uninsured became insured.

So when Republicans say this data doesn't really tell you the true story because these are all people just shifting from one plan to another, that is not true. The RAND study tells us that 9.3 million people who were uninsured became insured. The RAND study also says that 7.2 million people got access to employer-based insurance who didn't have it previously. And that data doesn't even include the surge of enrollment at the end of March. The RAND study only brings us up to about mid-March.

So this is the real story. This is what the numbers and the data tell us: that people are getting access to insurance for the first time ever. The Affordable Care Act isn't just shifting people from one insurance plan to another insurance plan; it is actually having a remarkable effect on the number of insured in this country.

I am not suggesting this trend line is going to continue along that axis, but, boy, if the next couple of years looks anything like the first 6 months of Affordable Care Act plans being available to people, we are going to see a revolution in this country in terms of the number of people who are outside our health care system. Yet this week was the 52nd, 53rd, 54th vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives. The Presiding Officer and I sat through probably 40 of those votes and there is another one today.

A budget presented, again, by Representative Paul Ryan would take away insurance from 7 million people who now have it, take away Medicaid coverage from 3 million more people who have it, would repeal a law that has provided $9 billion in savings for seniors when they are in the doughnut hole. And $9 billion is a big number and hard to comprehend. By the way, his bill would return that $9 billion to the drug industry because that is where it came from. It didn't shift money from one set of taxpayers to another set of taxpayers. The way we closed the doughnut hole was asking the drug industry to put up some money in order to help seniors.

The irony of all ironies is that the Ryan budget--while repealing all of the provisions that have provided insurance to over 10 million people and discounted health care for millions more--would keep in place the $716 billion in Medicare savings that Republicans and outside groups have hammered Democrats for supporting over the course of the last 5 years.

Over and over we have been told we are killing Medicare Advantage by asking Medicare Advantage to run their insurance plans for the same costs that Medicare charges. Yet despite all of the rhetoric, the Republican budget in the House would keep in place all of the Medicare cuts they have been running against outside of this building.

What our constituents know is that despite bumps in the road, the Affordable Care Act works. Anytime you reorder one-sixth of the American economy, you are going to have problems and you are going to have people who are going to be unhappy. The reality is that for decades we had the most expensive health care system in the

world, times two, compared to any other industrialized nation, and we were getting results that didn't measure up to the amount of money we were spending. We had 30 million people who were uninsured, rates of infant immortality and infections that were way above countries spending half as much as we did. We had to make a change. That there were 54 votes in the House of Representatives to repeal the bill, and not a single effort to replace it, tells you that it has been Democrats who have been willing to step to the plate and do the tough reform necessary to try to make changes that were 100 years overdue. The numbers don't lie in the end.

I get it that Republicans think they can win an election by continuing to hammer away at the Affordable Care Act, but there are 7\1/2\ million people who now have private health care. There are 3 million people who now have access to Medicaid. There are 3 million more young adults who can stay on their parents' plans. RAND and Gallup tell us that the number of people without insurance in this country is absolutely plummeting by the day. All of that is evidence that despite the best intentions from our Republicans to undermine the law the ACA works.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor about an hour or so after a vote on a motion to proceed to take up the Paycheck Fairness Act. I struggled with my decision as to whether to move to this measure that I feel was flawed in terms of its approach to a solution or to recognize that perhaps this measure was more of an exercise in political messaging rather than an effort to resolve what I believe is an issue.

In sorting through all aspects of not only the merits of the legislation, but also the facts as they exist back home, the facts as they exist around this country, where we see pay disparity between men and women, I had a lot on my mind. I had a lot to weigh. I did not come to the floor yesterday to speak with the many who rose to either offer proposed amendments to the Paycheck Fairness Act or those who rose to speak to defend the act. I don't want my silence yesterday to be construed that I don't think there is an issue here; that I don't think this is something that needs to be addressed.

Yesterday was national Equal Pay Day, the day when, according to the Department of Labor, women's wages supposedly catch up to men's wages. We can argue and we can debate what that gap is--whether it is 77 cents, whether those statistics are outdated, whether it is closer to 82 cents or what the raw statistics are. We can debate that. But the fact is--and I think the Presiding Officer and I would agree--if there is any discrepancy there, it is worth looking at. Why does a discrepancy exist? Is there disparity that stems from discrimination? Because if it stems from discrimination, it should not be allowed-- pretty simply.

