Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I join my colleague and ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from Vermont, as well as my colleague, the Senator from Massachusetts, in expressing support for the amendment we

will vote upon either tonight or tomorrow, and to express my displeasure that the documents that we have received are so inadequate in terms of what we have requested.

The first point I will make is, don't let anybody think that because this is a thick pile, it really has the nub of the matter. It does not.

The bottom line is that I would say that an ounce of disclosure is going to buy this White House a pound of problems. These documents raise more questions than they answer. The White House is better off coming clean and releasing all relevant and nonclassified documents.

In the Judiciary Committee, we have asked the administration for 23 specific documents as a starting point. Of the 13 the White House released today, only 3 are among those we asked for; 3 out of 23 is not a very good average. It is not even a good batting average, and we are pretty lenient there when we are above a third.

It seems painfully clear that this administration devised a strained--some would say tortured--new definition of torture. Then someone in the administration authorized the use of new ``interrogation techniques'' that would have run afoul of the old definition of torture but under the new definition were permissible.

Anybody who thinks those line soldiers at Abu Ghraib were acting on their own initiative must have his head in the sand.

It is absolutely unacceptable that the actions of a few in our military and our Government have brought shame on the 99.9 percent of our troops who serve us so honorably and well and are fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people.

We must not compound that error by letting a few soldiers at the bottom of the line take the fall if authorities higher up gave them the green light.

This matter must be pursued no matter where it leads, no matter how high it goes. If anyone at the Cabinet level or in the White House opened the door to the kind of abuse we saw in those pictures from Abu Ghraib, it is time to own up to it.

The credibility of the administration is on the line and the release of a handful of documents simply doesn't do the job.

I will repeat that it is not enough to release a few inches of documents. The White House should publicly disclose all relevant and nonclassified documents. Relevant classified documents should be provided to the Judiciary Committee and Armed Services Committee so we can get to the bottom of this.

Mr. President, I am aware of the difficulties in these situations. We are in the post-9/11 world, a brave new world. Sometimes things do have to change and be adjusted. We don't know where the balance should be exactly. That is the difficulty. But one thing I know for sure is that there should be debate as to what methods of interrogation should be allowed and used because that deals with the fundamental balance of security and liberty, and that is the balance the Founding Fathers focused on probably more than any other. That is the balance; they wanted open debate.

So the thing I am sure of is not where you draw the line. I think anybody who says that is certainly making a mistake. Rather, the thing I am certain of is, if there is open debate and discussion between the executive and legislative branches, which is what the Founding Fathers most certainly intended, we will almost inevitably end up in these most serious and delicate matters with a very good solution.

The problem, of course, is this: The Justice Department and the Attorney General have a penchant for secrecy. They have avoided at all costs open debate and discussion. The results almost always inevitably boomerang on them, and they end up having to backtrack anyway, but in a way that doesn't do justice and do right for the people they represent and for America and the world.

So the bottom line is this: At the end of the day, if we don't know who authorized what, when it was authorized, and whether it explains why the detainees at Abu Ghraib were treated the way they were, then the job is simply not done.

I thank my colleagues from Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Illinois for their leadership on this issue and encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield back the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I want to join all of my colleagues, including my good friend, the Senator from Kentucky, my colleague and friend, Senator Clinton, Senator Bingaman, and so many others who are in support of this bipartisan amendment, which would not only improve many of the unsuccessful provisions of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, but it would also address critical areas of concern important to workers that were not properly dealt with in the original legislation.

For decades during the cold war, thousands of New Yorkers labored in hazardous conditions at DOE and contractor facilities, unaware of the considerable health risks. Workers at these facilities handled high levels of radioactive materials and were responsible for helping create the huge nuclear arsenal that served as a deterrent to the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Although Government scientists knew of the dangers posed by radiation, workers were given little or no protection, and many have been diagnosed with cancer.

During the cold war, New York alone was home to 36 former atomic weapon employer sites and DOE cleanup facilities. In the 8 counties of western New York--in the Buffalo and Niagara region, where this is particularly a problem--there were 14 facilities that participated in the manufacture of America's nuclear arsenal.

Despite having one of the greatest concentrations of facilities involved in nuclear weapons production-related activities in the Nation, western New York continued to be seriously underserved by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, not just for a year or two but for many years. Many constituents from my State went unaware of the program entirely or were not provided with sufficient information about how the claimant process worked. In the opinion of my constituents, this program was completely ineffectual in its ability to address their questions and concerns properly.

Despite statutory language in section 3631 of the original legislation, which required DOL to provide outreach and claimant assistance, the only assistance applicants received when applying for this program was from a traveling resource center that came to the area too infrequently to serve the public.

Today I am happy to say that the Bunning-Bingaman amendment would substantially improve the effectiveness of outreach and claimant assistance to applicants from the New York region by recognizing the need for a resource center in western New York. This is something we have been pushing for years. This would be a substantial step toward improving services for workers in my home State.