In Alaska, the statistics are a little bit different than what we have on the national level. In my State, Equal Pay Day is not going to occur until May 5.

As an Alaskan, as a woman, and as one who has been in the Alaska job market, I want to know: Why the greater disparity in my State?

We had a women's summit in Anchorage, AK, last October. I worked with a former colleague in the Alaska State legislature to host a summit designed to look at many of the issues women face in Alaska, whether it is pay disparity, childcare affordability, access to health care--so many of the issues and concerns women all over the country deal with day to day. We relied on a study from the state Legislative Research Services. A portion of the research tried to drill down into some of the pay disparities we have in the State.

In 2010 our State Department of Labor reported a wage gap of 67 cents or 33 percent. This statistic is different from the overall national averages because that review conducted by Legislative Research Services included part-time as well as full-time workers and part-time workers generally receive lower salaries. That may be one reason for the disparity.

But when we look at some of the areas where there are discrepancies, it really does cause one to say: Wait a minute. In areas where occupations are significantly male-dominated--crab fishermen, for instance, welders on the pipeline--occupations where the pay is really quite substantial, we might look at that and say, OK, I understand why there might be a discrepancy. But there are other occupations that have some surprising statistics. For example, back in 2010 the average earnings for a male physician were $229,312, but the average for a woman physician was $166,000. It doesn't make sense.

In certain areas, women out-earn men--dietitians, for instance. The ratio of women's to men's earnings is 170 percent, according to the raw numbers. For legal secretaries, the ratio of women's to men's earnings is 132 percent.

For teachers, the ratio of women's to men's earnings is 125 percent.

We need to peel back the onion to understand what we are dealing with--is this a situation where it is the difference in the career choice that has made the distinction with the pay disparity? If that is the case, what are we doing to encourage women to go into areas where, quite clearly, earning opportunities are better?

When we look at occupations, I think it is something that needs to be considered. When we talk about a wage disparity, a pay disparity, I think we need to look very critically at whether there are other factors that come into play. Is it a career choice? Is it the need or desire for flexibility?

Starting out as a young lawyer in Anchorage, I was making what the young men in the firm were making. But when my husband and I decided that I wanted to spend more time at home with our boys, I negotiated for that level of flexibility. That put me behind my male counterparts in the firm. I was good with that. That was a choice I made. I wanted that flexibility.

Are there other nonmonetary forms of compensation that perhaps the wage gap statistics don't necessarily respect? We don't know. So this is where I came down in my decision process as to which direction to take on the Paycheck Fairness Act vote that we had just an hour or so ago. Do we want to try to address what I believe is an issue in that we do have a disparity but how we understand what causes that disparity and, then, what we do with that going forward is an important consideration.

We have the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that imposes strict liability for wage disparity based on gender. It is in law. We have title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that protects against all forms of employment discrimination, including on the basis of sex. But maybe we are not enforcing these Federal laws as we need to. If after all these years we are still seeing areas of disparity that we cannot reconcile based on occupation or based on desire for flexibility, does there continue to be discrimination? That is what we need to get to.

That is why I and many of my colleagues supported some of the amendments that were presented yesterday and I think were important to present--to make sure there is no retaliation for a woman when she inquires as to what others are making to determine whether there is discrimination, so making sure we are able to access that information. However, when we take a proposal like the Paycheck Fairness Act that has an initial presumption that the employer has unlawfully discriminated against an employee if there is a difference in pay--if we start off with a presumption of discrimination, it is pretty hard for an employer--particularly a small employer--to deal with that, to defend that, to present the case, to really work through this issue.

The solution should not be more litigation as the Paycheck Fairness Act response is here. The solution needs to be more all-encompassing because we have laws on the books that already say it is illegal to discriminate. If we are still seeing instances of discrimination--and, again, let's figure out where and why and how--then let's honestly try to address that rather than through messaging efforts that are designed to elevate the issue, which is fair, but then not be pragmatic about how we approach the solutions.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from this morning's Washington Post titled ``President Obama's persistent `77-cent' claim on wage gap gets a new Pinocchio rating.''

Included in this article is the following quote referencing a study by the Census Bureau:

This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the

differences in the compensation of men and women are the

result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap

should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action.

Indeed, there may be nothing to correct.

I don't know that. There indeed may be more that we can correct. I am willing to look to see, to continue to peel back this onion to see if we can do more than we did with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, do more than we did with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, do more than we did with the Lilly Ledbetter Act that I supported several years ago. If there is more that needs to be done, I am willing to work on it because I don't want to be in a State where men are viewed as being paid $1 to the 67 cents that a woman is being paid. I don't want those statistics to be valid. I don't want them to play out in my State. I want to understand how we ensure that there is a level of fairness. I think we need to make sure we look keenly to the issue of whether there is discrimination at play or whether, in fact, there are a host of other issues we need to consider as well. I am willing to work in good faith with my colleagues to do just that.

I see the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is with us.

(Mr. MARKEY assumed the Chair.)

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, 5 years ago, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law by President Obama. That bill--necessary because of a divided decision by the Supreme Court to strike a blow to the rights of working families in Vermont and across the country--was a first step in closing the still-existing gender wage gap. Today, one day after commemorating Equal Pay Day, Senators will once again have the opportunity to stand with working families and support equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender.

I am proud to cosponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Senator Mikulski--a trailblazer herself--has once again introduced to close loopholes that allow employers to unfairly discriminate workers based on gender. Thanks to the hard work and perseverance of earlier generations, working women today have career and business opportunities never before available. Yet, despite the gains we have made, there remains a troubling constant--women continue to earn less than men. According to the Census Bureau, women still only earn 77 cents for

every dollar a man earns. This disparity has real-world, financial consequences: on average, women are paid more than $11,000 per year less than men. And of American households with children under the age of 18, 40 percent list women as their sole or primary earners. The wage gap based on gender is hurting low- and middle-income families who, in today's economy, still wrestle with putting food on the table, heating their homes, paying the mortgage, and saving for college.

Vermont has been a national leader in addressing equal pay for equal work. In 2002, Vermont adopted its own Equal Pay Act, making it illegal for employers to offer anything less than equal pay for equal work. Still, in Vermont, where 22,000 households are headed by women, the yearly gender pay gap is nearly $6,000. More needs to be done, and we can do better.

Our national march toward equality continues. The Paycheck Fairness Act builds on efforts that date back more than 50 years to ensure a balanced and equal playing field in the workplace for both men and women. The Paycheck Fairness Act will require employers to show a difference in pay is truly linked to job performance and not to gender. It will protect employees from being retaliated against by their employers for discussing salaries with colleagues, and remove obstacles to challenging pay discrimination in a court of law. It will provide employers with assistance to create equal pay practices and recognize those who already adhere to such practices. These are commonsense provisions we can all support.

The Paycheck Fairness Act has twice before been filibustered in the Senate. Meanwhile, hard-working families across the country, anchored by the incomes of hard-working women, continue to struggle. Equal pay for equal work is a matter of simple fairness, and the Paycheck Fairness Act is an important step towards just that. I urge all Senators to support this bill.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished senior Senator from Alaska for yielding. I was interested in hearing her speech too.

Landmines

The Presiding Officer represents the beautiful Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But consider if 15 percent of the land area of Massachusetts was littered with 100,000 landmines or if my State of Vermont, with a slightly larger land area, was littered with landmines. Each one a tiny explosive buried a few inches beneath the surface of the ground, and it explodes when an unsuspecting person steps on it. Each one capable of killing a child or blowing the legs off of an adult.

This may sound far-fetched, but it is not. It is the reality today for many countries--from Vietnam to Angola to Colombia. But if that were the reality in our States, I think we would all agree that these inherently indiscriminate weapons--designed to be triggered by the victim regardless of whether it is a civilian or combatant--do not belong in the arsenal of a civilized country.

In fact, 161 nations have already agreed, and they have joined together in an international treaty banning antipersonnel mines. They include every member of NATO except one--the United States. They include every country in this hemisphere except two--the United States and Cuba.

We condemn the use of IED's against our soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, and of course we should. But why not condemn antipersonnel landmines? There is really no appreciable difference.

I am hoping some will be listening to me at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue because I ask this: If landmines were littering this country--in schoolyards, along roads, in cornfields, in our National Parks--and hundreds of American children were being crippled like this Cambodian girl who lost her left foot, how long would it take before the White House sent the Mine Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification? Two days? Two weeks? It wouldn't take any longer than that, I am sure. Yet we hear the same excuses year after year.