Upon successful passage of this legislation, I look forward to working with the newly established Office of the Ombudsman to locate a resource center in the western New York region. A permanent facility would not only increase awareness of the program among residents but would help serve workers throughout the claimant process.

Furthermore, this legislation would repair the definition of an ``atomic weapons employee'' to assure that those exposed to residual radiation after a facility finished processing radioactive materials for nuclear weapons programs would qualify to apply for benefits--a truly fundamental expansion on which my esteemed colleague Senator Clinton has been a leader.

In a report released at the end of 2003, NIOSH identified 86 atomic weapons employer facilities across the country where there was a potential for significant residual radiation outside the period in which weapons-related production occurred, and 14 of those are in my home State of New York.

Passage of this new legislation would provide a significant opportunity for sick nuclear workers from across New York and the country who were formally excluded from this program to receive the compensation they deserve.

While the act was enacted to provide compensation to employees of the Department of Energy and its contractors who were exposed to radiation or other toxic substances, a significant portion of this program utterly failed--utterly failed--in its obligations to thousands of Americans who dutifully acted as soldiers on the front lines of the nuclear arms race.

After 4 years and more than $90 million in administrative funding, DOE admits they have only provided compensation to 4 claimants of the more than 24,000 who have applied for assistance under subtitle D. There have been multiple Senate hearings examining the failures of this program and particularly of subtitle D. GAO has studied DOE's efforts under subtitle D and found significant problems with both DOE's claims review process and the ability to pay valid claims.

Today we owe it to those who sacrificed their health and safety for the security of America to pass the Bunning-Bingaman amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this amendment is an important amendment to this bill. It is passing with bipartisan cosponsorship, both the House and the Senate unanimously. It shows we can get things done in a bipartisan way. In good part that is because of my colleague from Alabama. I salute him for his leadership on this issue. He originally discovered the loophole about contractors who work for DOE, that they could not be prosecuted should they commit crimes abroad. He successfully passed a law last year about this issue.

When we discovered all the problems in the prisons in Iraq, it was clear that not all the contractors were contracted to by DOD. Other agencies contracted them. It made sense to me that we prosecute them as well. I believe it

made sense to everybody. So I suggest to my colleague from Alabama that we work together to expand the amendment to include all contractors who work abroad who commit crimes or potential crimes.

As usual, we worked very well together on this. I thank the Senator for his leadership in passing the original bill, now law, and now amending this to broaden it.

The amendment Senator Sessions and I are offering today will close a dangerous loophole in our criminal law that would have allowed civilian contractors who do the crime to escape doing the time. As I mentioned, Senator Sessions closed part of this loophole a few years ago when he passed the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and showed a great deal of foresight with that legislation.

The problem is that aside from Senator Sessions' bill there are negligently few provisions that give DOJ the power to go after civilian contractors. In short, if they do not contract with DOD, there is too strong a likelihood they will escape prosecution. Nothing in this amendment should be interpreted as undermining ongoing DOJ investigations or providing a basis for argument that DOJ does not have jurisdiction to prosecute contractor crimes in Iraq. Title 18, section 7, of the Criminal Code clearly confers such jurisdiction. This amendment covers contractors and territory for which title 18, section 7, does not confer jurisdiction.

I am proud to have worked with my colleague from Alabama to get this done. By passing this amendment today, this body gains stature because an important amendment is passed in a bipartisan way, and our country gains stature because the world sees when a crime is committed, unlike in so many other places in America, it is prosecuted.

With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.

I did not hear the request.

I apologize. I thought something was said about 10 minutes.

Yes.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida for his persistence to get to the truth, and my colleague from Delaware, who succinctly described our problem brilliantly in terms of the ideology of the neocons running into reality. I could not agree more.

Ever since I was in college in the late 1960s, I would say to my colleagues, ideologues have bothered me. Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble. They can be ideologues of the far left, they can be ideologues of the far right, they can be ideologues just on one issue. America is a place where we all

come together. It is a place of consensus.

I tend to believe in a strong and muscular foreign policy. I think the war on terror is real. But by being so blind to the realities of the world, those who are hawks should be more angry at some of the things that have been done, as my colleague from Delaware outlined, than those who are doves because we are going to need strength and fortitude to continue this war for decades.

I thank both my colleagues. I was privileged to listen to their erudite and illuminating explanation.

Over the last few days, we have been discussing the question: Are we better off than 4 years ago? We have been discussing mainly domestic issues the last few days. Today we are discussing it on national security; are we better off than we were 4 years ago. I guess this means our safety. And there are pluses and minuses.

Certainly in the wake of September 11 and the horrible attacks--and now that the September 11 Commission was in my city yesterday, I am living them all over again and it shakes my insides to remember what happened, to remember going the day after with my colleague, Senator Clinton and Mayor Guiliani and the Governor, and seeing what happened-- certainly we have responded. It is good we have responded. Some do not want to respond or find every response wrong, and you get caught in a quagmire of no response, which would be the worst response, in my opinion.

Having said that, I focus on two areas where we should be a lot better off than we were 4 years ago, where there is a large deficiency. One I will touch on is Iraq. Again, as somebody who supported the President going into Iraq and supported the $87 billion, I am troubled, deeply troubled, by the lack of planning, not just in the prisons but in the whole way the peace has been managed.

No one knows what is going to happen on June 30. We set a June 30 deadline and then we have to fill in the blanks. What do we want to do? How long does it take? The lack of planning has been troubling. It is taking the great military victory we had in Iraq, a justified victory, and turning it into certainly less than a complete success in terms of what happened afterward.

So this inadequate planning, the ``go it alone'' attitude which my colleagues discussed, means we should be a lot better off than we were.

The place I want to focus on in my remaining few minutes is homeland security. It is a truism that has been stated before, but it is not irrelevant still. To win a war, to win a game, you need a good offense and a good defense. My colleagues talked about some of the problems on our team's offense. Let me talk about our problems on our team's defense. We are better off than we were 4 years ago in terms of homeland security. No question. Our guard was down, we know that. But we are not close to where we should be.

What has happened is basically this: While this administration is willing to fully fund the war on terror overseas--and we will get repeated requests for more dollars, which we will support, provided they are planned out and we see what they are doing with the money--we are totally short on homeland security. There are so many areas where we are weak: Port security, rail security, computer technology, the borders, who is coming in and who is not.

What is frustrating is, we can solve all these problems. They are not technologically beyond our reach. We can have foreigners cross our borders free and clear and yet keep bad people out if we have the right computer systems and the right cards that we can give to foreigners before they come in.

We can make our rail and our ports far more secure. We can develop devices that can detect explosives and biological and chemical weapons. We can detect nuclear devices so, God forbid, if one is sent over here, we will get it at the borders.

And why is the pace so slow? I will tell you why. Somehow the priorities in the White House are not to spend money on homeland security. It is to talk about it. It is to do some photo opportunities. Let me share with the American people somebody who has been deeply concerned and ahead of our task force on this side on homeland security. Every time we ask for the dollars that are needed to tighten one area--we say $10 is needed, and they say, We will give you $1.50.

An example, shoulder-held missiles. We know the terrorists have them. God forbid, they smuggle 10 of them into this country, and on a given moment take down a plane in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Miami. The mayhem. Of course, all the progress we are trying to make on the economy would go right down the drain. No one would fly for 6 months or a year.

We can arm every one of our commercial planes so they can avoid these shoulder-held missiles. Our military planes have them. Air Force One has them. People on their own private jets, wealthy people, have them. We are not doing it on our commercial planes. It is a slow walk.

We said take $8 billion to do the whole thing in 2 years out of the $80 billion we are spending on the missile defense system--which was designed to fight Russia and now Russia, thank God, or the Communist Soviet Union, is no longer our enemy. And they said no. They do not say let's not do it, but they say let's spend $50 million and study it.

We know what is going on. I have spoken to people in the White House who will talk to me privately and say they will not spend a nickel on homeland security. Between the military and the idea of cutting taxes, cutting taxes, cutting taxes, you cannot do it all. And it seems to me homeland security should be just as high a priority as helping our troops overseas fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet there is nothing.

It hurts our localities. It is not just New York City, my city, where, obviously, we have a real problem. In Buffalo, Rochester, and smaller places, Watertown, Jamestown, talk to the police and fire departments, and they are trying to do their job. They do not have the dollars to do it. So they stretch and do their best. But it is not being done right.

In place after place after place, we are only inspecting 2 percent of the containers that come in on our ships. Two percent? Do you want there to be a 2-percent chance that we stop someone from smuggling in something terrible? We have the technology to do it. It costs dollars. We cannot do homeland security without the necessary resources to make it happen.

And every single time, the one place where we have done a good job is on air security, to prevent people from smuggling weapons on the planes. Even there we are not doing enough, but we have done better.

I give credit in one other place: In the biological area, we are doing a B. It is not an A--it should be an A--but we are doing B. In almost every one of the other areas we are at C's, D's, and F's.

Who in America would not spend dollars to make us safe so that, God forbid, another September 11 does not happen? No one. But, once again, it is the ideologues in the White House who say they hate spending money on domestic things. It is not just education or health care, it is homeland security.

So we are not as well off, we are not close to as well off as we should be. We can do a lot better.

The bottom line is this: In area after area we should be far more secure than we are. We have taken some steps in every area, but who wants to wake up one morning and say: What if? God forbid, there was a terrorist incident the day before, and we say: What if we had put the detectors on the cranes and ports to avoid nuclear? What if we had made our ports secure?

Mr. President, I hope the administration will change its view on homeland security and spend the dollars that are necessary.

Mr. President, I commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

On May 17, 1954, Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court, which stated, ``We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of `separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.''