I look at my five beautiful grandchildren and I ask, what if they were living in a country where simply by walking across a field, going to a playground, or walking down a road, they might lose their lives? They are not combatants. It is usually civilians who are injured and killed by these landmines. We hear the same excuses year after year-- why the most powerful Nation on earth cannot join its NATO allies, why the most powerful Nation on earth is the only country other than Cuba in this hemisphere not to sign it. What do we get? The same talking points, the same power points. It is really bureaucratic inertia. It is also a lack of leadership.

For 20 years the Pentagon insisted that Korea was the problem. But 20 years later, there is absolutely no evidence they have done anything to revise their Korea war plans without antipersonnel mines or that any President, Democratic or Republican, has ever told them to do so.

The U.S. Government deserves credit for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clear mines and help mine survivors, and the Leahy War Victims Fund has been an important part of that, including the money I have gotten through appropriations to clear land mines.

But this girl--and there are countless more like her--we are told there are thousands of new mine victims each year, show the other tragic side of the story.

I mentioned on the floor the other day about talking to a young teenager in the hospital about the Bosnia war. She had been sent away by her parents to a safe place during the fighting. The war ended. She could come home. She was running down the road calling out to her parents and stepped on a land mine and lost both her legs. She wasn't a combatant. She became a victim. There are so many innocent victims.

Americans overwhelmingly condemn the use of landmines, and they expect more than they are getting from their government, and so do I, and so, too, should every Member of Congress.

It has been 20 years since President Bill Clinton at the United Nations called for the elimination of antipersonnel landmines. I cheered him when he did. Two years later in 1996 he said: ``Today I am launching an international effort to ban antipersonnel landmines.'' And I cheered that. But 18 years later we are still waiting. We are waiting for action, not words. We haven't signed the landmine treaty. We didn't sign it during the Clinton administration or the George W. Bush administration or this administration.

I have spoken to President Obama about this. I was encouraged when, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, he said:

I am convinced that adhering to standards, international

standards, strengthens those who do and isolates and weakens

those who don't.

I told the President how much I agreed with his words. Coincidentally, when he received the Nobel Prize it was a decade after the Nobel committee awarded the prize to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. How fitting it would be after all these years if my friend, President Obama, gave real meaning to the words he said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize by putting the United States on a path to join the Mine Ban Treaty, and joining our NATO allies. This is what the President needs to do. More importantly, it is what America and the world needs.

I will speak further about this on another occasion, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I thank Senator Leahy for yielding.

Mr. President, every now and then there are figures who come along who play a profound and transformative role in the period in which they are living. Phil Hoff is one of those people. We are here to celebrate his 90th birthday and the work he has done in Vermont and around the country and the life he and his wife Joan have lived, both of whom have done so much for the people of the State of Vermont.

Phil Hoff was the 73rd Governor of the State of Vermont. He was in many ways the founder of progressive politics in our State. It is now recognized--and we say this proudly, although not everybody necessarily is as proud of it as we are--but Vermont is now one of the more progressive States in the United States of America. We have been a leader for the rights of working people, for the environment, for women's rights, for gay rights, for kids, and we are proud of that, but none of that would have happened--we would not be where we are today-- if it had not been for the work of Phil Hoff, who has Governor of our State and was elected in 1962.

I am going to yield to my colleague Senator Leahy now. I have a lot more I wish to say, but let me begin the discussion by saying that we in Vermont are extraordinarily fortunate that one of the great Governors of his time is a real visionary, a man who led the beginning of making profound changes in the State of Vermont.

I yield back to the senior Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy.

Mr. President, way back in 1968 as a young man, I got a job at the Department of Taxation in a small building on State Street across the street from the statehouse, working for the administration, then-Governor Hoff, and that was a very important experience for me and helped me shape some of my views which I carry today.

Phil Hoff's career of public service began during World War II when he put his studies on hold and joined the Navy, eventually joining the submarine service. He served on the USS Sea Dog in the Pacific theater, going on a number of combat tours in the dangerous waters near the main islands of Japan.

While in naval training in New London, CT, a friend of his set up a blind date with a Connecticut college student. Her name was Joan Brower, and she and Phil would be married after the war--a marriage that was to last for six rich decades.

I know Senator Leahy and his wife, as well as myself and my wife Jane, know the Hoffs very well. We know Joan and know of her years of dedication to the people of the State of Vermont, especially in the area of education. So she in her own right has been a very important figure in our State.