The decision made a statement about the course that this country needed to take to achieve the greatness that we, as a Nation, are capable of achieving. Brown v. Board of Education became the measure of equality--and a platform on which the civil rights era was born.

In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL, bus to a white person and was arrested. This sparked an outrage in the African American community, who decided to boycott the city's buses as a way to challenge the city's segregation laws. The boycott led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision that banned segregated buses.

In September 1957, the commitment to equality in education was reiterated in Little Rock, AK, when President Eisenhower sent troops to Central High School to uphold the Supreme Court's desegregation order protecting the rights of the ``Little Rock Nine.''

In 1960, four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, NC, were refused service at a lunch counter at the F.W. Woolworth Store. They sat quietly, without being served, until the store's closing. The next day, they returned with 25 more students from the college. Peaceful protests at lunch counters across the country were initiated and lasted for weeks. The lunch counter protests resulted in a number of stores integrating prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On October 1, 1962, federal officials escorted James Meredith, as he became the first African American to enroll at, and later graduate from, the University of Mississippi.

On August 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands of marchers--of all races-- descended on Washington, DC to urge Congress to pass legislation to provide equal access to public facilities, quality education, sufficient employment and housing options for African Americans.

The Brown decision and the events flowing from it were major catalysts that led the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

While we must never lose sight of the benefit and the power of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, we must not believe that the fight for true equality is over and won.

Fifty years later, our country is struggling along the path toward a truly equal society. Unfortunately, today, in many areas, we are still separate and unequal. Individuals come to work in integrated environments and return home to segregated neighborhoods. Parents send their children to schools that seem to be returning to those reminiscent of the days of segregation.

The road to Brown v. Board of Education was not an easy one, nor was it swift. So, on this, the 50th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, it is important that we not only recognize the struggle behind the Civil Rights movement, but that we rededicate ourselves to the goal of providing equal opportunity for all.

Mr. President, I rise today to remember and pay tribute to the late Senator Jacob Javits on what would have been his 100th birthday. I have the honor of currently serving in his Senate seat and I remember Jack with the deepest admiration and affection. We shared many passions, and one true love--New York and its citizens.

Jack did both jobs of Senator so well. He was a big thinker, a compassionate and visionary legislator, an important actor in global affairs. But when an ordinary citizen or a non-profit group or struggling company in New York needed his help, he was there. And that was his legacy; he made all our lives better.

Born in a tenement on the lower east side of Manhattan on May 18, 1904, Jack was the son of Jewish immigrant parents from Galicia and the Turkish Empire. He was educated in New York City's public schools, attended night classes at Columbia University and graduated from New York University Law School in 1926. From there he practiced law in New York City until joining the Army in 1941. Javits served in both Europe and the Pacific during World War II and was discharged as a lieutenant colonel in 1945. After the war, Jack resumed practicing law until he ran for office in 1946.

In 1946, Jack was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in New York's traditionally Democratic 21st District, which included Manhattan's upper west side, home to Columbia University. He served in the House for 8 years and had a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He then served as New York's attorney general from 1954 to 1956. In 1956, Jack won election to the United States Senate, defeating New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. He would go on to serve 24 years in the Senate, tied with Senator Moynihan for the longest service of any New York Senator.

He served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1969, later attaining the position of ranking Republican member. His service on that committee would spur a lifelong interest and involvement with foreign affairs and particularly Israel. He also served as ranking member of the Labor and Human Resources Committee and the Committee on Governmental Affairs.

Although he had a long and distinguished Senate career, Jack was most beloved and admired for his courageous efforts in the civil rights struggle. From his very first days in the Senate, Jack was a courageous leader in the fight against segregation and racial discrimination. He campaigned passionately for passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act and played a major role in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in other civil rights legislation that followed.

During the Vietnam era, Jack became a major critic of the war, and subsequently, one of his major concerns became the question of who has the power to make war. Jack was a primary sponsor of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which reestablished congressional responsibility, rather than presidential, to commit U.S. armed forces abroad in the absence of a formal declaration of war.

He was deeply troubled that the Congress had in many ways abdicated its proper role during the Vietnam War. I think many of us today share the very same concerns that Jack had some 30 years ago. For Jack cared deeply about the U.S. Senate, its debates, its constitutional authority. Its Members were his best friends. It did not matter whether he agreed with them or if they challenged or even attacked him--they were all his colleagues.

Jack once said of the Senate, ``I was stimulated by the ebb and flow of debate and the philosophic tensions of the work we did--balancing lofty principles against sectional or selfish interests, welding together antagonistic human and economic and ideological forces into the coherent schemes of governance that we call laws.'' Jack respected the Members of the Senate with a full heart and his great affection for them was returned in full measure.

A 1981 New York Times article remarked, ``whether or not you agreed with him on a given issue, you always knew that Mr. Javits was one of the brightest, hardest working and most effective elected officials in Washington in our time.''

After leaving the Senate in 1980, Jack visited and corresponded with many of his former political colleagues and maintained his interest in foreign affairs. In 1981, he served as special advisor on foreign policy issues of then Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr. He was a member of the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust and wrote numerous articles on international matters in publications such as the New York Times, Newsday, and Foreign Affairs.

The last project of his final, heroic years combined those elements that meant most to him. Jack created the concept of the Javits Senate Fellowship, a program that made available to the Senate many of the finest graduate students in public policy that our country could produce.

He asked these students of outstanding academic background to carry out his commitment to excellence in public service, to learn firsthand about the Senate and to bring to their own lives the values and experience which they had gained in the Senate. Many of these young people have gone on to very distinguished careers and accomplishments.

Jack knew that, in truth, the best way to be remembered would be through the accomplishments of the next generation, through those who would carry forward his spirit, his commitment to public service, and his abiding respect for, and love of, the United States Senate.

We remember Jack with deep admiration on what would have been his 100th birthday. His accomplishments for New York and the Nation will long be honored and remembered.

Mr. President, I just want to take a few minutes to express my deep disappointment that the Senate has once again failed to keep our promises to adequately fund our schools. The Senate's inability to pass the Harkin-Hagel amendment yesterday is an outrage. The amendment would have put us on a 6-year track to finally fulfill the Federal Government's promise to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Act--a promise made to our schoolchildren and our local districts 30 years ago.

The key with the Harkin-Hagel amendment--which I was very proud to cosponsor--was that it made the funding mandatory. It would have finally mandated that within 6 years, the Government fulfill its promise to cover 40 percent of the costs of educating special needs children in this country. Nationally, at current spending levels, the Federal Government only covers about 19 percent of the costs--and in New York, the figures are much lower than that. Some districts in New York spend nearly one-fifth of their overall school budgets providing quality special education programs. Yet for many districts, Federal funding only covers 8 or 9 percent of these costs.

I have talked to school superintendents all over the State about the budget crunches they are in--crunches that are exacerbated by the economy, tight State budgets, and year after year of being shortchanged by the Federal Government. Last month, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in New York reported that New York State will need $9.5 billion more for education funding over the next 4 years, but it has not yet been revealed where that money will come from. Schools across the State are struggling to balance their budgets--and are often forced to raise local property taxes to fund the Federal mandates we place on them.

The administration's proposal would increase IDEA funding by only $1 billion this year. At that rate of increase, we won't reach full funding until 2028--50 years after we promised it to our districts. Under the administration's budget, New York State will receive approximately $729 million in fiscal year 2005 funding. If we were at full funding, New York would be getting $1.49 billion next year. Under the Harkin-Hagel amendment, New York could expect $807 million in fiscal year 2005, and steady, solid increases in the subsequent 5 years to get the State to the full amount.

My office did an analysis, using data from the Congressional Research Service, the National Education Association, and the Department of Education, comparing the administration's fiscal year 2005 funding proposal to what various regions of the State would be receiving in 2005 under full funding. The shortfalls were shocking:

New York City will be shortchanged $303 million under the administration's budget. Under full funding, they could expect $565 million, but they are only going to get $262 million.

Schools in Western New York, which includes Buffalo, will be shortchanged $58 million. They should be getting $108 million, but will only see $50 million.

In Central New York, the region which includes Syracuse and the surrounding counties, schools will be shortchanged $43 million. They will get $37 million instead of $80 million.

In the Lower Hudson Valley, just north of the city, schools will get $45 million instead of $96 million.

Schools in the Rochester/Finger Lakes region will get $43 million instead of $93 million.

Schools in the Southern Tier of the State will be shortchanged $13 million. They will see $11 million instead of the $24 million they were promised by Congress in 1975.

The Senate had a real opportunity yesterday to make a difference in the lives of the families we are here to protect and represent. But I am ashamed that only 56 of us stepped up to the plate. For all the rhetoric we have heard over the last several years about the importance of making a true commitment to our kids, it is nothing more than schoolyard banter if we don't fund our promises.

We can make no better investment than providing a high-quality education for all of our kids--ensuring they have access to the best teachers, cutting-edge curricula and books, and access to the special services they need to learn, advance and become productive members of society.

Yesterday we had a chance to make it right. Our schools simply asked for the funding they were promised to provide kids with the services they need, and 41 Members of this body said no. We will be back. We will keep coming back, and we will keep fighting the fight until our kids and our schools get what they were promised and what they deserve.

Mr. President, I think I have 6\1/2\ minutes. I yield a minute of my time to the Senator from Nevada.

I thank my colleagues from Nevada and Illinois for what they have said. The bottom line is, of course, very little could be more counterproductive to this war effort than what has happened. The best way to deal with it is to come clean and come clean quickly, to find out how often it happened, where it happened, how high up the chain of command, and exorcise it. Because to the overwhelming majority of our troops and our military leadership this is abhorrent. The sooner we can exorcise this cancer, the better off we will all be. Keeping this secret is not going to work. It is going to come out. It has come out. I join my colleagues. I hope we can get Secretary Rumsfeld to come back before us very quickly and give us a full and complete briefing on what has happened. That should happen this week, because last week he gave a briefing in room 407 and didn't even mention this, even though it was going to appear on TV that night.