After Phil Hoff's graduation from Cornell Law School, he and Joan moved to Burlington, VT, in 1951. Deeply committed to social justice, he became involved in Democratic Party politics and did that despite the fact that he grew up in a Republican family.

Senator Leahy will remember that way back then, there was a group of what they called the Young Turks--younger Democrats who came into a very conservative Republican legislature. Most of them were under 40. Many of them were veterans of World War II. They moved forward to try to bring about some long needed change in the State.

Their experience in the legislature motivated Phil Hoff to run for Governor in 1962. As Senator Leahy indicated, if my memory is correct, he was the first Democrat elected Governor since the Civil War; is that right?

For more than 100 years--I think many people don't know this--the Republican Party dominated Vermont politics, controlling both Houses of the legislature and the Governor's office.

This is a funny story. Even in the landslide Presidential election of 1936, when FDR--Franklin Delano Roosevelt--won a huge landslide victory, Vermont joined Maine as the only State in the country to vote against Roosevelt and vote for Alfred Landon, and thus came the well- known expression: ``As goes Maine, so goes Vermont.'' What Phil Hoff helped do is lead Vermont out of a one-party State, badly in need of reforms, and brought that State in many significant ways into the second half of the 20th century.

I yield back to the senior Senator from Vermont.

Mr. President, Senator Leahy talked about the influence Governor Hoff had on the State. Let me give some examples of what he did.

Senator Leahy will remember in the early 1960s we had the situation in Vermont where the Vermont State House of Representatives, people were represented by every town. I lived for a while in the town of Stannard, VT, which has maybe 100, 150 people, and they had the same vote in the legislature as Burlington, VT, the largest city in the State, which has 40,000 people. Under Phil Hoff, what we moved to in the State--and with the Supreme Court ruling dealing with proper apportionment--was person, one vote, so the house began to reflect the population locations of the State and not just every town.

In addition to that, when Phil Hoff was Governor of the State, he successfully insisted on repealing Vermont's poll tax. Now we think that is ancient history. What the poll tax said is that in order to vote, you have to pay a certain amount of money, which, obviously, is discriminatory to lower income people. That was repealed under Hoff's era as Governor.

He understood and his wife understood the importance of education. What Governor Hoff did was he quadrupled State aid to public schools and organized the three State teachers colleges into a new, revitalized State college system that better met the needs of Vermont's students. That system endures to this day. We have a very strong system of State colleges in Vermont, and that began under the Hoff era.

Under Governor Hoff's leadership, Vermont's judicial system was modernized. Always a path breaker and an advocate for justice, Phil Hoff led the way to Vermont becoming one of the first States in the country to abolish the death penalty.

No aspect of State government was beneath his notice, and he took Vermont forward in many ways, including terminating the outdated ``overseer of the poor'' system. That was something he changed as well. He established the Vermont district court State court system, the Judicial Nominating Board, the Vermont State Housing Authority, and the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation--a program which today plays a very vital role in making sure young people in Vermont can get a college education.

What was also--and Senator Leahy knows this better than I--rather extraordinary about Phil Hoff is he understood that positive change could not take place in Vermont unless change was taking place throughout the country. In that area, being the Governor of one of the smallest States in the country, this man showed extraordinary courage, and he said: Do you know what. That war in Vietnam is not good for Vermont, it is not good for America.

He was one of the first public officials, as I recall, I say to Senator Leahy, to speak out. That took a whole lot of courage, to speak out against the war in Vietnam. He took it a step further. Here you had Lyndon Johnson at that time--who I think will go down in history, except for that war in Vietnam, as one of our great Presidents--and Phil Hoff said: Do you know what. Maybe we need a change in the White House, and maybe we should be looking at somebody like Bobby Kennedy rather than Lyndon Johnson.

But, I say to Senator Leahy, I know he was involved in some of that as a young man.

Let me concur with Senator Leahy. We take this opportunity to wish Governor Hoff a very happy 90th birthday. Jane and I see him quite often, and we just bumped into Phil and Joan recently. We look forward to continuing that relationship.

The bottom line is, as Senator Leahy said, we are very proud that Vermont is a leader in so many areas in terms of social justice, in terms of environmental sanity, in terms of protecting the needs of ordinary people. That transformation and those efforts did not come about by accident, and certainly one of the great leaders in moving us in that direction was the man we honor today; that is, Philip H. Hoff. We wish him the very, very best in the years to come.

With that, I yield the floor.