All of us who care so much about our troops, who are risking their lives with bravery, hate to see any stain upon them. The quicker we deal with this, the better it will be for everybody. Don't hide it. Don't underplay it. Just get it out, exorcise it, and go forward. That is what we have to do. I hope Mr. Rumsfeld will come before us quickly.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss oil prices, another problem vexing America. Everywhere I go in my State, people are just amazed that gasoline prices are through the roof. It is hurting everybody. There was a report last week that people were buying a little less food. You know you are getting down to the bare bones. Costs of everything could go up. Inflation, thankfully, has stayed low, but if energy prices stay this high for this long, they are going to get higher. What is so troubling is that we have the tools to bring the prices back down. The administration is fiddling while high-priced gasoline burns, if you will.

The No. 1 culprit is not the lack of refineries. Let me make clear: We do have a shortage of refineries. We have had a shortage for 15 years. The price has not been this high for 15 years. The price was a lot lower a year ago with the same number of refineries.

The problem is OPEC. OPEC has gotten together, led by the Saudis, and decided that the old ceiling of $28 a barrel is no longer the ceiling. It is approaching $40 a barrel. That is danger for our people, our economy. Senator Corzine mentioned before, you see the great economic numbers and then you talk to average folks and they are having as much trouble paying the bills and making ends meet as they ever did before. My view of my role as Senator is to help those folks with their daily lives, not to just look at numbers in the newspaper and say, the numbers are good but, rather, to talk to average people and say: How are you doing? When I ask that, they say: Well, I would be doing a lot better if gasoline prices were lower.

We have a weapon. We have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve's first and foremost purpose is to be there in an emergency. But we changed the law. I helped change it. It can be used when gasoline prices are too high as a temporary way of bringing them down. That is what we should be doing.

The bottom line is, instead of actually putting more oil on the market to lower the price, we are increasing the reserve as we speak, raising the price even further, even though the reserve is over 90 percent full.

I have a resolution I hope to introduce on some bill soon enough that asks the President to confront OPEC, not to play footsie with them, not to just tell the Saudis we understand.

I understand there has been a close relationship between many in this administration and the Saudis and the oil companies. It is sort of a Bermuda Triangle into which oil prices just go. But enough is enough. We should be putting a million barrels of oil out into the market for 30 or 60 days and watch, the price will come down.

I don't regard this as a partisan activity. I pushed President Clinton to do this for 8 months. He did it in October of 2002. The price went down and stayed down. Do you know why it stayed down? Not just the new oil on the market, although oil prices are decided at the margin, but because OPEC knew they couldn't play around with us. When Spence Abraham, the Secretary of Energy, says we are not using the SPR, it gives a green light to OPEC that says: Raise prices as high as you want.

Is that leadership? Is that what the average American needs? Again, the average American is not looking at the newspaper and saying: Gee, the economy is great. They are sitting down at the dinner table Friday night and tearing out their hair about how they are going to pay their bills. The high price of gasoline makes it much worse. We have a way to combat it, to tell the Saudis and OPEC, the heck with you. And we are sitting there. This administration just sits and twiddles its thumbs as the price goes up and up and up. In fact, we send them little signals that it is perfectly OK.

The resolution I will be drafting--and I know my colleagues from California and Oregon are interested because we have talked about this--asks that we immediately, for 30 days, and then with the option for another 30 days, put a million barrels of oil out there. The price will come down.

I ask my fellow New Yorkers and Americans, don't think there is nothing we can do about high oil prices. As my good colleague from Oregon who led this debate said and as my colleague from New Jersey said, if we would simply use the SPR to reduce prices instead of now having it raise prices, the price would come down.

Again, our job as Senator is not to just look at these macrostatistics--that is part of the job--it is to figure out what the average family needs. And they need lower prices.

We can do it. I urge the administration, I urge this body to stop ignoring this problem, to get working on this problem, and bring those prices down in a variety of ways. What I have been pushing is the SPR, release some oil from the SPR. Prices will come down. It happened when President Clinton did it.

I hope this body will act quickly. Just because there is big oil, because there are Saudis, does not mean we should have to roll over. The President should be standing up for the average American, not standing up for the oil companies and not patting the Saudis on the back.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank both the chairman and the ranking member of the Finance Committee for allowing me to speak for 5 minutes on this issue.

I wish to take this opportunity to recognize the important and significant role that New York's 2nd Battalion 108th Infantry Regiment recently played in the rescue of Thomas Hamill, the civilian contractor held captive for 3 weeks in Iraq.

Seeing this unit in the area surrounding the farmhouse in which he was kept gave Mr. Hamill the courage to stand against his captors and escape to freedom. That is why I wish to recognize the 2nd Battalion 108th Infantry Regiment today.

I know it must be of great comfort to Mr. Hamill's family and friends that when he first stepped in the light of freedom, he was greeted by these fine New Yorkers. This is what it is all about. A man from Mississippi escaping bravely, and there were New Yorkers. They are headquartered in Utica, NY, with companies in Whitehall, Morrisonville, Gloversville, Rome, and Glens Falls. The unit has served this country since 1898 at home and abroad, and there they were in exactly the right place at the right time to help Mr. Hamill.

The bottom line is that after the attacks on September 11, many of the men and women of the 2nd Battalion were activated and came to New York City to protect our citizens. They are aware, better than anyone else, that this war on terror is a war we must fight both at home and abroad, protecting us at home and protecting us abroad.

A full 11 of these National Guardsmen have such love for their fellow New Yorkers and for America that they are fighting in Iraq as new citizens, having been sworn in at a send-off celebration in February. The 2nd Battalion is fortunate to have guardsmen hailing from Africa, South America, the Ukraine, Japan, and across the world now serving as American citizens. What an extraordinary first act as an American to serve and protect the Iraqi people and lead Mr. Hamill to freedom.

Family, friends, and neighbors from Albany to New York City, from Westchester to Plattsburgh, Syracuse and Buffalo all gathered together at that send-off celebration to show their support and honor their bravery.

In the 2 months they have been in Iraq, these men and women have been serving under the leadership of LTC Mark Warnecke, having truly served their country in the true tradition of the National Guard. Today I recognize the efforts of the 2nd Battalion 108th Infantry Regiment. When they return home to their families, they will do so as heroes.

Mr. Hamill is now safe and recovering in Germany and looking forward to a reunion with his wife and his return to Mississippi, after his courageous ordeal. I look forward to the day when the men and women of New York's 2nd Battalion 108th Infantry Regiment can return as heroes to their own families. May God grant them safety and security as they finish out their tour. I hope their example will bring courage and pride to all those serving in Iraq, resiliently going about their task of bringing peace and freedom to the Nation.

All New Yorkers and all Americans congratulate the 108th Infantry Regiment of New York today, and we say two words to the 108th Infantry Regiment: Thank you.

I yield the floor. I ask unanimous consent that the time on the quorum call be charged equally against both sides.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I know my colleague from New Jersey wishes to speak on this issue for 2 minutes. I thank the Senator for his generous yielding of time. I yield 2 of my 10 minutes to Senator Corzine, and I will then take the other 8 myself.

Mr. President, first let me thank my colleague from Massachusetts for his generous yielding of time and for his leadership on this issue.

There is no question about it, this is a sad day when we have to pit workers who work for large employers versus workers who work for small employers in terms of their pension.

Testimony of Condoleezza Rice

I am not here to address that issue. As head of our Task Force on National Security and Homeland Security, I am here to respond to the testimony of adviser Condoleezza Rice. The hearings we have had and Condoleezza Rice's decision to testify is all to the good. To quote from the Scriptures, the truth shall set you free, and this Commission--half Democrat, half Republican--has endeavored, is endeavoring, will endeavor to find the truth.

The bottom line is the Commission is bipartisan. The people on it tend to be those who look at things not as Democrats or Republicans but as experts, and the Commission is needed. The bottom line, too, is we should not look to this Commission for pointing fingers of blame. It is very easy, in hindsight, to say this should be done or that should be done, and I do not object to the fact this administration--or I understand the fact this administration and others made mistakes. Everyone in America made mistakes. So that is not the problem with the testimony of Condoleezza Rice.

The problem is something else. Unfortunately, we did not hear from Adviser Rice three important words: We made mistakes.

Of course, we made mistakes. This administration made mistakes. The previous administrations made mistakes. The inability of this administration and of the National Security Adviser to admit mistakes were made makes us fear we will make future mistakes because, after all, the only way we are able to understand what went wrong is to first acknowledge it and then say we are going to correct it.

We may not be dealing with al-Qaida in the future. We may be dealing with Chechnyans or East Timorese or skinheads. Unless we realize what went wrong and why we failed to pick up the warning signs, we are less likely to pick up future warning signs that could create even greater terror than the terrible terror on September 11 that befell my city.

Is it for sure that had everything been done right we could never have prevented 9/11, as Adviser Rice says? I doubt it. There are six facts that, if they all were to be put together, would have clearly pointed the arrow at what happened.

First, 12 intelligence reports throughout the 1990s showed terrorists would use planes as missiles to attack American targets.

Second, upon entering office in January, Dr. Rice read a memo from Dick Clarke indicating there were active al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Third, in the summer of 2001, there was a threat spike about terrorist activities against American targets, including hijackings and warnings that something very big was about to happen.

Fourth, on July 10, 2001, a document was sent to FBI headquarters in Washington from Phoenix, warning several Islamic militants had enrolled in flight schools in Arizona and positing that al-Qaida was trying to infiltrate the U.S. aviation system.

Sixth, we missed warning signs from Special Agent Rowley in Minnesota about Zacarias Moussaoui, an Islamic radical who was getting special aviation training.

Finally, on August 6, a White House briefing memo to the President stated, ``bin Laden determined to attack in the United States,'' which was specific examples from the FBI of al-Qaida moves against Americans.

If, if, if, if on August 6 word went from the White House out to the FBI and all of the intelligence agencies, go turn over every rock and find out what al-Qaida is up to, it is very conceivable we would have been able to figure out what they might be doing, certainly disperse some of the terrorists, two of whom were known to be in the United States, from doing what they had done.

Is it a certainty? Absolutely not. Is it a possibility? For sure. To say it would be impossible to add up these signs and figure out what happened is dead wrong, as it would be dead wrong to say it is a certainty you could figure that out.

So the bottom line is simple. It is not the fact this administration did not try very hard on terrorism, because in the eyes of Security Adviser Rice they did. It is not the fact certain things were missed. They were missed by this administration--and let me underscore previous administrations--but it is the fact this administration, the President and his advisers, have this inability to say mistakes were made, under our watch and under previous watches. That leads to an attitude that we do not correct the problems.

Every parent knows when their child makes a mistake, they try to get the child to understand they made the mistake and maybe they will not do it again, but somehow we have this stonewalling and that is the most destructive fact.

Right now we hope and pray the messy situation in Iraq ends and ends quickly and that our Armed Forces can do the job against such bad people as this Sadr leader, but if the eyes of the administration were more open to what had been done wrongly in the past, maybe we would be better off in Iraq today. I say that as somebody who has been largely supportive of fighting the war on terror, voting for the war in Iraq.

What bothers me most about the testimony of Condoleezza Rice and the actions of this administration is not that they did not do everything right. Who could ask anyone to do that in this brave, new, post-9/11 world? But there is an inability to want to gather all the truth and figure out from that truth what was done right, what was done wrong, and improve and make things better.

The one lesson we learned in Vietnam is when our leaders did not accept the truth, it made matters worse. When our leaders failed to admit mistakes, it made things worse. Unfortunately, today's testimony shows an inability to admit mistakes were made and move forward and correct those mistakes and make America a more secure place in the future. I hope and pray it changes.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, honestly, I had come to the floor to submit a resolution on behalf of myself and 14 of my colleagues, including Senators Kennedy, Byrd, Lieberman, Clinton, Corzine, Dodd, Johnson, Hollings, Reid from Nevada, Lautenberg, Dorgan, Durbin, Daschle, and Nelson to ask the President to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath and in public. I heard NBC News has announced she will do just that. So the resolution is moot. I will make a couple of points, though.

One is I suppose all of the protestation that this would violate separation of powers has gone by the wayside. We all knew that was just a smokescreen because this commission is not congressional, and the whole theory of separation of powers is congressional.

The bottom line is the real reason the administration did not want Condoleezza Rice to testify, that they did not want her out there speaking about this, is quite apparent and had nothing to do with separation of powers.

The second point I make is to compliment the Commission. The Commission has done an incredible job. I think when Tom Kean, the former Governor of New Jersey, a Republican, one known for integrity, said the only way she would testify was under oath--she has been on every talk show. She is on television 24/7. So she has plenty of time to go public and say what she wants, but not what the Commission will ask her under oath.

Her statements, her public statements contradicted some of Dick Clarke's. Dick Clarke's were given under oath. Dick Clarke's were given after considerable criticism and vituperation directed from the White House and the attack machine that we know about here in Washington, the Republican attack machine. He stood by his story. So we now all wait with bated breath to hear what Condoleezza Rice will say under oath.

Mr. President, people as diverse as Colin Powell, John McCain, Chuck Hagel--Republicans--have talked about Dick Clarke's character. I have known Dick Clarke for a long time. He is a principled man. He has been a registered Republican. Whenever he met me--and I met him under the Clinton administration--he said he was a Republican. His one passion was to make America safe.

When all the information he had and all the work he and his staff had done were ignored, he became more and more frustrated. Dick Clarke's book is not aimed at political retribution. Dick Clarke's book is aimed at the truth. Like everywhere else, the Scriptures are right: The truth will set us free.

I hope Condoleezza Rice fully testifies, testifies truthfully. The Commission's goal is not to point fingers or blame; the Commission's goal is to find out what went wrong so we don't do it again. No one feels that more keenly than the families in my State who have lost loved ones and who yearn for the truth; not so much because it will ever bring their loved ones back but because they, in a charitable, an eleemosynary gesture, want to prevent it from happening again.

This is a good step. We ought to trust this Commission. It is bipartisan. It has many people of integrity on it. Let it go forward without stonewalling. The truth, the truth will set us free.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 10 minutes of our side's morning business time.